Create a Beautiful Badge Style Logo

1. Intro: Circular, bad style logos can work incredibly well for certain brands. The profile tends to fit a wide range of situations and they're an effective way to include an additional layer of information or tagline all arranged into one tidy package. But what really is a bad style logo? And how can you create one that looks professional and effective? What's best practice when it comes to curving text? And how can you compose so many different elements without the end result looking messy? I'll share the answer to each of those questions in this class. Hi, my name is Jason Miller. I'm a freelance graphic designer based in London who vote one London-based. I've had the privilege of working for clients all across the globe, specialize in brand identity design. And I've been doing this successfully as a freelancer for over 12 years now. So who's this class for? Well, it's ideal for anyone looking to expand their portfolio with a new style of logo designed to display or someone wants him to learn some quick, easy to implement techniques that can really speed up your workflow. Now this isn't an advanced class. We're going to dive straight in and just start having some fun creating this popular logo style. If you like, you can adjust your version so it looks a little more playful or more serious. It's completely up to you. I found the difference between a professional logo and then amateurish. One is often the balance and the techniques and processes you use to create it. I'm going to take you through my process for creating this logo style. Share plenty of tips, tricks and techniques along the way. And by the end, I'm sure you'll feel confident creating your own version yourself will also include in this class how you can create a secondary logo and a sub mark to complement the primary logo to ensure you're providing your clients with the tools they need for various situations. And finally, perhaps my favorite part of any project that we'll spend some time together presenting and showcasing your logo in mockups. By showing it in context, living and breathing out in the real world. This will really impress your potential clients. So I'm ready for this. When you're ready, let's get started. 2. Class Project: If possible, try to follow along step-by-step and create your own version of a sample logo. I'm taking you through in this class. I'll be designing this logo for a fictional brand called evoke brewery. London-based specializing in a type of craft beer called IPAs. So you're very welcome to come up with your own fictional brand to use a real-world projects. Or just to follow along with the exact example that I'm using. If you do follow along with my example, I'd recommend that at the very least you change the brand name. And that way when you present this in your own portfolio, this project isn't going to look exactly the same as hundreds of other designers. So our goal for this project is to learn how to create not just this bad style logo, but many others as well splinter off along the way, uh, to teach you different techniques and alternatives so that you can create a whole range of different badge style logos. So when you're ready, fire up Adobe Illustrator or something similar. And I'll see you in the first lesson. 3. Finding Inspiration: So first of all, a bad style logo is a thing. I promise I'm not just making it up. Maybe you've heard other designers use this phrase, but generally they're all referring to slightly different things. Now, if you search on Google and Pinterest on Behance for a bad style logo. For results you find won't all agree exactly. You will come across a range of logos for others have labeled in this category. But you will notice many of them. A certain look and feel. And definitely as you look through, you can see some have already curated kind of subcategories. So there's one here. They've labeled vintage style badges and logos. Sometimes we seem to use for where the badge and logo interchangeably, which can be confusing. Some like this one here are quite minimal. Some have a real vintage detailed approach to them. For me, visa, maybe a little too detailed to work as an effective logo. Something like this is acceptable or vote, you might want to make that look a little higher end. And unfortunately, when you Google search for stock libraries and be crowd designed websites tend to dominate the results. The quality is not always very high, but this gives you an idea of what people are referring to when you hear the term batch style logo and banded around on Behance, I tend to find that quality is a little higher. It's quite a nice mixed range of examples here. This is from Alan pizzas. You can see not all of these feature of a circular element, but many of them do. And definitely something they all have in common is a very tight knit composition. We scroll down and I'll let you look a little closer at some of these. Maybe there's a perfect example of a circular one. I think perhaps a little, a little tricky to find a focal point for this has got a monogram in the center, but then the text around the outside is an equal size, so it's a little hard to know where to look first. Service, I quite like there's no curve text here, but your eye goes straight to legacy. The overall composition at definitely forms a kind of badge. Here. I suppose your eye goes to this. It's like a symbol of fresh produce, which is quite good. I'm indefinitely the next place your eye goes to the brand name around the outside. So some nice examples here. I'll show you some examples from my own portfolio as well. So this is an example to show just how minimalist you can go with this. It really doesn't have to have a cluttered, high level of detail. It could be just a few well-placed elements that are composed with balanced, but work really nicely together. So I've really liked this as a minimalist badge style logo. Then at the opposite end of the spectrum, I can show you this one. So this was done for a brand that would be marketed in the UAE is quite acceptable. They're culturally to have a high level of detail. Things look quite opulent. So this is a batch version of the logo. Interestingly, this is for full version of the logo. And so I wouldn't call this a badge style logo. Overrule. But top part of this kind of forms a batch, but this is the full logo lockup. Because for full logo, it includes a bad shape. It's not that this is the logo in its entirety. I would say this is not a bad style logo, but there are elements of this portion of the artwork which worked really well, which would form quite as strong batch logo on itself. If we wanted this to be the logo in its entirety, for everything to fit within this circular lock-up, We definitely need for brand name to be more prominent on this version here you really quite easily pick out lux London. So we'd need to do something here to make sure it was, if not the most prominent thing, I've been definitely be the second most prominent and something your eye quickly finds. So an example of a logo that's not actually badge style. And this is the example I'll be creating in our class project together. So again, it's quite minimalist. You