Drawing Custom Lettering: Concept to Final Vector and Beyond

1. Trailer / Intro: Everyone, my name is Scott Biersack. I'm an illustrator and designer based here in New York City, and just moved here from Phoenix, Arizona. Today, we are outside this gorgeous garden in front of the Skillshare office. I'm about to teach you how to design a custom lettered logo type. Custom lettering is useful in situations where a brand needs something specific for a logo for advertising, for branding, whatever the case may be. Custom lettering is useful in almost any scenario, which is why it is in so high of the need. During this class, we're going to be discussing the ins and outs of lettering, what makes a good logo type, vectoring process, proper anchor point placement, the dos and don'ts of lettering in general. I'll go through step-by-step from the concepting to the sketching to the vectoring and beyond to really show you my process how to do what I do. This class is going to be perfect for all skill levels because we're going to discuss techniques and tips and tricks to hopefully speed up and perfect your design process. So if you're ready to begin designing your own custom lettered logo type, let's get started. 2. Why Design a Custom Logotype?: So, now we are ready to begin the process of designing this logotype but before we begin that process, I want to explain the difference between what a typographer is, a letterer is, or a lettering artist, and a calligrapher. So, what I consider myself as, is a lettering artist. Which means, I'll be using a pencil for this entire tutorial I'm drawing the letterforms, whereas a typographer will use existing typefaces to customize those and tweak those typefaces to fit their needs. And then a calligrapher is somebody that would write out the letterforms using like a fountain pen or something. So, for this entire tutorial we will be using the pencil. So, the question is, why design a custom lettered logo type? Well, ultimately you want something completely custom, completely unique, completely brand new to the viewer's eye, something that you've never seen before. The only way to do that is to use this pencil and create something that nobody has ever seen. So, before we get into that, we need to discuss the tools you will need for this particular project. With that we're going to be using tracing paper. This is just a role you could get a pad of tracing paper from Michael's, or wherever your art supply store might be. As well as various pens, pencils, whatever tool you think he may need for this part of the project. In this case I will be using a lot of the Tombow brush pens. They have two sides to them. The top one has a thicker nib, whereas the opposite side has a very fine point nib. They come in various colors. I always tend to use the black. I just happen to have this green one in my pencil role. Additionally, you could use a chisel tipped sharpie, or this calligraphy pen which is very similar to the chisel chip sharpie because it also has the exact same chisel tip, it is just a bit thinner than the Sharpie. So, if you're trying to be on the cheaper side, you should probably end up with a sharpie. I use a lot of Sharpies. So, here is a different nib point. The difference between this one and this, is this has a chisel and this is a round pointed nib. So, the effect you will achieve from these two different sharpies will be completely different. It depends on the lettering style of course. So, whatever your ultimate goal is, you should select that tool for the type of lettering you're going for. So, once you have all your tools ready in front of you. Get your pencils, get you the erasers, get your paper, all that stuff. You are ready to begin the inspiration and researching stage which we will get into next. 3. Let’s Do Some Research: So, for this entire Skillshare lesson, I will be designing and developing a logotype for Airbnb based out of Phoenix, Arizona. The client wanted the Airbnb to feel a little bit more commercialized, a little bit more branded. So, this logotype will be developed for that particular location. So, before I begin any project, I always write down all the content I think I may need. In this particular case, we are dealing with an Airbnb, so we want to describe the who, what, when, where, and why. So, in this instance, the who, it is an Airbnb location, what is it we're designing, a logotype for this house which is actually built in 1926. So the client wants to maintain that history. He wants to maintain that time period within this logotype. So, that will ultimately dictate what this style of lettering will look like. The when is the deadline. So, something the client said, he said he wants it within a month. Where, this particular Airbnb is located on Whitton Avenue, which is hence the name The Whitt, which is what he's calling this Airbnb. Why, like I said, he wants to make this Airbnb more commercialized. So, with all that said, you now have a general idea of what exactly you are looking for, what type of style of lettering you are looking for. In this instance, he wants to maintain the 1926 time period within this logotype. So, we will be jumping on the computer as well as going outside and searching for inspiration to get us started with this project. Jumping on the computer, I know it's in the 1920's time period. So, it just made sense to go on Google, do a quick Google Search of the 1920's advertisements which is a great resource because, generally, the advertisements around this time period were all set by hand. There is generally a lettering artist on staff creating custom lettering for these advertisements. So, referencing a lot of this stuff would be perfect for this logotype. After