Emblem Logo Design: Crafting Classic & Timeless Logos

1. What is a Emblem logo?: Hey, welcome to this mini brand design course on creating emblem logos. Now, this mini course is an exclusive module from my brand designer Pro program, which I'm sharing with the Skillshare community to help you guys, as brand designers create better emblems for your clients. So hopefully by the end of this course, you're going to understand the world of emblems a little bit better. You're also going to understand my personal process for how to create emblems so that you can create better logos for your clients, get paid more and be more confident as a designer, too. Now, this logo that we're about to design together is a real life project for a real life client. And I'm actually being hired through my branding agency Clementine House to design this logo for a real life business. So I Can await the div in with you. Let's get started. 2. Brief & Research: Okay, so the first step to designing an emblem logo is the briefing and the discovery phase. And for this particular project, I've stumbled across a dream client to work with. So this client is a Japanese restaurant which is opening in the USA, and they are ultimately called Banzai Teriyaki, focusing on Japanese cuisine, and this client knows exactly what he wants. And by the way, this is a real client that I'm working with. So you're going to literally see me designing the logo step by step from start to finish. Now, the brief that he's given me is ultimately very simple. He wants the logo to look Japanese, and he says that he wants a girl or some sort of kind of woman in the emblem, a little bit like the Starbucks logo. So basically, he wants a Starbucks inspired Japanese logo for this restaurant to kind of be a little bit seductive, I think. So I don't know how this is going to go, but I'm going to dive straight into the research and we will see how we get on. Now, usually, when I work with a client, I will develop 4-6 different types of logos to ultimately give him, you know, a different approach and a different variation for each of the directions that we're however in this little mini course, we're going to be focusing on just one, just to give you a little bit of a taste of how I would approach things given the brief that has been set to me by the client. The first thing I would do is I would dive straight into the likes of Pinterest, Google, and also potentially this flat icon icon website, which is usually pretty helpful. Now, the first thing I'm looking for is a Japanese go, but I feel like when I'm looking at these, they don't really strike me as kind of like a Starbucks style logo, to be honest. It's kind of this one's a little bit too cute see. This is pretty cool. I kind of like this. This is like, okay, this is getting somewhere, okay? I mean, it definitely isn't a girl, but it's cool and it definitely looks Japanese. Okay? Awesome. Let's dive in. I love this. I love these little circles. I think this looks awesome. Nice work whoever created that. That looks mint. Okay. I like this as well. I'll take that. So all I'm doing now is I'm just looking for inspiration. That's all I'm doing. I'm just looking for ideas and like little things. Like, for example, we see these these little waves, and we've seen them a couple of different times, like we see them again here. So, look, like this pattern of these little waves like this is something that is found in Japanese emblems. Pretty commonly, I believe, I've seen it about 50 times, and I'm only halfway down the page. Let's have a little look at. Japanese girl logo. Okay. Okay, so now we are getting somewhere. So look at this one. This one is a little bit closer to what we want. I don't think she looks very Japanese, to be honest. She does a little bit. She has sort of Asianish eyes. But this is, look at this now. Look at this. This looks cool. Okay, that's a dude. Yeah, these are starting to look a little bit more kind of Western. But okay, we're getting somewhere. We are getting some incredible inspiration. And at this point, I'm obviously not going to copy any of these logos, but what I'm doing is I'm just gaining a little bit of an understanding across, you know, like, why does this particular graphic look more Japanese? What types of patterns can I use? What types of colors are most commonly used? You see here, there's a lot of red, and the red, you know, is generally connected to Japan, right, because of the flag. I've got a lot of inspiration here because this is such a a direct brief. I've got some inspiration in regards to the girl. I've got some kind of waves and patterns and stuff, which I can use. So I've got this. I'm not really sure kind of what style I'm going to go for. I've got to decide that afterwards, but I'm definitely going to be using these little patterns just to kind of give it that super Japanesey vibe. Then I think also I should probably get, like, some sort of fond or typeface to kind of go with it. So I think something that's like like something like this would actually go, like, pretty well. I actually don't think that's very readable or legible, but I think something kind of like this would actually look a lot better, 'cause this is a little bit