Logo Design Tutorial – Video 3 of 6 – Transcript:

In this video tutorial series, I’m going to show you the Entire Process of Logo Design from Sketching Logo concepts, to selecting the perfect fonts, to custom lettering in Adobe Illustrator, to complete logo design, and we’ll wrap it up designing a business card using our new logo.

Welcome to Video 3 of my logo design tutorial.

Now that we have some of our fonts selected, now we can bring in our sketches. Here are our sketches, I like the one I referenced in the previous video at the bottom. ‘Command 7’ will allow you to mask any placed graphic in Illustrator.

It’s a little off, so I need to angle it to get it more horizontal. I’m going to open up the artboard, just get that baby over 2000 pixels.

I’m going to create some structure here, so I can actually start getting some X Heights defined for the characters. This is just a sketch, but I need to put some structure to this. I take the sketch and I push it back to like 30%, or 33%, because we do not want it to be in our way while we’re drawing the lines. So that gives us some structure.

Grab the one that looks similar, and you want to hit ‘Command Shift O’ to give you outlines of the font. I just created outlines from that font, now I can start to actually custom create the shapes I see in the sketch. By using the ‘Direct Selection’ tool, you can grab just pieces of this outlined font, and you can start to really control all of the shapes. See how I am just grabbing portions of this? And you can see that area below where the arc got a little funky. It’s going to get funky somewhere you just have to go back and clean it up.

Next I need to create the ‘U’. I will base it on the same shape as the ‘L’. If you click and hold ‘Shift + Option’ at the same time duplicate another shape along the same horizontal path. And again using ‘Direct Selection’ tool, I can tweak the height of these two characters.

Next I need to figure out this ‘U’ and the exact shapes I want to use. I’m just deleting individual points on that shape. And I just added a point on there that gave me a little arc to give my ‘U’ shape some structure.

Your sketch is really just a guide, this point you are creating a custom word Mark. Using ‘Command 2’ will lock elements in place instead of having to create another layer.

Thanks for sticking with me guys, looks like we’re making some progress. Next we’re going to be finishing off this ‘U’ shape. Duplicate the ‘L’. The best way to do it is to hold down ‘Option + Shift’ and drag. This will bring the shape over so you can start editing it. Size it down, and start creating that custom shape. To make sure those serifs are similar, so we don’t want to make them too small. Start deleting points using the ‘Direct Selection’ tool and then you can use that basic structure to finish off that custom ‘U’.

Now I need to connect these in a way that makes sense, away that works for the final logo. To do the additional little piece at the end of that ‘U’ I am roughing it out now and I can go back and clean up the curves. Now we have two shapes overlaying each other. The best thing to do is select them both, and you need to go to the Pathfinder that will connect those two shapes into one that you can now edit. Those connected shapes create different types of paths that you have to be aware of. By going into each one you can control exactly where the direction is headed. If the curves are not working go in and make sure they’re in the right spot.

I have some issues down here there’s a double line, got to get rid of one of those. Can quickly get messy if you don’t look at the details. You always want to reduce points in general. Use the fewest number of connected points for every character your drawing.

Now that looks weak. That needs help. That was the first stab at it, but it’s not there yet. You zoom in, zoom out. I really want it to work, but I’m going to need to do some more customization to that. You can grab individual points within the shape, and using your arrows keys you can start to customize exactly their position.

So the way I finished the ‘U’ on this is just not working. It’s crap. I need to redo it. I need to use the serif from the original ‘L’ I created. Right there. You know as you’re creating these forms, you need to be honest about how good they look. So going to make that duplicate shape and mirror it using the mirror tool. And then I can use that to finish off that ‘U’ correctly. Start deleting points, and you have a little piece that you can now use. See how those points can just be pulled over? Now you have something you can connect it to. Select both shapes and the ‘Connect’ tool in the Pathfinder, and you’ve got something that has a lot more consistency. That is so much better. Beautiful.

Stay tuned for the next video I’ll be fine tuning the letterforms in preparation for the business card design.

Thanks for watching!