could add some extra details and you'll see as we go through the project together in some iterations, I've tried some added detail. I've tried a few more elements in here. But I've arrived at this version, which I really like. And I quite like to design a logo that's more minimal, but then gives you the freedom to bring in textures, to bring in other elements. So here we're using a craft style box. There's wood in the background. I quite liked to design that way. Keep things modular and to arrive at the tone I'm looking for by bringing all the different elements together. So that's my preferred style. I'll teach you techniques that you could use to achieve your preferred style. Perhaps this for case, that you prefer something that has a little more pattern or detail going on, that's absolutely fine. So we'll run through some of the options. But using a platform of your choice, you could pick, as I've done here, a Pinterest board. And again, you'll see the examples. Zoom in. So this is a little bigger for you. The examples I've saved out here. Again, vis-a-vis more minimal side a spectrum. And this is what resonates with me. This is what I'm, I'm quite attracted to. This is what I tend to create for my clients. So have a good look through the different options, then you can make an informed decision about the style of batch logo that's right for you. Once you've found some inspiration, perhaps grab some different ideas. Join me in the next lesson where we'll start sketching out the concepts for our own logo design. 4. Sketching Out Concepts: In this lesson, having found some inspiration, we're going to now sketch out our ideas and concepts. Now this style of logo tends to have a number of different elements, and each of these elements needs to work together aesthetically. So we have a few specific goals as we're going about our sketches. We want to explore different elements or components we might use. In this logo. We want to find a balanced overall layout and composition. And we want to create hierarchy of elements. So somewhere for the eye to focus first. And then we'll try to guide the eye around with the logo. Really with so many different elements, we need to ensure we avoid overwhelming a viewer with too many elements at the same level. So size, contrast, and color are all things we can use to achieve that. Now again, you're very welcome to follow along step-by-step with the exact example I'm creating. Perhaps just to learn the techniques. Or perhaps you can create something yourself based on the inspiration you looked at. But my bad style logo for evoke is going to feature logo type as the centerpiece. That will be the thing that draws VI and the other elements will flow around them. In your version of this could just as easily be a monogram as the central part, or perhaps a symbol or brand mark. So here we have the rough sketches of I've drawn out. And I've not used pen and paper. I've used my iPad Pro, been scanned this in as an illustrator art board, which is quite a nice, nice workflow. You'll see I've explored a white mixture of elements because I'm working on a brewery of sketched out different elements. I might be able to use some hops, barley, little graphics to represent those things and then try to work those into some of the designs and the composition. You can see some of this is really roughly drawn, and that's absolutely fine. I'd recommend you work as quickly as you can just to test an idea. And then if it works, you can always create a, a more balanced and more careful iteration to explore it further. But you'll see down here, I've just used squiggles to represent small text. I'm really flying through these just to explore whether an idea has potential or not. So one route I've explored is almost a letter mark E. And that could be the focal point with the main logo type kind of curving at the top and the bottom. I quite liked that idea. I've also tried having part of the main logo type in the center and then flowing around the bottom. And in this example here, I tend to use a reference point if there's maybe a script E, but I'm looking to create as is the case here. I find the reference and then I sketch fat into my overall composition. And that just helps me to gauge whether that might work or not. And I do quite like this. And the idea of some of the type just breaking out of this outer key lime for the circle. And I quite like the idea of a key line starting and stopping as it overlaps with different elements. So you'd have some smaller text here. Text at the bottom, the key line breaks to fit those components together. So I quite like that. If I wanted to explore a more modern gram, there's quite a nice symmetry. If you split the E and B, then the center. Depending on, I suppose the way you compose the letters and the font. They've got these free horizontal portions of a line at exactly the same height. So that could be something quite interesting to explore. I've explored splitting them with a diagonal slant. We've looked at some different ideas. Although I'm not going to go for a truly vintage style logo, I do like the idea of this established in 2020. I think that's quite a nice touch. I think a barrel. I'm not sure why I've I've sketched with Barrow leaking here. That was me just having some fun. Barrels maybe a little too cliched. A crown I thought might work nicely as a way of positioning the brand to save it there claiming to be the best and in line with that, one of the potential taglines would be finest craft beer. Again, for some of the elements I've sketched out. So the hops, you can find reference pictures. This is one of the reference images that I found. And then I've just sketched looking at that. Use references for those different elements and then sketch them and make them your own. Also a font, I really like the look of, I pulled that here as a reference. And then you can see I've actually used that font as a reference when I've drawn the logo type in a little more accurately. So of course, when it comes to fonts, It's probably faster to explore those digitally, which I'll be doing in the next stage. But for your more detailed sketches sometimes to get a real sense of whether the idea has legs or not. I'll use a particular font as a reference. So this is a board of sketches I've created. Have some fun. Use your inspiration that you've saved. Find some useful references for your own logo. Try to sketch out different ideas and composition. Remember the goals we looked at. We want to explore different elements. We want to explore the overall composition. And with this style of logo V idea is to create something that feels quite tight knit, quite compact. But if it works beautifully together, have fun doing that. And when you're happy with one or two designs, you'd like to develop further. Come and join me in the next lesson. 