Logo design is such a grey area (only in terms of the varying quality you see every day – it's actually one of the most specalised design disciplines). Despite people being affected (subconsciously or otherwise) by the brands they see in their everyday lives, whenever (not always, but the majority of the time) a company/person needs a logo designing for themselves, they don't seem able to mentally draw parallels between succesful brands, and the one they wish to create. As such, literal thought processes take hold, and the finished project often falls short of what it is their brand needs (notice the ommision of the phrase "what they want").

If you look at successful brands (especially the cream of the crop) the brand is very rarely a visual description of the service/product, yet it is still indelibly marked in your brain (Nike swoosh, Fed-Ex, Amazon etc). Why? This is open to interpretation, but for me, it's because the unique design of the logo, coupled (this is the important bit) with the quality of the product/service, creates the brand, not the fact that the ''Mista Kleen-EZ" logo has a mop on it. This is why the majority of designers (particularly the good ones) will always veer away from the obvious, because it's obvious. Your brand should be unique, and if it's clichéd, it just won't cut the mustard.

So, when I was asked to create this logo (I'm not going to go into detail, as I don't want to offend the client/incur the wrath of my wife) and they made it clear that it needed to literally portray what it was, I heaved a great (internal) sigh. My pride in my work extends to the pride I take in helping a business to establish themselves, and there are some things which (unintentionally) harm your brand, none more so than a logo which, because it describes the business too literally, can't help but make things look tacky – and that's the last thing (usually) that a client wants.

Anyway, I digress. The reason the stars have aligned for me (in a very small, particular way) was that I stumbled across an analysed approach to logo design (via the website of the very successful Jacob Cass) and I think it helps to explain, far more eloquently than I ever could, what makes a logo so successful. And through examples of omission, it provides friendly examples to designers who are trying to point out what it is that logos shouldn't contain. You can read the article here.

A good logo does not a great brand make, but a poor logo can cause serious damage to any desired presence in the marketplace.

Create your document

I've created a new document in Quark (only because the program gets very little attention - this technique will work just as well in inDesign). All you need to do is create your text box and fill it with your list (I should point out that it doesn't have to be a list, you can use this technique to highlight any piece of text).

Making your list

As I've already mentioned, this technique isn't isolated to lists, but for the purpose of this, we'll stick with it. Get your text, and style it anyway you want to.

Create your graphics

Time to switch to Illustrator (or the graphics package of your choice). Create the graphic you want use, for this I've simply made a red rectangle with rounded corners. Note that this should tie in with the leading of your list (my list back in Quark has 12pt leading, and I've made the height of this rectangle 14pt to give me a little space - make sure you type in 'pt' after your height measurement otherwise it will default to the measurements set in your preferences).

Import your graphic

Time to go back to Quark. We now need to make a picture box and import the graphic at 100%. Make the size of your picture box 1mm wide by 12pt hight (again, ensure you specify the measurements in the Quark dialog boxes). You can now import your picture, though in truth you will see very little of it (we'll come to that in a second). What we now need to do is remove the restrictions in place, so that the picture extends beyond the boundaries of the image box.

For this, press +alt+T. This will bring up the clipping dialog box. Select 'Picture Bounds' in the type drop down menu, and then uncheck 'Restrict to Box'. Click OK. You should now be able to see your full graphic.

We now need to embed the graphic in the text box. Using the item tool, select your graphic box, and press +X to cut the box. Then, switch to the content tool and place the cursor in the place you wish to embed the graphic (I placed it at the very beginning of the line on one of the list entries) press +V to paste the graphic on the line of text. We now need to ensure the box doesn't affect the alignment of the text line in relation to the other list entries.

Bring up the runaround dialog box (+T). We need to ensure that the runaround to the right of the graphic box is ignored by the text. As the width of our graphic box is 1mm, we just need to negate that, so make the runaround -1mm.

Now you need to just adjust the position of the graphic (using the content tool) to your satisfaction. Once you've done this, you're finished. The graphic is effectively text now, so you can copy and paste the graphic as many times as you like, and they will all be consistently in the correct place on each line. The beauty of this technique is that if you make any alts to the text, the graphic flows with it, so you don't need to worry about things being out of position.

Hope this helps.

Sean