Transcripts
1. Introduction: Minimalist type only
logos can be an elegant, effective solution
for many brands. But one of the
challenges we face as designers is ensuring
that the logo, while simple, is unique. So how can you
effectively customize the type only logo
without adding unnecessary elements or
spoiling the simplicity. The balanced. Well, a method I've used many times now and I've
actually fallen in love with He's adding ligatures and swashes to serif type faces. So it means you get to
stand on the shoulders of some incredibly
well-balanced Sarah for bespoke from in a
way that actually enhances the overall aesthetic. Fast. Once you know what you're doing, it's actually quite an
easy trick to employ. But as always, for a few tricks to getting
this just right. So stay tuned and I'll show you exactly how to do
that in this class. My name is Jason Miller. I'm a freelance graphic designer from london. London based. I've had the privilege
of working with clients from Hong Kong to New York, to Australia, even been freelancing for
over 12 years now. And the last six years, this has been my sole
source of income. So there are some
great little hacks that make all the difference to pulling this effect off without pulling your
hair out in the process. So this will be an abbreviated version of
a full design process. I'll share these tips
with you as we run through some example projects
from start to finish. These tips are going to
include best-practice, pairing and balancing very
different form elements. And understanding how to
combine these in a way that follows the original
form, that feels natural. And of course, lots
of time-saving hacks. So I'm ready for this. When you're ready,
let's get started.
2. Class Project: Our class projects, if possible, try to follow along and
use the tips I'm showing you in this class on your
own sample projects. Now this could be
something made up but you plan to use in your
portfolio later. Or it could be a
real life project you decide to follow along with. As we go. I'll be showing you the
process I've used for some real-world
projects worked on. But we'll focus particularly
on this example for the orchid and natural
spar and wellness center. So please make sure
you come up with your own fictional
brand or you've got a real-world
project ready to use. You can actually test and try these techniques as
you are learning them. And please don't try to
recreate the orchid, one of the other real-world
projects I show you. And because these are
real-world clients, so you won't be able to use those examples in
your portfolio. Make sure you create something
that's unique to you. Now for real goal of this
class is to teach you some techniques
that you can use to open up different
design possibilities. Now you may not use these on every project you
work on in future. I'm sure you won't.
Definitely for some of your projects
and you will look, you'll see a good fit. And I think these
techniques will open up a whole new range of design
possibilities for you. So when you are ready, please fire up Adobe Illustrator
or similar software, and I'll see you in
the first lesson.
3. Examples The Good: In this first lesson, the goal is to show
you some examples, both good and bad, to show you exactly the kind of thing we're
trying to achieve. And if you look at this example, this is the primary brand I'm
going to take you through the process I use to experiment and Vint
to create this effect. It's very subtle. We're looking at just a ligature here that connects
we are to the sea. But in a really interesting
kind of sophisticated way, we're not trying to shoehorn this effect onto every letter. Sometimes less is more. So it may just be one or two of those characters that you
would apply this effect to, something else you can do. And we'll also cover this
in the scope of the class, is joining characters together where we're just
extending serifs. Or perhaps in other cases just pulling characters
closer together. So you can see V,
H, I, and D here. We've taken the serifs
from the H and the D. We've connected them
to create this effect. And that runs through
what would have been serifs along the top of VI, if that doesn't make sense
to you now, don't worry, I'm going to take you
through exactly what I did and how you
could do the same. But this is one, I think, good example where we've created something that looks
a bit more unique and visually engaging by creating these small little
customizations. So let's show you
this in a different context where we are, That's v, rather beautiful
logo for your kids. And then a sub mark that kind
of follows the same idea. So again, looking for these opportunities to use
a little ligature just to create some
extra connectivity between these elements. This is another example and
again, very subtly applied. So in this case, it's just letting this
elegant leg of the R, R1 emerge into the a. We're in the original font. That wouldn't be the case. When this idea here, I think this was
already embedded into the core font as a
glyph, as an option. But this I really like instead
of just your standard L, L, We've got a baby el
sitting within a larger one. So this is kind of
tasteful customizations that mean if someone were to
look at your client's logo, it doesn't look like you've
just selected a font, adjusted spacing and that's it. There's kind of an extra bit
of flair you are adding. So I think this is really useful for brands
that for a moment. Here it is again, with a
slightly different context. This is another one. I really like this, this time. I'll zoom in a little
so you can see better. This time our ligature actually
connects two characters. So it joins and intertwines
with both the I and V N. So a little bit of
customization there. Again, we're going to
show you how to do this in later lessons, but this is the kind of subtle classy effects
we're looking to achieve. Here's the same logo
in different contexts. You can see that works really nicely against that