5. Exploring Concepts in Illustrator: The first stage for me is to try to look in the fonts that you feel of a right fit for your brand. So you can see I explore quite a few of them. I tried to place them on an art board like this. So I can compare like for like and where you have similar fonts. Fees aren't very similar, but comparing them side-by-side can help you identify what you like about them. The unique factors that stand out. This font at the bottom here, we've got part of the E actually separated with a little gap. There is quite a wide contrast between the thick and thin portions of the Serif letters we owe is actually slanted at a slight angle. And that's quite a nice sloping arm. They've placed them the cave. So we won't dive too deep in this class. Fonts and their meaning they convey. I have other classes if you'd like to dive in a bit deeper to that, but explore some different fonts, but you feel a fitting. And when you've got a small selection, but you'd like to try bringing us sketch into Illustrator, as I've done here. And start to flesh out the different elements. Try to lock in what you're going to use. So I've begun with this main logo type for the word evoke. I will customize it, but for now I think that's absolutely fine. And when I found complimentary fonts, so nothing alike, but they compliment each other beautifully. I've used Futura here, and that really compliments main logo type nicely. And I've used that for both the top and the bottom portion of texts. Although I've used contrast in size to make sure you read Brewery before you read the tagline, London's finest IPA. And then again, referring back to my sketch and we can deviate off, you don't have to stick to the sketch as a blueprint. It just gives you a good starting point in fleshing out these ideas. So I've explored a solid key line surrounding the logo, dotted key line. And don't worry, in the next lesson, That's where I'm going to show you the techniques used to create these different elements. So we're going to look at best practice for placing type on a path and balancing that professionally. And we'll look at your different options for these kind of key lines and create a dotted or dashed lines if you like. Along with a few other techniques you might find useful. So this lesson will provide you with an overview of what you're looking to accomplish. And then in the next lesson, I'll share a few techniques with you. So now that I'm happy with my text, we then begin bringing in any other graphic elements. So it could be a graphic element. Symbol is actually the focus of your logo. And you have a text flowing around that. Which case you want to spend a bit longer on that portion of the design. But for me, visa, smaller, almost decorative elements which is add to the flavor of a brand. So I've got a crown. I want some kind of barley stalk or hot for icon that I can simplify and use as part of yard work. So this version here, just to see if it works initially, I've actually imaged, traced this from this reference picture. So again, that's a technique I'll share with you in the next lesson. And then at the bottom here, I've created a simple crown. I quite like the idea of doing something different, maybe having a split or divide inside the crown. So maybe I'll come back to that idea for now. I'm just going to use this solid version. So I'm quite happy with the way this is shaping up at this stage. So before we go any further approval process, let me stop and teach you some of the techniques I promised to share to create this professionally, which we'll do together in the next lesson. 6. Pro Techniques Curving Text: So useful techniques for creating bad style logos. I'm not going to run through all of my Illustrator tips. You can find one of my other classes with my top Illustrator tips for logo design in general, if you're interested in that. But these are tips specific to creating this kind of style of bad style logo, especially for circular ones. So the first tip we'll start with is creating type on a path balancing that. Our goal is to create something like this where the text is still alive, were still able to adjust the spacing. We can adjust the size. If you really wanted. You could actually apply this technique to have wording fully encompassed a circle. And I'll explain how you can use with different controls to fine-tune this and to tweak it to your liking. Now, I'm also going to mention another technique that's sometimes used to perhaps not have type, go around an entire circle, but certainly to arc type and to bend it. So I'm going to create some placeholder text here, and I'll show you the difference as a comparison. So one technique is to use the Arc tool in Illustrator. So I'm going to duplicate this. We go to Effect. And underwater. You can select one of these arc options. And you can change these options using this drop-down. So you can compare the results. You can see if we go to arc upper, lower for percentage here. This is giving you a flat bottom and just an arching effect, almost a 3D perspective to the top portion of a type here. So for specific purposes, but it could be something you wanted to do. I must say it's not something I often use in logo design. If we go back to Effect Warp. And Arc, Lower is just the inverse of that. But this regular arc, this is V effect. But you may sometimes want to use instead of type on a path which I'm about to show you, will create quite a noticeable arc on our text here. So we'll go, let's go all the way to 50 per cent. And then the other technique, this is one I've used, is to create type on a path. So first we need to create a circle. You can drag, hold Alt to drag out from the center. And you could create an ellipse. But I think if you hold Shift to constrain company tried to use a portion of a perfect circle that gives you better results. So I'm going to drag this up here and we'll just enlarge this until it's kinda matching the angle we have with our arch at the top here. That looks good to me. I'll just swap so that we've stroke to be key lines so we can see what we're doing. And then what we need to do. If I move this circle down now is use the type on a path tool. Under your regular type tool. If you press and hold to see the other options. Here, you have Type On a Path Tool hidden away, select that, and simply click. It could be any portion of a path. I'm going to click at the top here. This will use whichever font you had in your palette, and it will flow your type for the entire way around that path. So the first thing I'm going to do is take sample type here, but I want to use copy that, select everything here with Control or Command a, and then paste that type him. With that done, I'll delete that placeholder type. I now need to rotate this into place so you could simply hit transform and rotate your circle. But best practice is actually to use a built-in features to position your type. At the moment you can see my paragraph is actually left aligned and very little or zoom in so you can see them, these little control handles here and here signify the beginning and the end of V type area, if you'd like. So it arcs around and obviously it ends at almost back where it begins. If I zoom out here, I'm going to drag the ending control handle to three o'clock. And then restarting control handle to nine o'clock because it's left aligned starting from nine o'clock. But if we now go to paragraph and center align. We've got that lined up nicely and we're ensuring that that type can flow between those two control