easier to read. Well, I see it a little bit easier to read. It's not that easy to read. Something like this, maybe or something like this. Kingo okay. That's cool. That's actually a really cool name, right? Kingo? Kingo. Okay. And I'm going to take this as well, because this little fish looks awesome with kind of the sky and stuff diving under the water. Man, I love Japanese branding. If you've ever been to Japan and you've seen the metro tickets, they're like little pieces of art. It's so incredible. Okay. Alright, I've got enough inspiration here to keep me very, very busy. The next step of the process is to ultimately grab my Trusty pencil in my sketchpad and I will start to create different ideas based around what I've got here. So yeah, we're going to be sketching a Japanese girl for this emblem, and I cannot wait. So anyway, on that note, I will see you in the next lesson. See you soon. 3. Amazing Emblem Logo Examples: What actually makes a great emblem logo? Well, let's look at some examples. Let's look at Starbucks, Harley Davidson, and Harvard to see what the characteristics are of great emblem logos and why they are so great. First, let's start with Starbucks. Now, the whole story of Starbucks is actually super interesting. I read Howard Schultz's book when I used to live in China a long time ago, and his story of branding Starbucks and creating it into the juggernaut that it is today with, you know, thousands of stores worldwide, it is so important to realize that every single element of the Starbucks branding is being well thought out and it is being strategically managed to create this perception of kind of this higher end coffee, which let's be honest, there are better coffees out than Starbucks. There are so many coffees out there better than Starbucks. That are cheaper, as well. But one story that I do remember from that book, which was quite interesting from a design standpoint, is when they were designing the mermaid for the Starbucks logo, V couldn't figure out why the mermaid looked sinister or evil. And what they realized was, in order to make the mermaid look more human and more approachable and friendly, which obviously is very important for Starbucks because they want to be kind of the coffee brand for everyone, right? In order to do that, they needed to make the face less symmetrical, so they needed to make it asymmetrical, but I think they made the eye a little bit different and they made the nose a little bit longer on one side to kind of shake the face up a little bit. That made the face look a little bit less kind of perfect, which then made it look a little bit more human, which is a little bit crazy, right? But it just shows much like the Apple logo, how a little bit of imperfection or a little bit of unbalance can actually make the icon or the actual design look a little bit more personable, warm, and ultimately better. Now, the Harley Davidson logo is obviously completely different to Starbucks. But it's still an emblem, okay? It's a sign of authority, prestige, and tradition, right? It stands for something. If you see a bike with Harley Davison on it, it means that, you know, you're you like your motorcycles, right? You like your motorcycles. The logo itself looks sturdy, it looks strong, and it looks rebellious, right? Those are the traditions of Harley Davidson, right? That's what Harley Davidson ultimately stands for as a brand, at least to my knowledge. And that's what I think about when I actually see the company's logo and the emblem. Now, if we compare the Harley Davidson logo to the Harvard logo, where the typefaces, for example, are just completely different. In Harley Davidson, they're kind of strong and very rebellious and just, you know, very stern and bold. With the Harvard logo, they're very elegant. They're very, you know, kind of heritage, you know, pompous almost. Like, it's just very high end, right? They want to be seen as, you know, the highest end university in the world, the university to go to. And they even have, I believe, they have three kind of books ultimately open with a saying in Latin, which ultimately means truth. So it's extremely traditional. You know, it's very prestige, and that ultimately communicates a completely different message. So you can see that just by looking at those two logos and also the Starbucks logo, Starbucks is kind of trying to be for everyone. Holly Davison is trying to be for a very specific type of customer that is, you know, very kind of stern, very bold, and almost rebellious. Harvard is trying to be for, you know, kind of the prestigious, right? The people who think they are of a higher level, of a higher standard. So hopefully that gives you a little bit to think about in regards to the different types of emblems that are out there. But in the next lesson, we're going to actually design an emblem logo together and using my logo development process. So on that note, I will see you in the next video. See you. 4. Sketching Your Logo Ideas: So now we understand the brief and we've done the research, and we have some inspiration that we've captured from Pinterest and Google, for example. Now it's time to start sketching our emblem. Okay, so as we start sketching some ideas for