textured background. Here's another example. So again, very subtle. This time we've added
a ligature to VC. So of course the
original Serifs see would've ended as with
top part of a C does. Here. We've played around. We just got this simple
ligature joining it to the 0. But for me that adds a
real touch of class. And you can see the
results again here. Really stunning. In this case, maybe I
could afford to look to make just one
more customization. But as it happens, this works very nicely. I'm a firm believer in not over complicating just
for the sake of it. Here you can see some
of the brand board that was created in
different contexts. So super simple logo. But when you bring the
whole brand identity together and you've got
such a solid core logo. These are the possibilities, the effects you can create. And lastly, let's look at
another very subtle example. This is for evoke brewery. I actually worked
on this project in one of my other
Skillshare classes. But a similar idea, we've linked and customize
with serif of v0. So it joins together
with a V and then the K to V E. So not necessarily adding a
different ligature here, but it's the same
concept is looking for ways we can kind of pair
certain characters together. And customizing a
subtle tasteful way. And varied is again shown
in a different context. I'm not the only one. I'm doing this. I'll show
you a few online examples. This one was a bit
of work in progress, I think type customization
this designer was exploring, this is let herself,
She's amazing. You can follow her on
Instagram if you want. This is exactly the kind of thing we're exploring
in this video. These opportunities to look
for interesting ways to customize and perhaps link
certain characters together. Someone else I've found
online who uses this quite frequently and to great
effect is a toke studio. So again, you can check them out online for living and social. Great ideas for inspiration. But this is a really
subtle example here for their logo tumble. They've just got part of VM. We've accustomed ligature
running into V B, but it's really effective. And if you were to compare
side-by-side this version, and then just plain vanilla
logo typed out in that font. Will this little customisation really does make
all the difference? Another example from
the same studio, this is for this
logo sat in line. And this time we've added a ligature from a part of the a. It wouldn't naturally flow. I don't always look for
these opportunities myself, but they've made it
work quite well here. And it elongates the
crossbar of the t. So again, just gives that
little custom flare. Finally, studio Blanche,
she's a fantastic designer, followed her for a while now. And in this project
she's not used it for the main logo type. She's left fat as it
is, which is beautiful. But when it comes to the
sub mark, she's got the 0. And then a custom ligature
running here into the B, which is super effective,
works really nicely. And you can see how
well the simple logo foundation's work as you build the branding
out around them.
4. Examples The Bad: So those were some
good examples. Now for the bad examples, you can find plenty of
bad examples online. But I'm not gonna do that. I don't believe in calling other designers
out on field work. So instead, I'm going to jump into Illustrator
where I've kinda deliberately created or
in some cases pulled out bits of my exploratory work where it hasn't come
together nicely, where it's not a good fit. So often before I come
to the diversions, but work, I'll explore lots
of different pairings. In some cases, it just
wouldn't work at clashes. I think these are
some good examples of clashes in exploring this brand. So for low versus London, if you look at just for
style of the Serif font, we've got and then V
script style font. But I'm exploring
options to pair with it. Something like this for
me just wouldn't work. This has got a very relaxed, almost hand-drawn feel to it. And it clashes completely with the style of
this kind of classic, luxurious typeface we have
for the rest of the logo. If we look here, the same is the case if we were looking for ways of working that into
the beginning and the end, something like
this doesn't work. And I don't think
you can necessarily swap a whole character, a whole script L or script S, and just pop that alongside
the surf characters. I think what you'll
learn in this course is what you need
to take parts of each and work from Together really carefully when
the styles match. Again here, maybe a nice idea, could we have
something that runs through the center of E0? But just in terms of a style
is a real disjoint here. Um, so again, I think this
is a good, bad example. Same with the S on the end. I just don't think this, even with a lot
of customization, I don't think this would ever sit comfortably as one logo. Here. This is interesting. This I believe is one typeface. And this is kind of a way it comes out if you
just type for brand name. They've got some
ligatures included. But for me this doesn't
quite run nicely. The L, particularly into V0, is quite a clumsy joint there. The curve of E0 is
flowing in one direction, the L is bending into it. The two don't interrupt. So that to me doesn't
work as it is. And the same with
the R and the S. This feels quite clumsy. The angles aren't quite working. So sometimes you'll
find fonts which out-of-the-box kind of try
to embrace this concept. But you've really got to, and again, we're going to look at this in a future lesson, pull this apart and
rework it and make it so the elements are flowing
together seamlessly. And here's another example. So an out of a box fonts, again, some fancy
ligatures going on. And I don't hate
the idea of this. I think it's a little too busy. So maybe you could look
at keeping some of these elements could
work quite nicely. I quite like this
ligature that comes off of a V and it encircles. That's quite cool in circles
for whole logo type. And then it comes and
sweeps background kind of comes back on itself.
