I am learning to be a better cook. Any how-to cooking book will tell you that one of the keys to successful cooking is prep work. When you’re cooking sometimes you have several things happening at once, and having everything prepared allows you to handle multiple steps without panicking. You’ve already read through the recipe, so no step catches you by surprise. You gathered and prepared your ingredients, so when you have to quickly add minced garlic and saute, it’s already at hand. This prep work is called mise en place.

Besides, if you’ve prepped, you won’t end up in the middle of making risotto only to discover you don’t have enough rice. This may or may not have happened to me recently.

You see, even though I know that doing the prep work properly is important, I’m impatient and it’s tempting to dive right in.

The same is true of design. Prep work is key. And yet all too often we sit down to pick out colors, fonts, and photos without even a clear idea of the purpose of the project.

Design mise en place means doing the brainstorming and research ahead of time so you understand your audience, the message you are trying to convey, the vital information that must be included, and even what your competitors are already doing.

Unfortunately, just as in cooking, prep work can seem a little boring and time-consuming. But it’s necessary for successful designs. If you’ve done the prep, often the design itself snaps into place seemingly like magic, perfect in its simplicity.

As I start my next design projects, I’ll be reminding myself of risotto.

Everyone knows that they need one for their company. But why? What exactly is a logo and what is it supposed to accomplish for you?

A logo is a symbol that represents your company. It can be a) a graphic or image, b) a word or name in a specifically chosen or custom-designed typeface, or c) a combination of both a and b.

There is a list of job requirements for a good logo.

• It must have a simple, strong, memorable design
• It must work at very small and very large sizes, in all kinds of contexts from billboards to t-shirt printing
• It must communicate what your company is about

Well, that still leaves the definition pretty vague. Perhaps we should look at what a logo is NOT.

It is not a picture – not a photo or illustration. It is NOT clip art. Why? Because that defies the very first requirement for a logo, that it be simple, strong and memorable, and makes it impossible for the logo to be recognizable in all sizes and contexts.

It is not your name in Papyrus or Brush Script font. Why? First of all, because Brush Script is outdated and Papyrus is overused. But secondly (and more importantly), because that doesn’t accomplish the purpose of setting you apart and communicating something about your organization.

It is not something you can pick from a logo wizard at one of those flashy sites. Why? Because, again, such a thing is neither unique, interesting, nor easily recognizable as YOU.

It is not a random swooshy shape. Why? Because, again, that says absolutely nothing about you, and won’t be easily recognizable. A logo is a symbol of who you are and what you do. It can be abstract or representational, but it’s not some random shape that’s just there for no reason. If it is a swooshy shape, it should be a swooshy shape with a purpose, that looks different from all the other swooshy shape logos out there.

It doesn’t have lots of bevels, shines, gradients, and other fancy Photoshop effects. Why? Because they are needlessly complicated and make it hard to reproduce the logo in other contexts. Think of the most famous logos in the world – the Golden Arches, the Nike swoosh, Apple’s apple, the Red Cross. Incredibly simple and powerful. A good test for logo simplicity is whether it looks equally striking in pure black and white as in color.

Logos form a part of that mysterious thing called “branding.” In the most basic terms, branding just means that you have a recognizable style and you apply it consistently to every aspect of your company that is visible to the public. A good logo is essential to instantly-recognizable branding, but it’s not the only piece.

So if you’re thinking of designing a logo, where do you start?

How about answering these questions: How do you want people to feel when they think about you? What is the personality of your organization? Are you serious and refined, or quirky and playful? How do you want to be remembered by your clients and customers?

What sets you apart from your competition? Because branding, although it is eventually embodied in promotional materials, starts with defining who you are. You can’t design a strong logo that communicates something important until you know what it is you want to say.

I have a pet peeve about books. I hate it when publishers put the words “A Novel” on the cover and/or as part of the title. As in, Pride and Prejudice: A Novel or Jane Eyre: A Novel. (To coin some examples, ahem.) I think it’s unnecessary, silly, and just a bit insulting to my intelligence. If you can’t figure out that the book you’re reading is a novel, either something is really wrong with you, or something is really wrong with the author.

I have some theories about why publishers insert those two words. They imply a sort of false self-deprecation, as if you should read in a “Just” – just a novel. Or they suggest that the book is not to be confused with any plebeian subcategory of novel, like mystery novel or spy novel or sci-fi novel. The publishers seem to think that adding “A Novel” to the cover just looks literary. And the more they do it, the more other publishers copy them. I noticed “A Novel” popping out like a plague all over the covers of Christian fiction recently.

Then it occurred to me that the same could be true of design. It’s so tempting for us designers to add elements to a piece just because they look artsy, or because other designers did something similar and it looked cool.

But that’s a really bad reason for adding something. In a good design, every piece should be there for a reason. Every element should contribute a useful purpose to the whole. And if the design is off-balance, adding a meaningless swirl just covers up. It doesn’t really fix the problem. Design, like literature, is supposed to communicate clearly and incisively. If you have to add redundant comments to either your book or your design, something is probably wrong with the way you are communicating.