Lessons

Lesson Info

Assignment 1: Digitizing Sketches

We ended up with sketching and now we've scanned our letter forms that we need to digitize now, so I'm going to start there. I have mine here it was uh given to me in the form of a pdf so I'm going to go ahead and open mine up in photoshopped converted the gray scale I move a little quicker for everyone, so, um I'm going to rotate this just to get it back on cue. Um I only need this letter form, so I'm gonna just go ahead and crop it and I'm going to alter the image if you're gonna image trace and illustrating wanna make sure you're your document is biggest possible for the trace and again, this one's going to be a little crude because of the way I've drawn this here, but ah, what I also try to do is just to create more contrast here so it could be traced easier an illustrator so I will use a little tools in, um, for a shot to take out a lot of these sketch lines and just to get it closer to, uh ah high contrast if possible, and I'm sure there's faster ways of doing this. I'm kind of a...

novice and four shot, by the way, but I'm just trying to create contrast and do a little bit of cleanup here and there to get everything on track and again, I'm on ly interested in this outside edge if I'm creating my own custom letter form so I'm just kind of cleaning everything up like this get everything straightened out and again I'll try toe get as much contrast going as I can like this and then once I got dad, I save it as a tiff to my desktop again there's other ways to do this I'm just showing you my process, ok? I'm not going to take that tiff bringing into illustrator and I'm appear in image trace I'll just image trace it, and what we're doing is we're current converting the image to vector just like the original amazon logo is here as the ps, so I want to expand that trace and I want to take out all the the white areas, so I select the same phil color and delete that so now I have my pure vector g here in this format, so now if I nor to clean that up, I can take out the inside and outside forms and delete everything else because I don't need it now I have this, which is what I sketched for me though, and I'm gonna I think what I'm going to do is the way I'm working right now start over with my guys, I think I'm gonna shrink mind down a bit so I could get it on the sheet now that I'm digital aiken shrink it down, get it centered in here and then get everything leveled out with my guides again I want to get everything the way it should be nice and organized here uh ok and for this what I want to test your two was ah this this type face was really altered quite a bit so I want to make sure that my g you know, if I'm using starting with this typeface I need to make sure that it's compressed enough to match what they did here it could be the first order of business for me um because like we were saying earlier this dispersion that that is the finished version here I want to look it on top of here and see how much they compressed it meaning cores only right and again, I don't know if this is for certain and by the way, as a fundamental rule of typography, I always think ten times before I'm going to actually manually, um compressed anything with tight based upon our beyond the actual design of the typeface. So I think this is where I slowed down and I'm really careful what we're doing to the to the characters here because I'm not a big proponent of using these because I know that I'm going from type now toe lettering, okay so I'm just going to see how much upsets the wrong ones I'm gonna use this this tool here just to compress this a little bit to see how how much they did that here and if that's what they did looks like they did it quite a bit maybe if it wasn't handgun and I could be doing this the wrong way but yeah, it looks like it's altered the the width of the characters as well so this could have been done by hand so just for the sake of speed here without you know, getting too involved in all the details here also want to notice what they've done to these special areas here yeah because this is of concern for me with the g uh this connection here a supposed to this connection here ok, so for me I'm going to do is keep the original like this and actually put my eye back in place to I'm gonna need that um I want to make a digitized version of that g to put in place so I'm gonna digitize that or make that vector by, you know, creating outlines here because you're doing that and then bring to g down and start here because I'm working from this you hear ok, so I want to make sure that this is online with every sign and just to see like that those pretty close to what they have quite I gotta back up I don't think I did this correctly let's see before we went digital let's see here okay I'm just tryingto get my base started here towards very close to what's being matched here with all the characters because I'm going to start from this for my g it's like they altered this a bit more in there this is something that you really do have to focus on so you everybody's looking so closely at their computer all of our students here you can see them getting really close and looking inch by inch as they move that over because there's a lot of subtleties in here just on the difference between this is a difference between the original but you're seeing me where I'm working is the difference between they're a customized version and my original version of office you know so um the end heidi is correct but dio is not so something happened here right? So you they shrunk this down or it's custom been customized another way I'm not sure yeah it's completely custom because this this counter is too wide