That's quite nice. So maybe you could use
some of these elements. But I think just too
much going on here. And if I, let's just revert
back to a different glyph for all v. If we look Just, VL is kind of a clumsy
interaction with the a. It's kind of a nice idea, but there's vis, if I zoom in, there's this kind of
clumsy little gap where as it sweeps back round, I'd want this to maybe be
hitting the crossbar of the, a little bit of a serif
here popping out. So as we're going
to look at later, these are good ideas, but the execution, it's got to be neater and tinier than this. It's got to really feel
that it flows seamlessly. So overrule some
nice ideas I think, that are included in
this out-of-the-box one. But some customization, some
tidying would be needed. Looking Glass Studio,
that's actually a brand I worked on. And I'm just exaggerated
some of the options here so that you can
see what doesn't work. So this is quite interesting, kind of reducing the spacing and looking for opportunities to have these parts of these
characters flow together. So you can see some of this. And I haven't outlined
the font yet. Just a case of
reducing the tracking, the letter, spacing,
the kerning already. You can see in some cases it's flowing
together quite nicely. So when you outline the
font and you tidy this up, I'm not much work to do actually to get some of these
letters to flow together. But in other cases, like these two Ss, we've got an ugly gap here. So that's something
you wouldn't be able to present this as
the final logo. You definitely want to
do some tidying up. And then when you are exploring options to tighten things up, to have letters flow
one into the other. Just something to be
aware of is legibility. So if you were to look at
this and think that's nice, I could fly over g into vL. The problem is, you've
now made it a bit unclear whether this is a G or not because we're
covering so much of it. So although you can tell
it's still a G free, some of the details we've
kind of made it harder at first glance to be
able to read that. And that's a pretty important
role we don't want to break in customizing a logo. Legibility is an absolutely key. And then we'll look at
just a few more examples. So kind of along the same lines. Can you tell that the
first few letters or MIR? You can, even though we've
merged these together, I think the m is quite clear. You are, is quite clear, but you still find
yourself having to look just a little
harder to make out. But that's an I. So that's something
to bear in mind. Love for wavy or a come together the a and
b, That's nice. No legibility issues
where here, again, this is supposed
to end in e, l, l, e, those elbows
become quite unclear. You have to really take a
look at them to work out. Which is which because we've
merged portions together. And if I exaggerate
that a bit further, in this version,
just showing you I's L's ease used together. This is an absolute
headache to try to read because we've merged
those portions together. And it's not clear which
character is part of which. It's really difficult
to read that. So that's a potential mistake or bad example to look out for. So I hope these examples
have been helpful, both for good and for bad. And some of the mistakes I've
warned you to look out for, we're going to
dive into those in later lessons and I'll show you some ways to work around some of these
potential problems. So now that we have an idea of the kind of thing we're
looking to create. And we're going to
have some fun in the next lesson with
some experimenting.
5. Experimenting: So experimenting and being
able to experiment with different ideas quickly is key
to this technique working. And it's a great hack for saving some time if you're
sketching ideas and you're sketching out
full logos aversion at a time that can be
quite time-consuming. If you dive in to illustrate or your preferred
piece of software. And what we're looking
at in this lesson is looking for easy wins
for quick pairings, but work and trying
to identify quickly what may or may not work
in the case of our logo. So this is an
abbreviated process. If you're actually designing
a new logo from scratch, you'd be looking at, when you come to choose your
serif font as your base. What does it convey, what messaging does it have? So we're kind of ignoring all of that and we're just
going to dive into, when you found some
fonts you're happy with. How can you look to pair those with these script ligatures. That's what we're looking
to do in this lesson. So in the exploration process, I would start by
taking a look at the spacing and see if you can identify letters for
kind of naturally feel like they could
flow together. So as I look at this, I think for K here, but it looks like
a great candidate. If I bring the spacing down, that kind of looks
like it could flow really nicely into the eye here. We have to take care. It doesn't end up looking like a weird n or maybe a
height h. So again, you've always got to be weighing up the kind of
legibility issues. So what you could do is
keep the spacing as it was. But I'm just going to roughly
draw this with a brush. Look to elongate the leg of
the k. And that will give you the desired effect without spoiling the spacing
and the kerning. And as I look across here,
another few examples. So I tighten this one
up already and that l could run nicely into the AVA in turn,
could run into the S. And perhaps even the S. If something were
added down here, perhaps that S
could run into VRS, although I think
that would need to be tidied up carefully, but starts to potentially
look a bit clumsy. But that's the
first thing I would explore with your
chosen brand name. Try that out, type
it out in a font, serif font that you like. And then start playing with
the spacing and look for opportunities where
the character is almost trying to flow into the next one and see
what opportunities you have to maybe create some
links and some joins. So that's the first
step to explore. Then we want to come across and again with your
brand name typed out. Now we want to look for opportunities to
swap either swashes. And this here is a swash. It's not joining to another
character at the moment. But it's kind of a
beautified element that's been added to
this piece of type. You often see it
used in calligraphy. So we're looking for
opportunities to either add one of those swashes
or ligatures. Ligatures are basically
elements used for joining. So if I type out
usually in lowercase, my logo name, and I'll
pick a script style fonts. See if I can find a good one. Then I'll need to change
the spacing to zero. You'll see examples
of ligatures. So from the K to be I
want the I to the n, from the end to V G. So we're trying to
use that concept, but with uppercase type and Serif characters rather
than script characters. So we're kind of
pairing two techniques together to create
something that's unique. So these are the opportunities
we're looking for. And sometimes like e.g. the lowercase g is really different to be
uppercase, as is v, n. So that's maybe not a great opportunity there
because they're so different. But in other cases, for k, that's very similar to the leg of the uppercase
K that we have here. So sometimes looking
at a few examples in lowercase script can point
you in the right direction. It can give you some
ideas you could venues on your uppercase font. So I'd recommend doing that. Type out your brand name in
at least a few script fonts, and then type out just
individual letters using an uppercase
version of a character. So e.g. if I type out V 0, K, and there are certain
fonts but come with a rich range of swashes
and ligatures and decorative elements using just these individual
uppercase characters in a font that's going to include some
of those swashes and ligatures were kind
of looking for opportunities to maybe
pair elements together. So VL straight away,
That's quite nice. Perhaps there's something
we could do there without much
customization. Actually. You won't go in and
fine tune and try to merge those two fonts
together just yet. Just leave one portion
overlapping the other, and then move on and look
for other opportunities. So in this brand
I was working on, I'll kind of show you
the before and after. You can see this was
V base logo type written out in this font. And I've decided to join
VR to VA for a to b. And then we've got
these two nested L's, which looks quite nice. So these are two ideas
we're looking for. Is the brand name for the orchid just typed out in
that base fonts. And then again, you
can see I've typed out the r. I was looking
for ways to join vet to the see a few different
script style type faces. And again, we're
just looking for opportunities to
pair these together. So if you have them
a similar size, you can literally superimpose
one on top of the other and try and get a
sense for what might work. And I think this was
the version here. If I fought, had some potential. So I really, I really
liked the idea. And this is how I
would leave that as a concept and then
move on to explore more. So we're just trying to quickly give ourselves some ideas, some options to pick
from this stage. And ultimately that's
going to be a result. That's what I aim for. I break and I'll show you how to do this in a future lesson. I break this character apart and we're using
just proportion we want. Then we're swapping it in for a portion of the
existing character. So creating something
new as a result. So in your case with
your class projects, do that for your
chosen brand name. Look for opportunities to
pair characters together, to add swashes, to add ligatures for all those kind
of ideas down on art boards. And when you found
one you'd like to explore and leave it and
move on to find another. When you feel you've
got a few to work with. Join me in the next
lesson where we'll take a closer look at making
ligatures join naturally.
