{"course":{"slug":"vector-and-print","title":"Vectors, Logos and Things That Get Printed","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/vector-and-print","level":"beginner","track":"create"},"lesson":{"slug":"the-brief-before-the-pencil","title":"The questions to ask before you draw anything","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/vector-and-print/the-brief-before-the-pencil","position":37,"of":73,"minutes":8,"answer":"The surfaces list (every specific place the mark will appear) decides more of a logo's design than any adjective the client uses, so collect it first, convert vague directions into choices between real examples.","keyIdea":"The surfaces list (every specific place the mark will appear) decides more of a logo's design than any adjective the client uses, so collect it first, convert vague directions into choices between real examples, and send a one-page written brief back for confirmation."},"body":{"format":"markdown","text":"## Most logo work goes wrong before any drawing\n\nA client says \"we need a logo, make it modern, make it pop\". If you start drawing from that, you will produce three concepts, they will reject all three, and neither of you will be able to say why. The failure is not in the drawing.\n\nThere is a list of questions, and asking them takes twenty minutes.\n\n## The surfaces list, which is the most useful question\n\n> Where will this appear, specifically? Name every place you can think of.\n\nWrite down the answers. The list decides most of the design.\n\n- A shop board 3 m wide → the mark must hold at distance and probably be made in vinyl or acrylic letters, so no fine detail, no gradients.\n- Embroidered shirt pockets → one to three thread colours, nothing below 1.2 mm.\n- A rubber stamp → pure black, no tints, nothing thin.\n- An app icon → square, works at 16 px, no wordmark.\n- A vehicle → deforms over curves, gets dirty, seen at speed.\n- Invoices from a thermal printer → black only, low resolution.\n- A sponsor board with thirty other logos → must survive being 40 mm wide next to a competitor's.\n\nClients who say \"I don't know, everywhere\" have just told you to design for all of these, which means flat, simple and one-colour-capable. That is a design decision derived from a question, not from taste.\n\n## The rest of the list\n\n**About the organisation**\n\n- What do you actually do, in one sentence a stranger would understand?\n- Who is the customer? Where do they see you first?\n- What is the full legal name, and what do people actually call you? These differ more often than you would think, and the mark should usually carry what people say.\n- Is the name fixed? If they are still arguing about it, stop until they have decided.\n\n**About the current situation**\n\n- Is there an existing mark? Who owns the artwork, and is the source file available?\n- Which parts of it must survive: a colour, a symbol, a name? Sometimes there is an equity you must not throw away.\n- Is this a refresh or a replacement? These are different jobs at different prices.\n\n**About constraints**\n\n- Is the colour count constrained by how you print? (A shop printing its own bags in one colour has a real constraint.)\n- Any language other than English? A bilingual lockup is a different design problem and must be planned, not retrofitted.\n- Is there a sector convention you want or want to avoid: green for organic, a caduceus for medical, a tick for sportswear?\n\n**About the process**\n\n- Who signs this off? Get the name. Work approved by a manager and then shown to the owner's family is a project with two clients.\n- How many revision rounds are we agreeing on?\n- When do you need it, and what is the first thing it will be printed on?\n\n## The competitor look\n\nDo this before sketching, not after. Collect ten competitors' marks, print them at 30 mm on one sheet in black and white, and look.\n\nYou will learn two things immediately. First, the conventions of the sector, which you can follow deliberately or break deliberately, and either is a decision. Second, what is already taken: if six of the ten use a swoosh, the seventh swoosh is invisible.\n\nKeep the sheet. It is also the most persuasive thing you can put in front of a client who wants a swoosh.\n\n## Turning \"make it pop\" into something workable\n\nWhen you get an unusable direction, do not argue with it. Convert it into a choice.\n\n> \"When you say modern, do you mean something like this, or like this?\", and show two real examples.\n\nAdjectives are unreliable because they mean different things to different people. Examples are not. Ask the client to bring three marks they admire from *any* sector and three they dislike, and to say one sentence about each. Ten minutes of that is worth an hour of adjectives, and it gives you something to point at later when a decision is questioned.\n\n## Write it down and send it back\n\nOne page: what they do, where it appears, constraints, who approves, how many rounds, deadline. Send it and ask them to confirm.