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Types of Logos & Wordmark Classifications

Lesson 1 from: Logo Design: Wordmarks

Michael Stinson

Types of Logos & Wordmark Classifications

Lesson 1 from: Logo Design: Wordmarks

Michael Stinson

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Lesson Info

1. Types of Logos & Wordmark Classifications

Lesson Info

Types of Logos & Wordmark Classifications

Welcome everyone liked we're gonna love to work with you on world marks today it's one of the challenges I have had a designer over the years and first I want to talk to you about what we're gonna be doing today we talk about types of logan's there's five different categories I want to tell you about what a word mark is and some basic type of typographic classifications which are important sarah of sand service and scripts and we're gonna have to assignments today and I want to go through the process of how to do both of these assignments through analyzing what we're marks and finding our ideas okay and how to concept and execute and then also some design tips as we as we go forward ok, arms is something that we need prayer so types of logo's okay, first of all we have symbols a lot of you recognize these brands right and these air primarily images right without type. Next we have combination logos. Some of the browns that we've recognized and what these air are built of is a symbol wi...

th type with the company name next the emblems hemlines are characterized by an encasement of a shape where the images and the type er and kissed in the shape like these brands here and then we have letter marks or it's a combination ofthe like a monogram a few letters or just to see the letter and of course we come to word marks which is what we'll be talking about in focusing on today okay and these air uh in the design world these air typographic challenges for us because a lot of these air customized or hand drawn character forms ok so what exactly is a word mark in technical terms so it's zinc type of graphic does type on lee ok and it incorporates the name of the company of the product ah often the word mark is the visual symbol so if you think of frederick fedex or coca cola or campbell's right the brands that we know um they're created for a clear visually memorable brand identity right and topographically they're created through either custom fonts or hand lettering which are very common so with with word marce we need to talk about brand messages as well because a designer's what we often have to do is try to uh nail this situation of how that brand or product you know it's personality feels whether it's techy or stylish dependable timeless fun right so some examples of fun mikey you know these here so the personality of the company that the design comes out through how the characters were portrayed hey like peasants a great example because it actually communicates what it the product does right or like these brands here they're a little bit more classic and form right so when we're looking in brand marks like this, we also need to talk about some fundamentals of typography um they're used for all of us to get to a certain personality through the type and so we want to talk about some fundamentals of classifications this has helped me through the years of knowing and this is a basically a simple system this this classifications is more elaborate and um but here first we divided first into cirrus bryant in the four main categories here if you will humanist so when you see humanist first faras sarah ifs um we're talking about weight variation in the strokes to continue right and for transitional it's a little bit more difficult to recognize as as typefaces, but these are all the typefaces that we've read as children because they're the easiest to read a lot of the cliffs are characterized by very large excite right and there's on a lot of them there's less weight variation which makes them easier to read as well for the modern classification there's more wait contrast between the thick and thin these air mostly used for display, right? And uh some of the thai faces that we're talking about like first lab in a lot of these you can see here right? These are some of the classics that we've learned in years passing type school for human scare amman bamboo and jensen and transitional is casslyn plant in and they all have their certain characteristics for these classifications and um I've used classifications as a tool over the years because if I have a certain personality that I need to communicate for brand or lay out um there's certain characteristics in each classification that that work better for different situations okay um slab is really popular these days so you see that a lot in editorial and they're characterized by a larger figure sarah if somewhere brock it'd someone brockett it okay for the sand surf side you also have a humanist as well but the the characteristics are a little bit more subtle for a humanist you can still see the variation in thick and thin but it's again it's a lot more subtle you have got a fix on the grotesques um those two categories air vory why did arrange these days and again the's air just simplified to show you the basics here and geometric is categorized uh typically with a single story versus a two story, eh? Like in the first three examples right? But not all again on all typefaces air characterized with the single story but the characters for geometric are usually very round or the character with is very wide hey and here's some examples of those gil sands married