searching through all of this content, I'd pieced together a PEF, which I will show you all the great lettering that I discovered in this time period. So, this first one, excellent example of what a chisel tip sharpie could achieve. You can hold the chisel at a 45 degree angle to get this contrast between the horizontal stroke downward in this curve. So, a chisel tip would be perfect for this type of lettering. This lettering up top is as real nice, real intricate. It's very pointed as well with all the connecting points and the stems. Another Pepsi-Cola, this will ultimately help dictate the color scheme as well. So, the color scheme that was used in the 1920's, you can see a lot of orange, a lot of blue, some more reds. Here's another chisel tip type of lettering that you could achieve. Next, we have some ruby pencil erasers, just some more inspiration. This was all found via Google. Some nice lettering there. Another blue color scheme, blue and white. Next, the client had mentioned that he wants the lettering to be possibly gold leafed onto the door. So, in this photo example, there's John Downer applying some gold leaf to this window. So, he was trying to achieve this type of look with The Whitt. So, I grabbed a couple more examples of what gold leaf would look like just to show the client what exactly he's looking for, and hopefully, be on the same page with him. More examples of lettering. In this particular example, the client had also mentioned that he really wanted to show this horseshoe shape in the logotype as well. I'll get into that a bit later, but I was also looking for horseshoe references because, as you'll see in later images, the foundation of this Airbnb had horseshoe embeddings in the cement. But you'll see that a bit more of that a bit later. Next was this photo I took myself of this sausage house which is right down the street from the Airbnb location, and the script up top is another perfect example of the lettering that could be achieved for this logotype. Next, we have the actual location. So, in this example, going onto location is almost necessary for the design of this logotype, because you want to get a feel for what this place looks like, who's staying there, what the house actually feels like if it was built in 1926, but since he renovated it, it feels incredibly modern, really cozy, really quaint. There's a front view of the house. You can see all the changes and updates he made. Real nice modern furniture on the inside. This is what I was talking about, the horseshoe embeddings in the foundation of the house in the back. So, I took a photo of those two different horse shoes. So, you can later reference that as well with the logotype. Another horseshoe shape on the side of the street. He incorporated this barn and he also mentioned that he wanted to incorporate this logotype on the side of this barn door and casing. He wanted to paint the logo type on the side. So, that's another thing to keep in mind with your project. You need to understand where this logotype will live, what it's being used for, how small, how large. So, you need to keep in mind all those things when you're designing. So, now that we have all this online research done, let's head outside to find some additional resources and inspiration for your project. 4. Analyzing Your Surroundings: So, for this portion of the class, we're going to be finding inspiration and resources from things around you. So we're out here on the streets in New York and we're going to just walk up and down Elizabeth Street to find some inspiration from some of these buildings whether it is architectural, a painting, anything and everything to get you inspired, to get you ready to prepare for the project. So let's get started. So, something like this is perfect to get you inspired because you can see all the hand-painted intricacies such as the swoop of this drop capped S or the angle of this A, or even the fact that may use what looks like some gold paint to help the contrast between this brown metal. Something that instantly caught my eyes because it is hand-painted. Stuff like this is unique in its nature and it's perfect for this type of project. I mean, that type up there is gorgeous because you can see just how old it is. It was definitely painted as well by a sign painter, and then weather and everything just took care of it and weathered it away. You can see the texture in all the letterforms and it gives it a nice rustic hand-painted feel, which is another perfect example of inspiration that we're looking for for this type of project. Just anything and everything to get you inspired for what you're about to embark on. So, basically, with this one, I mean, the intricate details alone is what caught my eye because you don't see something like this in this day and age anymore. Obviously, this building is probably from the early 1900s, and that's the type of work you would have seen in the early 1900. So, it's a nice example of the history of where it came from and it's still standing to this day. So, finding something like this, just getting a photo of it on your phone and then using it as reference later is perfect. I mean, you might not even use it for this particular project, but it could come in handy later on for another project later on. So, it's always nice to have a collection, like a library of photos to reference. So, another example right here is, I always try to incorporate borders into some of my pieces, but something as awesome as this archway right here is another example of little details that you could incorporate into some border that you're about to create for, like it could be for this logo, it could be for something else as well. But like these little