this Japanese restaurant, we know that we need to achieve a couple of things. So we need to include a goal in some way, shape, or form, a Japanese goal, and we also need to kind of make the actual icon of the emblem look Japanese, okay? So that is ultimately the two things that we need to achieve. Let's get started. So what I want to do with every single logo that I develop, especially with emblems and with, you know, kind of icon focused logos, is to structure off my page into two phases. So the first phase is just getting ideas down, trying to see what format works and what works and what doesn't work overall. Phase two, is where I'll actually start to refine the idea, okay? Now, with phase one, usually with a client, I'll probably do for each direction around 20 different sketches, and then in phase two, I'll maybe take the best ones that I like, and I'll refine them a little bit, okay? And then from there, I'll choose the one that I actually like best, and I'll digitize it, and I'll actually present it to the client. Now, with this mini course, I'm just going to do maybe one or two in phase one, and then the best one that I like, I'll basically take it forward into phase two. Now, sometimes if I get it right in phase one, I won't even bother doing phase two because I like it already, and I will just refine it in digital format. But for this, I just want to start by trying to understand how we can make the girl look Japanese and also how we can get the actual emblem looking Japanese. So as I'm looking at these icons, you can see here, we've got two kind of Japanese girls here. Got another one here, which doesn't really look as Japanese as the other two, to be honest, I might just get rid of her. She does have quite Asian eyes, to be honest. So that's something which we can maybe learn from. Let's just get rid of this because we're not focusing on the word mark right now. We'll keep this at the back, which doesn't really make any massive difference. But let's focus on the actual girl first. So there's a couple of things that are kind of jumping out at me. First thing is these little sticks. This is very Japanese, so we need sticks. Let's do sticks. I also like the hair. Like a bob or like a bubble? Is that what it's called? A bubble? I don't know. I'm not a master of women's had to be completely honest. You know, we need, like, kind of, Asian eyes, quite a slim face, I think, quite a slim face. Okay. And then, kind of, like, almost like what's this called, like a Ginsu or something? I'm not sure what that means. If you actually know what that is, then please let me know. But yeah, there's kind of, like, a traditional Japanese uniform or outfit, which is used in restaurants and stuff. So um, Japanese uniform to kind of show that she is there to serve you, right? Okay. So, and that's been actually used in a couple of different variations. So let's look at that. Okay, perfect. I'm not sure about having these little cheeks. I think that's a little bit too I don't know. It just doesn't look very modern. I don't think we need that. I like this little nose, though. So nose is pretty cool. And I like the overall feel of this. So the next after we have the girl there is, how can we make this particular logo, emblem look Japanese? So from looking at this, there are two things at a stand now. One is the red, so we'll get to that afterwards. But the other thing that I'm seeing is these, like, sort of waves effect, if that makes sense, so waves and also, which isn't in let's see, so we've got the waves there. But also, as well, there's kind of this sort of like sunshine effect, which I think is really kind of well linked to Japan and Japanese culture and Japanese kind of logo design, I suppose. So I'm wondering if we can kind of put that behind the girl itself, so we can kind of do that. So it kind of like sun yeah, so sun or rear effect. Okay. So we've now got kind of like this understanding of the two things. If we do these two things, we should have a Japanese girl in a Japanese style album. Emblem. Sorry. So basically, we have these two things confirmed. If we do a girl with sticks, hair in this kind of bubble effect, Asian eyes, slim face, and uniform, and also the kind of two variations of the weird and also the sort of sun slash rear effect, we should have an emblem, which can represent those two things. So let's start with let's start with a circle, two circles, actually. Start with two circles. Which should be pretty cool, cause I think all of them are pretty much circles, right? It doesn't mean that, this one is in a circle, but I don't actually think I like how it looks, and it's not very scalable, but I like how the circles and the rears look with circles, so let's just go with that. Okay. So if I was, like, exploring, like, 20 different versions, then I would probably do a lot more different shapes, but for the purpose of this, let's just stick with circles. Now, for the girl first and foremost, obviously, we need to give her a slim face. Let's start with that. Okay, so slim face, like a really typical slim feminine Asian face. Give her a really thin neck as well, again, to make her super feminine. And then also as well, let's give her this kind of really traditional