for digger a lot of these year you're probably familiar with I'm in the gothic ce news. Gothic and franklin gothic and grotesques that's where you have all year, uh, helvetica is in universe the traditional, if you will protest typefaces and geometric has, uh, a lot of popular ones these days, like avenir in gotham and din. And then as far as another category that you can usually recognize these by sight. I threw in scripts as a little bonus here because sometimes scripts, or used for more classic brand marks a cz you know, if you've done studies of brand marks in the past, there's lots of familiar ones that we know, like ford and campbell's, coca cola, of course. So let's, talk about our first assignment. You know, michael there's that a couple of quick questions come in, that we may want to clarify before we jump into the assignment here. But some of these may be review for people, but we have people who are joining him of all different experiences in this. So we have a couple of questions here that have received five votes, so people are want to know, could you just clarify what you mean when you talk about cliffs? People want to know what our glimpse. So the type world everything you see on the on a page or a screen, whether it's a carrot after punctuation, a numeral those are all called glitz whatever the representation of that form is is called the cliff so when you look at a whole entire chart if you will and I have one um you start with the word typeface as the entire group and then everything underneath that that's included is called a cliff every single mark and accent or whatever it is hey, wait a similar question here you mentioned something called x height what is x height? Excite is really important typography because it tells you a lot of things the first being the actual largeness or the actual view of how big the typefaces and it's the excite that where we read across type from left to right across this line here this being the baseline that all types sits on this is the cap fight and then you have the x height got a few more coming in here we had a bow on this one. What do you mean when you say single story a does that mean there's two kinds of cheese and two kinds of aids in the type world? And, uh if I could go back one second here just to show you so with uh gonna go back one more here two story we have this line that we read we were taught to read and our eyes actually glide across the x height and our brains recognized up and down rhythm of the characters so are our brain is reading this bulk of the character so with a two story a you have a one story here in a second story here there's two halves to it so when there's more kerik characteristics for our brains to read, the easier it is to pick up in speed across the page right? So when you have a single story with no extra characteristics or stems or no bars in here it's a little more difficult to pick up this being a single story because there's only one piece ok it's the same with the geez you guys all remember with um way we're taught to write this g in grade school, right? We didn't write the one with the funny you know to ovals right that's the two story g I can find one in here I will point it out that's the difference between single story into story now we have another question just came in we got two votes on this one and a viewer wants to know what's the difference between humanist and transitional in sarah that's a great question humanist in transitional this is a history kind of divide if we wanted to talk quickly about this there's really a progression in history when type was developed this being the more the first of it humanists are the forms air based on uh brushstroke design from the script era back and say maybe the middle ages, right? Um, transitional came much later. We're talking about if we're talking moderns were around the time of I believe the mid eighteenth century transitional was before that a little bit. And the main characteristics in the typefaces are, um, the ball feels, if you know what a ball finney, alice let's. See if I can point one out where these these air finney als here just think of the term finish as a stroke finishes right if you're holding a calligraphy pen so they become more rounded as you go across here. All right, so also another characteristic like I was seeing that I found is the difference between waits for transitional. Um, they're really built for lengthy reading. So more words, novels, a lot of novels. And, of course, I mentioned that a lot of the kids books that were used to reading when we're younger aah, where there have, you know, they're setting like sixty point transitional. Typically, usually a philosophy is planted baskerville, uh, and some other popular ones that we know, okay?

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Michael Stinson - Keynote.pdf
Michael Stinson - Whisky Type Overview.mp4
Michael Stinson - Whisky Type Slides.pdf

bonus material with enrollment

Michael Stinson - Logo Design -- Materials Needed For Course Activities.pdf
Michael Stinson - Wordmarks Brief.pdf
Michael Stinson -- Wordmarks Handout.pdf
Michael Stinson - Why is Type Important - Article.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

kathleenc
 

Great class. It's nice to see your sketching/thinking process. Love seeing the tracing paper and ruler.

user-b4d49e
 

Thank you so much for the amazing course. Learned a lot of stuff even as a beginner.

a Creativelive Student
 

Great course, thanks very much!

Student Work

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