Design Ideas and Process
Logos are something that helps users identify the brand’s or the individual’s identity, therefore, it is essential for it to be effective and reflective of the brand/individual. Through this task, I was able to create letter logos using my initials and thus, apply perhaps my interests as I took inspirations from my hobbies and interests to express myself through logos.
Firstly, I started off by looking at Behance for inspiration and made a moodboard containing all the designs I liked. Then I took screenshots of the typefaces used in those designs and used the adobe font visual search to find out the possible typefaces that has been used to give myself possible ideas for my own designs. Using these as inspirations, I drew up sketches for how I wanted my logos to look like, nothing down typefaces I would like to use as well as creating a colour palette I thought would best suit for these typefaces.
Design 1
For my first design, I wanted to try a retro theme for the logo, so I chose bright and vibrant colours for them. I combined the typefaces ‘Chuck’ and ‘Bright’, which I downloaded from the website dafont.com. Typing up my initials (01), I explored how I would use my colour palette on the text, whether by using a gradient or contrasting fill and stroke colours (02). I messed around with the angles of the gradient but essentially settled in with a warm yellow as the fill and a gradient of reds and blue as my stroke colour (03). After this, I transformed the text into outlines (04) and experimented with the outlines of the letters to sort of create a graffiti effect on the text (05). I used the smooth tool to make the outlines look more rounded and smoother (06). I followed the same steps for my first name initial (07), but wasn’t quite satisfied with the results, therefore, I used the typeface ‘Bright’. I continued to follow the same steps I did for my other initial (08). I wanted to create a background for my logo, so I used the brush tool to ‘paint’ a background (09), but eventually scrapped the idea as it didn’t look nice in my opinion. I also tried warping the text but didn’t like the results of the finished outcomes (10 &11). Therefore, I decided to keep my logo with just the manipulated letters. Eventually, I got rid of the manipulation of my first initial to create contrast between the two letters.
Design 2
For the second design, I combined the typefaces ‘Interstate’ and ‘Rama Gothic C’. Using my colour palette, I added colour to the text using the eyedropper tool. Then, I created the text into outlines (03) and using the direct selection tool, I dragged the bottom of the letters using the anchors in the vectors of the letters (04). Once I was satisfied with it, I used the pencil tool (05) to draw a swirl around the letter logo and increased the stroke and added a contrasting colour to it. I smoothed out the curves using the smooth tool (06). Then, I used the arrange option to keep the swirl behind the letter logo (07,08 & 09).
Design 3
For the third and final design, I wanted to create something a bit more elegant looking. Therefore, for my colour palette, I used different shades of pink and for the typeface, I used ‘Kepler Std’. I found that it is difficult to directly add a gradient to text and therefore, I got rid of the fill and stroke first (02) and then using the appearance tools, added a new fill, which allowed me to use a gradient as the fill of the text (03 & 04). Next, I looked at the glyphs that this typeface provided and took note of some of the tails of other letters for references. Then I created outlines of the text (05) and using the eraser tool (07), got rid of parts of the letters I didn’t need and tried to combine the tails of the other letters to my initial letters logo (06) , but it wasn’t going exactly how I wanted. Because of this, I challenged myself and decided to draw the tails and ascenders of the letters myself using the pencil tool (08, 10 & 13). After drawing them, I used the smooth tool to smooth out the wonky lines. Then, using the width tool, I adjusted the width of the strokes and tried my best to make it look optically balanced (11). Then, using the gradient tool, I changed the direction of the gradient starting point to blend it with the edges of the letter I drew the first point from. I did some finishing touches by decreasing the width of the stem of the letter ‘J’ and grouped the whole design together.
Software Tutorials
From the tutorials provided, I learnt how to modify letterforms by creating outlines of them. Since I am fairly still very new to Illustrator, these tutorials helped me a lot doing the basic steps of creating monograms. Converting the letters into outlines was helpful as it allowed me to easily and quickly manipulate letters however I wanted, which I believe I would struggle with if I hadn’t known and would resort to using the anchor tool, which would result in me having to figure out the anchor points of the letter and would be difficult to use and also create inaccuracy. I also learnt how to use the envelope distort tool this was a very cool tool to learn about as I got to know another fun way to warp my text using any shapes, which would be helpful in future projects. Watching these tutorials, I further want to develop my overall design skills in Illustrator as it is a software I am interested in.
For my third design, I wanted to have a gradient as the fill colour for my initials and quickly learnt that Illustrator doesn’t allow gradients for that, so I found this tutorial on YouTube on how to achieve this effect and was able to use it in my design. This tutorial was short and straight to the point, which helped me grasp the skills quickly and apply it on my own. Using the appearance tool was the main element in achieving this effect as in order to do this effect, you would have to get rid of the fill and stroke colour of the text, and using the appearance tool, you would be able to add a new fill or stroke colour, and when doing so, choosing the gradient tool, applies the gradient you choose. This helped me give a seamless gradient without any harsh outlines around the edges of the letters.
Another tutorial I watched on YouTube was on manipulating and customising typography. This tutorial introduced me to the width tool and the pencil tool, which helped me add some flair to my design and I also got to learn how to open up the glyph tool to look at other variations of the typeface and use them in my design. I was particularly fascinated with the width tool as I really loved the fact how easy it was to change the width of a single stroke within varying points of the line/stroke.
Design Resources and Articles
The first two illustrations from Behance were the inspirations for my first design and the colour palette. I really liked the aesthetics of these illustrations as these have a very fun feel to them and therefore, I tried to create something similar to it in my own designs. The third and fourth designs were inspirations for my second design. I replicated the swirl from the third design, which i really liked and wanted to include in my own design. In terms of the typography, I tried to blend both styles and merged them into one in my own design. The fifth typography design was the inspiration for my third and final design. I really liked the manipulation of the typography in that design and was something I have never done before, so i decided to try it out myself. I chose all of these designs as inspirations as each of them used techniques and tools I have never used before and therefore, saw this as a way to move out of my comfort zone and try out and improve my skills. I hope to improve on these new found skills in future projects.
Learning Across the Module
In terms of using design softwares appropriately, I believe I have improved and learnt which software is suitable to use for a specific task. Through this module, I was able to learn certain facts in terms of printing, which I wasn’t aware of previously and it has helped me in understanding the softwares. I most definitely have grown more confident in using the softwares as compared to at the beginning of the module, when I was new to everything. In terms of design skills, I believe I have improved in using Photoshop and Illustrator specifically. I was able to improve my Illustrator skills through this module and learn new tools within the software. I believe I feel more flexible using Photoshop. Through Illustrator, I was able to improve my typography and drawing skills, in terms of drawing vectors and creating bezier curves.
Then I opened illustrator and made a list of how the possible typefaces look like in different weights and then chose ones that I liked and were closest to my designs.