handles, but we'd set and another little quick tip I'll share review is but this control handle that sitting for me at six o'clock at the bottom, we'll usually just sit opposite your type. If you click and drag that, you can toggle between the text sitting on the outside or the inside of your key line. And you can also use that to manually rotate and position your type. So I'm going to undo that change. So when I click to deselect, can you spot the difference between these two techniques? If I position them alongside each other? There is quite a big difference and it's not as noticeable with font and perhaps the uppercase. But if you look for example at V0 here, where we've used this, this arc effect. It's really distorted V0 quite noticeably. When you look at that perfect sitting where we've used type on a path. Now this is quite a gentle arc that we've used and we've used uppercase characters which tend to distort a little less than lowercase. But this is actually non-destructive V oc effect in the latest version of Illustrator. So if I click on our art type and you can see there's almost the ghost of the original left behind. And if I click over in appearance at V effect, you can edit the effect live. Now, if this were a more pronounced arc, let's say 75 or even 80 per cent. And I click Okay. Now some of the type is really not looking great about O has really been stretched out of proportion. The m, I'm not in love with you to me looks quite badly distorted. I wouldn't say it's about one technique is wrong and the other is right. But for certain situations where you're trying to curve texts, you don't want any distortion on the characters. And you're looking to do quite a pronounced curve, then I think type on a path is your friend. You will have less distortion. If I'll hit the undo key. And maybe we'll reduce this even further. Let's take it down to maybe 40 per cent, something like that. So there's a minimal amount of distortion. Some save at the Arc tool because each of the characters have been transformed, so they are perfectly aligned, pointing into the center. Some actually prefer that for a gentle arc like this. So I've shown you both techniques. I'll leave it to you depending on your artwork which you feel is best to use. It's also worth noting, although I outlined my type before using the architect and the latest version of Illustrator CC. And you can actually keep live type. So even though the arc effect is applied, I could begin adding characters. That changes we overall lymph, which would change the angle. It means to a certain extent this is non-destructive. So if that's the case with either technique. So going back to the version I've created, where we have type placed on a path at the top. And then on the bottom here you can see I've had to use that control handle to bring the type inside our path here. So it's situated with the right orientation. You can edit risk to your heart's content. You could even change for fonts. Later. You can completely, just for spacing, you can change the size. So it's quite useful to keep it in this format and actually not to outline the text until you've locked it in. A 100%. Happy with it. Another quick tip, when it comes to balancing, I recommend using wider spacing. So you can see I've used 780 tracking for the top portion of type here. And if I were to reduce that to its default, and then instead we had this typed larger. You can see it's a completely different effect and to me it's a little harder to read. So if you bring the size down, that helps your visual hierarchy. Especially if this is a tagline, make sure your eye it doesn't go to that first, even though it's positioned at the top of a logo. And then if we really exaggerate the spacing, I think when we hit around the 500 mark for tracking. That's now feeling nice and balanced, both in terms of visual hierarchy and just aesthetically. I think that's a much more pleasing way to read. Curving type. I've done the same of a bottom, although that's called a much larger point size. So hopefully those techniques cover all your type curving, warping leads. 7. Pro Techniques Circular Strokes: Let's go to our next technique. You'll notice I've used key lines and in certain designs, especially the more detailed or elaborate, some designers make heavy use of Circular Quay lines, have a manipulate votes. So let's consider a few tips and techniques we could use. So to create a circular path, we've got our ellipse tool. And you could drag that from the center and hold Alt and Shift to constrain that to perfect proportions. That would give you V Circular Quay line. I have here. You could copy, paste in front, then transformed to create layers, rings if you like, just be careful depending on your preferences. If I click to select, you can see that stroke is 1.18 and the stroke I've just transformed is 1.29. So by default, when you scale like this, illustrator will also scale the weight of your strokes. You can remedy that by selecting both of them and then picking a consistent stroke weight for them both once you've transformed or you could turn that off in the settings, I found you generally have to eyeball the center point. For me, it won't be the exact center of the, OH, here. I've kind of eyeballed this composition. And for that reason, it's useful if you're adding layers and rings just to keep everything consistent. If you copy, paste in front, which is Control or Command F. And then transform holding Shift to constrain the proportions and holding Alt for that transformation takes place from the center. It ensures quickly and easily. You're working with the same center point and it can save you a bit of a headache. So you could keep using that technique. Pasting in front, transforming down. And you could create something far more elaborate with as many layers, rings as you want. Just remember to select all your strokes at the end. And then pick something consistent technique you may have spotted I used in the last video was for something like this. I actually had a broken path for the circle so that my type flow across the middle. So let's show you how you can achieve the same. If we take this version here, and I'll show you this with just a single path. For now. I'll show you a few different techniques you could use. You want to use for rectangle tool. And just drag a rectangle to represent v space you want to create around, around that text or objects. And I'm going to fill that with white. Remove a stroke. Not positioned about to show you. So this is the effect we're going for. I could remove the stroke from the edge, but I'm just going to shrink it down and we'll just remove it from this path inside. There are two possible techniques, and with one, you will just use the pen tool. I'm going to color my block in a way that when I enter focus mode, I can still see exactly where it is. I'll double-click on our circular path. So this is now in focus mode, or use my pen tool. And you'll see if you have your tool tips turned on. It will come up with a tool tip that says intersect. When my pen reaches the point for that path, intersects with this shape we've placed behind. So I'll click to add an anchor point there. I'll do