For me, I have a bad habit of skipping the physical sketching phase, which leads to designing in circles and indeed slow progress, so i am trying to break that habit, but once I boot up the mac I always reach for Illustrator first, to get the logo tuned as nice as possible in black and white, then color, and if it needs further glitz for a website etc, i will simply pull it into photoshop as a smart object. THEN add the whiz-bang elements.

You should never add the “pretty bits” until AFTER you have a bulletproof design.

Luke.