Japanese outfit. Okay. Okay. And again, this is just rough. Like, we're not trying to create, you know, the next Monalisa here, but we're just kind of getting an idea of I remember this nose, as well that we liked from the other version. I'm not sure how attractive this woman's gonna be, but we're definitely going to try and see, you know, what she looks like. Hair wise, obviously, we wanted the bobble, didn't we? Yeah. We can even do, like, I don't know, maybe, like, a bob or a fringe or something. Do we do a fringe or, like, do some hair coming down or something, maybe? Okay. Let's do that. And then there was sticks, right? There were sticks there, so let's maybe put some sticks in her hair. Kind of popping out. This looks terrible as an emblem right now, but we're going to try and give some, like, Asian styled eyes. Wow. She literally looks like she's about to fight somebody in model combat. Okay. Let's get her a smiley face. Oh, my God. She just looks even more sinister. Look at how terrible this logo is right now. Okay. Um, yeah, she literally looks like she's about to kill someone. I'm not sure why. It looks like a panda a little bit, right? Like a really slim, well chiseled panda. Yeah, this doesn't look great at all. But anyway, let's kick on. Let's continue. Okay, behind her, let's do the kind of rays of light, which I guess will come from the center, so they'll kind of go from here to here. Okay. Yeah, this definitely looks a little bit more like a panda guy, almost, right? It doesn't look like a woman at all. Okay, never mind. We'll get that. We'll refine it later in phase two here. Okay, so let's just color this in. And then we'll refine and assess what's working and what's not working, which is basically what the situation is with logo design, to be honest. You know, testing testing quickly and then moving on from there. Let me change my pencil, actually, because it's a little bit Love that one. What's go? That's nice and sharp. Well, sharp enough. Okay. So at the moment, this looks a little bit like a guy, okay? It doesn't look like a woman at all. And also, we kind of have this new approach, which I really want to make sure that in the next one. I kind of like the rays, to be honest. I think they'll look okay, which we can refine afterwards, but I also want to approach the waves to see if the waves look any good. The waves gonna be probably coming from the bottom, right? Okay, I thought it would look. Oh, that bum, bum, bum. Yeah. So we've got the waves here. I think I think the reason that it doesn't look very good is because it kind of looks like this is like a hat. So let's make a little bit of feminine and make the kind of the locks of hair a little bit more prominent on the girl on the woman, should I say? Okay, and then make, like, a nice, elegant female Fringe here, this is looking a lot like a lot more. Just to make it a little bit more. Let's put, like, a little flower in our hair or something just to make it look a lot less like a hat and a lot more like hair. Okay. And we'll do this here. Okay. It's talking a lot better. Okay, put sticks in her hair. Then let's put, let's do, like, little cute cheeks almost. Okay. So yeah, we're kind of doing some I mean, I mean, the eyes are definitely I think just doing, like, cheeks and stuff is gonna be really helpful. Yeah, the eyes are gonna be Okay, so this is definitely looking a lot warmer and a lot better. I'm still not, like, set on the eyes, but I can figure that out afterwards, but I definitely like how this one is looking a lot better. I love the hair. I like the hair. And maybe we can do, like, rays coming out afterwards, 'cause I don't think doing these waves all over the place are going to help or gonna look very good. It's gonna look very busy, or maybe we just take the waves out completely and just do the rays. I'm not sure. I looks a lot simpler, right? Okay. Uh, Okay. Yeah, I kind of like how. Okay, so just assessing this, I think we're going to go with the rise for the actual sketch in phase two. I like this hair a lot better. I'm still not content on either of the eyes. I don't like either of the eyes. The nose and the mouth, I like this one maybe a little bit better, to be honest. So eyes and mouth will be here. I don't like the waves. Let's sketch this one and do it a little bit more refined so we can start to really understand. I do also like the flower. I like that. Okay. Let me sharp on my pencil really quick. And then we will get started. We'll go from there. Nice and sharp. Look at this. Gow. Look at that. It's in focus. We are ready to go. Okay. So for this, let's first start off by doing a nice circle for the actual icon. Okay, so let's start off by doing a nice circle for the emblem. Now, let's now do the girl's face. Actually, no, let's start with the hair, because we started with the hair before and it started going quite well. So let's keep her face nice and thin. It's good. And then let's do the little bubble at the top, like this which comes down, and then let's do the sticks. Doing the same side, actually. Maybe they'll come through here. Okay. Then I really want her to be, like, attractive, right? I want her to be cute and attractive. So let's maybe do, like, maybe