Design then tweak, tweak, tweak, tweak

[Pat Whatley]

About a year ago I posted a logo design I was working on for a local music festival. For the past year every couple of weeks I find myself fiddling with it. Last night I was looking for the final version we'd decided to use and realized how many different versions I had saved....and these are just the saved ones. There were probably two dozen completely different directions I tried out with this but those designs were saved over or dumped.

Just thought I'd share the pile of tweaked logos, sketches, and inspirations that this thing has had. Not all are mine....there are several that I saved from my previous logo design thread.

 

[weaselboogie]

I think I've seen at least 80% of those. Great work! I'm guilty of doing this too for jobs that I'm really excited about, but the customer only sees about 25% of what I come up with . I have to pull the reigns back a bit or I come off looking compulsively DESPARATE.. "Maybe we should just be friends"

So, whats final?

 

[weaselboogie]

Oh, yeah, here's one of mine. Just looking at this makes me feel like a hoarder.

 

[Pat Whatley]

So, whats final?

No idea. I've got until Friday afternoon to get the t-shirt guy the final artwork. It's really more of nailing down the color palette at this point.

 

[showcase 66]

Looks good. Makes me think of beer. Which is always a good thing in my opinion.

 

[Rick]

Too many times I'm tweaking, noodling, fiddling, nudging, monkeying with, finessing, manipulating, altering, mutating, transforming and occasionally transmogrifying a logo design till there is nothing left to do but go back to the original design and send that...

 

[Gino]

And I thought you meant two weeks after the design stage... something took place. :Oops:

 

[visual800]

i like the one in the middle 3 rd down on the left towards the top near the side.

they all look good and seriously i like the big orange one

 

[lexsigns]

love so many of them!
got the same problem with the sad sign I am still working on- have about 10 versions and still fiddling! Happens to me and I woud guess all of us sometimes
If the clients ever knew LOL!

 

[scuba_steve2699]

I wish I had a fraction of the talent I see in both sets of designs. I guess I need more practice!

 

[Pat Whatley]

I think it's all going more toward this. It lends itself to being configured for shirts, banners, and posters a lot better.

 

[WCSign]

I think it's all going more toward this. It lends itself to being configured for shirts, banners, and posters a lot better.

that design is going to look really great on shirts

 

[Rodi]

Nice Pat!

I always find myself whittling down making less, kern this check this leading take out this line, change the font rekern check the leading, etc etc, go back to square one and hate them all!

 

[Gino]

I have a serious question on this very topic......

As one does this fine tuning or adding new elements..... how do you save them ??

• Do you just use a folder inside the customer's folder and just keep adding to it ??
• Do you place each new idea in its own folder, inside the folder ??
• Do you just name it blur and grey # 14 ??

• How do you keep them all straight until the customer finally decides ??

And THEN... do you throw them away of archive them in a manner that you can re-use some of the discarded ones for someone new in the future ??

 

[Pat Whatley]

I don't have different folders for each customer, it's too easy for me accidentally save something in the wrong folder then I'd never find it. I save everything with the customer name (i.e. cattlemens-rodeo-2012.eps) to the desktop then periodically drag all of the files into a folder on the desktop called JOB FILES 2012a. If I need the customers work later a simple search gets me all of their files.

The files I just posted are all saved as bluesfest1.fs - bluesfest32c.fs

Hard drive space is cheap...as soon as I save over something I'll realize I need it.

I do have a dedicated folder where I stick designs that weren't used but that I was proud of. Whenever I'm having one of those brain **** days the first thing I do is scroll through it and see if there's something in there I can recycle.

 

[signswi]

I use various version control methods the most common is probably Adobe Version Cue though I've also played with Pixelnovel Timeline. Also some internal program tools like Photoshop Layer Comps.

Git or SVN for web projects, depending on if I'm working with partners and which of those prefer.

I also have really strict file and folder naming conventions that allow me to search very easily even outside of the digital asset management systems.