6. Looking for Natural Ligatures: Following on from
our previous lesson, where we've hopefully collected some ideas we'd like
to explore further. We're now going to
look at how to ensure these ligatures and these
perhaps swashes were using. They look natural and
they flow nicely. So in this example here, I'll be working on this piece of logo type for the
Kimberley collection. And you can see this is a K. I've pulled out script style K, and I really liked the
idea of swapping this for the leg of the k and having to interact with VI and
possibly even be n, If I can make that
loop round far enough. Also potentially VL, I fought, it looked like a
nice opportunity. So you can see I've
just left from here, from my exploration stage, kind of superimposed
over the top. But now is where we're going
to take a closer look. We're not going to
outline the fonts and actually show you how to start merging these
elements together just yet. But we are going to talk about, I guess, an idea of
what might work. But it's got the
potential to flow naturally with one that hasn't. So in this example here, I think this has got
good potential to flow naturally because we've got thin elements of
our serif typeface that's in the background. And if we just isolate
the script for a second, this has also got some
very thin elements. There's kind of a similar style. If this were a really
bulky scripts, then perhaps this
wouldn't work so well. But I think we compare the fin elements of
this script with the thin elements of this serif typeface and make
those work together nicely. So if we take the L here, Example, if I tried to merge it, this kind of position here, maybe cut away and have VL start from this position here to
match the script version. But it's going to feel quite disjointed with the
rest of the logo. So I would try to position
it may be here at the bottom and try to keep
for base of this serif. Maybe you could include
the loop and then definitely includes this
long sweeping section here. But other parts I
would erase I would erase all of this portion away. We'll show you
that in a bit more detail in a future lesson, we're actually going
to break apart, outline, and show you
some techniques for quickly and effectively merging different
portions together. But if I jump ahead to show you the end result
that I'm looking for. This has a really natural
looking flow to it feels like that k could be one kind
of original character. It doesn't feel like we've taken two separate characters and forced them together
at which we have them. From the ideas you've
explored and pulled out, try to find those that have the potential to work
together naturally. That's quite hard without
knowing where you're going to know what
you're looking for here. So if I show you another
iteration of this, this is the kind of
direction I developed it. I actually had this leg
of a case whooping. And it connects both the n and VI in a really
natural feeling way. I feel that kind
of combines V's, these two different styles quite nicely and
quite naturally. And if we jump across and we kinda show you with the brand
colors applied, this has a really nice, elegant feel to it. Simple customization. And then taking that
same kind of concept, we've used that to
create a sub mark. So the C taken an enlarged
from the word collection, paired with this
kind of original K. And the two connect together
really nicely about forms, a lovely sub-model symbol. Let's look at v orchid example. So here I've literally
typed out each of the characters in a script font, but I felt paired quite nicely. Again, looking at
the narrowest we're finished portion of
a serif typeface. I felt that had the
potential to flow naturally into portions
of this script typeface. So you've got to look
for something that has maybe similar
weight or contrast. So this is an idea I had, but I didn't go ahead
with in the end. But looking at about 0, it
kind of gave me this idea. Could I do something similar? Have you owe loop round into VR? Now as you can probably see, I've just drawn
really roughly using the brush tool and feel
free to do that when you're fine tuning
your exploration work just to see if an
idea has potential. Grab the brush tool. The shortcut is B. And I'm literally just even with a mouse that I'm
using at the moment. Just kinda draw freehand
and see what you think. I set for brush tool up. So it has a fair bit
of smoothing applied, which I find helps if you're
not using a graphics tablet. But feel free to do that. Again, it's faster than
sketching the whole thing out by hand at this stage
is helping us to explore what might work quickly. I've been here, I wondered
if I could do something. Looks a little
messy, overlapped, but we're looking just
at the leg of VR. And this of course is what I
eventually decided to use. I love that long sweeping leg. And there's a
version that I took forward and developed
and I'll show you how to refine that and end up with this result in a future lesson. So hopefully that gives you some idea of what
we're looking for. When I say we want
a ligature that's got the potential
to flow naturally. This is the kind of effect
that we're hoping to create. But one of the challenges
I'm sure you'll face is trying to match V slightly different
styles between the serif and the script fonts. So in the next
lesson, I'm going to share some tips with you to make matching these elements together seamlessly and that bit easier.