she has ears popping out. Maybe she doesn't. Let's do, like, little, like, cute kind of eyes. It's like a cheek almost. Oh, I'm not sure about these eyes, to be honest. I'm kind of lost, let me leave the eyes till afterwards. I just want, like, the cheeks to be there, and then I'll do this little nose. And then there's this nice warm mouth. There we go. That looks awesome. Look at that. Okay, there we go. That looks much better. Just kind of laughing and having fun. That looks so good. I love that. Awesome. Okay, so look where we've came from. We've came from literally like kung fu panda guy to this one who looks a bit like the clown to this one, which is actually starting to look like quite nice, right? She's looking kind of, you know, kind of a little bit more inviting. Okay, then we've got this, we've got the actual uniform. Awesome. Okay, and then we put the rays. There we go. And I guess I could, like, do, like, another sketch of this and really try and refine things and maybe look at different eyes and stuff. But just to respect your time for this course, I want to keep it as short and sweet as possible. I think this is looking a lot better. I'm not sure how this is gonna look overall from, like, an aesthetic standpoint because, obviously, we can't have, like, super heavy lines for the rays, and then this kind of not looking like this being very thin, so I'm probably going to have to figure out how to do that. But overall, I mean, it's looking a whole lot better. Okay. Man, that actually looks like a lot better. Like, I could obviously take time and refine it a little bit more. But ultimately, it looks so much better than the first two versions, and we kind of figured out what's working and what's not working. I'm still not sure on the eyes. Maybe I'm gonna do something on the eyes, but she looks like she's kind of there to, like, serve you, right? She looks like she's there to help you have a nice meal and have a good time, get them sticks a little bit more prominent. Awesome. Okay. Yeah, I could literally sketch around this forever. Okay, so I actually really love how this logo is coming together. I love how clean it is. I love how it kind of has that Japanese vib, but it also is, you know, including that Japanese woman, as well. It kind of has everything that the client wanted from the brief. So I'm excited to get this inside Illustrator, which is the next stage of the process, okay? We're going to take this. We're going to digitize it. And then once we do that, we can then start to, you know, showcase the actual logo in different environments and then present it to the client, which I can't wait for. So on that note, I will see you in the next stage of the process. See you there. 5. Digitising & Perfecting Your Design on Adobe Illustrator: So we're finally at the stage where we can take this emblem design for this Japanese restaurant and put it inside Illustrator to actually start creating the brand digitally. And so with that said, let's dive in Illustrator. Okay, so we finally have our sketch inside Illustrator. And now it's time to really, you know, refine things, get things look and polished professional, and edit things digitally. Now, the first step is to get a circle around this logo so we can start to add a little bit of structure. To what we're doing. Now, this is one of the main things with, you know, digitizing your logo design. You want to create structure, you want to make it look and feel, you know, predictable and aesthetically pleasing because our eyes like things that make sense. Our mind likes things that makes sense. So when I'm looking at this, I'm like, Okay, this looks and feels like it could work as it is. But let's just start by, say, for example, doing this flower. So let's make this like maybe I don't know, 15, and let's make some petals out here, a bum bum, bum, bum. So that kind of works okay, right? Just go to pull this in a little bit, just so they look a little bit better, little bit more like petals, ultimately. Let's make these a little bit less big. It's a little bit smaller. There you go. And basically, all this is going to be is me just going through the logo, making everything consistent, making everything tidy, making everything make sense, so that then afterwards, I can start to make things make sense. That's the most important thing. And I'll show you how I do a certain number of things with this particular logo, but then I'll use the power of time travel to basically fast track things and just show you the finished result ultimately once it's all done. You can see here, for example, I have the flower. I'm going to divide it. And then basically what I should be able to do is take these inside parts and just basically start to get rid of them. If I can find them, that's the thing. I guess that's a tricky thing, right? So I can find these, I can take this away, take this away, take this away. All I'm doing is I'm just recreating this element. This flower. Okay. Perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect. Then all I would need to do is basically take this. I've got the flower where I want it. Okay, perfect. What's the thickness like of that particular flower? What's the thickness like it? Maybe make it a