but I'm getting closer so for the sake of doing this like in perfect detail I'm I'm going tio just get is closest possible for today okay so it should be within range of we are so this I want to I want to look to see it this always same is this chief if I want to move this cheat down because that is one, eighty seven this is one, eighty three I think I would leave it the same so let's see now that we have that khun digitize this again use the key command for that get rid of my other letters okay, well I I think we decided to just take the dog awful together for now I have my key I'm going to fix my g to where it meets more of like the character issues of the end so I'm going to take this terminal off and just continue this for now um and what I'll do is I'm going to borrow this terminal here and put it on mine here looks like it's more narrow so I'm gonna pull this in so these meat because this is supposed to go here believe so connect that and then connect these so now I have the g it's pretty close the I believe I will take from one of these characters here just so it's custom. So now it's the kerney thing again so like I was doing before I'm going to dismantle this release the compound path and get everything separated put thes bacchus compound house so all that all these air separated this I could do this fast by turning this over just to get a read on the turning to see if I'm in in range here maggie should come over here maybe to be proportional so I'm gonna go ahead and just make my chief so it's coming together now how's everybody else doing yeah you guys feel good confident we help perfect any specific questions yeah thanks. How are you doing with your pretty good actually with the amount of time I spent on paper transition pretty well perfect but love better than it would have been had I jump straight into the computer so so you're s that you're doing is going to be the end and at the end of the art no it's right in the middle it is ok caddyshack yeah how is that yes it's going to lower case right okay, well you get to the yes but oh yeah I think I got it okay is in their way uh with that we'll have to print we're just gonna print and like I said well we'll print what we have you want to make sure you uh in about you know, eight minutes you want to wrap up get everything cleaned off to the sides have you mean mark in the middle of your kidnapped by eleven have a smaller than the original and down in the smaller bottom bottom corner okay and then we'll we'll make a pdf and put amount so I'm just gonna finish this up and for me I just need an eye again this isn't going to be dead on accurate but it's gonna be quite close work and I also have to fix the roundness of my g still here which I mean I may not get to but I don't know if this will work either know won't get this back over here but that has been altered as well ok, so with that I'm gonna look at the turning here just as a study so I can kind of gauge where I want my eye to go here and the same thing over here just to get it close now I can start doing this custom kerney to see where we're at um I want to get this in the center here if we can just analyze us a little bit that she looks a little close looks pretty good. Yeah it's looking pretty good so for that we got that um I want to find my original just so I could put it on there and compare um find out real fast so so they don't hear about that size I want to do the same thing here I just want to get the same excite so I can compare okay that's a little too much it's closed now and just to compare the two yeah, I'd like to see that r two if I have time to do that but just as a quick look let's try it and see well you guys are finishing up don't try this the viewer wanted to see this decision receive what this was here okay there's old detail for you did you know that the daughter of an eye should be slightly to the left of the steppes? What is it about you know why do there to the left or the right I was told um because vertically as a rice can it's always something higher is scan first so you need to read down it's always down and over you and I think it's either slightly to the left of the right on that I think the viewer might be right it looks great with the dog I don't know if it hinders it or not again you lose that vertical for that horizontal bar again with the dog yeah that's trick I kind of like it without the dog yeah well you guys are voting for opening up to a vote alright talking no words but it's that something does you know when you're doing this for all you want eliminate all the possibilities you know just by devil's advocate I mean they're good suggestions but in context sometimes they work sometimes they don't so are we ready? Um see school head and print out what we have so so there was a pdf and I'm gonna put mine on the drive here we've got dot okay this is the fun part I don't know about you guys, but I love critz where you get to learn everything but this is a great exercise just to show how how customize a lot of brand marks are and just you guys saw me working with office you know, on top of amazon to you literally see ah, the decisions that were made to customize these things yeah, I mean what we're taking this time here I'm just curious we had a number of people vote on this question, but how does this exercise prepare people for the process of creating their own word marks from scratch now this is an exercise this is intended to help people kind of get to that next level. So as we're going through this house specifically to something like this help someone who's out there trying to create their own word marks like this well, again the decisions that were made for safer like amazon for