Logo Design with Draplin: Secrets of Shape, Type and Color

1. Introduction: Hello, Skillshare students, enthusiasts, and hungry minds. My name is Aaron James Draplin. I'm 40 years old. I'm a graphic designer here in Portland Oregon, at Field Notes, Northwest headquarters, of course. Thank you for coming and being a part of this. When I went to art school in '98, you know what was cool, remember? Like you puke on a page, it kind of settles into a corner, and you flatten it, and it's post-modern graphic arts. You got it. You at the boom, wake up. I wasn't down with that, I like the grid, I like this idea of order and hierarchy, and stuff, and everyone's name of their company then was something like, it was predictable, and it's a reference were to say. I call myself the graphic design company because it just seemed to make sense, and it's just me, for the graphic design company. There's something fun about that because, if the work is cool, it'll look bigger, than what I am. It's like, at all times making fun of yourself, like talking in plural speaking [inaudible] , it's just stupid. But that's, where it came from, and now, it's like a real thing kind of, but not every logo, everything that you make and generate on your computer, is to be serious for a grade, or for a paycheck, or for cloud, it can just be for fun. For this project, instead of making some logo for a band that's going to die in six months, because the band breaks up, we are going to make it for one of the greatest bands or brands ever. Your family. I celebrate my grandmothers. I celebrate the lower. I celebrate all the weird shit my dad said. Try and do something that you're close to, have a good time with, and that's what we're dealing with. There is a lot we're going to pack in this 45-50 minutes. It's about four sections. Getting on the old web, or dig into some books, or maybe even going outside and go and junk in research and stuff. Number two, get into sketching and drawing, and then build some shapes in Illustrator, or wherever you're going to draw that stuff. Three, and a little bit of typography with family memo, what's that right typeface, and what's that right feel, what's right hierarchy, and that little sort of set of parameters you built, how's that shit fit in there properly. Four, color. What's right for your family? Here's 666 logos I made, of every shape and size and wherever, and lots of different color. Sometimes it's spectrum color, sometimes it's weird subdued stuff, sometimes it's real earthy, it's the spirit of the project that guided it. But along the way, there should be some tips and tricks, and little how to use, of this how to work quick, how to work fast, and how to work smart. All right everybody, let's get to work. 2. Project Background: So, a big part of why we're here is when, sadly, and I know everyone's read these stuff. I hope I was cool about it and if I didn't write back about it well, I apologize. My dad died. We're all going to die, okay? As it says in the big old Flaming Lips song, the sun rises and sun sets. It's just a big illusion, okay? I mean who the fuck really knows what's going on 100 million miles away as much as 100 miles away, right? No one knows, okay. When your dad dies, it just turns everything upside down and you get freaky, you get weird and whatever. I went home to his funeral and you're upside down. You're scared and you miss them. I still miss him viciously and yet at that funeral you get to see all these people who you haven't seen in a long time. I saw my cousin Brian who was always great to me and I haven't seen him in so long and I get to see him and the first thing he says, "Hey, you're a graphic designer. When are you going to make that Draplin family crest?" He challenged me and I just stopped and thought, "I don't know why I haven't made it. It's just that same old answer, I've been too busy." Which is bullshit. So, Brian Draplin, this one's for you man. I'm making us a family crest. I hope you dig it. It's got, pierogis and shit grammar Jos used to say and all the things that matter to the Draplin legacy and what a legacy it is. So, that's where this problem was put in front of me. So, you are going to make a family crest. Let's get to work, all right? 