little bit thicker. It's currently very, very different. Okay. It's a little bit longer than I thought actually. What I'm going to do now is I'm just going to outline the stroke, which will give me that. Then I'm going to basically merge all of these together, and then I'm going to create this center part, which is ultimately the bud of the flower, I think. Once I collect all of these and unite them all, then I can use this and cut this out. Then I actually have the flour and everything looks okay. I can refine this later if I want, but at the moment, I'm literally just getting the structure of everything in place. I would do that with the rest of the logo. For example, the nose, I'm just basically drawing it in the same fashion. As the sketch. This, for example, what? So that makes a lot of sense. Okay? Good stuff. Maybe make it a little bit shorter, but maybe a little bit longer like that. Good stuff. Maybe I can outline this and then just make it. Unite it and then just make it a little bit less there. Keep it like that. Then we can do the same thing for the mouth. Actually, I wouldn't mind doing a little smoke type thing, like a little charming smoke. An this isn't anything crazy. We're literally just recreating the actual shape of what I've sketched so that we can edit it a little bit later on. That's literally all we're doing. Again, just doing all the outlines. Cute. Do a little bob as well. Don't worry about the flower just yet. We're gonna come back to that later on. Just keep following the outlines, and then everything will come together. Let's make this outlines as well. Okay. And when you practice with the I'm not the best on Illustrator by any stretch of the imagination, but once you kind of get used to the pen tool, you know, you can draw things pretty easily, to be honest. It is not difficult to draw stuff. Then we can probably take this and create some sticks for hair, the hair pretty quickly. Probably get those two curved a little bit. We've put these two for the hair. Here we go, there's one. There's one I can maybe get another one and twirl that around. There we go. There's another one there. This ultimately, especially when you're designing this style of logo, it's very much the case that you're kind of just figuring things out and seeing what works and seeing what doesn't work. And then at the end, that's when things kind of all come together and you are left with, you know, a result which should look pretty good. Okay, so we've got that, we've got that, we've got that. Okay, so we need to do eyes and the actual face as well. I'm not going to go down, you know, through every single route of, you know, outlining everything with you, but just to kind of give you an idea of, you know, what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. So afterwards, you know that, you know, you're going down and you're editing stuff yourself and you're trying to create this logo, and for some reason, it's still not looking great. It's okay. That's absolutely fine. Because by the end, that is when everything is going to come together. That is when everything is going to look and feel far, far better. Once you've done the refinement, once you've put in the work to ultimately make it more polished. Because that's one of the steps which a lot of brand designers don't do. They don't put in that work to get that nice finished feel. And as well, I'm looking at this now, and I'm like, Okay, the actual sketch shouldn't be followed as closely as you may think sometimes. Sometimes you may need to go away from the actual sketch and kind of go on your own path. And all these lines are going to be all tidied up and stuff afterwards. But I'm just trying to figure out how things actually look and if the composition of everything is correct, so I can then refine things. Okay, so I'm just finishing off the face now, what I'm going to do, I'm going to finish off this face very quickly. And then once we finish off her face, we're going to do Okay. That's going to be fine for now. Then obviously I would do the neck, I would do the edges, I would play around with this a little bit. But just for the meantime, let's do the actual stripes and then afterwards, we can focus on how we're going to refine things. All I would do, the easiest way to do this is just to basically get your block color and then just refine this to the edges of the illustration. Edit them there. That's going to basically show you exactly how it should look. You can just duplicate that across every single point in the sketch where you actually have it. And say, for example, here where it's like laying over a little bit, you can see here, it's kind of laying over the curve a little bit. The way that you fix that, really, really simple. Just add this in here, add this here, there you go. Sorting. It doesn't have to be too tidy at this moment in time because you're literally just piecing things together. That's one thing that's super important that I really want to get across is the fact that when you are creating logos like this. Don't spend too much time trying to get everything perfect because if you get the flour perfect, for example, by itself, it may not be perfect for the rest. So for example, here, I know