I love commissions like this because the challenge is to make something personal and resonant but also looks cool printed on the side of a golf ball.
Thinking about getting your own bespoke golf ball logo? Get in touch…
While the end product of projects like this look simple enough, there’s often a lot of work lying behind them, starting with a list of questions for the client so I can get the clearest possible idea of what they want. Even during this early step, the ‘good’ idea can emerge (we-think-we-hope).
In this case, the process started when I found out that the client wanted the logo to star a very specific Welsh breed of sheep with a support cast of personally significant letters and numbers.
The next step was research which, in this case involved trawling through images of a very specific sheep to find a few ‘poses’ that I thought might work. From there, I could begin the sketching stage, which involved navigating the anatomy of sheep and and playing with some lettering I’d already had in mind…
The client had also cited one of my pieces which had originally been drawn with ink, so for the next stage, I made pen drawings of four different sheep so I had plenty to play with at the design stage.
Once scanned in, I could change the colour of the black ink lines to blue…
Now I got stuck into the ‘supporting cast’ of the logo, which involved some bespoke typography as well as design work…
The client also requested something called an ‘alignment line’, which is printed on the opposite pole of the golf ball so it’s easier to line the ball up with the hole on the putting green (every day’s a school day).
Using the previous logo designs, I mocked up a few possible choices for the alignment line…
At this stage, I already had a few possible logo variations so I started playing, pairing each variation with each sheep, positioning the elements until it felt like it was working.
This is the part of the process that always takes longer than you think. It’s a lot of shifting, then looking, then shifting, then looking… rinse and repeat…
I then sent the client a selection of mocked-up logo and line designs as if they were already printed on golf balls so they could get a sense of how the final product would look and feel.
And this was the final selection (featuring a character I had, for obvious reasons, dubbed ‘Cheeky Sheep’)…
If you want your very own personalised logo for your business, for one of the good people in your life or for your good self…