3. Research: All right. So, the first thing to talk about is research. It's safe to say every project I start, be it for the big guys or the little guys, I look into it, where is the brand from? What does their existing stuff look like? What they looked like years and years ago if they're that old? What do their competitors look like? You go and you get on the Web or you dig around. You could take a drive around town, you go to their building and see what their place looks like, and you go learn about them. So, I guess that's discovery well just say, so digging into a family crest. The first thing that really came to me was like, I had to get on the phone with some old family members and ask some questions about where we come, some of the family laurel, some of the family jokes. That was the first step but really, when you start looking at what the Internet provides and what shows up in Image Search, all this old heraldic stuff, is that a word heraldic, isn't it? It is right? Okay. So, when you go and research all these old family crest, you start looking at what it looked like 400 or 500 years ago. There's a list of things that they all had: swords and and lions and Latin and stuff. There's a list. Well, I made my own list and as you're going to go through, it's like you can go make your own very own laurel and your own little banner and your little crest and put some little icons in it and then plop a little type, and then go look at some color and find out what your family colors are. So, we're going to do each one of those here and that's something that was super fun right. That shouldn't be a job, it should be fun. You get a browser window going here. Now, let's be smart about this. Because we get to our little Skillshare thing here, we're going to make a new thing we're going to call this Reference. So now, we're going to take this little guy, we going to open him up nice and big here. We're going go plop going here and we're going to say, all right, let's go take a look at what it means to say family crest, just to get the words going and take a look and you're going to see these coats of arms and different things come up and it's just like, oh, man, look at all this garbage. First of all, when we came over from Poland, as my dad says, should we talked about before they cut our tails off or after they cut our tails off, it's hard to say in the family. But we weren't royalty by any stretch of the imagination. So, here's the thing, this is one search. I'm going to go click on some of this things and just look at all this crazy filigree and weird Latin and stuff. I'm sure there is a way to tear apart the architecture of this stuff and what all this means. But this will just give you a quick fun idea of like what people are using to build their lives out, these pieces out. So, well, I'm just start looking through like look at this, who's Lauren Moffatt? That thing is pretty cool. Lauren Moffatt good job. So, you're going to see like number one, you're going to see just symmetry blasting through here. If you go and you click on one of these guys, yes, that shape that you're getting there, there is a certain sort of like you put a little center line down the middle of that and these little pieces. Now, these are opportunities to put your story for your family inside there. Like wherever the bones are and there's their stuff. There's some anvils and some spinning of yarn shit and some agrarian quality, this different colors for family reunion so here's a deal. We'll why we're here is because who's gone to that family reunion and it totally sucked? You don't want to be there, you don't like anybody. Then just icing on the cake is the t-shirt you're forced to wear sucks. This is where you come in and you get to make something for your family that is appropriate, cool and doesn't look like FO Microsoft painted that son of a bitch to death, that's why we're here, okay. So, I'm just going to start grabbing some stuff really listen you can't just go plop this stuff into your document that's not what we're doing here we're just. We're just collecting inspiration. We're just looking, we're thinking, we're planning ahead and you start to see, man, there's some cool stuff happening here. I've always got my stuff here and my little field, notes always sketching. We're just starting to see there's this and there's going to be something here and something there, and then there's all these fun little shapes. You're making these cool little shapes or it could be really anything. How? We got to all be careful of this crap, whatever, we got to be careful of that stuff that's really cool right now. But when you look at this, these are little opportunities; leafs and sprigs and shit. Now, does that apply to the Draplin family? Well, I don't know. So, I got on the phone and I started talking to people and I started calling my my Uncle Tom and Uncle Bob and my cousin Brian and my mom and sisters and stuff just to get some reference going. Our last name is Draplin right the Draplin family but it used to be D-R-A-P-A-L-A which old country polish for Drapala. But the story goes, our great grandfather was forced to change his name so it wouldn't sound ethnic This is very common. This is Detroit turn of the century, maybe even a little bit before the century. Anyhow we came over from Poland and then our name became Draplin. So, I stepped back and I say, all right, grandmas and grandpas, well, Joseph and Josephine made Uncle Bob and Tom my dad. Out of that, came a bunch of children. When you step back and you say, "Well, what were we known for?" Well, my grandmother, my grandma Josie was this incredible pierogi martyr, and she would Christmas time do this big pierogi cook off and be crying and complaining and doing this for the families sake. It's a little side story and my dad's a refrigerator back in Michigan, he still has her last batch of pierogies from like 1994 frozen. So, just in case, there's those bastards from Wisconsin and Vedas, in Michigan we have a little bit of provisions, were stocked up. I'll go back to reality here, so let's see here. So, I start drawing little pierogies. I'm thinking through, this is something that was part of our our family, part of our lives. When I talked to my cousin Patrick yesterday, he said, "What are the first three words of the Polish National Anthem?" Attention Kmart shoppers. Now don't often won't even gets it anymore because where people shop? Amazon and Wiz Bang and Flickr and Kluger and also their bullshit, whatever. Well, we were a family that knew how to get a deal and my dad was vicious with Kresge and Kmart. A blue light special champions so when you go look at that old logo in 1970 or '65 or '75 and my dad was going there and our family was going there, well these were the colors. So, something already jumps out there. Now when you go look at Poland and you take a look at some of these old Polish Falcon, as my dad called the Polish chicken, and you start looking at all this stuff there's a certain like everything's looking off to the left, there's a certain symmetry but that's old country red and white. Well, we came over from Poland into Detroit and what's Detroit known for? Cars and things getting rough there, the Wings and the Tigers. My dad loved his Tigers. As a kid, Domino's Pizza and Little Caesars Pizza. So, you look at those pieces and it's like, "Well, what can you mine from that story? I didn't necessarily grow up there but I spent my summers there, and what I know is the Renaissance Center I remember that being this pillar of like progressive whatever. Now my grandmother, my grandma Josie, she had a bunch of festive sayings. Dupa was ass I think in Polish of course and "Ahtcha mahtcha kaktcha" meant get out of that as a way to get your attention, and of course the family favorite of "pull my finger," we don't need to get into it. She saved everything. So, it just gives tricky to eat there because you might be getting some peaches or somebody from like 1970 or something. So, you look at what she would say and then you start to go and look at just the shapes, what are the shapes that you see when we're back digging around in all this stuff here? If we're going to look at like a laurel on-the-fly like this and just type in laurel with the little leaves and filigree and stuff. Then we start seeing some of these little pieces here, you can see where the world has built every laurel ever. So he's a little vector sets and stuff. Stuff that you can go buy but that's cool and all but I think you can build your own and that's why we're here, is to really understand we're going to start hitting on this theme. Everything can be boiled down to about four or five shapes. Now look at this, this is incredible right here. So, we're going to go grab is one, then I'm going to jump into this real quick. 4. Efficient Workflow (and Laurel Tips): All right. Let's talk a little bit about workflow, and you'll see as I go whipping around the Illustrator page, you really want to think about how you keep track of where you were. So, if you're making out logo and you start over here and you make a little version and you try something, you want to make a change, don't change over that piece. Command option, drag it, dupe it, tinker around that one, do it again, tinker around that one, and as you pull back after the course of working for it half a day or whatever it's going to be, you'll see all the lineage of where you were, and that's cool because you can go back and say, "Something was good there." You can see the transformation and you can go back and say" something was good," and then go off of that, and another little branch comes out of that, and before you know it, you've got a ton of versions to work with, and you sort of tricked yourself into keeping track of everything you made, and then trying out some new stuff. So, just think of that as you go. Vectors are free, vectors are free, so don't be afraid to just fill up that big old art board with them. Some of these look very complex, but when you step back, like what's the scariest one here? Maybe it's this one right here with all those extra lines and stuff, but no, it's about one, two, it's about five pieces. So, if you understand that, understand how to tackle that and sketch that and go build it, you can go build your own damn laurel, you don't have to go buy one. All right. So, you can see here I come to my Laurel page now, and I don't have a Laurel. So, what we're going to do, is we're going to go grab a piece of our K-mart color, we got it stacked over here, and we're just going to lay something over it, and we're just looking at that shape, you can't quite see it there, so go multiplying over here and your transparency, and there's your shape, there's your little shape. So, we'll look at that thing and we're saying, two circles, we want that, keep it live, keep it live, and then take that little guy, now use your little intersect, there's your little shape you just made. We'll turn that thing off now and we're going to say, there's your little shapes we get and we kept this thing live. I bring this over here, we're going to sort of just using your constraints, your shift tools, we will make our own little Laurel like fast. So, here's a cool little piece right here, and we're going to set some nice mass and nice geometry. Keep that thing live, bring this thing down here, we're going to scale it down, we just scale it down and then we're going to accelerate. Let's just try, let's make some Laurels. So, real quick. Now, how you're doing that, is you're using the little command D. I'm going fast, I know. But in my brain, I knew what I needed to make, and you're using all your little align tools to keep those things nice and tight. Now you take that little thing and you pull off the sides and say, "Man, we've got a Laurel right there, there's number one, we just built that thing and how many steps? Well, how you do that? You saw me isolate that piece, we mirrored it over here, we bring it down smaller right here, and then just simply go Option, Shift, Command drag up above and then Command D, Command D, Command D, Command D which is just what duplicate or something, I don't even know. We want to go put one little guy at the top, so you use your little shift key and bring that thing just so it's centered in between those two little guys. And you see it's a little off, so now you go use your little align tool to get that thing lined up. Okay. So, we just built our own little Laurel. No one can mess with that, these are our pieces, our stuff, and we say to ourselves like, "Man, that we just made our own little library, we'll say that we're not rebuilding it from someone else's source, we're just going to use our own. So, we take that little guy over here and we say, all right, here we do this, we take this guy and we do this. Now, there's something happening there, there's already something happening, man, it's like well, how many steps is that? That's just stupid, right? Well, that's what design should be, it shouldn't be this damn thing where you're spending eight hours fucking around on Laurel, you should be able to blast through this stuff. Get a sketch going. So, as I said to look here, I don't know if you guys, we'll go back to this, but I'm just thinking in terms of form, what this thing is going to feel like, and that little sketch, that little sketch, that what? What was that? Five seconds? That just gave me an idea of what it could be now, we could go through or we could say, all right, we can do some different stuff and we got some things, we got some stuff, we know we need some little Laurel and some little pieces. Well, maybe I want to make a round Laurel. I want that thing to curve. There's a million ways to do it, and you can take your little guy you're already built here, group it, put it on it's side, go up here and do your little warp, put down the whole arc, instant kick-ass arching Laurel. Look at that. Shift Command E, learn your key commands, I'm going quick, but look at that, we just got some Laurel. You take that little guy, you mirror it, whatever you want to call it, you flip it. Now, we're cooking with gas, and it's this cool because it's like right there, we've got our own little guy, we didn't have to go buy that, we didn't have to go use someone else's that's been done 44 times. We're learning to think in really simple rudimentary shapes and you've got your little pieces. Now listen, that also is a sort of like, I like the cleanliness of those leaves, I just like how clean, and yes or no there, because what happens now if we take this little guy up here and we say, "Well, you know what? I want it to be outlined", let's give it some outline, and let's just give it a little bit of shaping in the inside. Okay, so, we take that little guy, and now once again, you build this little thing, you keep it live, go through here, make sure the guy is colored white. All right, okay, we've got it colored white. Now, I'm going to take this little guy, I'm going to make it small. I wanted just to overlap just a little bit, because then you start to see how you can make it feel like any one of those other guys, and here's this little guy. Now, with those couple quick steps, that thing can feel as complex as some of this going on in here. We were just talking about that like, "Wow, look at that, there it is right there, that's basically it." Looking at that last one and saying, "Well, there is a randomness, okay, let's just go make it a little bit random, we're just using math and say, let's go like 20 degrees." There's a cool, there's a little logo right there, but if you go back now, you just Command Z, and now we're just trying to find the math of where things enough lay over each other. There's a 15, we'll go try 10. All right, check it out. Now, okay, we're good. Keep this live, vectors are free you guys, vectors are free, and then go back in there now and clean out some of this stuff, and say, all right, it's a little dense, but the idea is you just made your own, no one's ever made that one like we just made in a minute. That's cool. That's a good thing, that's a good way to think about it, but it's like, that's how to tackle, making your own little Laurel, right? 