for a fine fact that the flour is too thick for the rest of the mark as it is right now. But if I took the mark, for example, and I started to make it a little bit thicker, and then if I cut this out here, for example, so it was, you know, kind of, you know, a little bit more respectful to the flowers present, that's going to make things look a lot better. So do not expect for everything to be perfect straightaway. It's not going to happen, okay? You need to give yourself that kind of that lenience and have the confidence to kind of, you know, do things that are imperfect so you can then get them perfect later on. Because otherwise, what ends up happening is you end up with a you end up spending about five times the amount of time fiddling around with little details and then doing them 15 times over. It just doesn't make any sense. You need to respect your time as a designer. You need to go through things and kind of break stuff, and then afterwards, you can fix it all later on. Unless it's a really simple design, obviously, like some of the other ones in brand design apply this type of logo requires you to just be fast and heavy first and foremost, get in there, get it done, and then afterwards, you can do the refinement. Spend the time in the refinement stage because that's where the magic happens. So again, I'm literally I'm going to show you exactly what this looks like after we finish just adding this little up a Okay, so we've got a bit of a crazy one here where we are essentially trying to kind of shape this around here, but it's okay. We're going to be right. I'm going to just not that in here and put this here. Okay, perfect. Then just so we can actually understand how everything's looking, let's just save it. Let's save this. I'm going to finish things off afterwards. Don't worry. I know it looks terrible. That's all part of the plan. We're going to outline this. Here. We're going to divide it, and then we're going to be able to we should be able to do this. There we go. You should be able to think it out as well, to be honest. There we go. Perfect. So that's what I mean by a slight little refinement, right? That's just one thing out of all the things that we need to do to basically take this to the next level, where we can actually start to look at it and say, Okay, this could look pretty good with a little bit of work, right? So again, we're going to put this down here. We're going to put this side by side. And now we have, obviously, I need to add the neck, I need to add the little shoulders, et cetera, et cetera. And then it's just a case of literally refining things until things look a lot better. So for example, here, I'm taking a little bit of time to assess. This is the most important part of the entire process, by the way, assessing what is looking good, what needs work, and then moving on from there. So the mouth, the nose, and the eyes, it's not looking great at the moment. It needs a little bit of work. The hair looks okay. The flower looks okay. I can tell that these need work. So you can see this here? How I'm looking at things and I'm literally highlighting, Okay, this particularly doesn't feel right. How do I fix it? If you do that and if you work through things systematically, you manage to get so much further, so much faster? Okay. So again, we're literally just working through things. Okay? Now, the sticks look 1 million times better, right? Can we all agree with that? Of course we can. Now here, we look at this. Okay. So that's the same thickness now. Obviously, this is not going to fly. Let's get this up here. Maybe make it a little bit curved and get that pressed up against here, so it's not so it's kind of not cutting away at the circle, so it's nice and clean. There we go. Looks better. A little bit better. There we go. Okay. And obviously, we're going to add the shoulders, we're going to add the neck and everything. The face as well here. That is, again, very thin. I want to make it a little bit thicker. But you can see here how Things are not perfect, but they're definitely better just by me changing a couple of little things, okay? So what I'm going to do is through the power of time travel, I'm going to refine this a little bit and basically tidy things up and spend a little bit of time just going through, you know, the tiny little details, and then we'll see how we get to afterwards. And on that note, and we're back. So what I did is I took this logo and I spent some time just reviewing it, fine tuning it. I actually kind of sketched an alternative just to kind of get the lines right and stuff, and this is what I ended up with. Now, you'll probably see a couple of things. I actually think the eyes could be a little bit better. I think currently, they look a little bit of sinister, to be completely honest. Like they don't look as welcoming as they maybe could. But ultimately, the other changes that I made were, I refined the hair slightly. I added some As just to make the girl look a little bit more human. I made the neck a little bit longer. I also made the lines around the actual girl a little bit more organic and not as structured. You can see here how everything's the same width. I wanted to make a little bit more organic and