Step 3 - Perfecting and digitizing
Lesson 7 from: Abstract Logo Design: Create Simple Logos That Tell A StoryScott Lancaster
Step 3 - Perfecting and digitizing
Lesson 7 from: Abstract Logo Design: Create Simple Logos That Tell A StoryScott Lancaster
Lesson Info
7. Step 3 - Perfecting and digitizing
Lessons
Welcome to the abstract logo design course
02:05 2What is abstract logo design?
02:01 3The secret to memorable logo design
02:21 4The neuroscience to why logos are remembered
02:25 5Step 1 - Finding the message
07:11 6Step 2 - Searching, Sketching & Selection
05:12 7Step 3 - Perfecting and digitizing
05:41 8Creating world-class mock ups
35:38Lesson Info
Step 3 - Perfecting and digitizing
So right now with our sketch, we have a piece of coal that is thriving to reach its full potential. Now with a little bit of time and refinement, we can turn that piece of coal into a beautiful diamond and it took me three hours to come up with that analogy. So I'm gonna have a celebratory sip of coffee. So now it's time in this lesson to take our sketch and to make it beautifully professional in the digital world. The first step is to refine the icon. Next, we'll pair with a complimentary word mark, refining the typeface slightly to make sure that your abstract logo and word mark shares a and style. And DNA lastly, we'll organize your logo into a branding system so that you can show your clients each version of the new logo and how it should be used. The first way is to use the golden ratio method which is quite good and it works quite well, but takes a little bit of practice. Another way is to freehand it. But to be honest, it doesn't really give you that professional feel that we're...
looking for. And the last way which is my personal favorite is to use the pen tool on illustrator. Now, what we want to do is to draw around the sketch lines as best we can. Then once we've outlined everything we can start to fiddle around with the anchor points to make sure everything looks great. The smooth tool usually comes in quite handy as it allows you to get a nice clean curved edge which is seamless throughout all your designs. Once you have your icon outlined and you're happy with it, fill it in with a color, it doesn't matter what color it is just yet and then check it once more that just make sure it all looks great. Now, moving on to step two, we need to find the correct high face to match well with our icon. Now, there are two things that you need to remember when trying to find the right typeface to match with your icon design. The first is that it needs to be roughly the same thickness as your icon. The second is it should be super easy to read. If you choose a typeface, which is a lot thicker or a lot thinner than your icon, then you're gonna run into trouble later on because they're just not gonna match very well. And you also need to make sure that your typeface is super easy to read. Otherwise it's gonna be hard to scale it down. And also it's gonna be difficult to make out what the word map actually says, making sure your logo is scalable. Simply means when your logo works great in any size. So if your typeface isn't easy to read or it's too thin, your logo won't be able to be seen clearly when small. Now, once you find typefaces that you like experiment with upper and lower case, generally, you need to see a couple of different options to see what feels best, upper case letters generally feel more dominant and corporate. All lower case letters tend to feel more approachable and friendly and using caps. And then lower case can also work great too. Just experiment, lay out all options and then see which one you feel most attracted to. I think we're gonna go with all lower case for sky wells because I really want to make the brand feel more down to earth and friendly. So now we selected our typeface. How can we take our word mark to the next level? Well, at the moment, our icon and our word mark aren't really related. They don't share any common DNA. Now, I know you may be wondering what do you mean by common DNA? And why is Scott so outrageously good looking? Well, the answer to the second question is my mum and the answer to the first question is that we need to find a way to make the word mark an icon feel like family. So for example, my mum's tall and she has blue eyes, I'm tall and I have blue eyes. Therefore, we look similar, we share common characteristics. So in order for the word mark and the icon to feel connected and like family, we need to find something that we can do with either of them to make them feel more related. Now, there are tons of different ways to do this. But the way that I found that's the easiest is to take a distinctive element from the icon and then refine the word mark with this particular characteristic. I usually do this by taking a curve from the icon and then basically adding it to each letter of the typeface. So for example, if I take this distinctive curve from the icon and start to place it at the edge of each of the letters within my word mark, you can start to see how the word mark starts to adopt some of the character of the icon itself. Now be careful to make sure that the base of your word mark is relatively flat as we want to make sure the logo still looks sturdy and trustworthy. But once you've added a little bit of the icon's DNA to each letter, you can then see that the word mark and the icons start to feel far more connected to each other. And this is great because when you start to create your branding system in a minute, you will see that you have your full brand mark your word mark and your I and no matter which one is being used, they all have the same shared style and look, which helps the brand to feel more consistent, no matter which version of the logo is being used. And now we have it, your sketch that humble piece of coal that we had in the beginning is now a beautiful diamond ready to present to a client. Now presenting your designs to a client is a little bit like proposing. There are a few ways that you can do it. The first is to just take the diamond ring and just hand it to them and just say, do you like it? Or the second option is to take the diamond ring, put it into a beautifully elegant box dress, incredibly, get down on one knee and look the person in the eye and tell them how much they mean to you and how much you want to spend the rest of your life, being committed, loving that person. Now, if you want to be the best to do things, right? Obviously, the first option is the second one. The second option is the best choice. And if you wanna learn how to perfectly present your work to clients, then join me in the next lesson where we will be covering exactly that I'll see you soon.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials