Logo Design Theory and Application Bootcamp

1. Chapter 01: Course introduction: My name is Shawn Berry, and I'm a creative professional with over 30 years experience. I'm also partner and creative director of a small boutique agency here in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Called Booster Rocket Media. I'm also a YouTube educator. I have my Shawn Berry creative YouTube channel where I have over 22,000 subscribers at the time of this particular course recording, and that number is growing. And I'm very grateful if some of you have joined me from the YouTube space Welcome. And I really appreciate that you've come and checked out my course. This course is called logo design Theory and application Boot camp, and that's really what is going to be. We're going to go through the whole process of professional logo design workflow. Now that has nothing to do with whether or not you like my logo design or you don't like this person's or you do like that persons. That's all opinions about logos, which is not really what this course is going to be about. This course, however, will be about good logo design process. If you can understand a good process than you can repeat that process any time and design the logo that makes you feel good. And we're gonna go deep into all kinds of theory. And it's going to cover up everything from the briefing through the conceptual process, which is going to include, you know, competitive analysis, even gets down to color theory, sketching, developing good ideas. We're gonna cover all that stuff in great detail. Now, The interesting part of this course is that is based on a real project that booster Rocket Media has. So we have an actual client. We have an actual client brief, and we have an actual logo to create. So I've actually got to go through and do this process for Riel. So this isn't just a course. This is This is really a world working projects. And I'm gonna be doing my project live for you that I will be presenting to a client and we'll be trying to sell him my ideas. So you're going to get to see all that process, and you're going to get to follow along with that process. You're going to get to work on your own logos based on good, solid briefs that I'm going to provide. So this course is intensive it's deep, it's gonna take a little while and there's a lot of work ahead of us. But if you'll join me on the journey, I guarantee that whether or not you like my logos, you at the end we'll have a good logo process that you can reproduce and work on any logo project that you get an approach it with sound conceptual strength, sound design principles and sound professional workflow. And these are all really important things. So I hope you'll join me on this journey and I can't wait to get to work. 2. Chapter 02: Course objectives: I'm really glad you decided to join me on this journey and welcome to the course. I'm excited to get started, and I hope that you are, too. And with that said, we have a couple of objectives to achieve in this course. One objective. And the primary objective for this is that you, at the end of this course will have produced a really great logo. And whether that is for one of the briefs that I'll provide, whether it's for your own brief or whether it's for a project that you just make up yourself, you just want to try on and follow along. You can certainly do that. But the objective would be that no matter what brief you use at the end of this course, you've prepared ah solid logo, which also has a style guide, which also has a professional file kit. And it's based on a good workflow and that your files look organized and you look like a professional, and that's my objective for this course. So at the end of it, your objective will be to actually create a really great pro logo with a style guide and a set of logo files that you can deliver, decline and delivered other suppliers. So that's the main objective. There are some secondary objectives along the way. You'll develop some good concepts, skills, some good research skills, hopefully, some good sketching skills. You notice. I didn't say drawing but sketching specifically for ideas, good file building habits and many other things. So if you look at the course outline, you'll see all the topics we're going to cover. There's a lot of them, but the objective is that you're going to develop a really great logo based on a couple of fun briefs that you can choose from or your own brief. You can follow me if you wish, and if you designed the logo with me using the same brief I use, that's fine to you. Gun. You're welcome to do that. You might get influenced by what I do, but you may want to choose one of the other briefs, but the point is, whichever way you go, you're gonna develop a really great local. By the end of this, and most importantly, this will be a logo that you can put in your portfolio. So that's the course objective. So with that great objective in mind. In the next video chapter, we're going to talk about what makes a good logo. Good, because with his objective, we need to understand. Need to have a target on the horizon and idea. But what a good logo is. We're gonna cover that off in the next video chapter, so I'll see you in a moment. 3. Chapter 03: What makes a good logo good: so understanding what makes a logo good begins with just basic observation. If you've looked at good logos and you love logos, most designers do because there's such a great little gem that requires so much design skill to make this one little communication work. That's why so many graphic designers love Working on Low was in. Try so hard to make great ones because it's sort of like, you know, it's the little It's a little trinket on the shelf. It's your interesting little bit. You go. You notice that, Yes, this is my logo design, right? So that's why Logo's air so tempting and why so many of us want to design really great logos. But it's important, understand? Kind of what makes a logo good on what makes a logo Not good. Well, what makes a local not good is the opposite of things. We're gonna talk about it, so basically the list is not long. I mean, you could come up with a list which had 10,000 things out that make a good logo Good. But I'm gonna give you some basic things to think about. One is conceptual simplicity. So when you have a logo, which has one core message. So it doesn't have six different symbols in it that are trying to communicate six different things when there's not like a logo with an arrow through it that has a truck at the bottom , which is going to this mountain over here. You know, whatever you know, you've seen these logo is just like I have that they exist. And, uh, these things get really complicated and sort of nonsensical, and after a while you don't know what you're looking at anymore. So what makes a great logo great is conceptual simplicity. And of course, the opposite of that would be some literal interpretation, which, you know, literal versus conceptual is something we're going to get to in a later video chapter. But essentially, just accept from me that conceptual simplicity is the right way to think of a local, have one idea, one communication and make it sweet. The next thing that makes a great logo great is excellent typography, which also includes good communication. So is that font readable? Is that fun? Easy to scale down to a small size and still be readable. If it's too decorative, it gets hard to look at. If it's too boring, that is not interesting. So there's that balance that you strike of finding a good relationship between the kind of letters and typography they're using and your symbols and your graphics and your icons. Assuming that you've included any in your design, you may just do a word mark, which is also fine. We're gonna cover those things in a later chapter as well. What the differences are but essentially good, readable type. Nice font. Well executed typography goes a long, long way. And finally, what makes a great local grade, in my opinion, is something that's well crafted. So you've taken the time to think about the position of this element to that element. You've taken some time to think about the color. You have a strategy for color, which we'll get to in a later video lesson, and you have an idea about balance and you've got You've got one joke, one joke. You're communicating. One cor notion. Well executed. These are all things that go into a well crafted logo, one that when you are presented with it, even if you don't understand good typography, you know the type is good. Even if you do understand illustration, you know that illustrations good. These things tend to speak for themselves when they're well crafted, when you take the time to build something right, and that means doing one version that another version, another version and tweaking this and changing that slightly and trying this and moving that, but not losing the work that you've done already, which is a great foundation for the evolution of your logos. And we're gonna get to all of that in a further chapter as well. So those are some basic things that make a good logo good, essentially simple ideas, well crafted and well executed. So those are the principles of a good logo. Keep it simple, keep it clean, make sure communicates well and make sure it's well balanced and well crafted. Then you've got a winning local, and by the way, I'll take that logo even one that's mediocre. I'll take that over the most spectacular exploding logo you've ever seen, which is like, Oh my God, look at all these shapes. Look at all these colors. Look at all this. How did he possibly do that? How did she design this? Such a beautiful thing. I can't believe what I'm looking at. That's great. If you can get one of those in your career, good for you. But if you do 10 logos every six months, then if all 10 of those logo's are just simple, solid, clear, that's what makes a great logo. And that's what makes a great local designers somebody that can think in those simple terms and execute great logo is based on good, clear communication. And, of course, the foundation for any great logo is a great brief. And in the next video chapter, we're going to cover off the briefs and talk about the project that we actually have in front of us and give you something that you can work with. I'm gonna show you what I'm gonna work with. We're gonna go through the briefs and detail because that's where we really get down to business. So I will see you in the next video lesson. 4. Chapter 04: The briefs: So with all that information about what makes a good logo good, now it's time to talk about the foundations of a good logo, which, of course, is a good brief and so good. Briefs are always necessary. You should always have briefs when you're working on logos. Any design project, really, but in particular logo and cultivating good information for a brief is really critical. Now I have supplied three different briefs for this project that you can choose from. Now. The first brief is actually for my client, John, who owns Green Light Window fashions. Riel client riel Deadline, riel project Real brief. So I'm actually going to be working from that because in fact, this is a project I have to complete. And so I'm going to use this course is an opportunity to share the process with you. So there's three logos that you can choose from green light window fashions, which is my project, as I had mentioned this one for a green cleaning company and one for an experiential company. Now those other companies air made up. The briefs are basically legitimate, based on good information that I've seen in many other briefs, so This is kind of typical of what you might see in a brief. So if you choose these briefs, you'll have legitimate data to work from. And it's been cultivated, sort of from various briefs that I've ever seen modified for the purpose of making up this brief for this project. So what I'm gonna do now, you can either watch the rest of this video or you can skip to the next video lesson and just download the briefs yourself and look at them. But in this next part, I'm just gonna go ahead and read through all three briefs. You can see what they are. You can follow along with me as I read through them and describe them. Or you can skip all that and just grab them yourself and make your decision about which one you want to use. So whether you watch the rest of the video or whether you skip from here, I will see you in the next video lesson and we're actually going to get started. We're gonna begin the process of working on these logos, so I will catch you in the next video lesson and enjoy the briefs. If you're gonna watch them and otherwise I'll see you in a moment. So to quickly go through the brief. As you can see, I've got this information filled out at the top because this is an actual project. Brief and myself and my business partner, Anthony, are working on this project together. And so the basic description for this project is to develop a logo for the new company. Green Light Window Fashions. This logo will be used in both digital and print, possibly on vehicles, business cards, brochures, website T shirt, etcetera. We have this client concept note horizon with blinds Pull tab inside House icon, which I'll get to in a later chapter of this course, and you'll see what that's all about. The objective. Develop a logo as a basis for the brand development process and to serve as an identity for the company. The logo should also reflect the business style and values of owner John and his contractors. Here's a quick note, which we'll get to in a later chapter about our competitors, which happens to be sunshades dot c. A. Our target audience primarily is new homeowners 40 plus on the own condos in the Toronto and surrounding area are secondary. Is new homeowners really any age, the tertiary of courses? Builders who just might subcontract John because they want his services? And then, as a general note, homeowners who are looking for a one on one consultation and custom solution and in home experience not found in the showroom. Our key message. The right custom solutions for your Windows based on one on one meeting in your home. The reasons to believe we come to your home to meet you face to face. We prefer to use green products, which is something we'll also talk about in a further video chapter where experts on these products is while as conventional products we have a price guarantee, very experienced medium price point on products and services. He's not the cheapest, but he's also not the most expensive, honest approach to business. No high pressure sales, and they are input driven. So, uh, he listens to what the customers have to say. The creative insight from John's experience hey knows how to get the most out of a budget. He also knows how to install and knows all kinds of people that do this work. He's very accurate, Ondas estimates. He likes to meet people, and he sells his services face to face. That's what he prefers. His feet on the street, if you will. Mandatory elements are pretty simple. Green light window fashions is a statement that we have to make, and that's all we're required to do. But of course, we'll dig deeper than that. You'll see. Is this all progresses? The production list is pretty simple. It's a logo, which is obvious. A style guide, which will cover at an upcoming chapter, and local files at various screen sizes and formats, which we will also cover. And there really wasn't any other comments or checklist items. We sort of talked thoroughly with the client during the briefing. ABC Cleaning Inc. Obviously a fake company and ah, fake product tree clean product logo is what our project is. So the description quickly designed a logo for the new product line. Tree Clean. ABC Cleaning Inc is launching a new product line of environmentally responsible cleaners. The catch they really clean. Each product from dish soap laundry detergent has added essential oils from various tree types and leave a forest fresh scent after use each product is easy on the environment but tough on dirt thes or injure average friendly cleaners. They do the job as well as the national brand. Harsh cleaners. They're priced higher as a result, but worth every penny to the clean conscious and environmentally conscious alike. And the course. Our objective, the logo and subsequent communication materials need to communicate clean. First and foremost, environmentally friendly is a dead term, overused and never properly delivered, as promised by most products in this category. To avoid this trap, were focusing on raw cleaning power. Logo needs to communicate clean. First and foremost, the tree and environmental aspect is important but can be represented in a subtle way. We have to get past the primary objection from this category that friendly cleaners don't clean our target audience for this logo and product. As homeowners and clean conscious consumers, secondary is environmental friendly consumers, so people who prefer to use friendly products on Lee. However, our first primary target market is people who want clean. This is a good cleaner. It works. We want to sell to them to tertiary premium product consumers, people who like to buy nice products that costs a little more just because it's a status statement or they just think that it is a better purchase, better value for their a little extra money. Our key message. Tree clean products clean as well as the harsh national brands with side benefit of being easier on the environment in the harsh cleaners. The reasons to believe in blind cleaning tests Comparing the tree clean products to national brands. 87% of consumers thought tree clean was a national brand cleaner after one month trial. Tree clean products use effective combinations of natural organic cleaning ingredients, augmented with stronger ingredients for an effective, clean and smaller environmental footprint. Creative Insight. We've got comments from a test market, all the tree clean products. I tried past the squeak test. I was a little surprised, actually, good products. I like the fact that the products are effective. That was always my barrier to environmentally friendly cleaners. Glad someone was listening. The scent of trees was a bit unexpected the first time I used it. After that, I was actually looking forward to cleaning the sense of really natural the mandatory elements. The words tree clean must appear in the logo must be clean, focused colors and design style. So clean is our message, not trees, not leaves at secondary production list. We need vector logo files, and the rest is unnecessary. An optional brief number two Superior entertainment made up company, of course. Quantum tours. So what's that all about? Well, design a logo for the new Quantum Tours franchise. Superior Entertainment is launching five locations across America to begin New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco. In Boston, the franchise is an educational entertainment venue that seems similar to an art exhibit, but it's all based on a miniature universe. The visitors will be led through the experience by a computer generated host who appears on monitors throughout the exhibit. They move from one attraction to another and are able to activate features of the exhibits . In some cases, the visitor is the size of an atom, while in the next exhibit they might be a giant roaming the galaxy. The exhibits are both educational and entertaining and based on known science and the laws of the universe. So a great place for geeks objective. The Quantum tours is not just for the nerdy. The exhibits air Bolden immersive not just a picture on a wall with some words to read. The experience will be interactive, educational and job dropping for all comers. The logo and all subsequent communication materials should express the science and excitement of quantum tours. It's not just nerdy, it's electric and exciting. Who's our target audience? As you could imagine, families with kids between 12 and 17 years old. Obviously, moms and dads are included in all that. Because you can imagine this would be a big family sort of destination and second areas of science enthusiasts and hobbyists. So nerds and families is essentially who we're talking to. And the key message. Quantum tours experiences like having the universe in the palm of your hand, the reasons to believe the venues air large enough to immerse but not so large as to be intimidating. Our staff are all science nerds and love to help visitors get the maximum experience and answer questions. Every exhibit has one wow factor built in that is controlled by the visitor, so no one leaves the experience without a wow moment. The digital host is a human figure inspired by Carl Sagan and our creative insight in early tests. We invited 100 families over a two month period to experience the prototype quantum tours experience and a temporary venue. They were shown prototype versions of the final exhibits and allowed to engage with them. Afterward, they were given comment cards. Here are some comments Newton, who happens to be our digital host. I just gave him that name. Newton was pretty interesting. I wasn't expecting a computer generated tour guy, but he seemed pretty natural and enjoyable to listen to. We had more fun watching the kids push the buttons and trying the experiments. We learned more than I thought we would. I just assumed it was fluffy entertainment. They managed to make science entertaining. I hope they, ADM or exhibits over time and are mandatory elements are logo must have the word Quantum tours. One version of the logo with tagline Space for your mind, which is the creative subtext or tagline to the logo included for certain applications. Primary logo doesn't need it. So in other words, you got to make two versions. Quantum tours without it is your main logo. Quantum tours, with the tagline, is a secondary treatment, so production list primary and secondary logos as vector files, and the rest is fine 5. Chapter 05: Research part 1: - Okay , so we're ready to get started on our logo project, and the first thing that we really have to do is good research. We've reviewed the brief, so we sort of have the territory in mind. But territory is just the place to begin. What we actually need now is to do research to remind ourselves visually of what kind of subject matter we're talking about. This is kind of an important step. There's a difference between knowing what an industry is. So if I talk about, in my case green light window fashions, I have the brief on my screen for my research. I know that there are windows. I know that there is, I assume window shades. All those things are indeed part of the subject matter, but that may not be everything. And so we want to have a look at what sort of inspiration lies out there for us. Research can take many different forms. I'm going to do Web research. You can do book research. If you want to go to the library and find books on the subject and look at information and scan ID or photocopy it. That's all fine as well if you wanna walk around outside and look for inspiration in life, that's also perfectly acceptable. Ah, lot of logo designers myself included, will sit down in front of Ah, Google tab and just begin the image research. So we're going to start there and get into this now. So let's just get right to work. Okay? So here at my desktop, I've got a document that I've created as sort of the foundation for my research. Now, this is not research in the strict sense, but this is keywords making a list of keywords as my first step because I sort of want to get my head around what I should be looking for in terms of visual inspiration. So I want to look at things that have something to do with the idea of a window window light window coverings. What does that mean? Now, this list of keywords is by no means a definitive list. And in fact, this list could be considerably longer. And I'm going to stop here only to make the point. But this, you know, this list of keywords could be 10 pages. If somehow that was the kind of material you were dealing with and the amount of keywords that you generated by thinking about the subject matter. But pretty much what I'm trying to do is really just establish a list of words that will help me as I look for visual cues. So because we're talking about green light window fashions that happens to be our client on this one, as you know. And so we have windows and windows, therefore let in light, which has to do with sun, which is warm. There's a glow we're talking about style because it's his window fashions. Those styles come in green products, which we know coming from the brief is sort of, Ah, big part of this so green is there, but that means environmentally friendly. And you know, those things are the same thing, but I still wrote them separately anyway. Solar, of course, is the sun radiate, which you know is rays of light or raise of warmth. Ah, heat comfort is another one private, although that's not really our message. That is kind of something that helps the idea of window coverings, modern and decoration. So these are things that kind of put a stake in the ground get me to start thinking about the subject matter. So when I do my visual research, I can come back to this list and see Hey, did I miss something? Was there may be a territory I could have done a little bit of research on, and maybe I would have drummed up something different. Okay, so once we take this list and we dive into the Internet to find some visual research, one of the things that I really want to stress is that you don't want to look for logos. Don't search for logos yet. This is not the time for that. This is essentially the phase where we just want to get a collection of images. They're going to give us something that we can think about visually that has to do with the subject matter, not with AH competitors business or their logo. So this is really important. Just avoid that stuff. Start with visual research, which we're going to get into now, and you'll see what it's all about when you watch what I gather. But essentially avoid locals, you'll see them as a result of looking. But ignore them for now is really the point that I'm making. And so if we come to, uh I gotta Google Tab opened up here. Now I think when I type in the word windows that I'm definitely going to get, uh, I'm definitely going to get Microsoft windows. Which, of course, is ah, you know what would happen. So if I just type in window singular, I'll get window. Uh, I'll get ironically windows plural, but you sort of get the idea that you obviously want to do a smart search. But anyway, so you can see the Google has given me some options to refine my image search. But at this point, I'm not going to necessarily do that. There's no open Windows house with curtains. And then, of course, we got the windows of Microsoft over over here which which were not looking for. So, uh, I'm essentially just going to start creating some visual references, and, um, it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm going to be using these images for anything, But what I'm gonna do is I'm going to save them into a folder so that I could have something to work with. So I'm going to save this image into my project folder, which I have here a green light window fashions glw f dash old one, which is the project number I've given to this project. I'm going to click new folder because I want to add a research folder here. Now, you don't have to follow my structure. I mean, this is not necessary, of course, but this is how I'm going to do it. So I've got my research folder. I'm just going to start dumping some of these images in now. I can't tell you specifically what I'm looking for, and everybody knows what a window is like. But the reason that I'm choosing some of these images is not so that I can, you know, have a folder full of windows. I don't need that. I know what a window looks like. However, this window in particular, this image has. It has this really nice sort of shadow and shadow and light play. And there's a little bit of glowing over exposed light in the background, which I think is kind of nice and moody, and that's interesting. So I'm going to grab that image. And as I looked through, I find something else, which is really just kind of fun and different, and it makes me think of, you know, possibilities on. And that's essentially what you want your image research to show. Okay, so you kind of get the idea where we're going with this. I'm going, Teoh, take a moment to pause, and I'm going to keep searching for images. I'm gonna collect all of my images together. So you're not watching me, like, you know, watching paint dry, and we'll come back and review those images in just a minute. Okay, So I've gone through and found a couple of different window images. And again, this is not the definitive list of windows, but I also don't need a lot of images. I'm kind of going by my own instinct in the things that I know will sort of help me when I begin to visualize ideas. So I was going to show you the window images that I grabbed in my quick search. This one, I like the idea of, ah, row of five windows, which you know, we're letting a lot of light and color in, and it looked very warm and I thought that would be a good reminder later. And this is kind of a freaky example, because obviously it's nothing like our subject matter. But the windows are super tall, and there's these really cool kind of ah tartans and different. I think there was called tartans, but hey, anyway, you know what? I'm talking about these things up here so that they create shape that create color and that won't help me in the logo designed specifically. But it was just a really interesting image that I thought could maybe ah, bump my brain out of its space when I'm possibly looking for inspiration. So this seemed like a very comfortable kind of a setting in a home. So comfort was a big part of our, uh, sort of research thinking. And, ah, again, this nice, symmetrical side by side panel could help me with some geometrical thinking later, high reflectivity. Again. This one has that nice, warm, shadowy light play, which I really thought was interesting. This has a real sense of that comfort, even though it's winter outside in this image and, you know, again, it's not our product, but it is kind of our message, which is building this really comfortable, uh, indoor situation as a result of how the window and light feels and all that kind of stuff, and this one just looked bananas. I really like the colors. And again it won't help me in any specific way, except that it was sort of a nice, bold visual that once again might help me think differently. And I like the idea of this one window ajar and one window closed. There could be something in that that when I begin playing with geometry later, if I start fooling around with things that this might offer some ideas. So I've I've grabbed that to remind myself and then once again, just a really comfortable indoor setting. So those air, some window images that I've grabbed. But of course, our list has mawr than window. But some of my image is already have grabbed light and sun and warm and glow and style, but, you know, not necessarily environmentally friendly yet. Maybe solar and radiator implied in some of those things, but I don't want just windows again. I don't need to know what a window looks like, but I do want to get a sense of, you know, different things that might be related toe light into green and toe warmth and all that kind of stuff. Okay, so you can see that the visual research is well underway. But there's still some topics in that list that we haven't quite covered off yet. So I'm going to take an opportunity to now go and do some deeper research, cover off some more of those things. They may help us. They may not. But I like to do thorough research. I think it's a good way to get your head really inside the subject. So we're also going to take a look at some other types of research that we can possibly do in the next video lesson. And there's some fun territory to be had, and we'll get into that a little bit, too, and find some inspiration in places that we didn't think about. So I'll see you in the next video 6. Chapter 05: Research part 2: Okay, so I've done some pretty extensive research, and I've got a lot of photo collections to sort of go through while not really a lot of photo collections, but a lot of photos collected and they're kind of in a couple of different categories, which I will sort of break down for you a little bit and also talk to you about some of my research and some things that I thought about while doing it that I think would be helpful for you to think about while you do yours. So let's just get into it, Okay, so I've gone through and made all of my image collections that I'm going to make for this project now the one thing I will say is, if I just pop back to my list again, one thing you'll notice that and I thought about this is I was grabbing images and something I didn't mention earlier. But I think it is important to pay attention to the fact that these keywords there's no keyword in here that says, like professional or, you know, good service or anything like that, because those things don't really relate to the visual. They don't relate to the execution of the logo. All of these words are very conceptual, and everything in here is sort of touchy feely. And it means to invoke some kind of visual, some kind of feeling, some kind of composition that might be based on one of these things based on some visual inspiration. So if you I kind of understand that that my image research and all of this will make more sense and it'll make more sense when you do it, avoid vague things which are unrelated to your subject, like professional or, you know, things like that kind of non words. They don't help you. Um, but anyway, that not being the point, I just want to make that statement quick. So if I pop over to the finder, what I've done is I've collected a bunch of images and in going through the I can't really say that I delivered on every single one of these words in my research because not everything was relevant in terms of an image. I'll give an example of what I mean, if I take the word environ, the phrase rather environmentally friendly and although it's an important part of my list. If I take environmentally friendly and I will just copy it and come over to my Google tab and paste it and do an image search on environmentally friendly, there isn't really much here. That helps me. So when I look at this, I see a lot of icons. Now this. I already know what these icons mean, and so does everybody else. We see them all the time, and they are. They're kind of like the word professional is, well, that they're kind of vague and the sort of meaningless, and I have the words in my list because they're important to remember. But not very many of these images will help me in terms of inspiration or things that make me think of the right kind of logo to design Now. I did grab a couple of things under this search, but essentially I abandoned it pretty quickly as I realized that there was nothing here that was helping me. And you may find that when you make a list, not everything is going to necessarily do the trick. And a lot of these words will give you the same visuals and research that other that other words do so, son, which in fact could even be sunlight might be a better term. And I did search that term, actually. But sunlight, light and glow often give you similar things. They don't give you new things that really help you understand or get inspiration in a different way. When I show you visuals that I picked, I'm gonna talk a little bit about why I chose those visuals. And I think you'll sort of understand the objective behind this stuff. So I'm gonna pop back over to the finder again. And, uh, now I've created one sub folder which I'll get into in a minute called Light and Shadow. But otherwise, I've just dumped all the images you can see here. I don't have that many. There aren't 700 images in this research because I don't need 700. I really need just a few things that remind me what my objectives are. It reminds me what I'm going for so that when I get into my design process, I'm not distracted by some current design and I get stuck in a rabbit hole. I can't get out of Aiken. Come back to this list look at these images again and take my mind into new territory. So I'm just going to show you this. Some of these images you will have seen in my first a bit of research. But this image has Windows and people comfort in which I thought was sort of interesting because, you know, this is really what we're talking about. And similarly light on warmth and comfort go together These images. I found a bunch of these. You'll see them as we go through. I thought when I searched comfort, I grabbed images in particular that had windows in the background because it was interesting that a lot of Google's responses to comfort had windows in them. So that was interesting to me. So I grabbed those and there'll be some or and you've seen this one, and this is a really goofy, strange image. But I just grabbed it because it was an environmental reminder. Like I said before, it wasn't an icon. It's not a recycling logo, which is, of course, so much of what we see under environmentally friendly. But this was interesting because it had something to do with light. It had something to do with light being diffused inside of a bubble and something growing. But you'll notice that these images here's another window again. And, uh, you know more people and comfort in light. I should point out that as you're looking at these images, you're going to notice that I'm not actually grabbing images there in any way going to help me designed the logo in terms of giving the visual solutions. That's not what this is about. Nothing here so far. If I just whipped back up through a couple of these images, nothing here provides me with Oh, hey, I could use this shape and I could make my logo If you can see what I'm getting at, this stuff sets a tone. Here's somebody with warmth and, you know, some blinds in the background, creating this really strong yellow light. And here's some more comfort. But these things are just reminding me of a feeling I'm going for. And if you can understand that I will maintain this feeling. As long as I refer back to these visuals, I can always remind myself, because if I start feeling differently because I'm maybe deep into geometry and I'm obsessed with rectangles. Well, rectangles aren't the whole story. So I come back is like, Oh, yeah, right. Breaking light through the sky, breaking light through the trees Green, green, light green grass Okay, It's interesting. You see what I'm getting at? And I have a lot of things like this, which are actual window coverings. So, um, here's another one of the environmental images that I did grab Not because I could I can use it. But again, it's a reminder. I look at this like, Oh, yeah, that's right. This is kind of the territory I'm in, even if I don't use these images specifically. But my point overall is that you can see these images help me understand what window coverings look like. They give me lots of examples of how some windows and their coverings can really change a room from this to this, the very different looks very different products, and here's kind of a different house all together. And, you know, different styles can be achieved by these different window hangings. And that's also an important thing for me to know. So I'm looking for comfort. I'm looking for style. I'm looking for warmth. I'm looking for window coverings that can change a room. And all these images remind me of those things. Family with the window in the background enjoying looks like Thanksgiving dinner, which is nice and wet, you know, light breaking through trees. But again, this doesn't help me either specifically, but it gives me a feeling. So mawr warm people mawr window coverings, more comfort, more yellow light, more interesting compositions with light at the key of it. So I'll just tap through these little more quickly and you'll see that this is essentially just a ton of material. Actually, Crap this because I had searched, radiate and radiate didn't give me anything that I could use because a lot of it was science e you know, it was the sun radiating waves and all this kind of stuff, which is all fine. But then I saw radiate positive vibes, and I thought, You know what? That's actually something I'm gonna grab to remember that radiate means this. It means a comfortable, warm feeling. So I thought that was useful and there's my reflective glass. But see, images like this kind of give me like, thes Grady INTs of light and dark and shadow and all this sort of interesting stuff which could become visual cues for later. Guy with his dog in front of the window, Very comfortable. Very warm looking, etcetera, etcetera. So you can see I'll just tap through the rest of these quickly. I'm just building. Ah, library of reminders so that I looked back and I go, Yeah, this this is the territory I want to be in. And if I'm stuck and I tapped through these things quickly, maybe there's all land on you know, this. And for some reason I'll go. You know what? This this whole three lines coming down here makes me think of something. And I may start to designed something which is a little bit different than where I was five minutes ago. So these things give me It gives me something to break out of my current right, if I'm in one and they serve as markers to kind of bring me back to where I should be. Okay, so you get that idea. But as I was doing my research, I stumbled upon another type of image. Siri's, if you will. I found one image that got me into searching for other similar images. And it's a territory I think is really interesting. So I created the separate folder and I dumped a bunch of images in there which are going to really help me think about this logo in a creative way. Now I've gotten the research in sort of all the, you know, the bits and pieces that makes sense based on the brief. But now this is territory where I want to have some fun. So I grab some images that I'll just show you what I got. Now we'll go through it. I came across a couple of images like this, which was the effect of light coming through a window, being disturbed by a window, covering and casting a shadow. It's kind of like the third effect you know, of window coverings, right? The first effect being it covers the window, the second effect being that it changes the room and gives you a warm feeling. But the third effect is that light literally now is creating shapes and patterns as a result of being diffused by something covering the window. So this isn't Maura about light and how light behaves, so it isn't a window covering, but it has something to do with the results of a window covering. And I thought it was really interesting now, part of the one or two like sexy, suggestive images in here. But I picked them not because of that, but because in this case it's throwing an interesting shadow behind her, which is sort of possibly something I might play around with. And this shows really harsh contrast, which is interesting once again ignore the fact that this is, ah, woman, you know, in some kind of a sexy pose. That's not the point. The point is that light is sort of bending around her and creating these unusual secondary shapes because now we have the light being broken by the window, covering and hitting a surface and wrapping around that in this interesting way, and that may inform me of something later you can see with or without a person in it. I'm looking at the same kinds of effects here. What happens when light is blocked? How does it bend around other things as a result, and this could create some interesting things that might be a logo territory might be something that I can play with the way the light hits the back and the shape is really pronounced by rather, the form is pronounced by what the light and shadow we're doing. These are all really interesting things to me, and I think they're very relevant to what we're doing now. In this case, this isn't specifically window coverings, but the same idea. This is light being broken by shapes. And that's kind of what we're talking about. Now, this is kind of on the fringe, but I just thought it was interesting, you know, as was this and this. So you get the idea that I'm just giving myself some interesting stuff to remind me about what I'm trying to achieve later. Okay, so now we've got some visual research in place, and we've got a ton of material that we can look at and this is all going to provide us with good headspace Fodder is gonna help inspire us once we get into logo design, where we can actually begin thinking about these things. Letterhead drift through the subject matter. But we're not quite there yet. We're not ready for creative just yet. A za, much as I want to get to that sketch phase myself. I know that it's a little too early because the one thing we haven't done yet is we haven't looked at what our competitors air doing, and that's kind of an important thing that we're going to get into in the next video lesson . So I will see you back here in just a minute. We'll dive right into that and start looking at what our competitors are doing. 7. Chapter 06: Competitive analysis: Okay, So now that we are ready to begin our competitive analysis, we need to really think about what other logo's are like in this particular industry space . So ah, that could mean a number of things. It could be other window fashion companies, which will be really where we focus. But we might see other things that are related to that on the fringe of that, which is all fine. The bottom line is that we want to see what others are doing. We want to be able to find territory to avoid, if necessary, find territory that is missing, that maybe we could do something in because no one else has, but also just to make sure we don't duplicate somebody else's logo. If you give 10 people the same creative brief, chances are they're gonna come up with really similar ideas, and that happens all the time. So our competitive analysis will let us have a look at what other people have done in the same space, given the same types of briefs so that we know kind of where we stand, and that's really important. So let's just dive right into that now, okay, so here we are back at the desktop and to begin the process of competitive analysis, I'm first going to come back to the brief because in the brief, if you remember from a couple of videos ago, we went through all the objectives and one of them is to identify the competitors. And in this case there's another company called Sunshades. They are sunshades dot c a, and this is what their logo looks like. And so the thing to remember about looking at logos of competitors that you're not always trying to figure out what your logo should look like by looking at your competitors logo is you don't know how their creative team was briefed. You don't really know what their objective was for the logo, however, It's good to know what others are doing because there's another designer out there, possibly just like you, who maybe a year ago received a brief similar to ours for another client. In this case, it could have been sun shade. It could have been just about anyone, but you want to take a look at what other people have done and what they're doing so that you don't essentially do exactly the same thing. Now it's not really possible that you're going to know every logo out there and be able to do something entirely unique that no one's ever seen before. That's really not what this is about. That's a That's a pretty tall order, anyway. But you do want to be unique. You do want your logo to not be directly related to a competitors logo, which is why you want to look at this and sort of make a decision about what territory you should avoid, if any. And it kind of gives you an idea. But what's happening out there in the business and particularly local in this case, I've done on Lee a local search on other window shade window, uh, fashion's companies that are in Toronto, or at least in the Toronto area. Or at least Google says, Hey, you're Toronto Search turned up this result. So whether these guys are exactly in Toronto or the surrounding area is beside the point. I just want to get an idea, but what the top five or six or 10 competitors air doing that come up in Google now? It's important to point out as well that It's not up to your eye as the designers to find every competitive logo and every competitive website everywhere possible. That's not really our job. Our job is to get a handful of direct competitors, so that least we know what the people in our neighborhoods air doing in terms of competitive logos and brands. So if the guy down the street who is also servicing the same area, another Canadian company or whatever, we should avoid those big ones, that's really the best that we could do. There's going to be lots of moms and pops. They're gonna be off of our radar who may be in competition with our clients, but we're never going to be able to see all of those. So we rely on our client during both the creative and the presentation process to help us identify the big ones. If they say, Oh, hey, you've done this logo But it looks exactly like this competitors, and it's somebody we missed in research. Well, then these are the things that we need to know. The client's got to help us do that, but essentially we're gonna do the due diligence. We're gonna find as many as we can and you get the idea that sort of our objective here. So, sun shade, uh, the one that our client has directly commented on This is their logo. So this other one, Clara Windows and Doors, is another Toronto based company, and so we could see their logo is up here, there doing this. This is what their brand is about. These are the basic colors they appear to be using and again, not so concerned about their services over their website, but just curious to know what they're doing. Let's look over here at Mira Window Fashions. They've got a little Canadian flag, so that's part of their identity there, Obviously saying, Hey, an important part is Canadian and we want that in the logo. That's important enough. So in addition to being Canadian, they seem to have some semi modern type type doesn't necessarily match, but that again, we're not really evaluating their logo. We're just looking at what they're doing. So here's somebody with a little bit of style who says, Hey, we're Canadian, that's, Ah, big deal for their brand. So here's Max Mara window fashions, and they appear to have a lot of Grady in Blue, which I could equate to a sky. So they're obviously thinking about light and sky and all those things. And they had some interesting shapes in their logo as well. A little bit of a play with the ex elite window fashions. They've gone sort of a very fashion typography style of word. Mark, uh, elite looks a lot like Elle magazine s O. That is possibly some inspiration that they got or their designer got in the process. Different font used down here this little line between so anyway, word Mark not really concerned about showing Windows light fashion, that's not really their thing. They just designed a clear word mark similar to sunshine window fashions. So they've said sunshine, they have this little ah little icon at the top of their logo. If I maybe zoom in the page a little bit, you can see it There, Uh, looks like a little sunburst over top of the I. So that's, uh, where they're at. And we got fine craft window fashions, which again, this is a word mark with a bit of fancy typography and finally star windows fashion, which appears to probably be I think this is. This looks like it might even be HTML type, although I'm not sure. But the point is that they obviously went for a title more than a logo. So there's not really a logo or brand here, so we can see that there's a bit of a mixture is kind of the point. And, um, if we just, you know, again, I don't care about their Web services. I don't care what their websites look like. But overall, if we look at the websites, we get a general sense of their tone, their feeling. Do they want to look professional that they want to look fun? Do they want to look whatever they might want to look like? So we can do a quick analysis, and when we do this whole process, we want to get information from our client as well, which we did get in the briefing. I have notes that I've taken, so I know a little more than what these tabs reveal about what the industry is like here, and I'm relying on that information as well. So I mean these few tabs on my browser don't tell me the whole story but they give me an overview. So these things are really going to help us out. You kind of get the idea. So now we have not only visual research and keywords, but now we also have territory based on our competitive analysis that we know is either territory to avoid or territory to exploit. But it's also good because it's gonna teach us things. If everybody in the entire industry is using one symbol or one single type of icon, everyone does it without fail. What can we learn from that? Is it that we should do it two? Or is it Hey, they've all fallen into the same trap that we're not going to, and it's interesting and you don't really know. There's no answer to that question. Other than using your experience and be able to say, OK, what's the objective of the logo on? You know, how do we how do we get there? But these things can tell us something, and so we've learned a lot by looking at what the competitors are doing. I have a really clear idea now for sure, where I think that this should go, but each project is going to present its own challenges. And speaking of challenges in the next video less when we're going to start talking about one of the biggest challenges in logo design, period, which is the conceptual versus literal conundrum and so many logo designers fall into this trap, even experienced ones of trying to be too literal or something gets down just a little bit into a rabbit hole than you find yourself 10 feet in. And it could be really difficult thing to handle at times. So we're gonna talk a little bit about that in the next video lesson, and I'll see you back here shortly for that. 8. Chapter 07: Conceptual vs literal: So let's talk a little bit about concept versus literal. And of course, those two things are pretty. Obviously, I hope obvious what their differences are, but to give you an idea of what I mean, I could show you a literal photo of me and that I could show you a concept of me. And that concept of me could be a word. Mark. That is just my name. It could be something else that represents me. Maybe a circle with two dots and no hair. You know, I could find a way to represent myself, which would be something that I could just go. Hey, that's me. And you go, Oh, I get it almost like a joke. Like a punch line. You're like, OK, I get what you mean, right? So that's concept versus literal in basic terms. So if I were to show you a house for a logo for a house company, I could show you a little square, a little triangle on top, or I could show you a photograph of a house. Well, which one is better? Well, neither is better, except when we're talking about logos and then I'm going to pitch the argument to you. That is better to go. Conceptual, because literal is a rabbit hole that's very, very deep, and it turns into some of the worst logos that you'll ever see. And so this is the problem that we want to avoid. Let's talk a little bit about it. I'll give you some visual examples here because I'm just rambling about concept versus literal, but I want to show you what I really mean. And then we're gonna talk about what the alternatives are and how you should be thinking about your logo design. And this goes for a beginner right up to a seasoned professional. These rules all still apply. And so let's just start talking about them now. Okay, so back here at the desktop, I want to begin by showing you some examples of what I mean by literal versus conceptual and trying to determine how much detail you need for a logo illustration. Icon or graphic is one of those things that is sort of the long game is going to take you a while to feel that out as a logo designer. But it is important to understand that there's a huge difference between representing something literally and representing something conceptually. In other words, is that a joke? Everyone gets by looking at it because it's so simple that they understand the idea. And that's kind of what you're going for. Essentially. So I've grabbed these quick images, a couple of which are obviously logo templates, and ah, couple others are actual logo's. And I'm not picking on these for any particular reason, except that I want to show you an example of what I'm talking about and kind of set the groundwork for further discussions. So, uh, I didn't create any of these logos, nor was I, you know, in receipt of any briefs that resulted in these logos. So I can't really say the designers did a, you know, made any mistakes or didn't do a good design job. I wasn't there. But for me, these are examples of logos that have what I'm going to call the too literal problem. So there's a NAWF a lot of detail in these that are communicating these happen to be home logos, or at least logo's related to homes, homebuilding or whatever. So you can see in the case of the CAD Pro design services. You know, they've gone all the way, right? So every bit of detail of the house, if I just zoom in a little more, You know, every bit of detail of this house is in this logo. I even called just Morris. You can see it. So you know, this this is pretty literal, obviously, shadow, light details, latticework windows that, you know, the whole nine yards, plus all the details within the actual blueprint in background. And, you know, the type is obviously struggling to begin with, but so I'll pick on that a little bit. But, you know, otherwise this is ah, logo that suffers from a very literal problem. Now, in the case of this logo, maybe it's a little less literal, but it still is pretty literal once these trees get in there, they introduced a whole new shape that isn't really necessary. This one, you know, similarly so has the problem of all the windows and the window shades and then the balcony and, uh, you know, the chimney and everything else being sort of very specifically called out. So just a run over these quick you get the idea. You understand what I'm talking about. There's an awful lot of detail communicating things that we might not need. I don't buy it exactly that. All of this detail was needed, but again, I wasn't there. I didn't get the brief, but I would just point this out as an example of what I'm talking about, not pick on any specific logo this one, even though it's probably the least literal on the page. It still has, I think, more detail than necessary, even though it's some kind of template that probably wasn't thought through terribly. And similarly here you've got, you know, the whole neighborhood in the logo, which is, you know, a pretty difficult visual cell for me anyway, So, uh, these are all very, very literal. Now I'm gonna pop over this page. It's interesting because it is kind of literal, Yet with some extra geometry and a little bit of creativity, it doesn't necessarily come off as terribly literal. But I'm also going to show this logo the White House logo, which I mean, if I'm honest, it's a pretty terrible logo, but I want to show you this because there are times when the broken rule works out okay, in the case of the White House in Washington, this is obviously a very important icon. And there's all this detail, which isn't necessary, but in a way, sort of doesn't matter because it's the White House. So they could do whatever they want. You know, people will generally accept that. So this kind of breaks the rule that I'm talking about a little bit. I don't think it successfully breaks it in a design way, but it certainly breaks it in a brand or representation way. There's ah, you know, somebody said to me, Hey, what would you do with the White House logo? I probably say not one single thing because it is such an established Icahn. I wouldn't want to start messing with something that was so identifiable, so well understood and so well accepted. So if you're designing for the White House, okay, let the rules go. Otherwise, I personally think that, you know, this kind of territory is good and this kind of territory is to be avoided because it's just too much detail now. That said, I want to show a quick couple of examples. These are actually homebuilding logos that I happen to design, and I want to show them as a counterpoint to the too much detail to say. Okay, well, then what does it look like when it's not too much detail? Well, I think this is one good example Now I didn't design this logo for the purpose of showing this or demonstrating this idea. This is something I worked on maybe a year and 1/2 ago for a for a client of mine, and it's just very simple. Grant and homes. You can see the roof lines and the foundation line sort of provide very simple indications that this is a house. But you don't need mawr. You sort of get it. When you say grant and homes and you see these shapes, you immediately understand what it is, and that's what I'm going to be getting into as we move forward in logo design and execution is this idea of simplification that communicating on Lee as much as you need to communicate is really important and can make your logo a lot more visually successful? This was another homebuilders logo that I designed, which is essentially a type execution, and it's just important to note that Sometimes this works perfectly well. And in fact this was something that came out of a ah progression of designs, some of which had a lot more to do with homes and, like, literally, the shape of a home, that the physical attributes of a home similar to the Granton logo not similar in design but similar in principle that it had more elements of home. But at the end of the day, this is what the client wanted. This work perfectly well, adding some rounded edges to it makes it work. Okay, but even though it's just a simple word, markets still a word mark contained in a box, and that box represents something with structure, and so even a simple element like that can actually change the game a bit and take you where you need to go. So this final logo I want to show you that I designed is kind of another. Comment is obviously not a homebuilder logo, but it's another comment on the idea of literal versus conceptual, and this is one that I did for a friend of mine who has a video production company, and siren district is the name of his company that he produces under. And this icon of a siren is nothing like an actual siren. In the same way, Grant and Homes is nothing like a home. Yet it's based on the shape that exists is based on the shape of a siren, which is essentially a square shaped outer casing with a red light in the center. So I didn't need any more information than that. I didn't need to communicate any more visually. Now, the fact that is rotated 90 degrees to create some rather 45 degrees to create some visual intrigue is simply on interesting bit of design. It's an interesting way to twist it, however. This shape still communicates and is still doing the job it's supposed to do without a whole lot of detail, and that's just the important thing. I want to point out there, and I said finally, but I guess this is finally the logo was going to show you that this one again. Not anything to do with home building. This is, ah, design that I did for a financial company a few years ago, and the idea was the meeting of several minds to help corporations. You know deal with financial issues on sort of, ah, larger scale, then just one on one. So this, you know, this icon can represent more than just one thing If it's designed well, in this case, the sort of interesting pie chart which also becomes, you know, an idea that people coming together sitting at this roundtable even though I'm not saying table, I'm not saying round I'm not saying pie chart when you know that is corporate finance, all these things are implied, and so you can go much further outside the realm of literal and get into something that is conceptual at a point where you'd almost have to describe this to someone for them to really know all the little things that you had in mind. Yet if they didn't have the description, they would understand that this had to do with corporate finance and that this was a smart icon that they would recognize, even if they don't understand all of its implications. So that's kind of an important thing to think about as well. Now, coming back to my my example here of the logo shapes, the final thing I want to comment on generally is representation. So what is required to represent a shape or an object that people would know or you know? So what is your logo need to communicate in order to be understood. So we start in the top left and work our way. Uh, across Essentially, we have a photograph of an actual truck. So this is pretty obviously a truck. Let's say that our client were a trucking company while Okay, fine. Do we need this truck with this grass and these trees to communicate truck? Well, I think the answer is obviously no. So next to it in the top, Right? We have this actual truck photograph, but we've removed the background. So now we don't have the background anymore. We have this literal truck and, you know, do we need that? Does that say track? Well, it certainly does. Now, in the second row, in the left, we see this Mack truck three D rendering. So this is not a photograph a truck. This is a three d rendering. So it has all the same properties as the two above, But it's not an actual photograph for truck, so that's a little less connected to the reality of a truck, but it's still all the detail that is required, you know, to represent a truck accurately now, next to that in the center right, we have some clip art, which is not a Mack truck or a large transport trucks, but it's a graphic representation of a truck, which has not had the same detail as the Mack truck on the left. But it certainly has enough detail that you can see what kind of truck it is, what color it is and what size it is. Theoretically, even picture the back seats. You get enough information from this that you understand everything that there is to understand about the truck. But in this bottom row to the far left, we have some clip art with a lot less detail in a lot less, uh, illustrative quality. So it's much simpler, but it's still got all the rivets and the wheels. It has the door handle. It has the reflections in the window. And as we get down to this truck in the bottom center, it's got some three D dimension, but it's only black and white, and it's represented through positive and negative shapes. But it is very representational of a truck. So at what point do we fall off the scale where we can no longer understand? It's a truck? Well, we can go all the way down to this bottom right version, and I mean this. You know, there's nothing in this icon that looks anything like an actual truck, except that somehow you understand it's a truck and you understand it because people you know through evolution or whatever you want to attribute it to, we have what's called a pattern seeking nature. So when we look at things, we see patterns as how we recognize faces. That's how we recognize objects on our desk. How far away something is. All these things are related to pattern seeking, and it's the way that our minds have evolved over the years. And this is what we can do really, really well with our vision and our understanding. So when I show you this bottom right icon, even if I isolated from everything else so that there's no other image that's communicating anything to do with truck, is this enough for you to understand it's a truck, or do you need something back here? Or is it Ah here or is it here? At what point for you? Does it fall off? Well, I would say that it's not just about your preference, because sometimes people will prefer this. I'd be completely wrong, you know, or prefer this three D rendering of a truck and be wrong. Preference isn't everything, but I think it's good to understand which I would point. At Which point, rather, do you feel comfortable that you've communicated a truck in this case? And I'm going to argue that you don't need any more than this bottom right? Example and possibly even less than this. But that's just me talking about literal versus conceptual. It may be that if I designed a logo tomorrow for a trucking company, I may end up here in the middle bottom. I might decide at some point No, no, I need this much because his bottom right example is to clip art For me. It's too simple. It's not aesthetically nice, and, you know, I've put all my type next to it. I don't think it works OK, that's all valid. That's all fair. But it's important to recognize that from the top left image of the literal truck with a background in the and the, you know, brushes and, uh, literal dirt under the tires all the way down to this bottom right end. At no point did we drop off the truck scale at no point that we introduced, ah, level of truck that you didn't understand, and it doesn't need the other trucks to communicate that. So this is just the point. I want to make that, um, don't get too hung up on details when you're trying to decide how much information you need in your logo. And finally, on this topic, I want to show you a website, which I think is interesting. Uh, what I mean, it's more than interesting. It's a great site for logo design. It's called logo pond and logo. Designers essentially will put their logo's up, and they'll post them and then people, you know comment on them. It can also went up is a featured logo, and so you can cruise through here. There's lots of ways that you can filter these results and have a look at them. You could do it by local designer or by topic and all of that So when you look at these logo's, if you come to logo pond dot com and have a look. But keep in mind the topic that we discussed, which is literal versus conceptual, and look through these logos and see how other logo designers air handling it. Now I should point out as well that being on logo pond does not mean these logo's are amazing. This is basically a user contributed site. So many of the logo's are quite good. Some of them are horrible, and you'll just see that as you go through, this is not a logo contest site. It's a logo, uh, portfolio site, if you will. However, if you stay on the front page, generally, logos that are well liked and well designed end up being featured on this home page most of the time. So you can cruise through logos and have a look at them. And I mean, even if we just grabbed randomly, uh, this one of the bottom, the angry leper cons I would say that this one is interesting because it breaks all the rules that I've just described to you. But it breaks the well enough that, yeah, there's a lot of detail in this lepre con. It's communicating what I might consider too much information. However, the logo designer happened to pull this one off. So it's a good design job that breaks the rules that I've been talking about, and that's an important distinction to make. So I'm a big fan of breaking the rules, and, uh, so as long as you break them well, as long as you demonstrate that you understand the rules and you could break them. But no, the rule first in practice, the rule first, So keep your logos simple. I think that's really the key is simple. Design is always going to be a better bet than complex design. Even though we see that some people can pull it off, they do it quite nicely. It's not the bet I would hedge all the time. So, uh, but it doesn't mean that simple logo design is easy, either, As we're going to see once we get into this, simplifying an idea is one of the hardest things that any graphic designer does because you try to make things simple, but not so much that they fall off the scale of interesting and that people go as just a box with a word in it. I don't get it. So sometimes a box inside of, ah, word inside of a box works. Sometimes it doesn't work, and these things are all experience based. You doom or logos you doom or design. These things become more and more obvious. So anyway, keep your design simple. And speaking of simple, the next video lesson. We're going to talk about the three types of logos. Well, I call them three types of logos, but there's really only one type of logo, but you can have a logo. You can also have a Nikon, and you can also have a word mark. So these are three different, I guess. Categories of logo that I'll talk to you about briefly in the next video before we get into the sketch phase would discover this off fast. So I'll see when the next lesson and we'll talk about that in short order 9. Chapter 08: Logos, icons and wordmarks: so I just cover this off very quickly. But basically there are three different types of logo categories, if you will, that I want you to think about this. List could be longer if you talk to somebody else. Or you may understand this differently as you grow your local design practice. But except from me now that I think of it three different ways and then, you know, that's all really say about this. But you can have a logo, which is essentially what I'll call a full communication. Ah, full logo design generally will have words plus an icon of some sort, some visual metaphor and some type of message, possibly even a tagline. Now, that doesn't mean you can't have a tag line or a metaphor in any other category of logo. But I'm gonna say Logo is those elements. That's how I'm going to define it now and then. The word mark on the other end of the scale has simply the words. This is just kind of what your company is called, who you are. Full stop and it's ah, nice design, nice typography, potentially. But then you have this middle ground, which is kind of an icon which isn't really a full communication. But an icon is great when your brand is so well known that this is all you need, but it's important to sort of understand the difference. I'm just gonna quickly show you how these three things are different. This is not going to be heavy material for you, but just so in your mind. You have this have this little check list that you can kind of ah, return to as you designed your work in the future. Okay, so I just grabbed these three files. I figured I would just demonstrate the differences between these three elements using my own logo. Booster Rocket Media. This is the logo for the company we have here in Toronto that I mentioned in the introduction. So there's two versions of the logo. One is wide, one is more stacked and square. And so we use these logos as required. So we've got a couple of elements. Obviously, this being the full logo full on design eso booster rocket and media are set in some nice forward type complement. The geometric shapes and the line values of my, uh, my little rocket icon here. So this Ah, rocket rotated to 45 degrees is blasting off with the power of booster rockets, of course. And just these nice little interesting key lines with circles at the end, or just a graphic element that sort of have a little bit of science e vibe to them, but not overboard. And then, of course, the stacked version. So this will be considered a logo and all these air really logos. But essentially, when you talk about a logo kind of in its most standard usual and expected format, you're talking about this kind of configuration, not rocket science. If you'll pardon the pun and then in the second example here we have the Rocket, which we also use as an icon. Now this rocket appears on invoices. It sort of makes its appearance in various ways, depending on how we decide to use it. And if you go to the booster rocket media dot com website, you'll actually see that we have a little launch animation in the beginning, where the rocket is utilized on its own. So this icon comes into play for the various branded elements that we create. I don't think it's enough just to have this, and this becomes a really great tool for us to use. And so, you know, icons are great because they add a lot of depth when you're building a brand and when you're building logo is, you can think of icons as being part of it, and you can pull them out and use them in various ways. If that is something that you intend by the design Aziz, you go through the process. But you can see I have these little fake pages down here that don't mean anything. But you know, this one might get used the top of a document in this way with the blue circle behind it. In other situations like this on the bottom, right? We might use it as a ghosted image cut back, and maybe there's type over top of that in a presentation or in an invoice on secondary documents of that type. So that's the rocket without the circles. We have a couple ways to express this icon, but this is essentially the icon versus the full on logo. And of course, if I were just to take the type and extract that from the logo and use it in this way. It will be considered a word mark, or some people call it a logo type as well. But word mark is the most commonly used term. Now there's no right and wrong time to use a word mark. You could design any local you want with a word mark if that meets your creative needs. If your client wants a word mark and you find typography that is adequate to express all the creative ideas that you have, then there's no right and wrong time to use it. You can use word marks as logos. They are logos. They're just another type of logo, another kind of way to express your creative design. So there are three different logo configurations elements, properties, states, whatever you would I like to say. So obviously simple thes territories aren't difficult to understand. It's just good, I think, to have them in your mind. Quick, little checklist. Off you go. So ah, Anyway, we're obviously going to go the full logo design route, a t least how I define a full logo and, uh, we're gonna begin the sketch phase next. So all this stuff we've been talking about all the research. We've done all this nonsense. Now the rubber meets the road. We're gonna get down into our creative Selves, and we're going to start exploring ideas. So I'll see you in the next video and we'll start having some fun. 10. Chapter 09: Sketch phase part 1: Okay, so now we're ready to begin the fun stuff. We're gonna get into concept development and dive into the sketch phase. So really, concepts is kind of what we're after. We're looking for big ideas, big brush strokes. We don't care what font it is. We're not going to sit there and say, Oh, the edge of the F isn't big enough. Or maybe the A should be. You know, none of that stuff. We're gonna stay far away from that territory. Sketching is all about big brush strokes, and I'm going to use my drawing tablet and Photoshopped. But of course, you could use a piece of paper and a pencil. You could use a white board, a chalkboard, crayons if you want. Whatever you can make a mark with. That's how you're going to spend your time thinking and doing your sketch phase and conceptual development. So this is going to help us to avoid the pitfalls of working An illustrator is too early for that. Don't jump into illustrator. Don't jump into your applications yet. I'm using Photoshopped. I'm not going to use any of its tools as you're about to see. So I'm going to make sure that all I'm doing is thinking about ideas. I'm not thinking about software. I'm not thinking about Oh, the rectangle tool with rounded edges, because as soon as you do that you are out of concept territory. Your mind is not working the same way, and you don't want to fall into that trap, I promise you. So we're going to keep this sketching loose. Conceptual. That's the key. We're going to begin the process, however, by returning to the brief and just having a look at a few things that we don't get too far down a path which isn't supported by what the client wants. That can happen really easy. You can get down a certain mental path or you confined Nikon and sketch something. You go. Oh, this is very cool. This turns into a 2nd 1 This turns into 1/3 1 However, you could be in entirely the wrong territory. And if you haven't looked at the brief in a while, you might forget that we all do. It's happened to everybody. Hours of work. You can't present the client because it's off strategy, so make sure you return to the brief and Let's take a look at that now and I'll show you why I look at the brief and just we're gonna skin that We're not going to go through the whole thing as you'll see. So what I want to do is I'm not gonna go through the entire brief, you know, I just want to remind myself of a couple of things. You know, of course, what we're doing. And one of the things is this client note. So the client had provided in the briefing process some ideas that he liked some things that he has seen that he kind of wants toe work with You wants to emulate. Now I should point out that I may not do that version of the logo when I say that version, I mean the client's version. He's sort of given me art direction by email, which, of course, he's not a creative person. That's not true. He's a creative person, but not a logo designer creative person. In that way. He doesn't think in this disciplined way that I think, and so I look at his ideas and I understand them. I know why he wants to see a set of blinds and a son and a house. He's thinking literal, which is what we talked about. Ah, couple lessons ago is that literal versus conceptual problem? He's being literal. He's thinking of every product he sells and trying to jam it into a logo. But that's the rabbit hole. That's the territory that I know from experience I need to avoid, because if I put in one type of blind, I've gotta put in all 10 that he sells. If I put in one window shade where the other six, he sells those ones, too, so you know what I mean? You can fall into this trap and you can get lead far away from a good logo and end of designing a brochure that looks like a logo, which is not something you want to get into. So that doesn't mean, however, that I'm going to throw his idea under the bus or that I'm not going to do it. What it means is I'll either stand on my soapbox and say, I'm not going to do your idea and this is why. And then I'll stick to that. I'll live and die by that statement or I'll say, Listen, yeah, I look at your idea. I did my own version of it and I'll tell you why. And I'll need a rationale for that. Or the third option is that I might do exactly what he asked for, but nothing more. Simply do it his way, the way he sees it, so that he can then look at and go. OK, there's a logo. I understand that you listen to my idea, The danger there is that anything you show a client they might buy. So he might, by the local. He cobbles together. Or he might buy one of mine. It's difficult to say, and it's a risk you always take when you explore this territory. But I have to let you know about this so you can acknowledge it as you begin your design thinking this is territory that's important. I'll probably have to include this, I imagine. But you know what? We'll figure that out as we go and we'll choose our soap box and when to stand on. But let's pop back to the finder for a moment. Just have a look at a couple of things, so essentially I have two folders I want to focus on right now. One is my research folder, and we'll just revive revisit some of those images rather that I pulled in my initial research. But there's also this folder, which is what I will call the client likes. And this is something that he sent to me along with this note about the horizon with blinds pulled tab inside house icon, which is kind of a mishmash of words that just reminded me of what he said during that meeting. But this is the visual example that he provided so these air logos that he's seen elsewhere , these air things that he collected on and made a little image map for me here. But basically you can see that there's a couple of recurring themes. One of them is this in the horizon logo. There are these slats that look like the louvers on the set of blinders. I think you call those louvers, uh, anyway, so beneath that there's another one. It's kind of in a sun shape, and you can also see the house. Is that I mean, these are essentially the two things the pull tab, the blinds and the house are the three things that he's kind of commenting on. He's he's seeing some combination of those three things. So again, I've got all these House icons and I've got this little plug house in the top right, which is probably the closest thing toe what he's describing. If you imagine that plug was the poll tab of the blinders like the horizon read local here in kind of the middle left or bottom, right, you can imagine that's sort of what he's getting at. So I'm pretty confident that I have the design ability to turn that into something interesting without saying, Oh, I don't like your idea. It's not as cool as my ideas, you know? That's certainly not the case. That's not the right way to think about it on. So anyway, I look at this and I go okay, so here's some territory that I'm going to consider now. With that said, I'm also gonna consider other territory so I can quickly go back and remind myself by just popping open. Ah, quick preview of just running down. I'm not gonna leave these images open or spend too much time looking at them, but I'm going to remind myself of some of the interesting things that I have noticed in my sort of progression here, particularly stuff like this, which has, you know, a lot of mood. It has a lot of feeling warm color, but also this interesting treatment of the light coming through the drapery at the back. Now I happen to know draperies or not large on his list of services or products he likes to pedal. So I'm not gonna get too much into drapes. I'm gonna try to avoid that territory when I begin the sketch phase. But I certainly can look at these things which have you noticed? These horizontal lines? Horizontal vertical lines. And that's a lot of this window covering sort of language, visual languages, horizontal and vertical. There's not much else, except that how do those things play out? And then you have this, which is the the behavior of light. So what this light do when it comes through something like this, when it's behind something in front of something burning on its own, like this? No, in this example is Well, uh, you know, there's an interesting sort of tone coming through the background here like the shade is half covering a window. Is Is that something I can exploit? Not sure. But anyway, as you know, as I said, I just come through and I quickly remind myself, you know, how does light behave coming through trees? Does that give me anything to work with? And, uh, so these are essentially the things that I want to Just remember as I begin sketching, I look at this like Okay, Yeah. I don't want to forget this stuff. I had a a reason for looking at this before. It gives me a sense of the kind of mood and the kind of territory that we're in now. I'm gonna come back again once quickly to this light and shadow and remind myself of some interesting things that I thought were these air kind of where as a designer, as a creative person, my mind tends to go. The client didn't necessarily think this way. And it's difficult for non visual people to think this way because this is kind of a tertiary territory. Visually speaking, this is not blind, and it's not a window. It is the effect of blinds over a window with sunshine coming through it. That's a leap of three different phases that I'm able to make. Not that the client can't think this way. Of course you can, but he doesn't think this way as a rule, because this is kind of what we do. This is the headspace that designers Aaron, when we start to think about what are the effects of something beyond the obvious Teoh him . The obvious thing is, is a window with slats over it, because those air blinds But this is a less obvious. This is deeper in, you know, and I kind of like the idea. And I still believe strongly that there is some territory here to exploit something about the shadow of the blinds. Something about light breaking through, something about light wrapping around form. And, uh, I think really strongly that I could make something out of this. So I'm gonna remind myself that this is the territory that I would like to explore. It may go nowhere, but I think that there's something there. Okay, Okay, so you get it. So now that we've gone through all of this stuff, we're now ready to actually put our pens to the screen. while pen tool to the screen. In my case, pencil the paper. Possibly in your case, Whatever it is now, we're actually going to get into it and start having some real fund. So let's get started. I'll see you in the next video. 11. Chapter 09: Sketch phase part 2: Okay, so I just popped my photo shop open, Got my drawing pen tool, and I'm going Teoh get started with the sketch phase. And, uh, so we're going to dive into it now. You're welcome to join me to sketch along maybe your own ideas or watch this and return to your sketchbook later. If you're choosing one of the other briefs or if you're going to follow me just for the exercise, then we're going to get into it. Now, I'm going to start my Photoshopped file and, uh, that we'll get rolling. Okay, So here in Photoshopped, I'm essentially just I've set up a a really simple 19 by 20. Uh, we're sorry. 1920 by 10. 80 pixel wide. Ah, photo shot fire. And this is just because I know that I'll be showing him my concepts. Although he may not see these sketches. I haven't decided yet if I will show the sketches, but because I'm going to show them Elektronik Lee, I've set up a file that kind of behaves nicely with most screens. If I show it on a laptop or a tablet or a desktop, it will be formatted sort of nicely for most screens, which are 16 by nine ratio. And in HD, that translates in 1920 by 10 80. They could also have a four K monitor. But let's just go on this for now, which will be just fine. So I'm going to zoom in 200% just so I can have a sense that I'm working in the rial size that I'm sketching. So, uh, reminding myself again of where the client's sort of wants to be, just got this kind of gray tone with my drawing tablet. I don't really need to be fancy. And again, I've said this a 1,000,000 times and I'll say it again. This is not about good drawing. I don't need to do a good drawing now, by the way, I can draw. I'm an accomplished artist and I have no problem drawing. But I don't bother to be very detailed or very, very artistic in this phase, because I'm really just getting ideas down. So the one thing was essentially the look at, you know, the house with the pull tab, you know? So I've got this sort of house shape with his little pull tab guy here, but I may just draw this quickly to go. Okay? Just don't forget this territory and the horizon line as well. If you remember that there was the the round kind of shape with slats going through it as though it were the blinds. And somehow, you know, maybe that's inside of a house is what he's kind of thinking. But one of the territories that I want to make sure I avoid is duplicating what I've seen before and these air already already beginning to look an awful lot like those examples that he put in that document that he showed us. So I'm going to make a note of these at the moment, and I'm going to come back to this atsu some point during the sketch phase. But to begin with, I'm just going to remind myself by sketching them out quickly. And the other thing I do often like to do, and I don't I don't do this literally, but I'll do it literally now, for the purpose of making this demonstration makes sense is that I have a couple of things . I've got windows. Which of our just to sketch them out? Uh, you know, four little windows together here. Um, you know, that's kind of ah, set of four windows. But of course, this is getting really close to the Microsoft kind of way of doing windows like the Windows software. Obviously. So you know, this may not be Ah ah, window configuration that I exploit. I may not do four panels, you know, in this configuration, because it just looks way too much like that. But, you know, I'm going to use my shift key to actually constrained my angles here a bit. But if I did something like this, you know, and then just drew a couple of straight lines down the middle Now, this can be a window type of territory that I could possibly explore. But here's the problem. If I If I fall too much into this sort of idea, if I start to get you know, uh, well, I'm gonna draw the windows here. I'm gonna draw the you know, the space between the windows, and here's where the blinds hang, because those blinds and so we have these blind shape all of a sudden, If I'm not careful what I end up doing, even if I remove this little bit here. Like I'm drawing. I'm thinking about what blinds look like, and I draw this whole set of blinds. Oh, yeah, that's right. There's a little pull tab next to the blinds. A wait a second. I'm already getting too literal. This is something I've talked about a 1,000,000 times and I've actually done YouTube videos on this subject as well. Is literal versus conceptual. This is the trap. And I don't want to fall into this trap now. Windows. I could represent a window basically like that. A square can be a window. And I don't want to think too much beyond this, but a windows Not really. Our message. A window is simply part of our message. It's an important part, but really, we're talking about the window covering. So we are talking about blinds and various types of window treatments, which may include drapery. Uh, doesn't mean draperies off the table. It just means our client isn't necessarily pushing draperies as part of his solution for his clients. So we want to put that in the logo necessarily. But you never know. So the point is, I like to identify these things early on. I like to sketch some things out. So I kind of get an idea, Like, you know, obviously these these slats for over top of a window with kind of the, you know, the the mechanism at the top and a drawstring at the side. It all gets to be too much, because if I put type around this and I make it small as a logo, it's gonna be way too much details. It's far too literal. It's unnecessarily complicated, so I don't want that. But a square might not be enough. However, I do already know just from experience that if I have a square which represents a window and just for the sake of my rendering an increase, this brush size a little bit. And I do something like this where I write out green light, you know, and then I just suggest window fashions down here so quick sketch on were actually writing it out. I can see that there's territory here that I could explore. I could possibly combine the idea of a window with some type, but the type covering the window isn't is sort of an interesting part of it, because we are talking about window coverings, window fashion. So I know that this territory is okay. I'm just gonna make this little note. This is not a concept sketch, but it could be. I mean, this could serve in some way, so this could be a concept, but I could also play around the territory of writing out green light. Maybe it's all that extra shape there. Maybe it's all in caps like this just to race this little extra bit so you can see I'm not being pretty. I'm just being conceptual. I'm kind of doing things in a bit of a flurry here, and I could theoretically do something like this. So maybe this is interesting territory. Another bit of interesting territory might be if I were to increase my brush size. I use my shift key again. If I did something like this and I decided to create my type, if you can kind of see where I'm going here, I create my type in such a way that maybe it looks like it was made out of the louvers of blinds. Will that be hard to read? My instinct tells me it will be, but I can sort of start thinking this way by jotting down these kinds of images. The point that I'm getting at is that I tend to get things out relatively quickly, and that's sort of how you want this to go. You don't want to get stuck drawing something and trying to make it look like something. Stay away from that territory. Is Mawr important to be just fluid and to have your ideas just sort of fly off of your pen a little bit? So another territory that we have is green? So when I think of Green, I think of immediately some kind of a shape like this, you know, and it could also possibly be something like this. So I've got possibly a son shape, so these things are green now here's the problem. However, this is while this may be the territory the client wants us to go in, is this overused? He's already shown us examples of things that he found that exist, which are exactly this logo and do I want to get into that? I don't know if I want to get trapped into that way of thinking about it, but it's, you know, the idea of the louvers. The idea of the drawstring, the idea of the sun, these air all accurate these role in the in the correct territory. So you know there are other possibilities here. Like is it Is it a leaf which has the drawstring for the blinds? Is there something that we can use their Now? This is strange because you don't really make a connection between these two things. But if the leaf was made of, if the leaf was made of the slats of the blinds Is there something there? You know, so this shape isn't quite correct because I've just drawn this quickly, but, um, you know, at least I can say OK, well, maybe there's something there. Maybe there isn't. Maybe through this sketching phase, I discover that it's far too complicated to try and deliver that kind of detail. But what I want try to explain here is that without designing a logo yet without doing anything without worrying about typography without worrying about what font, how big, what kind of colors or anything else? All I have done is I've limited myself, Teoh. One tone that I can draw with you could make this solid black. If you want graze a leisure on my eyes, I find ah, sketching this way, but that's really up to you. But all I'm doing is I'm giving myself some territory to play around with. I'm kind of exploring what could be interesting. Is it four windows together? Is it one big window? Is it literal? Slats of a blind isn't the shape of a leaf? Does that mean green and green is environmentally friendly? But is that a leaf? Should that be a son? Because we are talking about windows and window light. So there's all these things to be considered, and so I start the process by sketching in this way, I start laying down some territory that I'd like to be in. That I would possibly think, could be a really good basis for a local. But the other thing I want to stress here that I'm doing is I'm keeping things conceptual. I'm staying away from literal. I mean, this example that I drew here was as close to a literal is I'd like to get, And the reason that I'm avoiding literal is because I just know what kind of a trap that is I've also looked at these icon shapes that my client has sort of said, Hey, I really like these things. Maybe we could do something with that. I've sketched those out as a quick reminder, and that may be territory. That helps me as I get into the development process a little more. But what I'd like to do is I'd like to really start exploring kind of what it is that I think this stuff could look like. But I'm keeping it simple. I'm keeping an iconic. It's one shape. It's one image as soon as you start combining. Like if I tried to combine a leaf, you know, with a son in it as well. And oh, you know, by the way, well, we're talking about a house, and you know this. This has blinds and, you know, and there should be a louver and a pull string. There, you can see it gets too convoluted. There's no way that sort of doing all this stuff together, trying to combine these complex shapes to tell a story. It's going to be horrible territory to try and develop a logo in, because it's just too much stuff to try and explain. And if I have to explain the logo, it doesn't work. Whereas a shape like this may not be right, this may not be the right way to go, but it has the benefit of being one simple shape that I don't need to explain If I say green light window coverings and I show you a leaf. Yeah, that's kind of confusing in terms of the concept related toe a leaf. But the leaf itself isn't confusing. This is the point that I want to make is that when you're purifying your thoughts when you're going through and just doing these rough sketches, keep them conceptual. Keep them simple for this reason, because you can eliminate ideas that maybe aren't going to go anywhere. You can eliminate icons and shapes without doing a lot of work and without you getting invested two hours into trying to make this leaf work, and now you're not willing to let go the leaf. But the leaf means nothing, right? This happens all the time. People get stuck in these traps, which is why I suggest strongly that you know and again it's not about good art, but I suggest strongly that your sketch phase be like this? It's just a fluid Messi set of drawings that really kind of helped get you into a into the right territory. Okay, so you get what I'm saying. Keep a conceptual, keep it fluid. Don't draw too too much. Don't think about details. Thinkable concepts. Just let it flow from your fingertips and, uh, the prolific have as many ideas as you can. There's no right or wrong amount of ideas, and in fact, the more you can generate without making yourself crazy the better. But I'm going to hit pause in this video, and I'm going to focus entirely on the task of creative exploration because this is literally my creative phase, and I'm doing this for my client. I'm using this opportunity to ah do this video course, But this is a real project, and I'm gonna dive deep. So, uh, I'm going to come back, so you have to watch me for, like, through 34 hours, sit here and sketch. I'm gonna go ahead and do that on my own so I can focus entirely on that. But you're not gonna miss any of it, because when we come back in the next video lesson, I'm gonna take you through. All of my sketches were going to sort of analyze where I ended up and look at the territory that I'm in. See if you agree. And I hope that you'll be sketching in the meantime and I will see you in the next video lesson. 12. Chapter 09: Sketch phase part 3: Okay, so my pen is pretty hot. Have been through a lot of territory. I spent a lot of time sketching and thinking about it, turned on some music and let myself drift for a little while. Which is kind of the important thing. You should be doing that to, of course, find inspiration where you get it and spent several hours. Now I've got some good ideas to review. So I went down a few rabbit holes, but I didn't go too deep and kept coming back to the brief and just kind of reminding myself where I was. And I think I got some really great ideas that I can share with you and then eventually share with the client down the road. But let's just have a look at where ended up and you'll see what I'm talking about. So I've got five little Photoshopped files here. I just sort of kept saving them over to the next file, and I want to walk you through what I've done so far. And then I'm gonna spend a little bit of time exploring the client's idea, and I thought I would do that kind of live thinking. It through and sketching while I'm actually doing the video. So you get a little sense of kind of the process that I go through a little bit anyway. But so the first thing I started to think about was, and again, I'm not really concerned about the fund. I I know already that while this looks sloppy, this whole green light with the, you know, the tight being built out of the louvers of the blinds. This looks messy right now. But I know that I can choose a square font or even create the font and possibly get away with some of this. So I'm gonna sketch this idea out and leave it on the table, and I'm going to evaluate it in an upcoming video where we talk about identifying good ideas and I may not identify This one is a good idea, but I might. So I sketched out a couple of ways quick. I tried to down here. Maybe it's just Thea the initials and not the entire word. Maybe that helps. And then I would need the extra copy down here to kind of work that out. So anyway, I started thinking about this is that kind of the right territory to be in. Maybe it is, You know. So I've got another sketch down here, which is obviously these. Just zoom in a little. It's kind of see what's going on here. So obviously, you know, these would be blinds pulled down over a longer window, and I've kind of suggested the mechanism at the top. You know, I could put little I mean, I suppose I'll just grab my, uh, pen tool here and my brush. And I suppose I could you know, theoretically, I could do this. Um, you know that that seems like a lot, but that may that may add to it. I don't know. I kind of like this idea still, but we'll see. And next to that, I've got these contoured windows. They're not literal windows, but they certainly arrange and remind you of window. So if I say green light window fashions, I don't think you're like Well, yeah, but that's great. But one of those four squares there obviously windows, so Okay, I can play around now with what happens inside those windows. Is that where the initials go? Does it create some interesting geometry? I think so. And so it's a place to think about. So up here I sort of drew these ideas. Although now that I look at them, they're a little bit sixties, you know, which. I suppose that was your idea. It might be a good one, but kind of the big fat type and the blinds cutting through it. In this way, this this could work. I may just be not seeing it properly yet, but I don't think it's my strongest idea. But anyways, there and I think you know, it's interesting enough that I sketched it out and I'll hang on to it for now. And another idea was to actually bring in the vertical blinds rather than the horizontal type. Did that make sort of busting up the words into the louvers of the blinds? Does that help it any, These little dots down the side, like the like the pool rings that you would use to open the vertical blinds is that interesting territory? I don't know if it is, but I drew it anyway, and so that's one page of ideas. And then I came Teoh this next page, so let me just zoom in here a little bit. So starting up the top, I thought Okay, well, there's this theme of, you know, the whole idea of that circle and the louvers going through the circle and all that kind of stuff and that somehow the sun. But I thought, OK, fine. I will use that. This is what I was trying to get out before about using what a client gives you and saying , OK, that's great. But maybe I'll think about it differently than you will, but I'll give you the same idea. I'll still deal with that concept, and that's kind of what I've done here. I've started to deal with that concept a little bit, and so this is one way that it might work. These aren't to me anyway. They're becoming an interesting territory, these vertical slats of a set of vertical blinds. I've dunmore sketches based on these that you'll see in a moment. But this territory is starting to become really interesting to me, and I'm I'm pretty sure it's going to make my final round of logos to present to the client that I'm gonna slick up in on upcoming video. So I'm looking at this going? Yeah, I kind of like this and you'll see how it sort of evolves A little bit of my sketches here , but I thought maybe there's a whole roll of them, you know, ISMM or better Not sure if it is this deal down here, this this, like window shape down here, you can see is getting way too literal. So this is the trap that I talked about and we all fall into it. We all sketch things go Iook. Now back off. This is too much. So this is where I kind of hit the wall, if you will. Where I was like No, too literal. Uh, but then, you know, I was like, Hey, could I take the corner of, Ah, curtain Is it a drapery of some kinds that drapery shape become interesting but that I need to add the fold lines and it gets to be too much so that I played around with it inside of a square. Is it part of a shape that could be a territory? But, um, here this idea right here is one that I'm actually starting to really like. I think this is definitely going to make it into my final round as well. Of ideas I'd like to explore because I think that this this has some really interesting graphic implications that are just, you know, these really nice straight slats of color could be very, very cool. With the right font and the right treatment, I think that could be a real winner. So it's a territory that I'm in. And if I just pop up to the top here, I was sort of somewhat inspired by the idea of the light and shadow play where I could have this. This sort of rectangular object, which becomes a window, the type green light going through the window in this way. But the light that breaks through and cast the shadow is the window fashions, So that could be an interesting thing to explore. And I think there's real possibilities there. And, uh, you know, if these air a nice Grady Int, uh, show like shadow, soft effect kind of a thing, the trick is to keep it readable and particularly to keep it readable when it's on a business card. That's the pitfall of this idea, but I think the idea still has merit, so it's one that I kind of like I'm gonna come back to, um I played around here, this idea with Thea, the initials being disguised inside of window shapes. So they become almost drapery type things. And I think there's really something there as well. I sort of this one is really starting to grow on me. Although originally I wasn't so sure about it. Beneath that it, uh, it's sort of this idea right here is interesting because it has more of the now Scott some of this shape of what real blinds look like. But it's a little more abstract. However, it kind of has the vibe of a one of those would cover mortarboards the the graduation hats , eso somehow it just reminds me of that. I don't know why it doesn't look like a mortar board, but it reminds me of one. Somehow. I'm not so sure that that's is probably the string hanging down, this sort of sending that vibe. But after that, I drew this and I really like this. This deal down here is something I'm sure I'm going to come back to as being an interesting graphic. It may not be that I need five. It might be the wrong perspective, but I think there's something happening there, which is interesting. The idea behind this one is that it would just be super elegant. Typography be really slick, and then I would do some kind of ornate line work above it, which would kind of give you the idea of a window covering without actually being a window covering. It would just be a type execution, but it would be a type execution with all kinds of interesting character, and it would kind of remind you of a window fixture or window dressing. So I thought that was interesting. My third page. You can see that I did a little more exploration, so let me just start in the top corner with the sky up there. Um, so Anyway, this idea was sort of based on the idea of an open window, and one of the references that I had collected had some windows that were opened slightly, and so I thought, Oh, that's that's interesting. It's an open window. And does that have something to do with window coverings? It might. I don't think it does now that I've done it Now that I sketched it out, I was like, and maybe not so much. This looks more like windows Now. Now it's like the environment outside, which is really not what we're talking about. So I I abandoned this idea right away. I didn't sketch any further versions of it, but, um but I want to keep it just because, as I said before, I don't delete anything. It helps to remind me that this is probably not the right territory, and that will be useful when I come back and look at it later. So ah, right down here. Now, this guy here, I decided I would try. Maybe some really square typography could work. And if if the ease were made out of these slats of the blinds, would that be interesting? And but then I've got to tell the joke three different times. I don't think that that helps it. I think it weakens it when you've got a repeat. The clever trick all the way through and then, you know, begs the question. Does the I become a vertical blind and now I have to deal with that, and all of a sudden it gets to be kind of a mess, but I thought Okay, well, I'll do it anyway because maybe this will again. I may come back to this and think it was interesting. And so maybe it's enough to have three shapes which are obviously windows when you know the contacts and I say green light window fashions and it's some kind of interesting type over top of the the window shapes that could be interesting. That's I'm talking about this idea down here, Of course. So, uh, sketched that out. This idea here, these are these are too complicated. And so I didn't go further with adding type to them or really exploring that, because I kind of thought, Well, I've got better versions of this in my other sketches. So it was just an interesting reminder. But what it did do is it made me think about Oh, you know, the contrast of the slats being one color in the background, being another color. It took me in a direction and I thought about it more, and you'll see an emergence some stuff a bit later, which is another reason why I keep my sketches all the way through. I don't get rid of anything. Because it might remind me later of, even though this was a bad sketch, that it was like, Wow. Okay. But it's got a good property that I could exploit else wise. So I played around with the same idea that I had. I guess both of these two are somewhat the same in that I took the idea from logos number two. This guy up there part of that bad line. Anyway, I did that. I drew that with the mouse instead of my pen to let me try it again. This guy here see at night, sir. Perfect. So I took that and I thought, OK, maybe does more detail. Help that does. Getting more graphic with it. Help it in any way. I don't think it does. I've got three drawings of one idea, essentially, but it doesn't matter. It's there, and I've got it. So Okay, so there, those air there. So then this top idea, this one up here, I sort of got into the idea. You know, that got into the idea of, you know, do they become do the blinds become a different shape? Are they little rounded corner things that might have other implications. Possibly I kept it. But then I have all of that sketch to the one just beneath it. This one here. So what I thought about was the light breaking through the window and sort of bouncing off of the blinds. And if you look at your window blinds, if you have someone home, look at them and see how they behave, you know? And this is kind of the territory that I was starting to explore with. That one is just what happens now. This this little drawing itself is too literal, but is interesting. So I mean, you know, maybe it Maybe there's something that comes out of that, Yeah. 13. Chapter 09: Sketch phase part 4: this guy right here. I just decided I would try some typography with a simpler shape. And is that enough? And I think it could be interesting to have, you know, somehow just this could even be the louvered, you know, shapes above a piece of really strong square, horizontal, vertical kind of type. It might really help with that. So I kind of like this idea is it's another one that's growing on me. The more I look at it now, these two ideas here are somewhat the same idea. And I do kind of like where this is started going. But I think I'm more focused on the top one. And the idea here was that I thought, you know, when you see those vertical blinds and the breeze, that kind of sometimes they bump into each other, they kind of flow a little bit because they're just sort of, you know, the responding to the the air, moving through the window. And I thought, OK, maybe that be interesting. Once I drew it, I thought, Oh, it has the double meaning of being somewhat organic, And maybe there's something that would be fun to do with that So that's why I drew the 2nd 1 Because I thought, Oh, does that become the initials? Are they blowing flaps of a vertical blind? But what happens with those that then they just become tight, made of ribbons, which is not really the idea, even though I think that could be a really potentially interesting treatment. I don't know if it exactly does the trick, and I've got another idea somewhat like it, So I don't really need that. But But there they are. Anyway, it's a territory that I was in. And you know that the multiple vertical louvers with the green light over top, I thought that was a obvious territory. I want to sketch. And so I'll take this moment also mention that sometimes you have to sketch the obvious things. Get them off of your mind by just drawing them So they're on paper. And when you when you draw out some obvious stuff, it helps you get past it and gets you into some different territory that could be more fruitful and more interesting. So on this next page, I dove into this territory of the louvers a little deeper, and I'm really convinced that they are going to be. These are essentially going to be one of the ideas that I presented the client. Some form of this I'm convinced of that and because I think there's some real fun to be had with how those work out graphically. So if I zoom in and just come up to the top, here is once again, it was the first idea that I had in this kind of way of thinking, which was, you know, the the not symmetrical vertical blinds which have some light breaking through them. I don't think that this is going to survive my further development, but it was interesting that gave me some ideas that became other stuff that I've done that I will just kind of go through and show you. But anyway, this one here, um, the idea was flowing drapery over top of a window shape. But again, I'm falling into the trap of the Microsoft windows and you know how that looks very close to that potentially and you know it's in each shape. And if I remove these, what I discovered was I thought, Oh, maybe I should just remove the window separators like the little would frame between the panes of glass. But then all that happened was that I had sort of a curved shape. It didn't really have the window vibe. But, you know, it's still possibly an idea that I would like to explore more, but I'm not sure that it is is my point. So anyway, down here, the various long slats that air closer together, there's no light play except that they are different tones. And what I noticed in some of the research that I did was that light broke through these slats and it looked like some of them were different. So I thought, Oh, maybe that could be fun that you know, these air different because the light is breaking through different points and it gives them sort of ah, luminous kind of quality. So I may explore that down here. I came back to those leaves even over on this end where basically I just gave it a shot. Doesn't matter. They're there for considerations sake. Uh, this kind of looks like other things that I drew, but I drew it again because in my brain, I thought, maybe I just simplify everything. How would that work with that would not make the idea any better. And so I played with it. That Sorry, that being this idea, of course. But this one I'm really starting to like. I'm really starting to like that shape, and I don't have a solution for exactly yet, but I really think that this one is becoming something very, very interesting, and I like it a lot, So I'm going to come back to that for sure and do something with it. And the last couple of things that I sketched quickly, I don't think are going to really be the deal, because I think this as interesting as it is. And I talked about this in the research. You know, images that looked at is, I thought, Yeah, this is really interesting and I like it visually, but as a logo, it gets too complicated. There's too much nonsense going on in there that I would have to somehow deliver in a small logo. Now it doesn't mean that I can't do it, but it means I have to simplify and would simplifying it, weaken it? I don't know it's possible, but maybe not so, anyway, it's there for what it's worth and, uh, this idea Here, zoom in these guys, I sort of thought, if I have the type shaped like the blades of a blind and if you've seen those, if you look at your blinds at home, if you have them, you can see that they're kind of a shape, almost like an airplane blade. You know, on the propellers, it's sort of a contoured shape. It isn't flat what vertical blinds or flat, but the horizontal blinds have a bit of a curve to them. And I thought, Maybe that's it. Maybe the type is curved. And is that enough? And if I went further and put the little drawstring beneath it, Is that an idea? It's an idea for sure. I don't know that it's on award winning idea. Uh, really like I do. I have a hard time letting go of this because I really do like it. But it may end up being something that I just have to shall viz one of those really great ideas that never went anywhere, you know, But I may come back to that, but I left myself a little space on this page. I want to look at those shapes and things that we had talked with the client had given us. So if I had started maybe with, like, a circle and, you know, is the circle broken by how shape? So if I just removed this, you know? But I'm sure that I've seen something like this before. It's well, actually, I'm not so sure that that's Ah ah, hot idea. Although I suppose that I could theoretically do some kind of a shape like this. Ah, and then is there if there was a son behind it? Now I'm sure that I've seen this before as well. But if I divide this up now into the blinds Uh, yeah, Now I'll just do it so that I can say that I have explored this, uh, play around with that idea a little bit. Is there something there? But I think the most pure example of what our client was talking about If I give myself house icon and if I draw around this now, one thing that I will know what one thing I'll mention and this is sort of ah one thing that I think most designers are very sort of sensitive to and try to avoid at all costs Is things looking too phallic? And so sometimes you can sketch something quick and go, you know? Hey, that looks kind of rude. So you abandoned the idea, But sometimes you that the fix your sketch, you know, just a little bit. So if I do this and, you know, make that into, ah, ring with a string, uh, you no longer see this is a phallic symbol. But sometimes when you're drawing something quick and you sort of do this, you're like, Oh, you know, this is the wrong territory. But, you know, don't don't get scared off by those things right away. You have to fix them. But, I mean, they're fixable. So anyway, if I thin up this a little bit, so it kind of looks a little more string like I mean, this could this could be a possibility, I suppose, although I feel like no, actually feel like this would have to be, uh, actually, no. What I'm gonna undo, I just I remove those. But you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna undo these. And I remember my lesson, which is Don't get rid of an idea. So next to that, I will draw another one quickly, cause I think, uh, I think use me a bigger purpose fillings in. I think that there's a possibility here that if I, you know, take this, I make a smaller eraser. Uh, and I just kind of whipped through this with my little eraser, and Ah, so I got a house now, that sort of made up of blinds, but, um, grabs him white, you know? Actually, yes. I need more even need Moorhouse or less louvers. So which will it be? Maybe it'll be less looms. So if I just, uh, square that shape up a little bit and now I'm gonna back, grab some white and draw this in, You know, does this become interesting? Does this look too much like an arrowhead? It kind of does that. That's my sketch, Really? Not the idea. Um, you're hopes, my sketches and quite delivering that yet, but it doesn't mean that the idea is not there. So the point isn't Maybe it's something like that. Maybe the house with the the blinds and the drawstring that that could in fact, be a graphic that could go somewhere. That wouldn't be a bad idea. Um, yeah. You know what? I really do feel like that housebreaking. The sun shape is something I've seen too many times. I don't think it's the right the right way to go. And but I think those possibilities in the house with this little pull deal. So maybe, you know, maybe we have to save this idea. And I definitely think because the client is asked us for this idea that we're going to include this one. So it might even be this one, which I think probably has the most potential at this point, cause it it explains the string and the little loop better than just, you know, this one which, you know, you and I know that that's a a string on the bottom of ah, of a window covering. But I don't think on its own, it necessarily communicates that it looks more like a button. If somebody doesn't know the subject now, if we say window coverings, I think that helps it. But I think this one here does that better, and it really now becomes about What is the house shape look like? How does that you know? How does that help deliver this idea? So these are my rough sketches. And I think I've explored enough territory now that I can go to my illustrator execution and start doing some some actual black and white graphic design of the rial logos that I want to present. But of course, before I do that, I really do have to go through these and decide which is which. So obviously got some good design territory to explore. I'm obviously not ready for illustrator yet. I can't just jump in and start building logos because I have a ton of ideas. Not all of them are right. I don't want to show the client everything I have here because some of this stuff is territory that I just went into and then kind of ran out of gas or, you know, didn't like when I looked at it later. So of course we have to figure out what ideas we're gonna show them before we actually jump into developing those ideas. So in the next video, we're going to go through the process that I like to call identifying good ideas, which sounds simple, but It's not always simple, and we're gonna return to the brief while we do that as well, because we're going to have to figure it out based on the information that we know we have to deliver. So I will see you in the next video. We'll get down to identifying are good ideas. 14. Chapter 10: Identifying good ideas: Okay, so now that we've gone through that creative process, we're gonna back our brains out a little bit. And this is part of how logo design and conceptual development in general sort of goes. You want Teoh, take off the restraints while you sketch, but then you have to sort of put them back on again for this phase. So you gotta switch your brain into a different gear, which is what we're going to do now. We're going to look at the ideas objectively, which is something that we don't do when we're sketching. We just sketch as ideas come into our mind, it's a very organic process, but this next processes quite the reverse of that. So we have to step outside of ourselves a little bit and be our own creative director. In a sense, unless you have a literal creative director on your project. But in this case, we're going to assume that were freelancing this one up, as I am in this case. So I'm my own creative director, which means I've got to just step out of that Momenta. Um, and now look at the brief. Remember, all the things I have to deliver. There's a bunch of key messages. There's a bunch of nuances that I can't forget about. So this is the time to think about those. And to put him in front of my mind, go back through the ideas and say, Hey, this one works. This one doesn't work, so we're gonna get into that process right now. So the process of identifying good ideas has a couple of parts to it. I mean, essentially, once you've gone through the sketching phase and the idea phase, you wanted this. Disconnect yourself a little bit from your thinking, and you want to look back at what the objectives are, so I won't review the brief in great detail again. But let's just quickly review the description. Is a local for a company you know, the logo is gonna be used on business cards, vehicles, brochures, websites, etcetera? And the objective is to develop a logo that you reflect the business style and values of the owner on this contractors. And this is all, of course, for a window coverings companies. So let's not forget that their competitors sunshades. We've already sort of looked at what they are really doing. We know the target audiences, homeowners and condos? Preferably. But that's not that's not all of it. And so the second areas eyes anybody who has a home. It doesn't matter what style they could be in the G d. A. And Out on the fringe somewhere are builders who might subcontract green light but primarily new homeowners 40 plus that own condos. So the key messages that were the right custom solution for your windows based on a one on one meeting in your home. And so why do we believe that? Well, we come to meet you face to face? We prefer green products, where experts on those products we have price guarantee were experienced. Medium price point, not the cheap is not the most expensive in town. Honest business approach and no high pressure sales and their input driven. So look at the creative insight from experience. John knows how to get the most out of his budget, or rather, a budget that he's given, and he knows the products, and he's accurate, estimating, and he likes to meet people. So these are things that just help us on our thinking. Uh, logo text, of course, is green light window fashions, etcetera. So that's pretty much what we want to remember. I should point out that's kind of important. To understand is that sometimes the ideas you like aren't the right ideas. It's a rabbit hole again that you can get into where you're sold on something because you've just been living with it for so long. But if you don't return to the brief and keep reminding yourself about what you're supposed to deliver, it can become too heartbreaking to let go of these great ideas. I've got a portfolio. I don't show anybody full of great ideas that never went anywhere. There's all kinds of stuff that has been amazing ideas, great communications that were in completely wrong for the brief, so I couldn't sell them. I couldn't show them they didn't go anywhere. We all go through this Onley experience will kind of help you to avoid that, or at least at the very least, eliminate that a little bit from time to time. But you're always going to run into that. You're gonna have great ideas that you're you're just gonna know aren't gonna fit. So anyway, that's the point I'm making. Is that be willing to let go of those ideas and you know what? You'll have mawr. Don't worry about it, but let's get back to it. I'm also gonna look back in my keywords now, even though this had to do with research. I want to remember these things because these are things that came out of the of the initial client briefing. I mean, a window light, sunlight, warm, glow style, you know, environmentally friendly again. That's sort of ah, a secondary message. But it's still there solar, radiate, heat, comfort, private, modern and decoration, these air things that this is the language that our logo has to somewhat be speaking when people look at, they have to kind of Okay, I get it. If you tell me that. And I see your logo. Yeah, I get it. It makes sense is the point. So let's pop back into Photoshopped because this is kind of where our ideas are for consideration. Now that initial those initial rough so that I had drawn out, I'm just going to start by reminding myself of this a little bit, even though I've now done my sketches. So this this part really isn't necessary But did I miss anything? Is the point Okay, so on this first page what? I mean, what is here that I kind of think is worth exploring? Well, I definitely think this one is. And I think that there might be something here, and I think, uh, the green light in the blinds. I'm actually gonna check this one off, like I want to explore it. And really, this will become more of a font exercise. Do I find the right font to do this job? Well, maybe I can Maybe I can, I don't know yet, but I may give it a try. I definitely think a type only execution with a bit of graphic design around it is worth looking at. And this is probably one of the better ones of the ideas, because I had ideas that were like, this one as well and similar. But I think there's really something that could be quite awesome about this if I handle it properly. So I definitely think that there is something here without a doubt. I've got a look at that. I definitely think there's something here that I want to look at. I'm tempted by this area. But, uh mm. I think I'll come back to that and see, because I don't check it doesn't mean that once I get into the phase where I've actually laying stuff out, that I might not come back and decide later that I do want to develop this. But this just helps me to go through and be objective and say, Does this one really deliver the brief? And I think that this idea as much as I kind of think it has potential, I don't know that it delivers on the brief. I'm not sure that it does. And so that's the reason why I'm not going to check it right now is I'm not so sure I'd be tempted to try and develop this one, but I try to avoid things that I know are going to be a problem later. I mean, there's almost no point in trying to deliver this type like it was light coming through a window and to deliver it in such a way that you could read it on a business card. It's just too many things stacking up against it in terms of probability that I think I'm just going to avoid that territory for now. When I come to this page, I know that there's not a ton of this stuff that I want Teoh work with any further. But there could be something here. I definitely think there's something here that I really want to explore, and, uh, I like it. For that reason, I still I mean, I like this one, but I don't think it's really going anywhere. These ideas are just like the one that I just checked off the open window. I know that I don't really need that. This one is interesting, but I think it's too many jokes. And so I'm gonna let that one go. I think I have better ideas that do the same thing that this one does. So I think, really, these two and mostly this one, uh, over here is really from this page. What I want to explore now, coming to this page, there's absolutely no doubt I want to tackle that one. Um, I think there's something here we'll see, and I think the idea of the really graphic vertical louvers is interesting. I really do think that there's something there now. This idea doubt here is pretty much the same as that idea, so I don't need to check them both off. Uh, I just know that I'm essentially covering this territory by putting a check next to this logo rough because it kind of represents that idea of the louvered slats being some kind of graphic shape the leaf. I think I'm gonna abandon that idea because I liked it. I thought it was cool, but the more I think about it, the last it has to do with window coverings, I'm just going to stay clear away from it. Now, if the brief had been we on Li cel green window products than this idea would survive for sure, because I think it's a good territory. But I just don't think that there's really anything here that Aiken I can use usefully and again. I think this is too many jokes, so I don't think we need that one. We definitely are gonna explore the client's idea for sure. I don't know if I can use those to, but that's fine. We have plenty of raw material for building some good logos, which which will start to do next. But before we do that? We're gonna take a brief moment in the next video lesson and talk a little bit about building logos as vector art And what the difference between vector art and pixel art is. And some designers fall into this trap as well. This is a technical, non creative note, but is something you really need to know, And then we're gonna start building actual logo files. So let's get down to that next. I'll see you in the next video lesson. 15. Chapter 11: Working in Vector format: Okay, So before we get to building our options out in illustrator illustrators, the application that I'm going to use Adobe Illustrator to create my logos as vector objects and you can use whatever software you're comfortable in, provided it's vector based, and vector and pixel are two different file formats, and I'm going to show you the difference between them. But I'm gonna begin by saying that your logos should always, always be built in vectors. The reason it should be built in vectors is because any pixel based art will have the problem of enlargement. So if you make your logo this big, and maybe in digital terms, this big equals 600 pixels or 1200 pixels or four inches or 10 inches. Whatever size you make it at whatever resolution you make it be it 72 dp i 150 dp i or 300 d p. I. Those sizes are not scalable now. Those sizes are scalable if you use vector objects in the artwork, so there is a way to use photo shop, except that you'd have to build your art in vector format to begin with anyway. And so there's not really much of an advantage to using photo shop and Photoshopped or any other pixel based application. As you increase the size of your file, So do you increase the file size itself? I don't mean the dimensions, but I mean the actual data. Ah, Photoshopped file, which is big enough for a billboard, is a massive, massive document on. I've done promotional advertising for many years, and I can tell you this. You don't want to have to blow your files up to really large sizes because it's not great. And, ah, vector and pixel art also look very different. When you increase the size of your vector art, you could increase the size from one inch to 10 inches and from 10 inches to 100 feet, and you will not have any loss of quality. Now there are vector art issues even when you enlarge something. But there are entirely different issues. Resolution is not one of those issues, so you definitely want to build your art in vector, and I'm gonna show you a little bit of ah, I guess, Ah, diagram, if you will, or a quick little way for you to understand exactly what's happening between vectors and pixels and why you should choose vectors. So I did these couple of quick diagrams and I'm gonna show you. And I think this will do the trick. That sort of visualize what I'm trying to explain in words. And so to show you the difference between vectors and pixels, how they behave and why vectors are crucial to something like a logo. So essentially vectors to begin up here in the top left a vector is a point. So according to a vector application like Adobe Illustrator, this is simply a point. And this point occurs in my in the case of my file at 48.266 pixels on the X axis And by the way, at the top right side of my, uh, screen here in my little toolbar at the top here is showing the position of this pixel, which happens to be 48.266 pixels by 1 to 3.807 pixels on the Y axis. That's where this lies. But if this were a vector point, which is not, it's a little vector drawing. But if this were a vector point that's all. Your application knows that there's a point and that point. So what? Well, what happens when you draw two points, as in the case of this little diagram to the right side? Then there's this line that goes between these two points, and that line is a straight line. So when you de select your object, these points that I'm showing here that represent the vector anchor point won't be visible . They're visible when you select the item, but they're not visible when you don't. And the purpose of them is to say, Here's point A on the right side is point B, and between these two points is a straight line. Now that's significant, because in this little diagram just beneath that, the 2nd 1 down in the center here you've got one vector point, which has ah down sliding line to the second vector points. And so this vector points says, Hey, whatever is between these two is a straight line. No matter where these occur, no matter what their distance or their relative position is, and then at the top here there's 1/3 point, which extends this straight line, so the vector program is basically saying Don't care where these points are as long as the order is clear. One followed by two, followed by three. And there's a straight line between them. Okay, great. But wait, that's not the whole story. Of course, because we've got these same two points now, which are my third diagram down here in the center. And you see that there's these. Ah, well, I've obviously fake this, but you get the idea. These air spines, as they're called in the in terms of vector programs using vector points, they call these a spine, and this pline can be used to create a curve. So this curve is essentially created by its hard to explain simply. But just accept that the idea is wherever this bottom spine in this tops plein are dragged to. Relative to this point, it will affect the curve, while rather it will create a curve and affect the line between this point and the second point. So now similar to our top example. Two points and there's a line between them. The same thing is true in this third example, down with the curved line, it's simply a question of what kind of line. In this case, we have indicated it's a curved line. So Adobe Illustrator is what I'm using. So in my case, Adobe Illustrator takes 0.1, takes 0.2, takes the spines position and does some algorithmic funny stuff and creates this curve. And this curve is controlled by these spines. Now this is all mumbo jumble, but the important part is really down here. So let's just say there are a little smiley face line here is one inch in with. So, in other words, this point, and this is not accurate to scale, but you get the idea that point number one and point number two are one inch from each other. Therefore, this curve extends for one inch and it's a one inch curved, and that's the end of the story. But what happens if we were somehow able to travel a mile in distance on our computer screen, which we can't? But let's say that this is a mile. This is what happens. The first anchor point says, Okay, I'm over here at zero. This anchor point goes, I'm I'm here a mile away, but the curve is the same, and the curve is the same because these spines are still the same. They're still giving the same numbers to these two points, except that the distance between these points is much, much greater. But vectors don't care. They just keep calculating the curve, no matter the distance. And as a result, this line is always sharp and the reason it's always sharp. And when I say sharp, I mean in terms of resolution, it's high resolution and remains high resolution because this curve is constantly being calculated. So if it's one inch away, if it's six inches away, so you you enlarger logo from one inch to 15 inches, 200 inches. Tow one mile. It's simply a question of the math being reproduced and re calculated each time to create a sharp vector. However, pixels behave differently. So let's say that this is a pixel. Now it's a huge pixel, but for the point of demonstration, it's a pixel. So let's say that we have a document that we've created maybe a logo and you see one pixel followed by two, followed by three, followed by four Now, what this means is these air four pixels, but that doesn't mean anything until you have context. Let's say we have a document which is 300 pixels per inch. So pretty Obviously, you can imagine there's 123456789 10. And it keeps going until all these number of pixels equal 300. And those 300 pixels would fit into a one inch space. So here's one inch. Let's just say this again not to scale a say this is one inch. Unless, say, this is 300 pixels now, it's not exactly, but let's just say it is for the sake of discussion. So these pixels have been condensed down to this one inch mark, and so this is very high resolution, 300 pixels per inch, otherwise called 300 dots per inch. You may have heard that term as well, but pixels per inch is what this represents. But if we were doing largest toe a mile, wait a minute. What's going on? Well, what's going on is the pixels simply increase in size. They don't you know. Here's so here's this math and say I duplicated that over and I went I kept going and, oh, wait. If I met a mile, why wouldn't it just, like, fill him in like this? And I would have, you know, endless pixels, endless pixels. Well, yeah, I'd be great in your fantasy world, but in the real world, this is what happens. The pixels simply enlarge as the document enlarges. So in this way, you would end up having it This if these big pixels represented a photograph, you basically not see this person's eye anymore. Let's say this was an eye and something else next to it. You would just see these big dots and you'd have to get a mile away in order to see something that was high resolution and appearance like they would be at the one inch mark. As a result, you do not want this to happen to your logos when they're blown up to a large size. And the other problem with this is when you have a pixel based file, this document will become huge if you have to increase its size to one mile or 2 10 feet or to eight feet for a poster or whatever the size might be. But guess what this vector file at nine miles wide will be the same size as the vector file at one inch in size. Possibly the document itself would be would be larger because it would have to, you know, account for extra data. But it would nowhere near not even close to the same document size that this would have to be. So this is essentially why you want to avoid pixels when you're building a logo and build all of your logo's at a vector art. Okay, so hopefully those diagrams kind of makes sense and help you to understand exactly what I'm talking about. It's really just the way that the files handled data. When you enlarge it. When you export it, you do all those things. Vectors have all kinds of advantages, particularly with logos, and you want to take advantage of all of that power that your software has now. The other side of it, however, is a lot of people get anxious about building vectors, and they get anxious not about building factors, because those air relatively easy, but about constructing shapes and building objects from scratch. And so you don't know how to draw a house. You don't know how to draw a car, you're not really sure what to do with the vector program. So a lot of people will end up getting clip art or they'll use photo shop because somehow that seems easier. But in the next video, I'm actually going to show you some fundamentals from a drawing perspective. I'm an artist, and I have a drawing background, but we're not going to get very complex. But we are going to cover the basics of building shapes and how you can look at a really complex objects and, you know, de mystify them a little bit with just some simple analysis. So let's get into that next, and I'll see you in the next video lesson. 16. Chapter 12: Building basic shapes: So with vectors now sort of under control. So we understand the difference to in vectors and pixels, and we're gonna build in vectors because it really is the best way to build your logo. Artwork. We are going to now talk about basic shapes and the idea that any complex image that you see, whether it's a ah truck house, a window, a son, a building, a person or anything you can imagine these things all break down into a series of basic geometric shapes. But to understand that, we have to look at objects and analyze them properly. And this doesn't mean you have to become Leonardo de Vincey either. And to be able to create all kinds of images from what you see, that's not what this is about. That's illustration but illustration is really what we're talking about. It can be. But if you're gonna build simple icons and represent things, there is a level to which you can do that without a lot of art training Justus, long as you can learn to observe and by observing, reproducing by reproducing one simple shape at a time. Now let's get into it. I'll show you what that means, because it's difficult to talk about. This doesn't mean anything until you actually see what I'm talking about. And I'm gonna show you that right now. So let's jump into the jump into the Mac and I'll explain all this stuff a little better by example. Okay, so back here at the desktop again, we have a couple of images. The two of the top you've already seen. Uh, he's truck images again. This has nothing to do with our green light window fashions just yet, but so let's have a look at these images a little more up close. We didn't analyze these truck images earlier so much, but let's analyze them a little bit now. So here's this truck with all of this background. As we already know, we've already seen it's kind of a big dump truck, so it's got the been on the back, and, uh, you know, the cabin, the grill and tires and all those things we know are parts of a truck. In this case, this happens to be a grain truck. So similarly, it's got the the grain ban of the back, and then a similar cab and all the other good stuff about trucks. Now let's get down into this a little more because, uh, now getting down to the bottom of the page, these things become possibly a t least the appearance of being more complex. So these air Houses, I've got one house here, and I chose these two houses in particular because they seem like they were kind of a very scary shape. If you imagine having to draw these houses, you might, uh, experience some measure of anxiety. So I wanted to show you that the kind of, ah, let's you know, let's face the fear and talk about how to deal with it now. That's not to say we're going to illustrate. These houses were certainly not, but I want to de mystify the process for you a little bit if I can. So if the proposition is to represent some of these things for a logo, we already kind of know that it's it's the wrong thing to do to go down the rabbit hole of being too literal about things. But you also don't want to be too simple, either. There's that basic balance that you have to achieve, but let's just say for the moment, I'm gonna go off the art board for a moment. Just go to my paste board on the side Here. I'm going to just make this truck a little bit larger. If I look at this truck, I analyze the shapes that I see, which is what, and he'll and I happen to be an illustrator as well. So I'm coming to this with some art experience. But I'm gonna try to simplify this for you in terms of how to look at it and how to think about it. So if you've taken any kind of drawing classes before, you already know this. If you haven't, then hopefully Aiken get you thinking about things in a new way. If I look at these shapes, I see essentially two shapes throughout this entire truck circles and squares. And that is essentially it, with the exception of maybe a few dynamic shapes that have kind of their own levels of detail and characteristics. The idea is that you have some really simple shapes here, so I don't think of the whole truck. I think of the shapes. So the first thing I know is that there's a been on the back, the grain bin in the case of this truck. So if I come to my illustrator and I don't, I don't do software tutorial, So I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about these tools because that's not what I do. But if you have your illustration vector drawing program, whether it's Adobe illustrator, as I happen to be using, or if you reason Corral or some other version of a vector creating application, then go find your square to. And so, essentially, if we take the square tool or rectangle tool, as it's called, I can see this back been as being, ah square. So, uh, I've pretty much got my truck started that square because now I know that there are several other shapes that go together that are going to make this puzzle much easier to understand . So if I then go and I grab my lips tool and I draw a basic circle shape, then, ah, I'm already on the way to dealing with this truck. However, I can't just start putting them here and here ago. That's a truck, because, wait, that's not what's happening here. That truck isn't shaped like this, so I'm going to get rid of this one. And it looks like this guy down here is floating a bit and we know that it's not floating. We know there's a bunch of other gizmos and things that are all happening down here, but those things can be represented quite simply by another square. Now this other square. We can't see what's happening underneath the truck, but we can see that this square is actually not part of the been. It's part of the entire structure of the truck, which comes from the cab all the way under and out to the right. So I know this shape is actually going to extend out further this way, and it actually goes quite deep more where the tire is. It actually comes down quite a lot, probably to almost the halfway point of the tire, so I can represent it that way as well. And now I could grab this one and I could move it to the front roughly where I know what's going to be. And I can observe already that this tire is larger so I can make it larger. Now I'm making a couple of quick decisions here because I have some artistic understanding . I already know that. You know, if I get a guideline and I drank it down the bottom here, I can see that the tires are on the same surface. So I didn't You'll notice that I didn't take this tire. If I just undo what I just did a couple of moments ago, I didn't do this. I didn't expand it from the center to make it bigger. If I had done that, then what would my problem be? Well, if I drag a guideline to the bottom where the road line would be, this tire sits beneath it, which is artistically incorrect. So I'm not gonna do that. So rather, I'm going to undo what I just did, and I'm going to scale it up. So it remains on the same base line so that it's in contact with the same Rodas the back tires, like so and so if I take now my rectangle tool again, I can I can see there's a bit of space between the cab and the been. So I'm therefore going Teoh draw the shape about here. But this is not a straight edge. So around the edges of the cab, there's a bit of a rounded corner and so I can take my drawing tools. Aiken, round that corner slightly, and I can also see that this window What? The front comes down on an angle. So if I grab the shape and have toe sort of understand what I'm doing graphically, but I'm going to move this shape slightly forward to represent that downward dip in the front window, I'm going to grab the same rectangle tool again. And if I observe all this stuff, the bottom kind of lands in the same place. So I'm going to line those up, come out about as far as I observed that it appears to be going, and I create my next shape for the heart of the truck, which is also gonna have some rounded corners like so. And if I now take this front end and drop it as I see that it drops in the actual truck, so without actually drawing the full truck, which I'm not going to take the time to do because that would be a long video, I could add, You know, this I could have this tank here and around the corners off a bit, and I could call it a day. I could say this is a representation of a truck and you can see that I essentially used 1234567 shapes And I've represented that truck. Now, I haven't represented it perfectly as I look at this. Now, if I was really illustrating this for real, of course, there will be much more no care given to the shapes themselves. I could modify things slightly and play around a little bit to get it right, but I don't have to. The point is that these basic shapes were enough to build the foundation for some kind of truck. Now, in this case, this dump truck is you know, not what we're dealing with. And I might even find this too much information for a logo. And, you know, it's a bit of a childish illustration. I'm not showing you this as a demonstration of how it illustrate I'm showing you. This is a demonstration of how to break something down into its basic shapes. Those air squares and circles all combined to make a truck a quick one and a bad one. But that's not the point if you understand the point that I'm making. So if I get rid of ah, that guy, bring this one back over, I'm going to now just grab this house and again, I'm gonna go off the art board and just we're in this guy. Go to my pace board, gonna make this a little bit larger so I can see what I'm doing here. So once again, if I look at this shape now, if I analyze this shape, I can analyze the same way I did with a truck that there are a Siri's. There isn't one big house that you have to look at and go. My God, how do I recreate something that represents this? Well, you don't need to. You just need to look at the basic shapes and understand kind of what you're seeing. And so, in the case of this house, I know that I can start with this one big rectangle that goes through the center of the house, which might be represented with just this simple shape. So once again, a simple rectangle ends up being my starting point And so I could then put a triangle on top of that by drawing another square. I can rotate it. I have to match the size because I didn't do that properly. But if I If I match the size, if I just zoom in here a little bit intersect that point that intersect this point. I just back up here a little bit. I now already have a representation for the center portion of the house, and I could just keep building rectangle shapes all the way out with and then to deal with these rounded shapes. This is more than a a rounded edge. So once again, if I wanted to represent that, I could start with some rectangles. But I'm just going to draw one big rectangle that might represent this whole bank of windows here. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to use my lips, too. Find the centers on the line to the center of that. It's gonna eyeball that for a moment. But I can sort of create this oval shape, which is basically the same shape dynamics as the top of this window here. Just just do you see what I'm drawing. I'm actually drawing this little portion of the house here, this window with the rounded top. So if I back up, you can see that this doesn't look like that yet. But that's OK, because I know that's a combination of these two shapes that's going to get the job done. So I'm just gonna move this down until I see that I'm intersecting. If you're gonna understand what I'm trying to do here, let me zoom in a little more so you can see Here's the top edge of that rectangle. I'm going to meet it with it with the edge of my ellipse tool, which I have to kind of eyeball a little bit. And, uh, what I can do now is I can grab both of those shapes. I can go to my Pathfinder and I'm going to hit the Intersect button, which is going to give me this shape upside down. And essentially, you just have to play with these tools to find which, uh, which options give you the result that you're looking for. But just by combining those two shapes, I have now represented in this window with this round of top. Now my version isn't exactly right. If I were to select the bottom half of this shape and drag it down, that's probably more accurate. I would say Yeah, and possibly even this top rounded shape might serve well with with a little more shape to it. That's probably closer to what's happening there. So you understand. The idea that I'm getting out, however, is that essentially all these things you just back up so I won't draw the whole house. Would you get the idea? I'm combining simple shapes. I'm breaking this down into a triangle on top of a rectangle on oval on top of a square, two rectangles next to each other, etcetera, and so on. This is kind of the way that you build. I can't. And with all that said, this is essentially now, albeit this is This is a very rough tutorial. I realize that it's possibly frustrating that I can't teach you how to draw or teach you how to represent a knob jek properly in a very short example like this, and this is about logo design, not illustration. But I'm trying to help hopefully demonstrate that creating shapes is really about observing shapes. So in your logo design process, if you're trying to represent something graphically simplicity, conceptual approach versus literal. These are all things that are laddering up to the stage. Okay, so with all that stuff aside, you're obviously not going to go and create complex illustrations this way. But this will give you the foundation to start creating some simple representative icons at the very least, or to be able to a t least recreate simple shapes that you can use as a foundation for a good logo design or a good logo object, a Nikon or whatever that might be. So ah, Anyway, keep it simple, just like your logo designs. Keep your images simple as well. Keep your icons, representative. Don't get into a lot of details and follow that rapid down that hole of trying to recreate the things that you see in great detail because that's the trouble spot. And now in the next video lesson, we're gonna get right down to the meat of it. We're actually gonna start building artwork, which is what I've been waiting to do this whole time. I've been dying to get in there, so I got some good ideas. I'm gonna rip them out. And hopefully you will follow along and do your own work as well. And let's create some exciting logos. I'll see you in the next video lesson. 17. Chapter 13: Design phase part 1: Okay, So without brief talk about building shapes and mind, I know you're not going to be able to run out there and start creating complex three D objects in all sorts of things. But at least now you have a good understanding. But have a look at things and analyze them and find out what shapes their made off, in which case you can create those relatively easy. With some practice, you'll get better and better and not to worry. So, Ah, we are ready now to start building out some logos. And I'm very excited about that because that's what I want to do this entire time. And, uh, I love sketching, and I love research. But really, building out these logos is kind of where the excitement really starts because you start to see all the finesse, you know, and all those little sort of nuances that make logo design great start to come through. Hopefully in your work if you work at it hard enough, so we're going to start doing that now. But first we need to cultivate some good groundwork on we're going to start looking at logos that we like. This is the time now to start thinking about typography, to begin thinking about all the possibilities. So looking at really good logos that we like getting into that high design headspace and figuring out what kind of fonts we like, where we gonna get those fonts from? There's a few places that you can start to get this information from, but I'm gonna share some of that with you. But let's just get the ball rolling, and then we're gonna get into some file building as soon as possible. Okay, so back here, the desktop. I'm just at my brief again, which I don't need, but it was a good place to begin. Just you know, don't forget. The brief is always good to come back and keep it open while you're working. If you have a printed copy instead of a digital copy, it's on your desk or whatever. It's just good to glance at it. Every now and again. I find it's so helpful just to remember that there is a brief and to remember that there are things that we have to deliver. Even though we've already gone through the creative stage, we've proved it against the brief and feeling pretty confident that all the bases were covered. It's still good to be reminded of these things, even if nothing else, to remind yourself of the deadline, you know, whatever that might be. So we're ready now to begin the design phase, and there's a few things that I like to do in preparation for that. This isn't just about jumping into illustrator and making shapes, although that is what we're going to do. There's a little bit of preparation. First, there's some things that we should do. The first thing that we're gonna do is go through and identify. We're gonna remind ourselves the ones that we've narrowed it down against the brief and decided which ones are working well, that we want to develop further. What I'm gonna do is sort of skim through the files here for a moment, and I'm going to pick, I guess which one I want to begin with. And, uh, I think the one that I want to begin with is, in fact, this one right here. The reason I want to begin with this one is because I think in my personal exploration of this idea that this version keeps coming back to me is the simplest and most elegant way to communicate what this brand is about. This one just seems to do it better than the others. Now, that could turn out to be completely different once I start building them. Like once I make these. Really, I may change my mind about that. Still, I'm feeling right now like that's gonna be the one that I'm gonna really like. I think when all is said and done, there's still this one up here which I think is it's kind of another version of that same idea. But I really do think that graphic is interesting, but it's more complicated. This one's a lot. Thats one with just the straight vertical slat is a lot simpler. And, you know, I think that is strong. And I think there's something to be said about simple. Someone's gonna zoom into this one and photo shop so I can kind of come back and remind myself of what the design was really trying to communicate. These shadows aren't right. I'm gonna have to deal with out a little bit. These slats are all the same size. Maybe they shouldn't be. Maybe there's some perspective, some depth of field, I don't know yet. We're going to get into that and really start exploring what the's shape should be all about. But before we do that, I'm gonna pop to my browser for a moment. I'm gonna begin by suggesting that there are a couple things you want to do to get ready for the design phase, not the least of which is going to be choosing fonts, but also getting some inspiration. Now, what I did was I just did a random search. I don't have a go to website. I don't have a single book that I always come back to. There are some great books and there are some great websites. But I just did a quick search for award winning logos and I don't want to, you know, look at the exact same logos every time I try to get inspired to do a job, so I'll just kind of randomly search and see what comes up. Now you might find websites that are just like, you know, joe blow dot com, my favorite logos. Well, that might not help you a whole lot, but it might if you agree with his choices of logos, but I prefer to find what I do is I searched award winning logos and then you can sort of look at the websites and get a sense that Okay, this one seems unbiased and somewhat legit in that the logo has appeared to be a cross section of many different logos and just an interesting side note this Elektra cycle appear in the top right corner. My good friend Tom AJ designed this logo. Actually, I didn't know that when I came to this website. I didn't know what I was going to see and the first page popped open and a I see one of his logos here. So he's an awesome logo designer and you know he's He's won awards before, so I know this is legit. And, uh, anyway, it's a It's a great logo and he's on awesome local designer, awesome creative guy in general. But anyway, So, uh, so I'm looking at this, and I've got you know, these several pages of logos that I can go through and really all I'm doing is I'm not looking for a logo that I'm going to do. Obviously, I I just want to remind myself, you know, keeping it simple, really cool icons. How to see things differently here, This this logo in the top right corner. You sort of see that negative Space mountain inside the and which is very cool, this little coffee being inside the psychedelic roast circles there. And anyway, you get the idea. So I'm looking at these different things that the bunny rabbit with. Thanks. That was cool. So, you know, I can have a look at these, and I can say OK, right. Simple negative space. Interesting type, not cluttered and conceptual. I can remind myself of these things and just look at stuff and get my head a little bit into the space of, you know, cool logos and just kind of getting my mind right. And I found a couple of other websites, Uh, again, I just did a random search, So you may want to do this as well. You can look at these exact websites that I've searched here. If you wish, or you know, you find your own. Grab a book from your book shelf of that, you're away and just have a look. And sometimes it can remind you of things. You want to stay away from his? Well, I find this logo here for yonder studio feels a little bit complicated to me. It's a nice logo. There's nothing wrong with it. My personal mantra would maybe take me away from something like this. So even though I like that local a lot, it reminds me, Okay, you keep it simple. Don't don't fall into a trap of too much clutter. And ah, this one very much like this. I was about to say, you know, be careful of readability, but I realize this is perfectly readable and I like it quite a lot. It's It's interesting. So you know the motion one is great, Scott, the wheels for the O's, which is very cool, etcetera. You get the idea. And, uh, 3rd 1 is brands of the world, which is a ah pretty common website visited by creative people. They also have a latest logo awards submissions, which isn't neat because these ones didn't win awards there, simply submitted for the purpose of and in hopes of. So you get sort of more of a cross section. These aren't the elite logos these air simply logos that have been submitted and made it this far another resource that I want you to see his Google fonts now. What I've decided to do for the purpose of this project is I'm going to limit myself to Google funds. So I'm going to use Google fonts and limit myself that because it's a free resource, however you can, and I often do. But I'm not going to for this project to force myself to make font choices that I really have to think about. But you can come to other font websites like font house dot com Spot a funhouse is spelled F o N T h a, u s dot com and ah, this is, of course, a premium font site, and you can purchase fonts from here. I have many times, and it doesn't mean just because of fun is available for sale doesn't mean that is better than a Google font. What it generally means is that these funds are updated more often. They have premium designs that aren't, you know, available in free resources very often. But there are fonts that you know can work just as well as these that you confined by other means. However, you can purchase these fonts. If your client has approved the cost and lie. No type is another one. L i n o t y p dot com Same deal. It's got premium fonts and very, very good funds. But again, I'm going to stick to the free resource Google funds just to kind of make a point that you don't have to go Premium. If you are on a budget of your clients on the budget, you can go ahead and do that. My client does happen to be on something of a budget, although I could pay for the phone and I could sort of get that cost recovered. But I'm not going to. I'm going to stick to free fonts to make the point. So anyway, with Google fonts, what I'm going to do is I'm going to look back at my design, So I'm gonna have a look at this, and I'm going to say I've got this really strong geometry. So this is the idea that I'm going to execute first, and I'm looking at this thinking OK, what kind of fun goes with this? I don't think a cartoon font does. I don't think Ah, Script Font does. Although I am going to try one hand written fund, I think, or at least something that's not a slab kind of font, like a sawn serve with really straight lines. Although that's my first gut instinct based on the geometry, But I'm gonna give it a try a couple of different ways. So I'm just gonna bear this logo design in mind as I popped back to Google Chrome and there's preview text here in which I can enter green flight and then maybe I'll just enter the whole thing. Window fashions. It s on the end of that. Now I can have a look at what my logo text looks like. Now, of course, I'm not seeing it in application in the design, but I am able to look at OK, you know, I get it. It's ah, you know, it looks like this and I can imagine that in various arrangements. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to select from all categories. I'm gonna filter down to San Serif and handwriting and I'm gonna click. OK? And so that's going to filter all the results and keep it in basically those two territories because those are the two that I think are the right ones. I don't think there's any point of me looking at a Sarah fund. I don't feel like Serif really works with that design, but something that looks hand written may work. So anyway, I happen to have Montserrat, so I know that that's OK, but I'm looking at this one. I like that. I'll probably try that one, and, uh, but regardless of the fact that I already have it, what I'm going to do is when I identify a font like this one that I like, I'm going to click on the right side, add to collection, and I'm gonna show you how that works. If you've never used Google fonts before, um, I also happen to have railway, So I know that I may give that a try because I quite like railway. But I also think that a rounded corner or a rounded font would actually work as well. I have a couple of those, but I'm gonna keep my eyes open for ah, something here that might be, uh, a rounded style. This oxygen looks kind of interesting. I think I may add that to my collection. Okay, so I'm gonna continue getting all my fonts together and get ready to start actually installing them in building some files. So we're gonna get to that in phase two of the design process in the very next video lesson . And then it gets really? So let's get down to it. I'll see you in the next video. 18. Chapter 13: Design phase part 2: Okay, so I've gone ahead and got all my fonts together, and I'm gonna walk you through a with ones that I selected show you, sort of how I plug them in and get ready to use them. But we're also going to get into building some actual shapes now, So we're gonna start creating some vector art files and illustrators. So I'm excited for that because you get to finally start building some logos and actually see all this work come together because we got a ton of research. We got tired of sketches, and we've been just grinding through this process. But now the fun begins, and we can actually create some really cool art. So let's get right into that now. Okay, So I made my selections, which I will show you how to look at those in a moment. I've made them, but you're not seeing them up here just yet. One thing I did do, and I thought I would just point this out that I started a second tab, actually for Google fonts, uh, under which I narrowed the search down to the hand written font styles in a separate window . The reason I did that was because initially I looked at all caps, which is what I am planning to do in terms of the green light window fashions, typography. Whenever I use a saw Inserra font like this in one of my designs, the plan is to use it as all caps. However, when I included the script in this search, I was getting script in all caps, which, of course, was to distracting and difficult to understand if I actually liked that font or not, because if you look at script in all caps, that's ah, that's bad news. So I started a second tab and I wrote out green light window fashions and upper lower case so that I could actually see what those look like. And I started a collection based on that search as well, so I'm going to download both collections. So what happens in Google fonts and specifically is that as you add fonts to your collection, they are collected. Of course, you can see them in your browser as you go along in the bottom here, but what you really want to do is you want Teoh go down to this little lower panel which has my collection has 13 fonts that I've selected to have Ah, second look at and I'm going to click the use button. So what that's going to do is that's going to sort of give me a list, and it's going to show me visually what my fonts are. And ah, in this case, it actually has a way that I can see which fonts are being downloaded within the family. This is a thing that Google does, but I would probably have preferred to do it another way if it was me. But anyway, what I like to do is, ah, just go in and toggle these on because essentially what you want is you want to have access to all the fonts and a family if you're using them. Ah, and your design working. But Google rather obviously made the decision Teoh to preference or to default to a narrower selection for downloading. Maybe they found that that was, you know, feedback from users who knows what doesn't matter anyway. So I've gone through and I've specifically selected all the weights of all the fonts within all the families that I want and you can see here there's a preview. It's not previewing my text anymore, but that doesn't matter. I've already had a look at that, but it's showing me what those funds look like and what the weights look like. So I may not use all of them. In fact, I know that I won't use all the weights. But if I'm going to download the fun anyway, I might as well grab all the weights is the point. So up in the top corner here, you'll see a little link, Icahn and an arrow. What you want is the era, which is gonna be your download. So download the font families in your collection as a zip file or sink the Google fonts to your desktop using sky fonts and download all font families, including source files at the Google fonts. Get hub project, which I don't need all of that certainly. And I don't use sky fonts, so I'm not gonna concern myself without options. So I just click ZIC, so it's going to give me a an option to download my zip. So this is just gonna be called funds, but I'm going to change this name just so I remember, uh, This is the songs Serif fonts. And so just download that zip to my desktop, which is fine. Close that. And then I will do the same for my script. So I'm gonna click use gonna make sure there aren't other weights. Normally in script fonts, you won't find secondary weights, but, uh, check anyway, just to make sure And, uh, that looks fine. So I'm gonna download them as a zip again, and, uh, I'm gonna click, So it gives me the same file name, which I'm gonna change. Anyway, I didn't have to do that, but I just did, regardless. So script, funds and clothes, and that's all you need to do. But if you leave the browser and you come back, just know that it will wipe out your collection. So basically, the collection is gathered during a session in your browser. So as long as you keep that browser window open, that collection will remain there. But if you had navigated away from Google fonts and then came back, that collection is gone. So just f y I as a little quirk, I learned the hard way you can imagine. So anyway, I'm gonna close these uh, he's fought. Tab. Don't need those anymore. I've still got my brands of the World 99 creative logo designs for inspiration from a triple w words dot com so awards dot com and we'll I'll leave those open just to come back to them every once in a while if I feel like I want to have a look at something. So if I foot back to my desktop now. So back here my desktop, you can see my Millennium Falcon. If that tells you anything about me, that's fine. Anyway, eso I'm gonna unzip my song, Sara, but I'm gonna unzip my script fonts and I'm going to install them. So, of course, on the Mac, you install them simply by double clicking your font TTF file, and you can click install that will load up into font book. And, uh, once it validates the font and installs that it will be available to my system. So I'm going to repeat that process for all the fonts, and, uh, I will pause to do that, but I'll just open these up to to sort of point out that I usually what I'll do is I'll keep these folders open in my finder initially, just once they're installed. Just so I remember which ones it was that I chose for this. I can obviously go into my illustrator, pulled down my font menu and simply keep looking until I find them. Okay, So back here at the desktop, I've just finished installing all my fonts. But I did a dumb thing. Which was I Then, out of a force of habit selected and deleted the font folders that I had used rather the font folders that I downloaded from Google. Even though I've installed all the fonts and I have them as just a reflex action, I normally throw these things out because they've been collected into my font applications . So I had to go back to the recording that I did of the screen so I could actually pull out a moment in that video when I had those folders open to remind me what sort of fonts I used . So anyway, that was just kind of an amateur mistake, but so I have to come back here. Teoh, look at these, but doesn't matter. So that's fine. So now that I've installed the fonts anyway, they will be available to my system. So back to photo shop for a quick reminder. This is what we're developing. Going to pop over to illustrator and create a new file. And I'm gonna make that file. It doesn't really matter. I'm going to, uh, set inches and 11 by 17. Horizontal is perfectly fine for what I'm gonna do. So I'm gonna begin with some basic geometry then. So I want to create a shape, uh, which is going to first be my triangle. Here's if I rotate this using my shift key, I'm going to get 45 degree angles, which is what I want. Uh, and I'm going Teoh create. Ah, a rectangle of no particular sighs exactly. Just yet. I'm gonna figure that out in a moment. But basically, uh, So here's one of the slats, basically, but I want to get this angle right there. So I want this 45 degree angle as the bottom. And so if I increase that to match, you can kind of see what I'm doing there. Uh, zoom And I'm just basically taking the corners of this and lining them up to my shape so I can see where they are Now, if I click on my rectangle and pull on angle up to match, then this will be a 45 degree angle. So that's what I got. There are some illustrator gurus out there that will have a faster, easier way to do a 45 degree angle than that. But that's my version. So there's a 45 degree angle. And so I'm starting with math that I can kind of trust and eso I'm building this, uh, this louver here. I'm gonna bring this. I'm actually gonna work a bit smaller here, Uh, in a little bit. I'm not gonna worry about my paste board of my page edges. But whatever, you know, worry about a little bit. I don't need to. So first thing I'm gonna do is grab this. I'm gonna drag it over and duplicated until it matches. Uh, like that. So I have this little shape with these negative space negative spaces at the end. But of course, this is our vertical blinds, which have the little angle at the bottom, which is kind of a perspective thing. So if I now take this, what I want to do is starting from the corner here, I'm gonna draw a holding the shift key, you know, draw square so it matches the edges of this. And now that square. If I just I can sort of just do this, in fact, and if I take these guys now, uh, I can line them up with the top of the square. So you sort of understand what I've done. I've created a shape which has some math. Aiken basically say is is solid. So the math is these air 45 degree angles, which is a, uh, is a good number because you've got 0 90 degrees, 45 degrees one night, 1 80 degrees and 3 60 degrees for all the way around, of course, in a full circle. So I'm just using some basic geometry, and now I can actually get rid of that square in the back. But also, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna grab one of these slats. We just get rid of that shape I no longer need. So what I'm gonna do is drag this off to the side so that I have one vertical blind slat which is based on if you can sort of understand this. This is based on a square, a perfect square. Because I did the restrain angle drew a perfect square around this. These are 45 degree angles, all of which meet the bottom of that square. Thes edges meet the edges of the square of the top of the square, etcetera. So this little box shape I've created is based on some math. Now it's very simple math. It was very quick, and I didn't be labored with a calculator and a set of notes, and I didn't go crazy. But I just know that if I essentially set that up in that way than that is good enough. So I've got one little grouping here, which is salted based on one slat, which in threes equals a perfect square. So knowing that I can now take this, keep duplicating it and try different things and not worry about having changed my math, you know, or did something I can't undo. So it's always good to keep your work so actively, you know the same and just keep building mawr versions. Don't rework one version. Just scatter a ton of them all over the place, so you can. You can always come back to what you were working on before. If there's something that you like there, so another thing that I could do now I'm breaking that square. But that's OK, because the square isn't my only joke. I'm gonna try different things, but I'm gonna separate them now. In this case, they are all together in this case now they're not. So this is another option that Aiken play with and that sort of interesting. It breaks the negative space sort of zigzag at the bottom a little bit because it creates this new space between them. But this actually might read better, like visually read better than this one. Does that square with the mall joined? It might read as blinds better. So it's good to experiment with these things duplicated. Don't change that version because I've already got that. So I'm going to create a 2nd 45 degree angle now because I'd like to try something else. So I dragged this line straight down at a 45 degree angle. I'm gonna give a stroke. This is not gonna be part of my design. It's just gonna be a quick guideline for me to work with. Gonna take these slats. I'm going to scale these two up until the tip of that 2nd 1 meets the line. And then I'm going to scale this final one up until it meets this line. So now I've duplicated my 45 degree angle. So I delete that because we know that's 45 degrees. We know that these air 45 degrees. So now what I've done is I've created a shape based on simple perspective, or at least the illusion of perspective. There isn't any real perspective, but you get the sense that they go back in space a little bit, which is ah, which is interesting so that, you know, that breaks the square and it breaks the symmetry. But now you have depth or dimension. Theoretically. So now what I want to do is save this file. So I'm going to save this into my project folder, which is Ah, I've got all my other folders in here like client likes the competitive logo's all that stuff we looked at earlier. So I'm gonna create another new folder. I'm gonna call this one logo options create. I was gonna call this one green light window fashions No one. That's our project and logo one. So this will be the document in which I include all of these versions. All the stuff I do associated with this one, this one particular version. So saving is good? Of course. Okay, so now I've got so three quick versions based on one sort of idea. Of course, I don't have to keep with just this exact configuration. Now, what I'm gonna do is duplicate this one. Exact. This is sort of an interesting shape to work with. I'm going to select the top of all three of those shapes, and I'm just going to extend it not to a particular size, just optically kind of make a decision that I think, you know, that could be interesting because a Z interesting as these are these little squares, which I quite like the shorter slats because they have a specific kind of based on a square based on certain angles. I want to try them elongated to because, you know, vertical blinds are long, so you know, we should We should explore that as well, so I can do the same quick couple of versions based on this long one. So I'm gonna use this one on the left and bring all the slats together. Make sure did, uh, here? So now they are the same kind of shape is the, uh, the other one? I've got the same versions. Basically, I got this one, which has the the spaces in between. I'm gonna take this one and do a 45 degree angle treatment. Actually, I don't have to do that. What I can do is I can just, uh, take the one that I already did, which is this one, and just duplicate that one down. I can just make it taller and see what we get now. Size doesn't mean the size is kind of not relative a tous point. So, you know, this one looks bigger than everything else. It doesn't have to be. You know, I'm gonna get myself distracted by that. So the one thing I'm looking at now that I can possibly have a look at is this same version with the depth, but with the same width so that I'm not actually increasing the width as I go. Now, this version where I increase the width is actually, you know, mawr accurate in the sense that that is sort of what would happen. You would get larger askew, get closer. But maybe we don't want to do that. Maybe we want to try it, Uh, the other way. Okay, so now that my shapes are well underway, I'm going to start looking at some typography as well and start creating some actual, complete lockups. And we're not gonna go through the entire list of logos in this way. I'm going to skip ahead a little bit and review with you what we do. But anyway, this should give you an idea of how this process goes and that you can repeat this process for all of your ideas. But we'll get to that. So in the next video racks, they're gonna lock this one up and creates, um, good logo art and get ready for presentation. So I'll see you in the next video lesson. 19. Chapter 13: Design phase part 3: Okay, so we have some really good looking shapes happening here. I'm really enjoying this logo on the way it's coming together. There's some really smart geometry that I think is ah is presenting itself through this little exploration. We're gonna dive deeper into that and start adding some fonts and creating our lock up and getting a little deeper into this territory. Because this is really getting exciting now. So let's get into it. Okay? So, back in our illustrator file again. Now we sort of want to look at some fonts in a pot back to my desktop and open the dumb screen capture that I had to make in order. Teoh, remember what fonts I was using? Okay, so we had a few different types of font that we're gonna try out. And I'm gonna begin with sawn Sarah because my confidence level is high. That that's the area that we're gonna be in. So we have a bell. Electra lies fragile. A one, I think is how you pronounce that, uh, or, uh, for Jolla one. But we'll figure that out. Joseph in sands, conned. Ended up being, ah fought that even though it displayed a font style and Google fonts. When I added it to my system, it appeared to be a Hindi text font. So that was in the collection that I pulled down. But I won't be using that because it was obviously my mistake, which is fine. But I got my chroma monster at orbit, Tron, Oxygen and a few other font that we can try. So let's just kind of begin by popping back into Illustrator and we're going Teoh off to the side. We're gonna create just the word green light to begin with. That's all we're going to. That's all we're gonna use. A right away will eventually get to the tagline, but that's fine. So I was gonna make this sort of big enough that I can kind of get a good sense of what's going on. So the first thought that we decided to try was a bell or able, I guess, how that's supposed to be pronounced but a B e l for whatever that's worth. So what was the next one? We had another one called Pop back over in my preview here. Electoral eyes. We had, uh, fish, Allah or few Jolla wherever that one is pronounced. So I'm basically just going to set this and every font that I chose and just give me a moment. I'll take care of that quick. Okay, so here's my array of fonts. I've set my green light in all caps for the San Serif and in upper Lower Case for the script, and I can already see just by looking over all that, I think there's gonna be some good matches here. I didn't expect there to be a lot of great matches in the script font, but as I'm looking at it, I'm actually thinking that there might be a couple of really worked nicely with it, particularly script fun when I think of things that are decorative like this, like a decorator. But the reason that I'm shying away from this a little bit from a conceptual point of view is after having met the client, having met John and sad and talk with him, I get the feeling that something mawr in this sort of territory of San serif strong fonts will work on, particularly with these strong geometric shapes. But thats OK because I mean this is all about trying, so we're going to try stuff. We're going to see what works and what doesn't. So that's kind of the idea I was gonna begin by grabbing all these and scaling them down. I had a big for the benefit of just looking at them, you know? But so need that anymore. But I'm going Teoh, just zoom in and start making some choices here. So now they've got all my geometric shapes kind of worked out. I'm gonna slide them off to the side and there's gonna grab one of the time and kind of bring him in and give some things a shot. So actually gonna jump right down to this one with the square around it because I kind of kind of like that one. Now I duplicated it not because I think I'm going to change anything, but in case I do change something by accident, I want to keep that configuration untouched so I can see what's working. So because this is square, it kind of is sort of tolerant to just about any shape because of the geometry. That's all part of that. I think it's pretty open to any sort of font that I want to choose. But often what I will do is I'll start thinking about the shape of a font in the shape of an object that I'm dealing with. So in other words, if I had something that was very, very tall, vertically say, for example, one of these shapes. So let's say that as an example, I pulled a copy of this one out. That shape makes me think of things that are taller and more narrow, sort of like possibly this font, sort of like possibly this fund. And again, I'm duplicating the fonts out here as well, because I may end up turning these toe outlines to apply certain effects to them possibly. And if I do that, I don't want to lose my list of live fonts that I could sort of look at, You know where there, Uh, so, just like shapes, you want to protect your font choices as well. So these air, tall and narrow like this, is tall and narrow. I look at this shape, however, this one in the top left in its more square. So I begin to think of the font versions that are more square. That might kind of work with that in particular. So let's just have a look at a couple of these, Um, maybe this one, too. Let's just play around with this for a wee bit. It's a drag. Goes off a little bit, so I can kind of see what I'm doing here. And, uh, what if it's the same? Same with I'm going Teoh duplicate thes again so I could use each of my fonts in a similar way. What I'm essentially doing is building myself a visual set of options that I can I can look at. And I could begin eliminating ones that I don't think frustrating illustrator there, the way things were snapping. But anyway, 70 Sometimes you have to come in closer and deal with stuff. So I'm going to get a sense of what these these arrangements behave like when they are together. Eso I can look at all of these and I may end up eliminating, you know, one from the three or two from the three. Each time I go through this process by doing simple comparisons, Do I like this one mawr or less than this one or that one? And I'll start making decisions based on that, but least now I can kind of see what happens if they're all the same with as that square in these three kind of square ish type funds bring down a duplicate set. Well, I'm gonna do here is I'm going to reduce the size of this. So now we have, ah, smaller shape with larger text. I just duplicate that, Uh, for each one of these, Now we're gonna do is ah, is each one of these all grouped them. And the reason that I will group them is so that I can grab the type and this shape I can come up to my alignment tools at the top here, and Aiken center them. But if I didn't, if I didn't deal with those shapes, if I tried to center them I get this because those slats are separate shapes and illustrator just doesn't know what I mean. So I group them command G on the Mac, which I think is under object group. If you wish to use your menu instead of your keyboard and now that they are grouped Aiken Center, align them. I think I did this one already, but I'll double check, and that's fine. And I will do the same with this one. So now I can see that shape as it might appear. Ah, with the type and the type being larger, maybe the type is a little further away in all cases, so you can see that now. What I'm doing is I'm sort of building some some logos here. I'm kind of getting a look at what happens when each one of them is treated. Ah, a little bit differently. Grab this one duplicated and see what happens if I bring the type to the side and make it much bigger and just talk it in. Maybe it's, uh, about there. Do that for these, uh, other two fonts as well. Now I'm just gonna make a decision. Based on each one, the font is a little bit different. Size and thickness. So orient, um, optically, as it feels right to do, not necessarily paying attention to the one above. Because even though the math is similar, the font is different. So it it may have different behavior than it tends towards. Now you notice that I'm not getting into turning the fonts yet. I'm not worrying entirely about that yet. I will do that, but I'm not overly concerned. I don't want to get down to many rabbit holes where I'm getting too distracted by small things. I want to get some big brush strokes here. I want to look at this font option and how it wants to play out with the different types style and different shapes. Working together, essentially, just trying to figure out what do I like. You know what In big, broad brushstrokes looks good. I think all three of these fonts works actually pretty well. So it's gonna be hard, Teoh the pick, only one in particular. But I do think that I'm feeling like my chroma is working particularly. Well, um, I think that, uh that electoral eyes is a little bit narrow, and I think that Russo one is a little bit heavy and it's got the slab serif. It introduces a new shape where this one remains relatively clean. And even though it's got round edges around, the are, it's not a square chiseled out fun. It just seems that behave well with this one. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to go ahead and go on that gut feeling. I'm going to remove the other two options from this particular configuration and call this one kind of working well with this fonts of this shape, this square geometry, 45 degree angle everything fits in a square is working nicely with this very square kind of fund which even though it's nice and open, it's not particularly square or boxy feeling. It just behaves nicely with this. And I'm a try a few different things, like possibly this local version here might look nice if that type had a slight arc. So once again, I'm I know that all this is centered, but I'm going to double check it anyway because things can sometimes shift. So yes, it is. Now, as I had mentioned before, I'm gonna turn this toe outlines. So now this is no longer alive fun. Which is why I keep these things duplicated off to the side because I'm gonna try something . I think that if I had tried to add an envelope distort to this I'm going Teoh make with warp. Obviously I don't want that dramatic a change. I'm gonna use Arch. I'm going to bring it down so it's just subtle. I don't want a lot. Tried it 10% and, uh, click. OK, I'm gonna increase the size of this a little bit, so it looks like it could just kind of benefit from a little bit of an increase. So it's just a neat little shape change that the type could possibly offer. And so I want to play with that. I want to have a look at what that might be like. Maybe it goes the other way. So I'm gonna duplicate that this one again. I'm gonna drag it over, outline this type, which is done under type, and you can go to create outlines, which is right here. Shift command O on the Mac. I don't use a PC, so I'm not sure what it is on the PC, but you can find it under the tight menu. I'm gonna try the arch Ah, different way object menu and come down to envelope the store make with war, try a different one. This time I'm going to try it. Uh, actually, I'm gonna try the same one, but I'm going to bend it the other way and see what that gives me. but I'll leave the size the same. I won't make this one bigger, so there's a little bit of, ah, typographic difference. But now that has me thinking I could try one more, which might be interesting. But you can see that I as I'm duplicating and moving things around, I'm building these little options here, and it's not that difficult. They aren't. I don't have to rethink each option as being something entirely new. And in fact, I also I don't have to make this type live are outlined. I could leave it live if I wish, but I just don't see any benefit or advantage to doing that's wide. I turn it outlines as a habit. But anyway, if I tried to arc lower instead of arching the entire design, Aiken possibly find an interesting new way. Uh, so the squares match with that little bend down there could just add some interest to the type, but it might break the geometry in a way that isn't as pleasing as the straight type version. But that's okay. We can just give it a try, and, uh, I might even duplicate this one more time and just see what this Looks like if the font is tracked out a little bit. So I'm going to open this up to maybe, uh, maybe more than that. Let's try it. Weapon 100. I'm gonna re center all of those objects together, and so just by opening up the type, I kind of change the feeling a bit, And I do somewhat like that. And in fact, I think I like this. Maybe now bring the font down in size. I actually want to center that font. So it kind of behaves, uh, it behaves centered. Keep having a re center it. So let's get rid of that problem. So, um, so I can play. I can even try 200 which is actually not that at all. And I can maybe try increasing the size of the fonts a little bit, See what happens there. So with some very simple adjustments, I can actually make quite a bit of variation. Aiken really create something interesting. Okay, so you can kind of see how that's starting to look with the funds now. It's really becoming interesting, and I think we got some real style happening. So what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna pause the video so you don't see me have to fight with logos and shapes thing entire day s. So I'm gonna go ahead and plow through those and show you the options that I've gotten it down to. But anyway, I'm gonna dig into that. I'm going to come back and review this idea and see where we ended up, get into our next idea and start building it with the same quality and approach. We built our concept number one. So, uh, I will see what next video lesson, and we'll get down to it. 20. Chapter 13: Design phase part 4: Okay, so I've gone ahead and done all my explorations of dug deep. And I spent a few hours out playing around with fonts and refining shapes. And I got some really cool stuff, like, quite a lot on this logo version number one. So I'm excited to take you through it, so check this out. Okay, so here I am back at, uh, my file after I've done some tweaking. So I basically boiled it down to these eight versions. Now, these eight versions are more or less interchangeable sets of three versions or three or four versions, if you will. So, really, what's happening is I've got, uh, this simplified geometry with my Sohn Sarah of font in that little bent shape, which I quite like, It just adds a little dimension to it. It breaks the the, uh, the sameness of it. And ah, the typography is nice and readable. It looks good and the same configuration. But this time I've chosen one of the script fonts. Well, rather hand written script. You can say it either way. You wish, But this font seemed to work nicely. The other ones became more difficult to read. There's a lot of them. Red is a Q or they were too ornate. They created too much shape to deal with. So this simplified script fought really seems to work well. In addition, I think in the outside line and played around a little bit with the relationship of this geometric shape within a shape. And, you know, working with the negative and positive space is around thes vertical blind slats, which ended up working out really nicely. But then I decided to take that same shape, and this is often what happens when you're refining a logo is that you get it down to something that you know is working. But you know, you also have more ground to cover, and one of the ways that you cover it is by just experimenting with your existing shape, not trying to create new shapes or doing something you know too far outside of your idea, because we have other ideas to nail. So once you get into a territory, don't get tempted too much by fooling around with that and trying to change shapes to too much. However, that being said I looked at this shape and thought, well, you know I've got this kind of window with blinds is really what this whole shape represents. So what if I extended that window out a little bit further thickened up the line, played around with its relationship to the slats themselves, in this case connecting the slats to the top. However, in this other case, leaving some white space around almost like a window frame and then repeating that same process in the second row but reversing the colors because the blinds or not, black although they wouldn't be black in our final version, they would be some kind of color. But, you know, maybe they don't have to be a color. Maybe they are white set inside of a color, so doing them as a reversed shape was sort of important to try open it turns out I like that much better. This bottom row, I think, is really quite really quite cool. But I don't want to totally abandon this top row either. So now I'll have to make a decision, and the decision I have to make now is how many of these refined versions will I show my client for the presentation because this is simply concept one. This is just eight versions of concept one. So this is all one logo concept as a part of the three or four or five that I'm going to show the client so I may make a page with all eight. That wouldn't be tragic. However, I run the risk of confusing the client of making it hard for him or her Him. In this case, my client is Jonah's. You remember from the brief. But essentially, I've got to give these to John in a way that he can look at them and go, OK, I don't understand which is the right or the wrong one to pick. Is there a writer? Wrong answer. Is this a trick question? Which, of course, is not the case, But, you know, it's hard. Sometimes you have to make these kinds of decisions and figure out what it is that you're actually trying to accomplish. And, uh, you know, so I've got to think about that. But I really like all of these. So it's gonna be it's gonna be difficult. And I think this is gonna be a good presentation because this is just the 1st 1 out of the gate war already in really good shape. So I know the other ones are going to be a nice, well rounded presentation. We're gonna have some really good options for him to choose from. And actually, as I'm looking at this right now, I would even do this live. I realize that I probably on. I did messed up my geometry a little bit here, so that, in fact, should come down to a boat there. I was looking at this white space around the edge of the Slaton. Just realized that I think I had those sitting just a bit too high. That looks better already back up. Yeah. Yeah, That's, uh that's working. So now I'm gonna do that. Same fix for the reverse version. All right down here. Although that doesn't look is wrong. Optically it doesn't look is wrong. And that could be the combination of the key line and white Space and those other you know , aspects of the first design. Sometimes illustrator behaves weird now was get frustrated. That gonna pull away out. Okay, fine. Illustrator. No. Calm down and then pull it down now. Matches. Okay. Uh, so and I also really get annoyed. Sometimes I don't have a really good solution for this, but sometimes you'll see that the preview well, sort of error, the preview of it. There's a bit of a gap, although I can attest that there is no gap between these two slats, this one, this one. And yet on my screen, whether or not it comes through in the video, there's a fine black line separates the two. Although there is no black separating, it is something. It's it's a screen preview error. That just seems to be something that the adobe APS can't always get. 100% right. And I Those are the things that drive me crazy. I just have to stop looking at them after a while. I don't know how you feel, but that's my experience anyway. So here are our logos. I'm gonna hit, say, because I just made those quick Lou tweaks. But here's ah, concept 18 versions, which we will have to make a decision about what we show. But we'll get to that. So that's my refinement process for this first concept. Now I'm gonna come back to my Photoshopped file. So here is the original that we worked from. Now the thing I'm going to point out now is that I have to make some decisions again. Now that I've seen how this played out, this looks really, really nice and I'm really liking it. I know now I have a better sense that I don't need. I don't need to do everything that I've marked off that has vertical blinds or blind slats of any kind. So, for example, as much as I love something about this shape up here, there's something about that that I really, really like. I don't know if I need it anymore, because that simple window with blinds has been delivered so well in this idea. And this is so simple. This is a more complex shape. As much as I love it, I don't know if I need it. So this is now the process that you will go through as you look at your ideas. And let's start to think about which ideas air similar in which ideas air different. So this this idea that we just developed, which worked out really well, is very similar to this idea, So I probably don't need the second idea. However, this window is different. So of course, this is a version that we are going to develop for sure. And if I look back at home, my other notes, uh, I've got this idea which now makes me think it's very similar to this idea, except that it's not necessarily the same. But this might deliver window better than this one. So you know, that's a decision that I have to make. And I'm looking at this, and I'm thinking that that may be my decision. Now this one off to the side here has something different about it has organic shapes moving through this thing that we're calling a window. So I think that that is worth developing. But I don't think that this other one is really something I need to focus on because I've got other window like ideas. That air that are better than other one is frankly better. And it's ah, it's amore complete design, and I think that's the one that will develop. And so if we look at are other pages, Uh, this one. I think we do still need this one because it's not a window, but it is sort of an ornate representation of a window covering. But what is really a typography execution? And I think it's always good to have one of those. I think we still need this one because these are unique. This is a unique way of looking at the blinds, and I think that's very different than the slats that we just did. However, I think this one is very similar to this one. So we may actually combine these two into an idea that you know will try it a couple different ways. Maybe in one design that the slats are on this angle. The other design, they are straight ahead, like our first sketch. So, you know, these are the things that I'm trying to identify now is what? What don't I need anymore? It's sort of the point. So when you go through your ideas and look at them, you can start making those decisions. So we're gonna go through and develop some or here. But as we go, we're going to, you know, make those big decisions and try to, you know, not turn this into a 10 local presentation because that's just too many. So but we do need this version. There's no doubt we need the client's version, so we're gonna come back to that. But in the meantime, I'm going to go ahead and move to this version next and start dealing with the window. So I'm gonna pop back to my illustrator file, and I've already saved this one, which is good, and I'm going to do a save as of this. In fact, now, the only reason I'm gonna do a save as is because in this file that I've created, even though I'm going to now delete all of this work that I've done in this file because I still have it in my logo Version one, file. But, um, the point is that I get to keep all the font because I'm just gonna use these fonts. I mean, I've already gone through and selected these based on my font research, so I don't want to lose that selection. So I'm going Teoh, go ahead and work from this same collection of fonts. And actually, now that I look at this, I think I made a mistake earlier. Uh, I didn't duplicate this fund. I actually dragged it out by accident, which would not have been. What I was supposed to do is I'm gonna drag that back. So I know that I've got all my script fonts intact. So I no longer need this vertical blind slat. And I no longer need any of these versions of shapes and fonts and things that I created. Nor do I need of course, any of those or any of those. So now I'm gonna begin to focus completely on my window idea. So I'm gonna come back to photo shop and to remind myself of where we began. So we sort of got a rectangle that represents a window. I've put a bit of a shape above it in my sketch to indicate images. Zoom in. So we're looking at this, but so I just done this other shape at the top. This kind of window header, I guess you might call it with this font going through the window and then the tagline beneath. So, you know, just gonna remind myself of those elements and see what happens when I begin to create that in illustrator. So I'm going to start with a rectangle because that is my window shape. And ah, we are going to work in black and white. But, um, you know, now I have, ah, the option. This this could be a solid color because in my final this this could end up being, you know, blue for the sky. And then the slats could be the white blinds in front of it, which is sort of conceptually what we're getting out. But it might not be exactly that. It might just be enough to say window, in which case I probably need a second shape that doesn't have, uh, Phil. However, it will have a stroke. And so let's put a stroke around it. Maybe it's start with a fairly thick stroke and place it on the outside of the shape. But now I can make a decision here about Do I want a radius corner? Is this something that would communicate Window? A za graphic designer. I like to play with shapes a bit, but I mean this this seems last window than this does eso. I don't think a radius corner is really going to help me much, so I've got these two sort of basic options to begin with, which is kind of how I want to identify this now the height and width of these is arbitrary the moment. But once I put the type in place, then of course, we're going to know a little more. So if I begin by looking at my font options Ah, you know, there's not really ah compelling reason to use either a square font like my chroma or, you know, specifically like able more narrow fund. Except that possibly this more narrow font style could maybe Seymour like vertical blinds. But vertical blinds isn't my only joke here, so I don't want to get too hung up on that. This rectangle is also wide, which might argue for a a wider font possibility as well. So I get to think about those things and just play around them and see what kind of works. And at the moment I'll say that. And, you know, as I kept duping these, I didn't you know, I didn't drag these out and start working with him. I've kept all my fonts live in the corner here, so I know which ones I'm using. And, uh, I rather like the way or Beltran, which is this font eyes kind of looking I sort of like it. So let's begin the same way we began the other one. We're going to start putting shapes together and some type together. So the first thing I want to try is I'm gonna look at my rectangle here, and I'm going to duplicate that rectangle. I'm going, Teoh, scale it down, uh, and make my little window header, I guess for a lack of a better term. But ah, the little header that would appear over the window. And, you know, maybe it's not the same size. Maybe it's larger. That seems to read more like a window with a header over it. But but as we know, we can always duplicate it. Keep all of our math live, And, uh, we'll do one where you know, we bring it in to the same size. And so let's bring up this type. Now we're working sort of, ah, white type on black shape at the moment. But that's OK, so we're keeping it all black and white as we did with the other one. We're not making anything a color yet. That is for later. So this could either be on the inside like that possibly in the center and now have to decide is this window too deep? And I'm going to grab a copy of this, drag it over, and I'm gonna try it with a slightly less deep window. But then that that sort of is a very specific type of window. It's almost like you could imagine that have to be on awfully large, awfully large window. Uh, you know, because normally you think of a window was a certain height. So it's relative with would indicate this, like a 22 foot window. And is that really what we're talking about? Well, not necessarily, but it doesn't really matter that we do it that way. So then we can also now try. Since we've already got these shapes up here, I might delete that font. And let's give one of these more narrow, taller one to try. Like we haven't used, uh, Farge Allah yet that's how you pronounce it. I I'm sticking with that because I think that's how I'm gonna pronounce it, even if that's not how the fund designer pronounces it. And so I'm gonna put that in front of this black window which will not be black eventually . But for now, it is black. Drag it out and you see, that actually fits. Obviously much better in the space. But now what does that say about this whole window thing? Does it still read Is a window with something in front of it? It is that kind of enough. So I can now begin to look at breaking the borders of this a little bit. And, uh, I might try this same font right next door, but it seems that the line above going slightly beyond the window edge seems to read a little better as kind of a window with window covering. Um, I'm not gonna delete this one. I'll leave it in place. But I think so far it seems like that works better. So I'm gonna drag this one over top of my other open window or my white window rather which nudge it down there. I'm gonna center those up. I'm not sure if they are centered. I at the guy. I bawled out a bit, but, uh, seems like it's good. So Okay, so obviously ah, concept number two is well underway, but I'm going to pause the video as before I'm going to dig in deep, and I'm gonna do my full exploration of this idea so I can wrap up these logo versions, and then we're going to get to work on all the rest. But I won't make you watch all of that, but I'll get to that. So I'm gonna dive into concept number two, and I will see you again in the next video lesson, and I'll show you where I ended up. 21. Chapter 13: Design phase part 5: Okay, so I've dug into concept number two, and I've got all my type variations in all my shape variations. And I'm gonna walk you through the various things that I came up with. I like this one a lot, too. That 1st 1 though, is sexy. I'm really enjoying that. But we got solid ideas, and they just keep kind of coming out as we dig deep into this. So I'm gonna show you the concept number two. So check this out. Once again. I went through the process of deciding, you know, does it break outside the borders of the window? Is that script type? Is it sawn? Sarah, if you know, what are the relationships between all the shapes and all of that? And I added one new Google fought to my process here. One called rationale because I was playing around trying to find a narrow fought that would sort of do a better job of telling the story of the blinds. Aziz, you can see up in these ideas here, So I just did another quick search and found some narrow fonts, and that was sort of the The objective is to give myself another option to consider. So after doing this exploration and playing around, I narrowed it down to these three. And these three really mean these six? Because these three on the end are the same idea, but with a couple of variations in tone, essentially, you know, totally reversed or black with a frame and then sort of indication of a window on the inside of a window frame, you know, just played around with those variations. But I think ultimately that this one down here on the bottom is possibly the strongest and has the simplest execution. And I really kind of like the way that looks. And these other two are just variations on the window theme, more of a window frame, uh, unto itself. And then one with kind of the blinds. The vertical blind holder, uh, kind of implied at the top. And then just let the type do its thing. I found that you know, the type breaking out of the edges really didn't help the window message. It looked cool and it was interesting, but it didn't it didn't say window quite as well. That's sort of why I abandon that line of thinking and I tried, you know, are they are the vertical blind slats, kind of gently blowing in the breeze. But that was hard to describe, and you'd have to know that that was the joke I was going for and I tried some script, but I just didn't feel this one had the sophistication that the song Sara fought did. And it wasn't quite the right concept for a script, so I dropped that approach in this one. I tried some thinner fonds. I tried some drop shadows, which I just felt would probably fall apart when I reduced it to a business card size and make it harder to print. So I just abandoned that idea pretty quick. But this is where I end up in terms of the ones that I will present and how I will show the client version two. It's going to come out of this collection of three, which is really six but three with some variations. And so that's what I did with Concept number two. I hope that this has given you the sense of how these things get built. The process of trial and error, copying and pasting, never deleting your work but just moving it along and trying different things and coming back and refining things and the way that I found these ideas, in fact was going through this whole process getting down to kind of the bottom here, right? Try different things. And then I sort of whipped my page back to the beginning And 10 yeah, I had some really neat shapes that were happening kind of in here and in here some of the earlier stuff that I had worked on. And that's what created this shorter list of three. Okay, so now, with all that said, what I'm gonna do next is I'm going to between this video and the next, I'm going to go ahead and just finish up all the logo is based on the same process. So I will make you watch all of that because I don't think it's necessary. I hope that what you've got from this so far is that once you have an idea, sort it out and you've done that with creative sketches. You haven't burdened yourself with the illustrator tools and which fought and how big something is that you have purified your thoughts and been conceptual once you do that. And once we've done all that other research and all that stuff in the beginning, you can see now that we can focus purely on the craft of design. Nice typography, nice geometry, simple shapes, delivering good concept. And I'll take a solid professional logo which is readable, easily understood, conceptually clever and not literal. I'll take that any time over the greatest artwork that anyone's ever created that you know . Look at those effects. Look at all that three D. Look at all this shiny. How did he do that in Photoshopped? How was this create? Don't even know what this is. All that stuff. That's great. If you could do simple logos that communicate simply and are clever and great to look at, then you're a real logo designer. That other nonsense doesn't matter. So that's what this is all about. And I hope that this is sort of getting through that. Your understanding that because this is the process you want to follow to make great logos , I promise you that. So I'm going to go through and finish these things off. We're gonna go Ah, in the next video lesson through a design analysis and look at where we ended up. Take a real hard look at where we are, and then it gets into presentation. So we're gonna get ready to show the client all these ideas soon. I will see you in the next lesson. 22. Chapter 14: Design review and analysis: Okay, so I've got a ton of work and I blown through all the logos, and I've got all my variations done, and I've narrowed it down to the few that I really like in each concept. So I've rounded them all off, including the clients. Concept, of course, Built out some files for that, too, and I'm gonna take it through those. But essentially, the design analysis phase is the opportunity for you to once again step outside just like we did with identifying good ideas. This is the same process. We're going to step outside of our illustrator, step outside of our type and shape focused minds for a moment and play the other rule. We're gonna put on the creative director hat now, because now the objective when you're looking at your ideas that you've designed, you want to make sure that you've differentiated each idea well enough. Do they all look like the same version? Just done. Saved as, and you change the size of the font. Well, that's not a new version. That's not good enough. You've got to actually do the work. You've actually got to explore the shapes uniquely for each one. You gotta pick the type that works uniquely with each version. And it may be the same font in each version. I'm not suggesting that you can't do that, but I am suggesting that you look at these and objectively and make sure that all of your concepts, whether you're showing one concept, three concepts or 10 concepts are you differentiating your ideas? And are those ideas clearly communicated just in the way that you've built them? And are they ready to show the client? Have you got all of this stuff together? And it's all still black and white. We are nowhere near ready for color yet, but we're gonna do a design analysis, be our own creative director, and we're gonna look at these and analyze exactly where we ended up in how good our position is before we show these to the client. So I've sort of isolated the well, I guess the eight. I mean, it's not a specific number, but I've isolated some designs here from you know, I got on my rubbish sort of down here, but just above that kind of isolated, I guess what represents the best of this idea for me. So the various versions of it which end up being sort of the I guess the D A list the ones that I want to show the client. So I've got this very cool geometry of our set of blinds, which is kind of represents blinds is not literal as we've been talking about. We got some good type options here, and it looks good in black and white really holds up. If I grab one and I just drag it across over here and I scale it down, it holds up pretty well. So I know that I've done Ah, good job there. So that's, uh, concept number one. Let's have a look. A concept number two. The same idea. All my rubbish is down here. But I've isolated these five in this case that I think are good representations of this idea, things that I could show the client. So this doesn't have the geometry of the 1st 1 It isn't as much about blinds in the sense that you can actually see a shape that represents them. This is kind of like a big window, and green light is just in the window, so it has kind of that nice, a simple idea behind it. So it borderlines on a type on the execution, but it's type only with a flair, and I think it's solid. We got some good options here. The window frame might not be necessary, but I thought it was an interesting version and variation. So I think we're doing pretty good on this one as well. And I already know that if I give this one the scale test, I know it will hold up just fine on and it certainly does. So Constant number three, my personal favorite. I'm really digging on this one, and I really quite like this. This old fashioned kind of established in 1992 which when we just talked to the client, was an arbitrary date that we picked. But we know that he's been in business for roughly this long in other capacities. But we'd get this number right, maybe its 1996. Maybe it's 1990. We don't know whatever it is, we'll fix that. But the point is we got this really cool kind of old fashioned logo, which is very modern as well in its execution, but it's you know, it kind of reminds me of him. He's no spring chicken, but he's also very contemporary artist in the way that he approaches what he does. So I think this one fits super Well, I love this one and in fact is probably the one I'm gonna recommend when we present to the client. So, you know, I already know it passes all the tests, but let's just have a look at that. So I'll drag this guy over to the side so I could give it a quick scale test and see how it holds up. And it's good. So this one differentiates itself quite a bit from the 1st 2 and quite a bit from the rest . I think it kind of has the best of everything in it from my perspective anyway. And so, uh, this one is probably the closest thing we have to literal. We don't have anything literal here. These aren't literal blinds, but they're pretty close. But they just have the louver shape and, you know, they hold up pretty well and I think we've got some some good versions here already know that these ones hold up nicely. The type is nice and big and we got some variations. So this is different from the first idea. Very different from the second. Of course, Number three was quite unique. So I know we've differentiated this one enough that it's Ah, it's worth showing and I like it solid. We pop over to this idea. This this concept is probably, uh, pretty close to this one. Number two. But I'm not concerned because this one doesn't have kind of the type Onley execution. It's not type only. It changes things when we add these shapes, because these shapes really are in indicative of window hangings. So it's a little bit different than the window itself. It's also different than the blinds or the mechanism of the blinds. This becomes something that just represents Hey, this is Window and it's kind of fashion E and you know, it has that sort of angle to it, which is different than our other ideas. So we have things that are very blinds related. Vory windows related, related to the the message itself. So we've covered off. Uh, I think just about everything with these five concepts, and so I think we're in good shape there now. This Final One. You're gonna see this and wonder what happened to me in the design process. But what I can tell you is this I'm showing you this because this literally did actually honestly happen in the process. The client, he was doing his own fiddling around online, doing some research as he has been this whole process. And he decided that he saw this house shape, whi