almost like an illustration, so I did that. And then I also created an outline outside those to separate the actual sunburst rear effect from the actual woman. So it kind of looked like it was behind her and she was the main attraction. I made the flower a little bit more interesting and less kind of structured, right? Because obviously, here, it was literally just, you know, set shapes. And then, so, yeah, I also did a little thing as well, and I'm not sure if you've actually saw this before, but let me show you something in regards to the Starbucks logo very quickly. So with the Starbucks logo, I'm not sure if you've actually realized this, but the Starbucks logo has two eyes, but there was a huge thing with Starbucks that the people who were designing the Starbucks logo made the person look super sinister and they didn't know why. The reason was because they basically had the two eyes look exactly the same. So let me just sinister. Let me try and show you there's an actual story about it. So there's basically a big story about the fact that when the eyes look the same, they looked like they were kind of too perfect, so they didn't look um, human enough. So they had to make this kind of this little slight asymmetry to make the Starbucks logo look more appealing and more inviting, basically. So I try to do a very similar thing here, but it still looks a little bit too I don't know. I still looks a little bit too sinister. I mean, she looks happy, obviously, but it feels like she's kind of ready to I don't know. There's something not right about it, so I'll probably need to take a little bit of time just to kind of refine things and get things into a place where, you know, it feels a little bit better. Maybe it's because this is a little bit too sharp. But I also made another version. Which basically has the outline taken away. And instead, it basically has the rays as the frame for the actual logo. I like the way that it's more organic than the original design. I like how it feels a little bit more human, but I also think that the eyes could do with a little bit more work. And that's ultimately one of the most important things when it comes to designing these types of logos, right? It is all about taking the time to refine and refine and refine until you get to a point where you're happy with it, and then you can send it to the client. Here, for example, the eyes are the biggest thing for me. I think once the eyes are refined, that's going to be a huge, huge weight off my shoulders. I like how the mouth is like that, but I also think doing something like this a little bit where it's a little bit less symmetrical and more human. I think that could be better, or even something like that. I think that looks a little bit I mean, that looks a little bit more a little bit more inviting already, I think. But that is ultimately what a lot of logo design is all about. It's all about playing around with things, filling around with things, what works? What doesn't work, what works better. Then if you can do that, then you wind up with a result, which I mean, that looks a little bit more inviting already. So that's what I mean by moving a little thing here and there, you can end up creating something that looks completely different. At the moment, it kind of looks a little bit like Batman, to be honest. So that's kind of the thing that I would be juggling with and trying to get right. But hopefully this lesson has been helpful for you. Hopefully you've learned a thing or two in regards to my process, something that you can take away to implement into your own process. But yeah, it's been really great to spend some time with you. And on that note, I will hopefully see you again in another lesson. That's Es. 6. It's Project Time!: Teaching brand designers and working with them to improve their skills and help them build more profitable businesses is by far the thing that I'm most passionate about. And just seeing the designer become more confident and more capable and also see them have more success with their design business, it brings me so much fulfillment, and I'm so grateful to be in a position where I can help brand designers on a personal basis. Pretty much every single day. Now, if you are an ambitious brand designer and you really want to accelerate your learning and become the best brand designer you can be, I love to invite you into our community, the brand design abroad community, to help you to get to where you want to be as a brand designer and building your brand design business. I really do put a lot of effort into making the content look great and also trying to be as informative and as helpful as possible to help support brand designers to ultimately be the best version of themselves. I'd love you to share one of your logos that you've designed that you're super proud of as a project this course. That way I can give you some personalized feedback to really help to accelerate your learning and just add a little bit more value after you've taken the course. Anyway, I just want to really say that I'm super grateful for you spending the time, watching this course, and yeah, hopefully we'll connect again sometime in the future. Anyway, I'll see you very soon. Take.