floral designs are another element that you could incorporate into what you're about to create. I mean, that's pretty sweet. Somebody use the environment to create a piece of art using what looks like a shoe string or just regular string, and it's almost like custom graffiti for this fence using string. If you back up, you can see the depth. I can make out an H, that's all I got. It's like a slab, serif H right there and then the rest is just, I'm not sure. It's still really cool. I've never seen anything like that before. This is it. This is the bee's knees right here. This is the stuff. I mean, it's definitely a stencil. But anything obey-related just instantly it catches my eye because of the intricacy and all the detail work that he puts into it. Some of it looks hand-painted, too. If you get a close up shot, it's like you can see he went back in and touched it up with a paint brush or something to really brighten up those colors. So, after you walked around your city and you took photos of all the inspiration, take those photos and upload them to the project page. I'm looking forward to seeing what inspires you. 5. Rough & Dirty Sketches: So, at this point, we are going to begin really quick, really fast sketches of whatever this logotype may be. So, for me, I'm going to be writing out The Whitt over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over until you have pages and pages of what appears to be a crazy person writing on a piece of paper but I promise it will be beneficial to you because we'll deconstruct a lot of these and determine which one is the best and why. So, before we get into that, I want to discuss utilizing shapes to compose your composition. For example, you could use an arching baseline such as this to write in whatever your logo type may say. The Whitt. Always referencing your materials is nice, in which case we are referencing the Packard script of the Motor Cars which has a really nice upward bass line. So, again, utilizing that baseline and then writing really quick, really fast. It doesn't matter what these letters look like because we will be ultimately customizing it from there or maybe it's just a straight horizontal bass line. Just writing really quickly as fast as you can. Maybe try holding the pencil a little bit higher to try and get a different look and feel. Hold it really close towards the tip of the lead, maybe the letterforms will change every time you write, because every time you write it over and over your letter form such as this W over and over, it's different. So, this bowl opens up. This one loops across. There's so many ways to write one letterform. So, that's why writing it over and over and over and over until you find that perfect combination of letters is pretty much what we're looking for here. So, after all of these iterations, I wrote it, who knows, hundreds and hundreds of times, trying to figure out what W would work best. Always referencing the material once again, referencing this car. I reference this Carter's script at the bottom of this what appears to be a laundry advertisement. They have a really nice script logo with a horizontal bass line which is what I was trying to achieve throughout most of these logo type rough sketches and ultimately, after all of these sketches were complete, I like to finalize it down to three concepts to then finalize further. So, in which case I selected this. I always number them. This was number two. Number one is right up here. I really liked how this vertical stroke hugged the H and the E, so I wanted to utilize this rough sketch as well as the really harsh slope that was going on in this really quick concept up in the top then the bottom right. This was more of the upright straight horizontal bass line. Another real quick and dirty sketch. Then number three was drawn after I referenced the monarch ad for this automobile. I saw the interesting characters in the counter forms of the O and the A. I wanted to somehow evoke that same style with this concept sketch here and I kept a lot of the letterforms more upright on a horizontal base line and trying to determine where I would fit in Phoenix, AZ because the client wanted to ultimately show where this Airbnb was going to be located. So, once you have your three concepts selected, take all of those concepts, scan them into the computer and we are going to further work with them in Photoshop in the next video lesson. 6. 3 Concepts to Further Edit: So now that you have all of your concepts scanned onto the computer, we're going to essentially create a new Photoshop document. I always set it up to paper and a half by 11, which is what I have set up here. We have all of our concepts here on the same board, I'm going to turn all of them off except one. What I like to do, I like to work really big. This is a preference thing, but I just scale it all the way up until it fills the entire canvas and we are going to do that for all of our concepts. All right. Now, that we have all those scaled up and ready to print, go ahead and print those off because we will be using them along with the tracing paper to finalize them and perfect them to the ultimate final piece that we will have at the end of this lesson. So, now we have all these printed out. They are two scale of 8.5 by 11 piece of paper and we're going to begin finalizing these with the tracing paper, one at a time. Pick whatever one you would like to finalize first because ultimately the client wants to see three options, which is why we selected three concepts to finalize. So, rip off a piece of tracing paper and make sure you're constantly referencing that inspiration in reference material you gather because you want to obviously try and fit the style and