instance it's going to help them on the details of what's happening with the characters where when they're in that certain specific arrangement I have two a's name and I got a c I have a slanted stroke in the middle of amazon's word mark all right busy slants truth that is a distinction of what ties into the overall look of the mark all the details that you saw that the designers to use to customize it I'm sure all characteristic details the war specifically chosen to give slightly more personality to the brand mark, like just just making the corners more rounded the new world without sena, just to give it a slightly more. Maybe it was for digital reasons, too, to amazon online, so whatever the reasons were, I'm sure they have good reasons to do it. And what what this whole exercise is about is to learn about those details and still with ingrained in the fundamentals of typography, but to make those decisions with the brand mark to bring out more of the personality of the brand. No, great, just a clarification question from avery lane photography a couple people voted on this, but when you were doing that just then, were you working in layers in that situation? Or is that just on one like, I wasn't? I mean, when when it's like one or two or three layers, even I won't. I'll use layers when it's necessary, if if I'm going to show generations for for clients and I'll run through those and all spit out pds and then put him together, um, I only use the layers when it's complicated, I use layers that in designed for layout, always separate text removes on layer basis, but in this case I didn't since it was, you know, movies so fast. Right now I'd like to hear from our students here now that you guys have just finish this up we were the biggest challenges for you guys as you went through that process on that exercise volunteers thank you know it's a tough question but now that you've gone through that process maybe you feel differently than you did when you first started um something's were her some things I anticipated to be more difficult than others and thought the ark um my word markets on a curve so I thought that would be relatively easy to recreate um but my word had like several more letters so I end up having to sort of shifted to not be exactly the same so there's think a lot of details that look like they're always the same like from leonard slaughter characters but when you're actually getting really close into the details of it there's a lot of like super nuanced differences so that was tricky to work with yeah, any advice for people when they have that challenge uh ark's always look easier than they are sometimes and sometimes arcs depending on what characters is there sometimes they don't, you know, turn out even from left to right lex, you know, like you had this the center of that they decided to talk the tale of the uae up to the baseline right? Because it might have known it was cause a problem that's the only thing overhanging antsy and so visually as a shape again in my pose a problem so again, my advice would be to make sure you know what you're studying when you do a brand mark even if you're just messing around with you know normal characters from the typeface I have to a sender's I have one d center I want to put it on arc so I need to make it all caps because you know, lower case on a narc difficult much easier caps so why what I dr jill intense your question chris is just approach is really important, so I creative directors always drive the brief right because the approach and how you study the components well either lead you down the right path of the kind of wrong path will so it's all in approach no what you have, how many characters you know dissenters, centers, all caps what do you have to work with you first diving in without looking is not a good never a good idea no matter what you're doing so great any other challenges from you guys, anything else you struggled with here that whenever first thinking about it thinking about the parts of a logo that make that still give it that characteristic in this case I don't think that it was the most successful because that oh it's so around in geometric so I totally like it was too late to go far that it's too far down the path like, yeah, it didn't turn out it's not a curve anymore. It is more squared. Yeah, and those two have met those aren't exactly a circle, often same with dots on eyes. Mike students always wanted eight thousand life you're asking for trouble is really hard to yank the little dots and lines. Yeah, the the character with of those gym metrics to is going to cause havoc with chilies because, chiles, if you look at it all smashed to go because they're all right stems right? So it now when you, you know, uh, extend that out to really white characters like and os and a c because he was white, too. Then it's, like, just keeps going. Yeah, right, yeah, that is part of the challenge, so we'll see. Wait. Well, we've got a few other questions that I came in here that we can touch on now. We had a question from a viewer here we had five people vote on this, but they want to know about are there rules or guidelines and using typography and low goes, I know that there are some traditional typographic rules that people follow, but when you're creating something like this, you know, are you free to sort of throw a lot of these rules out? The window is just a matter of sort of improvising, are there still rules that you try to stick to and things that you wouldn't break when you're doing something like this? Always says there's quite a few questions in that question, as faras rules, I'm just a old schooler, you know, just like any of my colleagues would say, you