5. Shape Architecture - Part One: All right. So, now we're talking about shapes. What you're going to notice, be it 40 years old or whatever age you guys are, is there's like logos are distilled down into about six shapes. If you look at these things, these things come across, those are the bedrock of cellular tissue and even nature sometimes, right. But when you look at logos and you look at things that are just pleasing in that small space. It's funny that that worked in 1960 with the Masters. So, if you go look at Saul Bass and my favorite, and yet you take say eight of my logos and here they are, and say eight of my logos, you're going to notice is a symmetry. There's a certain ubiquitous utilitarian shape and size to these guys because that works here as much as it works on my phone or something. Quick note on symmetry, I don't want that to be too foreboding, where you have to think that way. But, if you look at logos, some of those pleasing ones are usually are pretty symmetrical. There is something about that. If you go look at some of the Masters, the Paul Rand, you'll see that. Now it might not be perfect but just the overall visual feel will have that sense of like could work this big and this big. It's not competing. If you think of what a peacock looks like and how the hell do you put a big old peacock in this little shape, it's going to be all over the place, feathers and plumes and [inaudible] . But, if you take one little, that little beautiful little piece of feather and that little egg part from the plume or whatever, that is your logo? That's still says peacock. That's the thinking here is like, what are these shapes that are pleasing that work everywhere for every kind of culture, every kind of eye? So, now you've got this little piece. We've got our little laurels that we've built. So, let's go and grab a little piece. Let's go grab a shape. Use some very general shapes I found from a little set, but you can go grab your shapes. So, we'll make that our shape. Okay. So, we grab this little shape. I'm going to give it a quick outline here. So, we'll just flip that thing around and it will lay a couple of these little boxes here. Just to show you how to do it, here's a couple of tricks. You can use this guy. We have this thing selected, it'll tell you where the centers are. See the low center of the X, this is the center but the optical is weird. We're close. Okay. Pull it out like this. Here's a quick trick. Take this guy because what we want is we want that shape to be isolated. We want that shaped to be isolated. Here's a way to do it. Command C, Command F, don't worry about dragging it too far. There you go. Now, you've got that piece and that piece. Now, you can go flip these back around so you can see what they feel like. But what's nice now, that little teeny point, if we go all the way in on that a little teeny and you go up to 10,000 percent all the way. So we're at 6,400 percent to get in there, that math is perfect. I don't know how tight we can go, but that math is perfect because it is very tricky unless you're just doing it in a way like you have shit snap in and stuff, ban snaps. But if you don't snap, you're never going get it right. If you zoom in to 100 screen percent, it's always just going to be a little bit of this. We don't want that because somewhere you're going to see it. It's going to print weird. It's going read weird. So, what we're going to do here is we're going to say, "All right, you drag this little guys up to that corner. Now all we want in there we just want those nice little pieces right here." So, here's how you grab those. We don't want to use that one. We want to keep that one because we want that shape for later on. We say, okay, command C, Command F. Give it a weird color, that helps me because it reminds me of what I'm messing with. So, if I drag that thing off, then you'll still see originals back there. Now, go grab these little guys, path-find divide them, un-group it all, deselect and deselect, get rid of all the other chaff and there you go, you've got those shapes. Okay. So, now we've got a little shield or your little shape as a way to hold some pieces. Let's go find a little sprig. Remember, we built that little laurel. Here we're grabbing some laurel, copy that guy, go back to where we were, and just put that next to these things. So, now we're just assembling these little shapes. I think it's pretty cool there. But what if we want to be off a little bit? I don't know. Just go and quickly reflect it, copy it, grab one, bring it over here. All right, some stuff is starting to come together. Now, in your research, when you go look, you see all these little banners, man. Look at that little banner right there. We need to build that banner. Let's go put a little banner on our thing. Don't overthink, but here's the thing. I just start by building the shapes, simple shapes. Here is a little shape. Give it a nice outline, let's try to mimic that outline up there because we want those all to feel the same later on. Now, simply by taking this little guy and saying Command C, command F, which is command cut and then placed it on top, you just duped one on top of it, pull one off to the side. Okay, we're cool. Now, throw that to the back, color it all white. Grab it again because you're just using that little edge now. Command C, command F, pull it to the top, pull that little guy out. There he is, somewhere right there. Use your math. There is a lot of ways to get to that. Pull to the back and now you can see quickly that we start to build our own little banner. Go round those edges. So, I think feels a little better. Now, quickly just grab this our little guy, reflect it, copy it, bring that to the end here, and now you've got a little banner. But we want that thing to sit up on this and dupe it. Remember, option drag makes an extra one. Group it. Now, bring it up and lay it on that saying that, "You know what? That's cool straight like that but I won't mind have it a little bit an arc." So, go up in new effects, go to your work, go to your arc, and work that thing. Okay, 32 that's pretty good. Let's try 25, your little preview on, that's looking pretty good. Remember, if you go ape shit and go all the way, it'll just go right around that circle. Okay. But it keeps your geometry intact. It still looks pretty good. So, let's just go back to that nice 30 percent, whatever, and there you go man. Now, we got a banner. Now, if you want it white, keep it white. Okay. Remember, these are those simple shapes just told to be bent. Whatever worked, we have to go expand them so you've got the real pieces. So, you expand an appearance. Now, those are one, two, three, four, five pieces. If you want a white one, keep a white one, cool. But now you've got the parts and pieces. You've got this chunk, which has just been told to go warp and then you've got your actual expanded pieces. You can say, "I want a white one. I'm going to flip it. I want a black one over that thin," whatever you want and you can quickly see like, "Oh man, this stuff's coming together." We've got a little nests and little places for icons and for little piece of type and stuff. We'll get to that a little bit, but we've built some sprigs of laurel. What does this thing need, man? It needs something. It needs a little pierogi, so let's go build a pierogi. 6. Shape Architecture - Part Two: Now listen, for the [inaudible] my grandma made those incredible pierogi's. So, let's go make her a pierogi. What does a pierogi look like? So, okay, we go back, we get to your file, so we can drop some stuff on there, and let's go look at pierogi. Okay. So, you're looking at pierogi's and she's kind of saying, "All right, here's some little pierogi, and those are cool." My grandma would pinch them. I think there was a little tool. Then, we can see what a pierogi looks like. So, real quick. We just do a search just to see like. What's the architecture of a pierogi look like or like, "Look it right there, like right there! Man, that little pierogi stamper. Yeah it's a little half shape." All right. So, let's go back, let's grab some of this stuff. These are cool. Remember, you just grabbing this stuff for reference you guys, always search on the Web. Someone took that photo. You can't use that photo. But what you can do is you just look at it, and collect it, and play with it, and draft off it. So, we're seeing these little half shapes, we were grabbing stuff. But, to go back now, and we're going to say, "Let's just go build a pierogi." Now, remember, let's go place one of those images we found. So, let's go here. Were going to plop that one in here. Now, all we're doing is we're just plop it in this in here, just to look, just to see it like in the same document. Now, of course, it's giant, we don't want that. Now, we're just looking at what this little shape looks like. So, just remember you guys, everything in the world is built off like seven or eight shapes, kind of, you know what I mean? If you look at that and you say,"All right, let's build a pierogi, let's build a pierogi." So, okay, here we start with this and let's put a line in between those guys. But remember to keep track of what you're building and why you're building it. So, you got a circle and you got a little turquoise line laying over the top of it. That's it, so now okay. Get that, keep your architecture, keep