look of one of these pieces you're hopefully referencing. But before we get into the drawing, I want to discuss a couple of terms and those terms we'll be using throughout this lesson; Color, contrast, kerning, rhythm, speed, and angle. There are a couple others that I may mention but these are the ones that you will constantly be paying attention to. Color, in this case is the balance between the positive which is what the letter forms are taking up and the negative space, which is the area around every letter form. Next, will be the contrast and that would be the stroke width and how a vertical downward stroke would be thicker than your thin upward stroke such as this h. So, you want to think about the contrast between your thicks and your thins. Next kerning, that would be the spacing between your letterforms. So, it is really rough sketch. I know that this w and this h are way too close together. So, as you're tracing you will draw your h or draw your w, you'll draw your w first. You'll move that tracing paper over just a tad to turn your w in your edge and you'll go ahead and draw that in. So that's what kerning is if you didn't know that already. Rhythm, that is the balance and the progression between each letterforms. So in this example, this letterforms is rather large. This letterforms is about a medium size and then small, large again, and then another medium. So, I like to portray that rhythm with circles or squares, you can visually show the rhythm in a letterform and how that letterform is moving along the baseline, it's dictated upon many things, but ultimately it is the letterform shape and where it is lying on that baseline. So, in this particular instance we want a straight baseline so the rhythm is going to be relatively low and we want that to feel a bit bounced as well. So we've got a large, medium, small, large medium, I think that's a great rhythm we've got going on there. So keep that. Speed, speed and angle are relatively similar. The angle will change depending on however you want this logotype to look. So, if we want this logotype to be a bit harsher of an angle, you could change this h to be more upright, or signing more slanted, this h will be a bit more slanted if you wanted to change the angle, as well as, the i, the t and that changes the entire look and fill of the letter form if everything is looking like it's falling like this or you could slant it backwards. You can make it more upright, make the h a bit straight, and again, that will change the entire look and fill of this letterform. So, these core things will change the look and fill of the entire logotype as you begin sketching throughout this process. So, those are the things you want to be aware of. So, if you keep sketching, changing the angle, changing the contrast maybe this is much thicker, maybe this is a very thick downstroke and a very thin hairline upstroke, and again, changing that contrast very thick, very thin. So whatever you decide to do, just make sure you keep everything consistent throughout the entire logotype. So if you do this sort of very thick and very thin contrast throughout, you need to carry that throughout the rest of the logotypes. So, this edge needs to have the same weight, the same look and feel, every letter needs to relate to one another. All right. So, let's get a new sheet of tracing paper if you need one, if not, keep using the same one. We're going to start using the tools that I mentioned earlier. It's up to you which tool you use. In this case, I believe I'll use a sharpie because the look and feel I'm going for is a little bit more squared off on the end and a very low contrast. So, that means that the stroke width between your fix and your thins are going to be very equal. So at this point, begin tracing your logo type all the way through out with whatever tool you decide to use because this is ultimately going to show the fix and thins of your relationships. You'll find the areas that you need to carn. You'll find the angles you need to change. So, keep tracing until we reach the final end product. Whatever that may be it's up to you. You want to perfect these letterforms, perfect the kerning, perfect the weight. Make sure everything's balanced, everything's equal, everything feels the same throughout. Nudging the tracing paper over is beneficial to help with your kerning. As you add on the weight if that's thicker, nudge that paper over just a tad and begin adding weight onto the next letterform. It is a constant back and forth process of adding positive space, removing positive space, just making sure everything feels the same. These are still rough, really rough sketches. We will go back into using the pencil again, this is just to help you fine tune the weights of your letterforms, the angles of your letterforms. I'll just keep doing that over and over and over with more tracing paper. 