got another rules to break him and that's where the fun begins to, uh, just like anything else. But yes, that the hard part and I had this trouble too, when I was younger is is when to break them and why and that's the whole thing, the keywords, that last word, why are you breaking them? You saw me struggling with what is being done with office off senior for amazon, but I'm really larry on when I go to the altar, um, an original typeface from its original design because it, like I teach people that you're now on the loitering side of it, since the characters have been fact arised, um but that that's one of those rules, it has been driven into mia's respect the type face. You know, um I think ten times before you alter it kind of a thing, but when you're doing this like a brand mark like this, you know, you know, going in with your mind set that you are going to alter it for good reasons though, so to me my macha is if you're going to break the rules, have a really good reason and make make sure it's relevant what you doing like those little corners on on amazon? I'm sure there was a great reason for that I'm sure it had to do with personality maybe those corners were too sharp for the smile it's counterintuitive of the smile right? Those corners aren't happy enough for that smile let's say you know there's all these states could happen in the in the in the room with with the creatives doing that so great now I know you touched on a little bit about the differences between victor and rastra graphics but we had a question come in we had three people vote on this. How much concern do you have when modifying the text or the font with regard to switching between vector and rastra graphics? Um I tried it depends for me why what I do is it depends on what the purpose of visit I try to use the software for what it's it's best job it was designed for so forward four marks which is in a logo kind of situation in a category that's an illustrator thing because it they're all reproduced as vectors I never try to promote if unless it's necessary because a lot of locals air produced for on screen now so I should watch where I say they're um but typically since artwork has to be like a logo has to be resized easily it's better done so in factor for mt however, if it's meant for on screen and that's the environment it lives in then it's probably better resized you know digitally you know through photo shopped for something so again there's two different environments or worlds there between factor in roster graphics um it's just a matter of which one's appropriate doctor I know you get a clean form of that artwork and it can always go digital our roster from there. So in this case working in factor is how I've been taught to work in this clean form first and then it can be made an image ok that but again that's depending on what environment you going tio on screen or off against people ok well we have another sort of you know theory question here we have four people vote on this but we touched on this a little bit but we want to dive deeper. The question is how does it designer make all of these decisions when you're making the changes to the actual word mark I mean what is the thought processes it always to convey a message or is it to convey an idea that comes through the actual image there well you might have to understand live it more about branding, branding there's so many things involved with that little mark there's a lot of psychology and there's always been a ton of research involved with the name and how it sounds to the buses consumers and all these things have been researched out and so what you want to do as a designer is to not negate those things you want to embrace and enhance those things through the characters again for a zone example from its on if in that brief that they had a tornado where was so we need to make it more inviting again the smile scenario um sharp edges to characters and this is just my theory maybe they're not soft enough to coincide with the personality of someone smile because are there any straight edges on a smile? No one doesn't have any I don't know it right so that could have been a reason there but my my point is is when you're making these design this is even on the marco scale like that you want to make sure they're relevant decisions and have a good reason to do it I stress that to all my students whenever making a design decision make sure you have a good reason for my line first mentor did that all the time you'd ask me everything why is it red why's it yellow why'd you pick calves line right in those kinds of things okay? So it's not as random as you think, right? Just from your own experience that I'd love to hear have you ever had an experience with something like this where you're just going down the line? You're making a lot of these changes trying to achieve a goal with the word mark do you ever just get to the point where you have to start over, you know, just like you know what? This is just a round robin you full circle absolutely just doesn't in my nature you hit it in yeah, but that's the thing about doing sketches to with your sketches some of those will hit dead ends if you travel down that road you know, I'm just like rg did here, ok that's a good idea to go to work, maybe not necessarily ok there's a dead and at least we tried it and now that's out of the way because again, that would also help in in meetings with clients as well because ago shouldn't this do you do that? No, we tried it and you know that kind of thing um so no there's always I've always said dead ends, especially with brand marks. Their custom characters like this like that. That didn't work or whatever. Yeah, great.