7. Tips for Matching the Style: Now there are a few little
tips that can make life easier when it comes to
trying to match the style. And this is the kind of
effect we're looking for. We took from an earlier video a portion of a script character, and I've broken it apart. And we're using just this leg from the are we trying to make the two merge together feeling
as seamless as possible? So the first thing
you want to look at is weight and contrast. If you look at for
weights of these portions of a font, the upright portions, very bold, very thick, where the horizontal portions are contrasted,
they're very thin. So you want to reflect that in this portion
we're adding on. And there's a few ways you
could go about doing that. I'll jump across to
another art board here. That was another nice little
touch I came to by-the-way, decided to put V inside VO. Think that's quite a nice touch. You could even match
the narrowest, lightest portion
of a serif font. And I've just drawn this by
hand using the brush tool. Just so I can illustrate to
you the difference that, that stroke weight makes. If it's very thin, we're
matching the narrowest element. And that's okay to me, that doesn't really flow nicely. It looks a little bit extreme as it jumps out of
here from the ER. But in some cases, let's say this were coming
from a narrow portion. Maybe you'd want to continue that weight all the way along. If we increase the size because it's going to look
really ugly at first. And we did something
like maybe taper it. So it starts off thick
and then it tapers down. I mean, that's okay. Potentially. So
maybe that would be one way that you
decide to balance it in this particular case is another example
I've created here. Now, this is a little closer
to what you'd want to do. So I would suggest, if you are looking to
really try to match the original style and it's
not something you can do. I'm just grabbing and tweaking. I'm the script typeface, but you've put aside, you'd want to carefully draw
over it with a brush tool. So to do that, the
shortcut is B. And just literally, if you've got the
smoothing set quite high, just draw, even with your mouse, you should be able to
follow that roughly. And you get something like that when smoothing is applied. Brush smoothing,
which is tucked away. If you look at the options
under the brush tool. Once you've got that, you're kind of free vent
to use the width tool. Now I'm going to move
this to the side just so we can focus on
it for a second. Now we've width tool selected. The shortcut is Shift W and it lives just there
in your toolbar. This won't work at first. And that's because for puff, we have at the moment, we created it using
the brush tool and our settings kinda prevent
the width tool from working. So if you look up
in your options, uniform is fine, but we have a brush definition set
to one of these presets. We need to change that to basic. But I'm going to increase
the stroke weight just so we can see
what we're doing. And you'll now see if you
go back to the width tool. You've got the option to, you can click and drag
and you're creating almost anchor points that
will affect the width. I'd suggest start
from the very ends. And as you hover, I'll zoom in a little. As you hover over an endpoint, you can see there's little, these little anchor points expanding out to the edges here. So this is where you're setting these anchor points
for the width. You can add as many as you like. You don't have to click
existing anchor points. You could click
anywhere on the path. And it kind of creates
a new point for you and you're then able
to adjust for whip. Experiment. Have a play with this tool if
you've not used it before, It's fantastic, gives you
some real fine control. You can select and drag a
point once you've created it, to move it around the path. And using this, you should
be able to mirror any kind of effect you have in
your original serif font. So in my case here, I could do something
like this if I wanted to match exactly. We've got a really
wide vertical portion to the r. Then it
goes super thin, just as it does in
the serif font. And then it begins to go wide again as it comes
back into the sea. So I've not quite fine tuned violent and made it as
neat as it could be. But hopefully you get the idea, this is what kind of thing
you'd be aiming for. So perhaps you feel
looking at that, that kind of matches the
overall style more closely. If you compare it to the
original R that we had there, we've got something
similar going on, but we're shaping the direction
we want that to flow. Personally though, if I
jump back across here, this is the version,
but I arrived at and sometimes I find a
happy medium works. So in this case, for wide
portions on nearly as wide as the portions of
the original serif font. But it does actually go to about half width as it comes to the horizontal
portion here. For me, this is via the perfect balancing
point for I've arrived at. But hopefully sharing vet
technique review means for whatever the situation,
whatever your preferences. And you've got the tools to draw a little custom portion with a brush tool if you need, then start manually adjusting the width and the contrast
so you can match the styles. Now we're actually going
to revisit that in a bit more detail
in a future lesson. And I'll also show you how
if you don't want to have to draw it out with a brush
tool, your own ligature. You can adjust and
customize from the script font we've
taken this portion from. So all of that's going to
come in a future lesson.