7. Fine-Tune Those Letters: So, over time, after tracing and tracing and tracing and tracing until you've reached this final stage that we have here, we went from this first stage of just my handwriting scanned into Photoshop to what we have here, the final logo type that I will be presenting to the client. With further edits in Photoshop, I corrected some of the color issues within the stem of the H as well as the scale of the word "The" before the Whitt just in case he wanted a variation with "The" less pronounced and less prominent. Then we did this exact same process with all the sketching for the remainder of our initial concept sketches. So, this sketch turned into what this is now. Again, altering stuff in Photoshop, the wavy crossbar just as a variation to show the client as well as keeping these vertical strokes a bit more angular to add to that custom unique hand lettered nature. The next concept was this initial rough sketch and then we turned it into what you see here. More Photoshop work to save us some time, possibly fitting the word "The" in between the negative space of the H and the crossbar of the T. It's a little tight but it could be fine tuned later into a vector format. Then the last sketch I did was this piece right here based off of the Packard logo type within our inspiration that we found as well as the sausage signage on the sausage stand not too far from the actual location of the Airbnb. So, the client ultimately liked where this was heading because it felt very reminiscent of the time period and I showed him the final sketch that I am showing you here, and this final sketch is what ultimately will lead to the final vector because the client liked this most as well as the look and feel that it gave off of the 1926 time period. So, in the next lesson, we will discuss the proper anchor point placement as well as techniques to speed up your vectoring process such as the cross over technique, rectangle technique which will help you place your anchor points. I will get into that further. So, I will see you there. 8. Vector The Final Lettering: So now we're going to be working with our final selected logo type design. Before we jump on the computer, I want to show you guys what Jessica Hische calls the rectangle technique. I learned this technique within one of her workshops, and it's been incredibly easy to determine where to place your anchor points with this technique. So, let me show you what exactly I mean by that. So for example, if we draw a rectangle or a square, depends on the shape of the letter form. If we draw one around this E, you can see wherever the sides of this rectangle touch, the letter form is where your anchor points should lie. So you can see where I marked there on the sides, the tops on the right side. That is where the extrema of the letter form is. That is essentially where these letter form, or these anchor points here, are going to do a large majority of the work. Because they are on the extreme opposites of the letter form. We could do that with any of these letters. We could do that with the I. Draw a rectangle around that, and you'll see that you'll place all your anchor points here, here, here, and here. It's just a matter of fine tuning those handles which you will later get into with Adobe Illustrator. So one more time, with the T, pretty similar to the I, along the bottom of the T, the tops. If you wanted to, you would know, if you wanted to trim down that rectangle, you'd know it's on the right side as well. We could do that for the W. We could split it up into pieces, because it depends on how you want to vector this guy. You could vector in pieces, or create this whole thing as one entire shape, or you could create this part as one shape, and then the second part as another shape. It all depends on how you yourself vectors. But, if we decompose it into two pieces, you're going to have an anchor point here, an anchor point up here, here, down below here creating this curve. You get the picture. So, after you draw your rectangles out, it's time to scan this piece of lettering into the computer once again, and we will bring this sketch into Adobe Illustrator for vectoring. All right. So now that we have the lettering scanned into the computer, we're going to bring it into Adobe Illustrator. You'll create a new document, I generally set it up to the letter size, eight and a half by 11. You're going to import, or place your file in here. I usually just click and drag from the desktop and drag in the file. This is what it'll look like at 100 percent. I tone it down to about 30 percent, 20 percent. That way it's knocked down enough for you to draw on top of it with the pen tool. We're going to using the pen tool for this tutorial, because there's nothing greater than the pen tool. I promise, it is frustrating at times, but, through practice and determination, you can achieve anything. So we're going to have a sketch on a separate layer. I'm going to lock it, and I am going to begin vectoring on top of that sketch. I generally just use a stroke with a very bright fill. In this case, maybe magenta. A very thin stroke 0.25 generally works as well. We're going to begin plotting our points. What I generally do is plot the points first. I know exactly where these points will lie, because I've done this before, and I also know where the extrema will lie, which is what we discussed with the rectangle technique. So now that you have them all placed, you can change over to the, what's called, "The Convert Anchor Point Tool." Shift C. I'll be using that combination of keys very often throughout this lesson. This will open up your handles, you can see how the handles are extending outwards now using the Convert Anchor Point Tool. We'll begin creating handles for all of these anchor points. So let's do that. We will correct them later. All right. Before we go any further, I'm going to change the color of these handle points because they are just too bright right now. Maybe a brown. All right. Let's begin perfecting this curve right here. We're going to allow these two handles to distribute all this weight. We don't need any handles in between. Let's drag this guy in. We might not even need this guy. We're going to use the Convert Anchor Point Tool again. Click on the handle to get rid of one of the anchor point handles. That way we can allow the top anchor point to create this curve right here, without disturbing the curve that this anchor point below is creating. So we got the top and now we need to perfect this bottom curve as well. We're