\n\nThis is the single cheapest piece of professional practice in the trade. It catches the misunderstandings while they cost nothing, and when somebody later says \"I never said one colour\", the page says otherwise."},"check":{"question":"A client asks for a \"modern, premium\" logo for a bakery, and mentions in passing that they print their own paper bags on a single-colour flexo machine. Which of these follows most directly from that passing remark?","options":[{"text":"The mark must be designed and tested as a solid one-colour form, because the packaging cannot reproduce anything else.","correct":true},{"text":"A premium look requires foil or a spot colour, so the client should be advised to change printers before the design work starts.","correct":false,"tempting":"Treats a constraint as a problem to remove. Single-colour flexo is a legitimate process and many premium brands use it deliberately."},{"text":"The logo should be supplied as a high-resolution PNG with transparency, since flexo plates are made from bitmap images.","correct":false,"tempting":"Flexo plates are imaged from vector artwork through a RIP like any other process; supplying a raster would reduce quality for no reason."},{"text":"Colour is unconstrained because the bags are only one item among many surfaces the mark will appear on.","correct":false,"tempting":"The bag is the surface the customer holds. A constraint on the most-seen application is the governing constraint, not an exception to be averaged away."}]},"prev":{"slug":"logo-at-sixteen-pixels","title":"If it does not work in black at 16 pixels, it is not a logo","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/vector-and-print/logo-at-sixteen-pixels"},"next":{"slug":"the-five-kinds-of-mark","title":"Five kinds of mark, and what each one costs","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/vector-and-print/the-five-kinds-of-mark"},"authorship":"Founder and series editor: Dr Mustafa Mun. Written by AI models to a written standard. Exam keys checked blind by a second model: 3,665 of 3,666 agreed. Academic review invited.","review":{"status":"Draft, open for academic review"},"cite":"Addaly (2026) 'The questions to ask before you draw anything', in Vectors, Logos and Things That Get Printed. Edited by M. Mun. Addaly. Available at: https://addaly.com/learn/vector-and-print/the-brief-before-the-pencil (Accessed: 13 October 2026).","licence":{"name":"CC BY-NC-SA 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/"},"reader":{"schema":1,"title":"The questions to ask before you draw anything","courseTitle":"Vectors, Logos and Things That Get Printed","module":{"index":5,"slug":"designing-a-mark","title":"Designing a mark"},"answer":null,"keyIdea":"The surfaces list (every specific place the mark will appear) decides more of a logo’s design than any adjective the client uses, so collect it first, convert vague directions into choices between real examples, and send a one-page written brief back for confirmation.","hero":{"kind":"plate","image":null,"alt":null,"caption":null},"blocks":[{"t":"h2","id":"most-logo-work-goes-wrong-before-any-drawing","runs":[{"text":"Most logo work goes wrong before any drawing"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"A client says “we need a logo, make it modern, make it pop”. If you start drawing from that, you will produce three concepts, they will reject all three, and neither of you will be able to say why. The failure is not in the drawing."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"There is a list of questions, and asking them takes twenty minutes."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"the-surfaces-list-which-is-the-most-useful-question","runs":[{"text":"The surfaces list, which is the most useful question"}]},{"t":"quote","runs":[{"text":"Where will this appear, specifically? Name every place you can think of."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Write down the answers. The list decides most of the design."}]},{"t":"ul","items":[[{"text":"A shop board 3 m wide → the mark must hold at distance and probably be made in vinyl or acrylic letters, so no fine detail, no gradients."}],[{"text":"Embroidered shirt pockets → one to three thread colours, nothing below 1.2 mm."}],[{"text":"A rubber stamp → pure black, no tints, nothing thin."}],[{"text":"An app icon → square, works at 16 px, no wordmark."}],[{"text":"A vehicle → deforms over curves, gets dirty, seen at speed."}],[{"text":"Invoices from a thermal printer → black only, low resolution."}],[{"text":"A sponsor board with thirty other logos → must survive being 40 mm wide next to a competitor’s."}]]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Clients who say “I don’t know, everywhere” have just told you to design for all of these, which means flat, simple and one-colour-capable. That is a design decision derived from a question, not from taste."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"the-rest-of-the-list","runs":[{"text":"The rest of the list"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"About the organisation","b":true}]},{"t":"ul","items":[[{"text":"What do you actually do, in one sentence a stranger would understand?"