8. Fine Tuning: So if you're following the
process in this lesson, we're going to look at some
fine tuning techniques. So how do you create
something like this from our separate elements? And this is a starting point we're going to use
for this lesson. We'll obviously in your case,
this will be different, but I hope that
technique I show you, we'll give you some freedom
to do whatever you need to. Start linking your
characters together and seamlessly combining
different elements. So we took a little
peek at a technique in the previous lesson
of actually using the brush tool and
kinda following. Even if you're using a
mouse with some smoothing applied to give yourself a starting point and create
your own custom path. Now personally,
I'd recommend not using that technique when
you're starting out. I'm going to show
you a technique. You might find that
a little bit easier. But in some cases, you'll need to use the technique that works best
with the situation. So here's what I
think is a little easier and might
save you some time. So first of all, we want to
outline all of our type. We're gonna do that for both the base serif font
and R script style letter. But we're going to be
borrowing a portion from, and I'm going to duplicate
down just so I've still got those originals if I
need to refer back to them. And looking again at where exactly we want
to position this. And I'm gonna do
this version roughly because it can be quite
time consuming when you, when you do it precisely. But I'll kind of show you
the before and after and just roughly the technique
you need to use to do this. So with these two positioned
on top of each other, you want to select them both and use the shape builder tool. The shortcut for
that is Shift M. We have a Shape Builder. First of all, I want you
to hold Alt and start deleting away for portions of that script character
that you no longer lead. And as long as you
have an overlap as you hold Alt and you click and drag, it's going to allow
you to delete a way as simply as that. So I'm sure already you can
see how useful this tool is and why it makes this
technique such a time-saver. So as long as there's some
kind of overlap, as you hover, you can see the shape
builder identifies these are two different elements you are hoping to merge or subtract. So hold Alt and click
and just take K, you're not deleting anything
you wanted to keep. And then when you get to some
of the fine tuning points, I'm going to zoom in up here. Here there's no clear overlap. So we'd have to address this
little jacket portion that's sticking out here on the left. That's quite nice. I think
that runs quite nicely. So I leave this here. You could begin selecting anchor points and deleting away and really
fine tuning this. The only anchor
point I'm going to manipulate is this one here. Sometimes when you've
used the Shape Builder, you will have almost a
shadow who have a portion of this left from both objects
because they were overlapped. So you may have to
apply this twice. So for this top
line anchor point, just very roughly going
to put it up here. I'm going to get
rid of those curves which were attached to it by
using the anchor point tool. The shortcut for that is Shift C. So I've moved that
up out of the way. Then for this underlying shape, I'm going to simply
with a pen tool, click to remove anchor points. Bring up my anchor
point tool again, and click to remove a curve
we had applied to that. And as I zoom out, That's nice. Now let's tidy that up into
a nice smooth flowing arc. So I'm not going to give a tutorial on using the pen
tool, the anchor point. The anchor point tool. And because I think that
overlaps with other lessons, hopefully you know some of
those techniques already. If you don't find other resources to help get
you up to speed with that. But the main thing we wanted
to achieve here is just quickly using the
shape builder tool to, once we position our characters as we want them to overlap, delete a wave of
bits we don't want. And then what you can
do as a final step, select all of this together and bring up the shape
builder tool again. Shift M is click and drag. You might want to
zoom in to do this, to merge these remaining
portions together. So once you're happy, remember I had to tidy up that little jagged portion
that was sticking out. Once you're happy with that, merge together what's left? Then you have no
overlapping shapes that are going to cause
you trouble in future. Now, this here, if I merge this, I created a single shape from these two characters.
I'm going to do that. I don't see that
causing any problems. So I'm quite happy to do that. And that is now one shape. So to me that's quite a
quick and easy technique. As soon as you finish your
experimentation and you know which elements of his characters you
want to overlap. The shape builder tool
lets you delete a way and create something new
very efficiently. Now, if you wanted to find shoe, Let's say you weren't
happy with a whip. We explored before
using the brush tool, creating your own path, using the width tool. But what if you wanted to just fine tune what
you have here already? Well, again, that
comes under use of anchor points and
manipulating anchor points. So I'm not going to dive into great detail that's going to
make this less than huge. But just to quickly show you the direction you
want to head with this, if you bring up the
direct selection tool, the shortcut for that is a and click on either a
path or an anchor point. You can literally click and drag to start
manipulating these. Now, if you click a path, you'll notice it's
changing the curves, it's changing the shape. As you do that. If I undo
and I click instead, the anchor point doesn't
change your angles. So it allows you to
manipulate and drag without your angles being altered until you come to a
crunch point like this, where the handles begin
to overlap a little. So as I say, I'm not gonna
give you a crash course on using this tool and exactly what the
control handles do. But you can find that
out from other videos. But from this point here, if you did work your way along, grabbing these anchor points, you can grab a few at once. And just adding a little
more width to this. You can see that
It's quite easy to add just a little bit of
extra width if you need it. Or conversely, if you wanted to make something a
little more narrow, as I look at this, apologies if this is a
little small on your screen, I can see there's
just one anchor point here on the inside
of this curve. So if I were to select
that and drag it down, would be a very simple way
of making this portion as fun as I like without overly, without damaging the curbs and the structure of
the rest of this. So it really is easy
from that starting point to tweak and make some
further fine tuning to this. So once you're happy, particularly when you
zoom out with a wave, this looks at zoom in and
try to look for any issues, any kind of rogue anchor points or little kinks that
might be sticking out. In this case here That's
looking really good. Now something else
I'd like to do, this kind of falls under
the heading of fine tuning. You can see this is a version
I decided to take forward. I've included v inside the 0, which I really like. And ultimately I decided, rather than have this kind
of loop back on itself, which makes it to meal
a little obvious, it's a separate element. I've actually again use the shape builder tool,
deleted that way. So we just have it run
smoothly into the sea. And again, if you zoom in closely and you manipulate
the anchor points, play with the angles,
you'll be able to get that to run very smoothly. One path into another. Something I then like to
do if you haven't already, is to look at your
spacing and your kerning. Now a technique I
like to use just to kinda help me visually
balance things out, is to create little