going to do the same. Allow these two handles to do all the work, because we can. It's just a matter of going back and forth, extending this one, extending that. Just make sure that your anchor point handles are distributing the weight evenly, and by that I mean, make sure your handle lengths are generally equal. It's okay if they're not, that's just a rule of thumb. Obviously, this one is going to do a little bit more work, because it's on the bottom, and it's carrying this curve all the way through, so that's all right. Now, let's fix this bottom curve. Might need to adjust the position of the anchor points as well. That's okay. I'm not liking how flat that is. I might use the convert anchor point tool. Again, bring out the handle. Get rid of the one we don't need, to help around that curve out. Something along those lines. Now that we have the general shape, I tend to reverse it. So, it is a fill instead of a stroke, and to do that, you'd press Shift X. So, that way we have an entire shape that will consist of the stem of our T. And from doing that, I can see that this curve isn't as smooth as I want it to be, so once you convert it back to a fill, you might have some further tweaking to do with the anchor points. We're going to continue doing that throughout this entire logotype, plotting our points. Luckily, I have already vectored this out, and I will show you the final vector and the connecting points. The stroke weight is a bit too thick for you to see what I did exactly. You can see that in some instances, such as right here, the initial sketches a little too thin, so I corrected that in the vector. You can see that I vectored these shapes separately. How the I connects to the T, and the tea connects to the other, the crossbar is separate as well. Everything is separate so that you can later change those angles if you need to. You don't want to vector this entire thing as a single shape, so that way if I ungroup this, you can move these individually. So, that is what the final vector, the first run through, I should say, looked like- I always go through it once, to get the anchor point placements down, and then I copy the artboard by pressing Shift O. Shift O will open up your artboard editing palette, so you can hold option, drag it down. In this case, I already have done that to the right. I dragged it over to the right-hand side. We are going to begin further correcting things, such as; how thin this is here. We want to make sure everything's on the same baseline. We want to make sure the connecting points are lining up the same as well, which you can see here. So I created guidelines for that. We want to make all the tiny corrections after the first vector run through within the second vector run through. This is just my personal preference, and process so if this does not work for you, then by all means, feel free to skip this step. So, after you have made additional corrections to your logotype, I always go through it one more time. Copy that artboard, I dragged it down this time, correcting more of those issues. That way, if you ever need to reach one of these previous steps, you can, because you have these additional copies. So throughout here, I was correcting more of these curves, more of the weights in the contrast issues that I had between my Fix and Thins. There were some tiny, tiny little issues with how sharp some of these were ending, so if this was gone, for example, that's just a little too sharp for my liking. So I was curving and rounding those out, such as this right here. It's not round enough, and that's a bit too sharp. So what I generally do is, add a point there, add a point there. So, either side, so that way when you delete this, it rounds it off ever so slightly. Make sure those anchor points are relatively close. I don't have Adobe Creative Cloud, so I can't use the Rounding Tool that they have. But that's essentially what we're doing here, using to round the corners. I brought this final into another Illustrator file because I wanted to keep it separate, because, the W was a bit too funky for me. It started out with these rounded connecting points that you can see here, and I did this all in one shape as well. But I wasn't liking that too much, because it didn't really fit in with the rest of the sharper edges that the rest of the logotype had. So, I tried to fix that within this new document, and, I curved and pointed the ends more similar to how the stem of the T is looking. So that way it felt a little bit more cohesive with the rest of the logotype. Constantly correcting throughout. Every time I copy an artboard, there's minor corrections, and by that, you can see here. I created the new custom W in this artboard, and then I made minor corrections. You can see how the stem of the H has thinned out along with the X-height of the Y. I brought the crossbar down on the T's, correcting these tiny, tiny little details, but it makes all the difference. And then that final stage, kerning everything, just a tad, correcting the slope on the exit stroke of the H, and then at this point, I begin working with the placement and size of the secondary type, which is the Phoenix Arizona, the location of their Airbnb. Moving forward, the client wanted to see what the logotype would look like with a drop shadow. So I developed a drop shadow as well, and then it began a process of testing what color would be best for this logotype. I referenced the past resources and inspiration that we gathered. A lot of those blues, a lot of those oranges, and the reds. So, of course, it made sense to incorporate that orange into the logotype as well. So, one more thing I want to discuss with you guys is what I try to call the crossover