While field research can be helpful and I highly suggest making fieldwork part
of our logo brainstorming creative process, there's another step that can
also be beneficial if it is possible to do in your case, and that is both
interviewing and focus groups. You can interview current and potential
customers of your client about the client's products and services. Compared
to quantitative research, this can yield more in depth information with specific
individuals. So interviewing people in depth is part of qualitative research.
Of course sending out surveys and seeing how people react to certain words or images
or shapes or logos for quantitative data can be helpful, but qualitative data
allows for follow-up questions right away and it results in more of a
conversation rather than just answering a list of specific questions.
Besides interviewing individuals, focus groups can also be helpful. In a formal focus
group you would meet with the group of, say eight to 12 people, in a specific
demographic that you're trying to reach and ask them to talk freely about topics
like your client and their related interests. Ask them what words they think
of to describe your client's business and ask them direct certain words that
relate to your client. For example, you could ask the focus group what their
reactions are to specific words, phrases, images or even logo concepts. In both
in depth individual interviews and focus groups, your objective would be to
understand what the company and its brand are all about in the minds of consumers.
So what is appealing and leads to customers to purchasing products or
services of that client? It's also possible, of course, to explore the idea
of brand loyalty with these interview participants. So talk about if they only
select products from this client or do they also purchase competing products?
The difference is that with the focus group, there could be a group discussion,
group brainstorming all
centered around the discussion prompts rather than say a one-on-one discussion
or just a question and answer session or conversation. You'd want to record the
conversation regardless with the participant's permission of course.
Then the marketing and logo design team or individual can look at the transcript
later to learn from the data. Of course you'd be part of the logo design team or
just a individual logo designer. So interviewing potential customers and
current customers can be helpful to come up with ideas as well. While individual
interviews and focus groups with current and potential customers of a client can
be insightful, it's really not mandatory in order to design a logo of course.
In fact, I've designed numerous logos by only interviewing the client about the logo,
about the business and about the customers. So this is not required. If you do
have funds for a focus group, since they often need some kind of funding, or at least
a gift certificate for their time, or if it's simply not feasible, it's not a big
deal. You can of course conduct interviews and focus groups of customers
even after a logo is launched and used just to see their reaction to the new
logo. However the interviewing the client about the logo is essential so while
focus groups and in-depth interviews with customers are not required, meeting
with the client of course is. So in the next lesson you'll see an example
meeting where I discuss the logo concept with a client. Thank.