semi-transparent blocks. And I'll drag and I'll
drop them and I'll give blocks of the same
width, the same color. So I can just
visually see if I'm aligning things to similar
widths consistently. I did a bit of fine
tuning, a bit of nudging. And it always surprises me when something looks
right to your eye. Quite often if you look
at the math behind it, it does align to rule
of thirds or to Hobbes. Usually, our eye is looking
for that consistency. So you can see I've tried to match up some of the spacing. I think it's quite nice. The distance for this ligature
kind of loops down here is equal to the space we've got
between certain elements. There's a bit of negative space on either side of the eye, which is equal to half
the height of a logo. So I use this as a bit of a grid to fine tune
and line things up. There are different
techniques you can use, but this is one I quite like. So once I've made
my customizations, I grid this up and I just see if there's
anywhere I need to fine-tune or tweak this and
something else I've adjusted. I'll come back here to highlight this is this little custom AI. So this is the original. And I've just joined
the serifs from the top and bottom of a H and a D. And when I've
created a little gap, just deleted a wave the eye. So we've got this kind
of interesting way of portraying VI here
between those spaces. Yeah, visa for fine
tuning, finishing touches. But I'm looking to make. Now I'll briefly show
you another example. I've actually focused on this as a case study in a
previous class, so you may have come across it. But for this brand, this was the original font. This is kind of a vanilla
out-of-the-box font. And I liked the idea. I liked the idea of the
LL sweeping below v 0. And they are sweeping below VS. But for me that didn't work. Whereas in this
another vanilla font, I thought it did a
slightly better job. I like for wave that kind
of caresses for bottom of the 0 and the R and S, That feels much
more comfortable. So I didn't like
this overrule font. I wanted this font. It felt a little more
Finnemore elegant, but I did want this effect. So you know where this is going. I decided to merge
the two together. First of all, show
you a bad example. If I just manipulated
with the anchor tool the existing path from
this original font. That to me looks really clumsy up maybe I could have done
a better job with it. But it doesn't feel good at all. It's not really the effect
that I'm looking for. So this is what
I'm hoping to do. This is a full
characters swapped in. I want to pair that we are
into this overrule font style. And if I scroll further down, you can see now I've literally using that technique
with the Shape Builder. I've taken that bottom portion
and I've combined it here with the top portion of
the previous l and r, and the same here
with the Lego VR. But if that looks
quite clumsy on V, Lego VR, particularly the
contrast is all wrong. So in this final version, manipulated for whip, it falls much more in line
with the original font. There we have it
to new characters which fit beautifully but taken from a completely
different font, merged together. So to me, this feels
quite seamless. So we've gone way over
time of this video. Hopefully it's been
useful for you to see some of these different
techniques you can use. In the next video,
we're just going to briefly revisit the
technique of using the brush tool to create custom paths and how
you can fine-tune and get that to
look professional.
9. Bonus Points: So I already briefly touched on this in
a previous lesson, but we're going to revisit
it because I think it can be a useful technique, especially when you're a bit more familiar with the process. And you want to really
customize and fine tune things. That technique is
using the brush tool in Illustrator or the
pen tool, if you prefer. And creating your
own custom path for manipulating that path to
create a custom ligature. In this example, this is V, final version, I created
this logo for lavas, but it would be
possible to create the same effect by creating
your own custom path. So here's one I created earlier. And to achieve
something like this, I'm going to bring this out
of a wages for the second. You want to bring
up the brush tool. The shortcut for
that is simply be. And I've used a stroke color just to make this
nice and easy to see. And if you double-click
on the brush tool, just check that your settings
have a smoothing set. I have it set almost to max. And then I give it 15 pixels. Smooth with him. Click, Okay? And you literally just
want to click and drag as carefully as
you can with a mouse, but not being too worried because we've got
the smoothing on, that gives us our
starting point. So if you're happy enough
with this, keep it. Otherwise have another try. Just draw it again. I'm gonna do that here. I've not gone quiet as low as I wanted to on the original. So that's a bit closer. And then I'm going to drag it just so we can see
what we're doing. And we're going to adjust the width in different
portions using the width tool. The shortcut for
that is Shift W. You'll notice at first
I'm not able to, It comes up with a stop
sign next to my cursor, not able to manipulate it. That's because we need to
go into settings and change the brush definition from one
of these presets to basic. Once it sets a basic, I'll now be able to manipulate
this with the width tool. I'm going to start this off
with a bit of a wider stroke. So it's easier to select. When you shift W to
bring up for width tool. And now you can see my cursor as I hover over different
points of this path. It comes up with a plus sign. So I'll start at the very end. If I click and drag, that allows me to position
a width anchor point. And I can now click and drag to manipulate the width of
that portion of the path. You don't have to follow the anchor points for the
line, for the path. You can add your own any portion you like going along this path. If I click here
and then drag out, I'm able to create a
different one there. So I'm going to drag this
existing width anchor point. I don't know if that's the
technical term for it. That's what I call it. And I'll drag it to around. They're going to bring that
down just a little bit. My endpoint, I think
this is too wide, so I'm going to
bring it back down. We're going to
create one just here to pinch for add in a little. And you can see as I
work my way along, you want to try to
achieve this using as few anchor
points as possible, because that gives you
a smoother result. But we're just working
our way along and we're trying to create the
desired effect here. I'm going to pinch
it down to nothing. So it kind of tapers
off at the end and that's it if you were
to drag that into place. So you match up the color that would achieve
the same effect, but giving you a much
higher degree of control. If you leave it as
this is a life path, then it means you could come back and you could further fine tune it at future
stages in your design, especially if you present
this to the client. And they want something
just tweaked or changed. Sometimes having that live path saved can save you some
headache and future. And Soviet advantage of that, as I said, is we're fine tuning. So this is the version
we have at the moment. It ends here, kinda just
pass mid way of V0. But actually, it might be
quite nice to extend it like this and have it run all the way almost to
the edge of V0. And that's easily possible just by dragging your anchor points. And if you wanted, you could even have it
stretched as far as the a it's completely up to you. Just have to maybe tweak and
adjust for control handles to eliminate any kinks
from elongating it. Ultimately. That's the kind of
thing you could do. Ultimately taking the time to create your own custom path. But it does give you a
higher level of freedom, although it will take longer.
