Lessons
Overview
1Getting Started
00:50 2What Is A Symbol
01:05 3Types of Brandmarks
01:48 4Identity Systems
03:29 5Minimalism Vs Abstraction
02:08 6What Makes A Good Symbol
02:26 7Aesthetic Terminology
01:15Other Things To Keep In Mind
02:26 9Book Recomendations
00:48 10Your Project
00:52 11Quiz: Overview
Clarifying Your Intent
12Setting the Stage
00:23 13Knowing Your Client
01:30 14Generating Key Ideas
03:27 15Moodboards
02:59 16Quiz: Clarifying Your Intent
Techniques
17The Designer's Approach to Drawing
00:36 18Free Sketching
03:57 19Illustrating With Shapes
10:24 20Thinking With Grids
10:26 21Customizing Type
14:06 22Building Letterforms From Scratch
07:08 23Quiz: Techniques
Finishing With Character
24Adding Life To Your Concepts
00:19 25Tightening Up
07:35 26Stylistic Variations
01:33 27Building Out A Set
02:01 28Pairing With Type
02:22 29Mocking Up
02:08 30Presenting the Line-Up
01:02 31Pitch Deck Completed
00:24 32Quiz: Finishing With Character
Conclusion
33Summary
00:47Final Quiz
34Final Quiz
Lesson Info
Tightening Up
once you've settled on a couple of favorite concepts, you're probably gonna wanna vectorized them in adobe, illustrator. I've done that myself here with my rabbit, but I want to show you how I might make this illustration look better and talk to some of the design principles we laid out in the first section of our class. Like I said in the beginning, this class assumes that you know your way around the adobe creative suite. So I'm going to assume that you know how to vectorized your illustration and skip ahead to making that factory look better. So, I've got my illustration of a rabbit here. And the first thing I want to do here with my symbol is actually critique it. So I'm already noticing something good about it, which is that I'm looking looking at the positive and negative space. I'm seeing that the back half of the leg here, this inner part um is actually taking up almost an equal. This space is the front half of the rabbit. So there's this sort of nice um nice symmetry going on ...
here. Um and then I'm also noticing an opportunity in terms of space and form down here with the three ft because there's sort of a sense of rhythm with this back foot and then these front two ft almost looking like the same shape. But uh in that same sense there, when I'm looking at these strokes here, they're all pretty different. And one of them, especially this one in the middle here. It feels a little wonky to me. So, these are issues I'm going to address uh kind of later on. The other thing I'm noticing here is that the nose here and the eye and the mouth are the only elements on this rabbit that sort of stand on their own right, because everything else is almost this continuous line that goes around. Whereas these are pretty separate. So I want to be aware of that and make sure that I can either take advantage of those elements or or choose to get rid of them. So just speaking to the positive and negative space, I want to point out that a really cool thing you can do just to take a look at that is to see it on black and white, like we have to the left and then I'm going to make a square here on the right of black space. I'm gonna duplicate this rabbit, throw it on there, make it white. And now we can sort of more clearly see um what's taking up what kind of space. So one of the first things I'm noticing here is that the nose here, right. This sort of negative space in between here, it's it's really small and kind of awkward and this not really anywhere else on the rabbit where that small of a space occurs. And also the lines around it are pretty thick and heavy. So it's kind of creating this awkward visual weight right here at the front of the nose. So that's something I might want to address as I move forward. But first I'm just gonna get rid of this guy here and I'm gonna go back to our original symbol and after my critique, I'm gonna start making the changes that I discussed. So first thing I'm gonna do is address these sort of bottom feet down here, since I want these to repeat, I'm just going to make one ft that I'm happy with, and I'm sort of going to duplicate it. Um so I want to make this stroke look a little bit better. So I'm just gonna adjust the curves here a little bit and make this foot a little more geometric and intentional. I'm also noticing some some interesting flaws in this in this vector curve. These handles are both sort of over shooting each other a little bit. So there's this sort of awkward, awkward line shape here. So just something to keep in mind is if you see this in one of your shapes, you might want to pull back on that and pull down on this and that curve starts to look a lot more natural and and beautiful so that it doesn't have that awkward tension. So I'm starting to get a little more happy with the way this curve is shaped. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get rid of this line in the middle, I'm gonna get rid of this line here And I'm just going to copy these three points and then I'm going to paste them in front that they land in the same area. So I actually ended up with one more gonna delete that. Now, I've got this sort of nice repetition going on here, so I'm just gonna close up the shape here, I'm gonna draw a line here and here and again. I'm, what I'm doing here is I'm looking at this sort of positive and negative space, I know that this shape is almost exactly this shape, but now I'm looking at how this might be a little bit awkward, right? This distance from here to here is a little bit more than this. So I'm going to move this line here a little bit close that up and now we've got some good symmetry going and again, talking to the rhythm of these three legs, that's starting to look a little bit more in line. The other thing I'm noticing as I'm flowing through this is that the back end of the rabbit as it kind of flows through to the tail here, it's got a nice sort of open space and it's not really happening up here. So again, in keeping with consistency, um I'm gonna want to open that up a little bit just so that this speaks the same visual language throughout the whole, throughout the whole mark. So going back to that knows I'm just going to take care of that here. Um I know that I can kind of maybe move this around and create a more pleasing shape. Just like I did with the feet. But I'm also kind of thinking about the brand that I'm building and there's supposed to be this air of mystery and magic and I just think that this smile looks almost like the rabbits. Um you know, smiling and a little bit too cheery for the for the personality. So I'm just gonna get rid of it. And again, speaking to that form of abstraction. Yes, I pulled that knows from the illustration that I was referencing this rabbit from. But I'm kind of kind of want to take liberties at this point and push and pull this mark to be a little bit more unrealistic so that it looks a little bit more symbolic and a little bit more unique to our brand. So, to that end when I think of a rabbit tail, I don't really think of it as being pointy like this. I actually think about it as being a little bit more fluffy. So I'm taking liberties and I am making it more fluffy sort of circle. So feel free to do that again. Don't make it so crazy and realistic that people can't recognize it because then you're kind of then you're kind of betraying that idea that you want this symbol to speak to everybody mm hmm Okay, so I'm already liking this a lot more. And the other thing I think I'm gonna do again. And speaking to the positive and negative spaces. I'm gonna make this outline a little bit thicker and there you go. See. I already think that symbol is a lot more tight and uh, and a little bit more dramatic. And it's all just because we pushed and pulled the negative space and made sure that everything was was in alignment and we considered the visual rhythm of this thing. Um, and we broke away from just using a sort of simple tracing of a rabbit by style izing it just a little bit
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Muhammad Osama
He's great.
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