the same over on the left. Do the same on the bottom left, and the same on the bottom right. And now that we've got those anchor points added, if you hit the a key to bring up the direct selection tool, we want to first click away somewhere off on the canvas and then drag and select. If you pick up the portions of a path inside that rectangular shape you drew here for Delete key. And it's as simple as that. You've removed those portions of a path. If we exit from Focus Mode, delete our placeholder object, and there you have it. You now have to live paths. So you can still edit the stroke weight, which can be useful. Now there is another technique, so I'll undo to bring us back to this point. The starting point is the same. We still want a reference object, but this time we're going to select our reference objects. Hold Shift to also select our circular path. And then on Pathfinder, we're going to click minus front. Now if that's almost done, what we want, you'll notice it's closed closed off these paths. So we now have this portion in the center that we don't want to get rid of that. We just hit a to bring up the Direct Selection Tool. Click to select we unwanted path and hit the Delete key and doing that on the top and bottom. That's when creating the same effect. One more method you could use to achieve this. So again, we'll go back to our starting point is using the shape builder tool. Again, we select both of the objects, bring up the shape builder tool using Shift M. If you hold down Alt, you can click and drag to delete the unwanted portions. Again, hit a to print up the direct selection tool, select the unwanted portion of a path and delete away. Now finally, for bonus points, if you zoom in, you'll see it's not very noticeable because I have just a two-point stroke. If it's a one-point stroke, it's even less noticeable. But it's not a perfectly flat edge to this path ends quite abruptly. So what if you wanted it to end at this angle here? Will, to do that. We'll go back again to our starting point. And this time, and you have to be happy with the weight of your path before you start this step. We'll go to object, expand and will expand How stroke. So this is now its own object with a stroke expanded. And both objects selected, we'll bring up our shape builder tool. Hold Alt, and click to remove a portion we don't want. And you'll notice this time if we zoom in, we have a flat edge to that stroke. Maybe in your particular design, that's an effect you're going for. If that was a very simple example, but you can use that same technique for multiple layers and overlaps. And you can create something that's completely bespoke. Fine tune it to your needs. 8. Pro Techniques More Quick Tips: So we've spent quite a while mastering those techniques. A few additional techniques which are much faster and Visa more quick tips. That one is to use image trace on objects. So for your final artwork, especially if you haven't licensed for reference image you're using. You need to be careful with this. You don't want to infringe on copyright. But particularly if you found a reference with an open source license or you've licensed something that you can use. And what we're going to do is crop this image so that we bring up just for portion we want to use. We'll hit apply. And in your contextual toolbar at the top, you can see under Image Trace, if you click on V Tracing Presets, you've got a number of presets you could select from here. So I want to break this down into just black and white components. And it's actually labeled that as appropriate for a logo. Once I click that, you can see it does a fairly good job of guessing which portions to color in black or in white. You can fine-tune this again up and v contextual control panel. If you click on the Image Trace panel. This gives you some additional options so you're able to reduce or increase the threshold, which effectively lets you control at which details are picked up or not. And if you twirl open, Advanced, you can control the number of pops. Lower will give you something with harder edges, a higher number of paths, a greater level of detail, corners, and the noise of a tooltip here explains it quite well. It says ignores areas of a specified pixel size. So if you reduce that down, it's going to give you a much higher level of detail, which isn't always what we want for a simplified logo element. So I'm quite happy with that. One last feature you can use is under options for tick box, for Ignore White. If you click that and then hit Expand, you've now got a custom graphic that you can play with and position in your artwork as I've done here. So a final tip will consider, and this is another quick one. If you were hoping to create something with some complex areas, as you can see in this version here, for a lots of lines expanding out in a circle from a central point. And that can be quite handy technique to use. So I'll show you how you would accomplish that. We'll drag in our circle here as a reference point. And we're going to start just by using the line segment tool. We have Tooltips on. So I get that little pink line pop up. When I'm in the center. I'm going to drag down just to create a simple vertical line. And I'll nudge this up. So it's sitting just inside that circular path, a few venues with Rotate tool. The shortcut for that is our unfortunately you will see I no longer get a tooltip to show me when I'm at the center of a circle, which is really annoying. So a trick I use is to select the circle and I'll place an object here. I can use as a reference point for the center. I'm going to create another little line and just place that at the center of a circle. Now again, with the line we've created up here selected, we'll hit R to bring up the rotate tool. And this time I can use this path as my reference point. Now, if I left-click, I can then drag and manually rotate this. If I hold the Alt key, duplicate this for me. So you could eyeball this, but I recommend working out the math service 360 degrees in a circle. You want to use something that divides perfectly into 360. So it could be 15 degrees, 30 degrees. So there's my 15 degrees release to drop that in place. And then if you use the shortcut Command or Control D, it will replicate that last transformation. So if I hit that enough times, that will fill out a circle, I'm going to delete that reference point now because I don't need it. I'm going to select all of this. De-select footpath. If I wanted, I could copy, paste in front and then use the transform tool to rotate in place to create another layer of those same lines which I'm just eyeballing for now. I can increase the stroke weight if I wanted. But using a combination of those techniques, you could rotate any object you like to form this kind of repeating circular pattern which opens up a lot of design possibilities. When you combine that with layers and rows, it really gives you some interesting options for your art work. So personally, that level of detail isn't necessary in a bachelor logo. But there are some techniques if that's something you wanted to do. A last, last, because this video is getting quite long now, bonus technique, if you didn't know this already, if you select this outer circular path and you click on Stroke, you've got a tick box to create a dashed line, which does just that. The moment if we were to zoom in, you'd see this is a vertical dash pointing out from the center. If I select it again, click on Stroke by changing the cap to a round cap. De-select and zoom in again. You can now see that it's got a rounded appearance. If I open this again and I changed that dash to 0 points, then becomes just a dot, which at times is quite a nice effect to use in our artwork. So if there's a final tip for you, I hope some of these were helpful and we'll give you more confidence in fine tuning and composing your artwork. Now that we've covered those techniques, let's develop our chosen logo fervor, that which we'll do in our next lesson. 