10. Presentation Tips: So hopefully if you follow
it along by this point, you've now got a
finished version. Fine tune tweets adjusted of your logo that
you're happy with. Hopefully you've been able
to use these techniques and you've got some kind of
costume ligature or swash. Or you've paired
characters together in an interesting and unique way. Once you've got that, how to best present it. If you want this to
be a sample piece in your portfolio or
in this lesson, I'm going to give you just a
few quick presentation tips. This is a process. I go through it for a moment. If I want to present a
sample piece of my work, I use InDesign for this, although you could
achieve the same thing in Illustrator or even
other software suites. So first of all, obviously if this is a real-world projects, you will have developed a color palette as
part of a process. If not, try to select a
fitting color palette. And I like to present for logo, showing a few of those
different variations. So we've got the logo there and then just a simple
background illustrating, um, each of free options
for the color palette. You could adapt to this. If e.g. there were
just two options, you could do
something like that. But I think this
makes quite a nice little presentation art board to show via the intended
effect in one place. Then I think it's really
effective to show your logo. I'm kind of cut out in some solid whites against
a appropriate stock image. Now, a great place to look
for stock at the moment, royalty-free stock is Unsplash. Unsplash. And I'll kind of look
through and I'll download some fitting related images. So for your kid, this is a wellness spar. So we've got some kind of
wellness related images. Images of treatments,
plants, textures, even this texture I love because of the hot stones
you might get in a spar. I felt that makes a really
nice background picture. Grab a few stock
pitches for yourself. And then as you create
these art boards, this one here, we've just got the logo in white, centered. I've got a locked layer
contains a color overlay. If I drag that to the side, you can see I've got one
of her brand colors. And the overlay is
set, in this case, just to 30% capacity. But it means you're giving
the images like a bit of a brand related tint. And I think that can be a
really nice touch over the top. Then again, I'm just highlighting the
brand color palette. So I think these make for a really nice little
presentation graphics. They're great to share
on social media and just showcase your artwork
with a bit of context. Especially when we've created something that it's so simple. I think it really helps
to see that simplicity working along with
other brand elements. You can see we're just creating some different simple layouts, were showing portions
of the logo. In this case, a little simple sub-market I've created here, kind of using elements
from that main logo. We're just showing them
in various brand colors. There's a little step and
repeat pattern I created. Together with that stock
imagery and some heavy tints. Over-the-top, work
your way through. Feel free to use
some of these ideas. It's a simple formula I use. We've got patterns
in some places, blocks of color in others. And we just showcasing the
brand in all its glory. So once I've created these
and like this one here, this is a Photoshop mockup
to illustrate for wave, this would look printed
on a business card. Another mockup here. If you have some mockups, you are able to create this as a good place to insert those. And the end result is a really nice polished
presentation. So you're showing not just a single close-up
of logo you've created, but you're showing the way that logo would
actually live and breathe in a real-world being used in
different scenarios. So see if you can
create this yourself. Maybe create a
template so you can showcase future
projects the same way. Enjoy presenting
your beautiful work.
11. Conclusion & Thanks for Watching: So well done. If you're watching this now, hopefully it means
you've picked up lots of techniques that you can apply it to future branding projects. It also means you
will have picked up some tips and tricks to
speed that process up. And hopefully, if you followed along with
your own example, perhaps you've got
a nice new project to show off in your portfolio. So if you've enjoyed this class, please be sure to check out my Skillshare profile and have a look at my other classes. There are lots of
different forms of logo design and branding. So perhaps you could find
something else that would be useful to add to your
design repertoire. And please don't
forget to upload your own work following
this class project area. It's great to see what other designers have
been able to create using their own imagination and the techniques
used in this class. And lastly, please
remember to leave a review if you've
enjoyed this class and be sure to follow
my profile so that hopefully I can see
you in the next one.
Jason Miller, Freelance Graphic Designer