}],[{"text":"Who is the customer? Where do they see you first?"}],[{"text":"What is the full legal name, and what do people actually call you? These differ more often than you would think, and the mark should usually carry what people say."}],[{"text":"Is the name fixed? If they are still arguing about it, stop until they have decided."}]]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"About the current situation","b":true}]},{"t":"ul","items":[[{"text":"Is there an existing mark? Who owns the artwork, and is the source file available?"}],[{"text":"Which parts of it must survive: a colour, a symbol, a name? Sometimes there is an equity you must not throw away."}],[{"text":"Is this a refresh or a replacement? These are different jobs at different prices."}]]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"About constraints","b":true}]},{"t":"ul","items":[[{"text":"Is the colour count constrained by how you print? (A shop printing its own bags in one colour has a real constraint.)"}],[{"text":"Any language other than English? A bilingual lockup is a different design problem and must be planned, not retrofitted."}],[{"text":"Is there a sector convention you want or want to avoid: green for organic, a caduceus for medical, a tick for sportswear?"}]]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"About the process","b":true}]},{"t":"ul","items":[[{"text":"Who signs this off? Get the name. Work approved by a manager and then shown to the owner’s family is a project with two clients."}],[{"text":"How many revision rounds are we agreeing on?"}],[{"text":"When do you need it, and what is the first thing it will be printed on?"}]]},{"t":"h2","id":"the-competitor-look","runs":[{"text":"The competitor look"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Do this before sketching, not after. Collect ten competitors’ marks, print them at 30 mm on one sheet in black and white, and look."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"You will learn two things immediately. First, the conventions of the sector, which you can follow deliberately or break deliberately, and either is a decision. Second, what is already taken: if six of the ten use a swoosh, the seventh swoosh is invisible."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Keep the sheet. It is also the most persuasive thing you can put in front of a client who wants a swoosh."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"turning-make-it-pop-into-something-workable","runs":[{"text":"Turning “make it pop” into something workable"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"When you get an unusable direction, do not argue with it. Convert it into a choice."}]},{"t":"quote","runs":[{"text":"“When you say modern, do you mean something like this, or like this?”, and show two real examples."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Adjectives are unreliable because they mean different things to different people. Examples are not. Ask the client to bring three marks they admire from "},{"text":"any","i":true},{"text":" sector and three they dislike, and to say one sentence about each. Ten minutes of that is worth an hour of adjectives, and it gives you something to point at later when a decision is questioned."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"write-it-down-and-send-it-back","runs":[{"text":"Write it down and send it back"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"One page: what they do, where it appears, constraints, who approves, how many rounds, deadline. Send it and ask them to confirm."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"This is the single cheapest piece of professional practice in the trade. It catches the misunderstandings while they cost nothing, and when somebody later says “I never said one colour”, the page says otherwise."}]}],"check":{"question":[{"text":"A client asks for a “modern, premium” logo for a bakery, and mentions in passing that they print their own paper bags on a single-colour flexo machine. 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Single-colour flexo is a legitimate process and many premium brands use it deliberately."}]},{"text":[{"text":"The logo should be supplied as a high-resolution PNG with transparency, since flexo plates are made from bitmap images."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"Flexo plates are imaged from vector artwork through a RIP like any other process; supplying a raster would reduce quality for no reason."}]},{"text":[{"text":"Colour is unconstrained because the bags are only one item among many surfaces the mark will appear on."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"The bag is the surface the customer holds. A constraint on the most-seen application is the governing constraint, not an exception to be averaged away."}]}],"order":[2,1,3,0],"why":null},"prev":{"slug":"logo-at-sixteen-pixels","title":"If it does not work in black at 16 pixels, it is not a logo","minutes":10},"next":{"slug":"the-five-kinds-of-mark","title":"Five kinds of mark, and what each one costs","minutes":8}}}