9. Logo Development: So in a real life project, there are really no rules as to where one phase ends and another begins when you finish looking at your initial concepts and when you are then in V development stage, usually it would be once you've shown maybe some of the options to a client, they come back to you with a version that you will develop and you'll spend a little more time on. But for our project together, It's completely up to you. So don't be worried if one phase bleeds into another. Now, by this point, if you've played around unexplored, you may have already developed your logo and you may actually have a iteration, but you're quite happy with in my own process. I got quiet, carried away, and because I had no client to work with, I didn't take a break between exploring options and developing a fine tuning. So I would probably say maybe something like this here as one option. And perhaps this is another, would be the phase that I would present something to a client and ask them to give me feedback to pick a direction. And you can see now that I'm happy with the overall composition, the fonts for different elements. I'm exploring just for a little nuances. So for example here, our main type actually pokes out, it protrudes from the circle created by this key line, and also from our logo type. So I'll show you how to break a circle like this without losing the ability to edit it as a live stroke is quite easy to do. That's another technique we'll cover in the next lesson. This is a more simplified version. So if we compare the two iterations, here, we've almost got an inner ring with our type of an outer ring with a key line. And this version, we've simplified that. We have just a single ring and we've got a teeny bit of a key line. I'm just filling in a gap in the composition there. So look quite effective. This version here is simplest still. So we don't have any key lime to fill this gap is still reasonably balanced. But to me it feels like for word Brewery is kinda floating by itself down there. So in this final iteration, and we've actually notched word brewery up and position like this. It doesn't feel there's a gap and it feels linked to the rest of the logo. I've always with a keen eye for detail, may have noticed, but between these two iterations, now actually begun to edit and make some tweaks to our logo type. So this is live text. It means I can continue to edit and work on it. Here we've actually outlined the type and the shortcut for that is Command or Control Shift O. When you outline type allows you to work on each portion of the type as if it's a shape, which is exactly what I wanted to do. So just to see if it's worked, I've just dropped a block of white here to create the effect of a disjointed and portion here on the E. And I've done the same here with the O. So I quite like that bit of customization. I think it modernized Is this a little? And it might be the kind of element we could play on and repeat for other elements of V identity or the logo. And in fact, I've explored about on the next art board, the idea of maybe repeating that for crown to create something that's a little more distinct. So explore as many different iterations of this as you like. Try experimenting with different elements. Challenge yourself to create something that's more and more perfect until you arrive at something that's balanced. But you're really happy with. And you can see, that's exactly what I've done. I quit, keep making small little tweaks until this feels more and more coherent to me. So you can see in this version, I've actually manipulated for type. Over the top of VTE runs into V. And as I hover over these, you can see where one letter ends and the other begins. And I've kind of created this overlap here. So I did that simply by using the direct selection tool, selecting a portion of that type, and just dragging it can positioning it carefully in a wave at work. Sometimes it can be as simple as that. Sometimes you've then got to go under the microscope and fine tune it so that it flows nicely together. And then for symmetry, I've done the same here with a K. I think that really flows beautifully now into V E visa, but kind of fine tuning touches that I wouldn't do to your initial designs. I'd only do this to a concept, but I'm sure I want to use to really take it across the finish line. You don't have to customize your type to this extent. But I think if you can add some finishing touches, perhaps a kind of stylized theme that runs through the design, like this diagonal cutaway portion here that runs through v o, it runs through the crown. I think that can really tie things together nicely. And of course, branding is all about recognition. So the more unique, recognizable you can make a logo for more effectively, that's going to work for your client. And on the subjects of creating something that's effective for your client. In the next lesson, now that we've locked in our preferred design, I'm going to show you how to create an effective secondary logo and an effective sub mark soviet. You'd give your client a few more design options. 10. Creating a Secondary Logo & Submark: In this lesson, we're going to look at some of the principles behind creating an effective secondary logo and an effective sub mark. And this can be really simple and really straightforward. So let's dive into it. For my example here. This is my full logo lockup. I'm very happy with this. I think it looks well balanced, but there are some situations where there's just too much detail in this logo, where something more simple might be better. So I'll show you a few examples of this in action. Here's a mock-up for landing page. If this brewery had their website, and you can see this secondary logo fit so much better than before Bajaj logo width placed in this narrow band at the top of our header. You can see from a practical standpoint, it's useful to arm your client with something we're able to use that best fits each situation. Here's another example and perhaps a compliment slip, or it would be the same case on the letterhead. Again, a slightly simplified secondary logo, where it has a more horizontal shapes that can fit into or feel better balanced in spaces that are bad to logo struggle. And one last example we'll consider. This is a mock-up of a wax seal. So for brewery wanted to use something like this. You can see