The Fruitful Design Process

Whether designing a custom logo, illustration, or book cover, I use the same trusted process at Fruitful:

1. Discovery 2. Mood Board 3. Hand-Drawn Sketches 4. Four Rounds 5. Final Design 6. Final Files

A slide titled 'The brand noun list' with a subtitle 'Make a list of people, places, things, or ideas to visually guide the logo design process.' The slide contains a numbered list with items: 1. House, 2. Happy People, 3. Artists, 4. Historic Neighborhoods of Omaha (Benson, Dundee), 5. Joslyn & Durham (Art Deco), 6. Sunrise, 7. Nature. The slide has a green and cream color scheme with a logo that says 'Truiful' and the section labeled 'Brand Discovery Questions'.
A brand slider with sliders for five traits: Elite, Serious, Conventional, Friend, and Mature, each with a circular handle, on a greenish background. The text reads "11 Brand Sliders" and provides instructions to move circles to indicate brand preferences.
A brand slider with sliders for five traits: Elite, Serious, Conventional, Friend, and Mature, each with a circular handle, on a greenish background. The text reads "11 Brand Sliders" and provides instructions to move circles to indicate brand preferences.

1

Design Discovery

I take you through an interactive discovery deck full of questions and exercises digging into audience, competition, inspirational brands, and how you’d like to be perceived in the market. This provides the perfect jumping off point for the next step.

A digital collage of various product categories including vintage watches, vintage Abercrombie & Fitch items, luxury pens, Sabah slippers, southern men's fashion, field notes, and vintage teal cars.

2

Research & Mood Board

Since differentiation is such an important part of effective visual branding, it’s crucial to conduct extensive research into your competition and inspirational brands to determine ways to both relate to your audience and stand out from the croud. I assemble a visual “mood board” of found design samples that inspires our hand-drawn comps.

Collection of black and white logo stickers with the words 'WES GAY' and various stylized designs, some accompanied by illustrations of a dragon and a crocodile.

3

Hand Drawn Sketches

I believe design is better made by human hands. Building off decades of logo building, I begin by drawing dozens of unique thumbnail logo sketches. Experimenting with form, concepts, typography, and unique connections. With a background in illustrative design and hand-lettering, I use my encyclopedic knowledge of visual branding to create a wide array of unique iterations.

4

Rounds of Comps

I don’t just create 3 semi-final designs and ask you to choose one. I create 4 rounds of curated sketches, and guide you through our design choices.

  • Collection of eight book covers for "Light in the Darkness" by Michael P.V. Barrett, each with different illustrations and designs.

    Round 1: Hand Drawn Sketches

    Round one shows my top 8-10 hand-drawn sketches paired with key visual inspiration from our mood board, and a description. I send it over as a PDF presentation, along with a short Loom video walking you through each concept. I then give you time to digest this information, show the deck to trusted stakeholders, and then we schedule a review call to discuss what works and what doesn’t. I lead you to think in terms of your audience, the things that we discovered about your brand in the discovery phase, as well as the research we’ve done in your industry.

  • Four black and white book covers titled "Light in the Darkness: The Meaning of Judges" by Michael P.V. Barrett, with illustrations of a torch, skulls, and dark scenes.

    Round 2: Eliminate & Combine

    Round two usually includes 2-4 refined sketches based on the winning concepts from round one, and the review call. These are still rough, black and white, hand drawn sketches, but they are more dialed in than the previous round, and much closer to the final concept. Quite often one of the concepts from round two will be the winning idea, but sometimes it will spark a new concept that will be revealed in the next round.

  • Sign with the words 'Texas Native Seeds' and a graphic of a blueflower with a white base.

    Round 3: Refine & Decide

    In round three, I bring things into the computer and begin to fine-tune one or two logo concepts, based on everything we have created up to this point. In this phase we are looking for approval on the final logo concept. I will often mock up the designs in photoshop to show what the branding could look like on a sign, t-shirt, or stationery. This is where the brand really comes to life. I may show multiple versions of the logo in this round (badge, icon, horizontal and vertical lock ups) and begin to establish some ideas around color.

  • Multicolored graphic featuring a dinosaur head silhouette with the text 'WES GAY' in different colors across three sections.

    Round 4: Colors & Details

    In round four, we’ve arrived at our final design, we just need to fine-tune it some. I then create a deck depicting various color scheme options inspired by everything we’ve learned throughout the branding process.

Book cover of "The Caring House" by Raj Lulla, featuring an illustration of a large white house with a front porch, set against a background of mountains and a blue sky with clouds.
Illustration of a diverse group of people in a meeting or collaborative work session in an office with plants and modern lighting.
A stylized yellow Owl logo on a dark blue background.

5

Final Design

In round four, we’ve arrived at our final design, we just need to fine-tune it some. I then create a deck depicting various color scheme options inspired by everything we’ve learned throughout the branding process.

Design template showcasing various font styles and color swatches. The template features a circular logo with text reading ' Gay' and 'Words Make Money', along with font options for 'Canela Text Regular', 'DM Sans Medium', and 'Canela Text Italic' on a beige background.
Multiple logo designs for 'Wes Gay' featuring a pen nib symbol and the text 'Wes Gay' in various styles, with tags 'Words Make Money' and different arrangements of the name.
Black and white portrait of a man with a contemplative expression, partially obscured by the words "WES GAY" and a logo on a dark background.
A dark green graphic design featuring the text 'WES GAY' in large white letters overlaid on a stylized illustration of a dinosaur's head, with a small logo of a pen nib inside an orange circle to the left of the text.

6

Final Files

We believe in putting the power of your brand in your hands. One way we do this is by delivering all the design files you could possibly need. For logos that might include badge versions, icons, monograms and varying alignments, and color options in multiple file formats.

For book covers it may be implementing the design in an actual print template with proper spacing, guides and spine thickness. No matter the project, all of the artwork belongs to you – so we always hand over all of our final, builder files with every project.

Additional Deliverables

  • Brand Sheet

    A one-page Canva file & PDF that spells out the colors, fonts, logo types and paragraph styles of your brand.

  • Brand Guidelines Book

    A 20+ page Canva document & PDF file that includes all of the basics of the brand but goes into greater detail about brand do’s and don’ts, and brand imagery.

  • Canva Templates

    Canva is a powerful design tool for the non-designer. I love creating brand files that my clients can actually use.

  • Homepage Design

    Although I don’t offer full web design and development options, I love designing homepage Figma files that helps show how your new brand should be applied on the web.

  • Book Dust Jacket Design

    In addition to creating the all-important cover design for your book, I help adapt that design across the dust jacket , boards, spine, back cover etc.

  • Interior Book Design

    Creating a cohesive design experience with your book is important. I help establish the design/format of your chapters, and work with another designer to apply this design throughout your book.

  • Icon Set

    Custom icons are an important part of the look, feel, and design language of your new brand. Iconography can help differentiate you from you competition and connect your audience with your brand.

  • Swag Design

    Hats, shirts, mugs, water bottles, stickers and other physical items are a great way to get your visual brand into the world. We help guide the aesthetic of these essential brand artifacts.

  • Stationery

    Business cards, letterhead, envelopes, notecards and other forms of stationery are classic physical embodiments of your brand.

  • Presentation Design

    A powerful visual presentation can often make a key difference in the experience of your brand. I design easy to edit/copy Canva-based presentation files for my branding clients.

This process is perfect for brands and individuals who care about the foundation of their brand and want a collaborative, experiential, fun process with an experienced graphic artist.

The average investment for a Fruitful design project is currently in the $10k range – and takes 6-8 weeks to complete from start to finish, depending on client responsiveness and availability.

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