technique. I'll show you exactly what I mean by this example. I tried to dissect this W into different shapes, and in which case all of these are separate pieces. But this piece right here, instead of making this wash a separate shape, I connected the two by crossing over the vector anchor points. So, beginning here I made my way up. Place an anchor point here, continued that throughout instead of dissecting the shape as we did here. Another good example of this crossover technique would be this New York City script that I developed. You can see how I crossed over to create the crossbar of the N. In this case, you can see exactly why this crossover technique is useful, because if you want to correct the weight of the crossbar, you can move one of the anchor points without disturbing the contrast of the thinner stroke on the left. Same for this anchor point on the right. You can manipulate the thinner stroke without altering the thicker stroke. If you just had one anchor point instead of the two, you'll see what I mean. Because now that you have one, you are correcting both at the same time. The crossover technique is definitely useful in this instance where you can correct one side of your letter form without disturbing another. All right. So now, with your final logotype design and vectored on the computer, we are going to move forward with applying that logotype to whatever application you think it may need to be on. So, in this case, I need to mock it up on a fence, because he wanted it painted on a fence, and I need to mock it up on a door, because he wanted to see what this logotype would look like gold-leafed onto a glass window. So, I will see you in the next lesson. 9. Don’t Show It, Present It: So in this point of the process, we're going to take our finished logotype and apply it to a mock-up. We want to show the client exactly what it is going to look like and its livable space, in this case, on a barn door. We are on the side of his barn door, as well as mocked up on a window. That way, the client can see exactly what it looked like. You can see if it's working at certain scales. So, let's start with this barn door. We're going to copy it. We are working in Photoshop again. I took a photo of this, pasting it in. I'm going to change the color to black because I know he wants to match the barn door color, that black color to get it onto the perspective. If you know anything about Photoshop, we need to, I generally will convert things to smart objects. We're going to work with the perspective here. It's going to be a lot of tweaking as well. I mean, nothing's going to be perfect. But we are going to attempt to get this looking right. I generally will end up butchering the logo, but as long as the client can see exactly what it might look like, I think we're going to be alright. So, in this case, I'm definitely butchering the logo and that's okay. It is just for presentation purposes only so the client can see how this might look. So, I think we're nearly there. We're just continuously skewing it. I think that's not too bad. Might even change the blend mode, shift plus will change the blend mode. So that way the logotype will blend through those cracks. None of those blend modes are working too well, but that's alight. I think that might be good enough to send them along, maybe even decrease the opacity, so it's a little see through. Whatever you think may be best, it's ultimately up to you. It's your judgment. Just any way to show the client what this could look like in its final stages. So, let me show you the before and after. That is generally what it will hopefully look like on that wood. It's always good to show the client the logotype with its intended colors as well because sometimes it might look good reversed out like this. But, for example, if I change it to black, that might not look the best. If I remove this background color, the positive and negative space is different. So, if I view it on a white background, the letterforms appear a little bit more open, a little bit more spaced out. But if I bring it back onto this orange background, it almost seems a bit more condensed, a bit more bold. That's just a trick that your eyes play on you. So, you can see what I mean by the positive and negative space here. If I show you this quick preview, that is what it looks like on a white background and then a black background. You can almost see how the changes, especially in the counter forms of the secondary type, you can see how the counter form of that A just gets smaller. It is just an optical thing. It is not actually getting bolder. It's just a trick your eyes play on you. So, it's something you need to be aware of when you do present your logotype, something you need to be aware of when you design your logotype. Make sure it looks good on a white background. Make sure it looks good on a black background. So, once you have your final vectored logotype, feel free to upload that to the project page and I will hopefully provide honest feedback and my opinions on what you guys have created. So, I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys have made. 10. Thank you!: All right. So, that's the end of this Skillshare class. So, thank you guys for following through. If you have any questions or feedback, please let me know. Hopefully, I taught to you guys a thing or two. I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys have created, and if you're logotype does not turn out the way you want to, don't fret. I was in the same position a year and a half ago, I was making things that were not the best, but through time, dedication, and practice it only gets better. So, keep pushing, practice makes perfect, and I'll see you in class.