for full batch logo, it works and for circular shape certainly fits V, the circular space we have on the wax seal here. But look how much better. Something like that would work. It's clearer, it's simpler. It doesn't look messy because there's lots of space. And this is using just the portion of the logo to create a sub mark is still recognizable, it's distinct, it's on-brand. So this is what we're aiming to create. Let me share with you my thought process for getting there so that you're able to create something similar for yourself, for a standalone emblem or perhaps brand mark. That can be the most distinct portion of your logo. And you can simply pull that out and provide that to your client by itself as a standalone graphic. There's not really enough here for this to be a sub-market for me. So I created this, which uses B O from the center of our logo along with that Mark. And I think that's just distinct and unique enough. That's really a perfect representation of a brand. Now this isn't something you'd ever use if you could use for full of a secondary version of the logo. But there are some places if you think of a favicon for a website, or sometimes even for a profile picture for your Snapchat, your Instagram is such a small area, but you can't effectively read the full logo. You just want a hint of a company's identity and then it's going to be linked to a profile page or somewhere that you can find more information anyway, sub mark is really, really useful design tool to equip your clients with. And you can create it as simply as that, just by pulling out one or two distinct elements. And lastly, our secondary logo. I've created this using components of a main logo, but they're actually presented differently. So we have the same font for brewery. But this time I've actually presented this on a straight line. There's no curve to that at all. And although the crown sits just above the main evoke logo type in our full logo. In this version of position of a crown in the center, which I think is quite effective. And I've made sure the angle of that slash, it lines up nicely between V0 and the crown in turn ties in with our sub mark. So when you look at these elements together, There's a really nice synergy there. They feel coherent. It feels like you're looking at the same brand. There's no mistaking whether this is a different brand, but this gives a great deal of versatility to your client. So try to do the same. In principle, try to pick out key recognizable elements of your main logo. Use that to create a sub mark and for the secondary logo. And think about orientation. If your primary logo fits really nicely into a square or a circle, try to come up with something, perhaps using less of your elements. I've removed my tagline. I've chopped away v, established, refine it down to just the core components that are needed and create an alternative. So please do that with your own version as part of a class project. And when you're finished, join me in the next lesson, we're finally we explore color palettes and we'll add some color to this design. 11. Explore Colour Palettes: So for me, for black and white version of this logo is quite beautiful and it works really well. But that's a testament to strong design. I think if your design can work well enough in black and white. But when you introduce color, it can look at absolutely incredible. And sometimes that can allow you to fine tune the tone and positioning so that it really sits at where your client will want it to. I'm going to share with you my process for first of all, finding color inspiration. And then I think it's really important to apply color the right way. If I show you a sneak peek, some of my art boards below, I feel there's definitely a right and a wrong way to apply color. Sometimes you will see color palettes suggested on Instagram, on Pinterest, but applied for wrong way. Even with the most beautiful color palette. It doesn't work. It doesn't speak well for the brand. And an understanding of a way you can employ and bring color together really help elevate your design. So first, let's look at our inspiration. Now, I like to put together some very rough, you could call them moodboards, if you'd like, with related imagery, depending on the brand I'm working on. So for this example, because it's a brewery, we've got barrels, bits of v. Ok and would be used in the brewing process. Sometimes it was actually metal barrels used in that process. This is a fictional brand, so I've got a little bit more freedom there. We've got some imagery of beer actually being served and enjoy it. And then here I've got some imagery with hops, with wheat, barley, the kind of grain, but it's used to produce it. And I've deliberately picked out imagery that shares a common theme in terms of color. As I'm looking for this imagery, now, I am deliberately looking to pull things out that fall within a certain color palette. And while this won't work for every type of industry, work with where it does work. I think it's really effective and it can help you to pick colors that just resonate deeply with a brand you're working on. So because these are rough mood boards, I will literally drag and drop some of these different elements. I'll shrink elements so that they have less visual impact. And then I might enlarge other elements. They take up more of a board. And I'll keep doing that until I come up with something like this, a few palettes, but I'm happy with having a range from quite roughly on the page. I drop these little almost swatch pins in. It's simply a circle with a white stroke on the outside. And if you have one of these selected, hit the I key. To bring up your eyedropper. You can click to grab the sample, the color you've sampled from any portion of the images on this page. When I stroke from war at the end. So that's how I achieved that. When I've got each of those pins selected. And I'm happy with the way it's looking. I'll go to my swatches panel. And if you click on Create New Color Group, when you've got a selection like that made, you can actually create that color group from your selected artwork. And when you hit Okay, you get a nice neatly arranged folder with the colors you've sampled. And I use that just at the bottom here, obviously excluding the white that I use for the edge of a pin to illustrate V proposed color palette. So it's as simple as that. I'll show you another example. This one I really like. So you can see I've not pulled any of the O key wooden brown tones. This one we've got a really fresh hockey green, darker olive green here. And then we're pulling on the fresh modern metallic colors from the metal barrels here. So those are the palettes. How would you then use this in your art work effectively? Well, if I take us across to our art boards here, and I can show you just 2. First of all, show you how this could be employed in the wrong way. If I take this, here is an example. This is my palette. And let's say I tried to use the brown as we background color. And then I've used with green as we accent on top of it. And it may be here. I tried to use a lighter shade of brown. It looks like a very muddy mess. There's not enough contrast, there's not a nice, neutral background color. It really is possible to use a great color palette in the wrong way. So if I undo and we come out to the palette I've selected, you'll notice in this iteration. I haven't actually used any of her brown tones yet. I really like the kinda crisp simplicity of this soft black together with an off-white and this really nice neutral green, which works equally well on a dark and a light background. Another iteration from that same palette, this time, we've used for Brown, and again we've got a neutral, off-white and a dark background. It could be the evil version is, et cetera, acceptable. It could be that perhaps that's the overall brand color palette, what you're seeing on the screen now, but on the logo itself, one or the other of the accent colors, perhaps not the two of them together. And this is why it can be so hard to work on brand identity if you focus only on the logo design. But brand identity as a whole is part of a much bigger picture. Where you might have brochures, websites, and lots of collateral where you need quite a broad, diverse color palette, being the logo itself. If you try to use every color from the color palette, you can really spoil the look and feel. I'll zoom out and we'll go across to show another example. So this was using the other palette. I put together. This one I really like. It's got such a fresh, modern feel to it. This is quite a cool slate gray. It's almost a cross between a navy blue and a slate gray tone. And it really works nicely against this green. And I've just used that green sparingly to make the focal points pop. I've treated the same elements so that kind of lends itself to the consistency of the brand. And you've got a version that can work equally well on a light or a dark background. So I really liked that. And a different way you could implement this. I'm not as keen on this version, but this feels far more almost organic, natural, healthy. And you can do something like this if a sufficient contrast, this is almost a monochrome effect, where you've got the lighter green and then the darker green behind. If I select these and just edit that color to be a little brighter. You can see that that works a bit better practically. If I went for something along these lines, I'd probably have to brighten up the lighter green, just service sufficient contrast. And of course you don't have to use any color. You might want to create a version that's simply uses off whites and soft blacks, which for luxury brands, certainly a possibility. When we look in the next lesson, free mockups we create when we look at this brand actually living and breathing in the real-world, you notice there are many uses and where color won't come into it, the logo might be engraved or stamped, foiled. So while we certainly might want to use a strong color palette to enhance the brand and to aid in brand recognition. For core of it needs to be strong enough that it could work without any color at all. That was why we began this process and working on this in black and white. So have some fun. Try to use either my technique or your own techniques to source some color inspiration and put some pallets together and then try to use them in a balanced, sparing way. If you have four or five colors in a palette, you don't have to use every one of them. Perhaps just two or three, would be more of an enough to give you some nice balanced options. So have some fun adding color to your own work. And then join me in the next lesson where we're really breathe life into this by creating some mock-ups together. 12. Create Mock ups: So in a way, this is kind of a bonus stage when you finished for projects and you're ready to save out the different components of your logo for sub mark the secondary logo. But I think our projects never complete before you really test for where it's going to live and breathe in the wild, which some mockups. So I'm going to share with you a series of mockups I've created for my sample brand for evoke brewery. And then we'll look at a few places. I recommend that you can download some good mockups for free. I don't think you need a tutorial on how to create mock-ups. It's quite straightforward and they often come with instructions. But picking something that really feels appropriate fits be industry are designing for. So like this here, this could be something they used in the brewery, maybe for tastings to take out a small selection of bottles. This could easily be a traditional swing sign at the front of a brewery. This is something that they might use for their packaging or part of a bag. A beautiful lever embossed mock-up here. Maybe this could be in front of a presentation folders that tells you about the brewery in its history. Sometimes our mockup, just for landing page, for a website, that's quite nice, perhaps not the most appropriate for a brewery practically by really light for craft card and wooden tones that vis to show off the potential use of v sub mark a comp slip using the secondary logo there, just to show the way all these elements can be used interchangeably. And finally, a close-up, that landing page. So I'm really happy with the mockups I've put together. I think they really show off and look and feel of this brand and its potential. But where can you look to find some mockups for free? Will Graphic Burger is a slight I've used for quite a long time. They have a pretty well curated and searchable collection of mockups. And over the years we've updated this quite frequently and there's quite a nice selection and range on this website, I quite like using the search feature and seeing what they have. Another site I've started using more recently is for graphic TM.com. And they have a freebie section which you can link to from their navbar and visa freebies that they're happy to give away if you want to purchase premium mockups. And those are very, very good as well. So there's a few places to get you started. Of course, you can have your own search and you can see what's out there. So have fun. Showcase your brand actually living and breathing and showcase for weigh your logo would be used and be sure to save those out because those are really the hero pieces. But I would display prominently in your portfolio. So have fun creating mockups. 13. Conclusion & Thanks for Watching: Well done. If you're watching this, it means you should have an impressive new logo for your portfolio, for confidence to offer a bad style of logo design and some transferable skills that you can hopefully apply to other projects you work on in Illustrator. So if you've enjoyed this class, if you found it valuable, please be sure to check out my other classes on Skillshare and perhaps you can expand your portfolio even further. It can be really useful as a designer to showcase a versatile range of logo types, from monograms to word marks. Also, please don't forget to upload your creations in the class project area. I always really enjoy looking at what students have been able to create by following along. Feel free to leave a review if you've enjoyed this class. And please be sure to follow my profile so that hopefully I can see you again in the next one.