your parts, and your geometry, and your pieces, and let's go start playing with some of this stuff, and start working with it. So, we got a little pierogi shape, there's a pierogi shape. Bam, you got a pierogi. Now, we say, "All right, there's those cool little dimples around there." So, let's make some dimples. So now, what I want to do is take this little line right here and dupe that, and we're going to make those little dimples. Or you could do it by just simply saying, "Okay, check it out." Let's call this, I don't know, 10 degrees. I'm going to copy these little guys, and that might be too much. Remember, this always need to work this big and sort of this big. So, we'll just say 20, and these little pieces start coming out like this. You say, "Man, how I'm going to get those things to align inside there?" Well, that's where you go back to where you were. So, just so we can see what we're working with here. Here's those two shapes, we made those two shapes, you dupe it, bring it over here. Let's color one-piece kind of pierogi. Now, let's go in here, let's make these some real gross, make it a loud color, so you see what you're working with. Lay those little pieces over it. Now, I don't know if it's perfectly aligned in there right now. I don't know. So, what you do is just to ensure, group these, group those, and go through and align that stuff. Bam and bam. Now, you saw it snap up just a little bit, and I think it's aligned in there perfectly. Now, you can go through and say, "Okay." That was 20 degrees each little set, let's go 15. We just do this, and now bring those all the way around, and then we say, "Okay, yeah. It's alright." Now remember, dupe it, get rid of the stuff you don't need, and you can quickly say, "We just made ourselves a little pierogi." Now, if you were to take this guy and say, "Okay, let's just go color some of this stuff up." There's your little magical packet of potato there. Then here, is your little noodle, crunched down or whatever. If we were to go and say, "Those little dimples are just a little bit darker." We've got ourselves a pierogi, pretty quick. Maybe that's a little too dark, but the idea is simple shapes and it's fast. Let's just go take this little line here, and say, "Let's mimic what this little line was." There you go, there's a pierogi right there. So, maybe just a little bit down. So, here's the thing is like, you know, I just made a pierogi, there's a pierogi, there's you're little pierogi, that's cool. Now, we want to take this little guy and let's reduce it down. Let's reduce it down to where it's going to work just as one color. We already have our lines, let's just go add one more line in this other guy out here. So, let's just call it black. We're going to go snap it out there so it's on the outer edge, and will match those other little guys. Now, we're going to make the inside of that thing white, and these little guys right here, nice and black, and you got a little pierogi. So, if we go back and we find out where we were at before, we got ourselves a little pierogi. We can start building our own little icons, these are just simple simple shapes. There's a kick ass little pierogi, let's get it in there. Then, you step back and you say, "Man, that's a nice little pierogi, I get a little hungry looking at that thing. It's got nice, still legible. here's little pierogi." Then, you kind of say, "Well, let's get a line going," that's when these little wafty little lines here. This is just for fast, just to be quick. Okay. It's good thing, looking good. Then, let's just take this little guy and say, "Let's bring this here, let's bring this here, let's bring this here, let's bring this here." Now, the math isn't quite right, but let's us get those little guys, to beef them up just a hair. Use your lines to get all the math right, so they're all nice and the same now or you could come and say, you could say, "Let's follow the arc of how that would come off of that little guys." So, let's bring those guys down a little bit. Let's bring these other two a little bit down. But, what I'm getting at here is like that's a quick quick little way to say, "Our family was all about pierogi." I just put a pierogi in there, now you have to figure out what your family pieces are going to be. I can show you how to build stuff but it's up to you to fit things in here. If we go back to where we were looking at some of this fun stuff. Okay. Remember, we're from Detroit, and there's that incredible Renaissance Center, there it is. If we go take a look now, remember we go back, and we're going to go research, we looked at that thing looks like, and you start seeing images with that thing looks like, and let's just go quickly build one. So, here we go, we found one, there we go. Now, here's a cool one. Do a screen grab of it. Go back into here. Go to your little document. I just want a little Renaissance Center in there. Lay it down and let's just take apart what it is. You've got one, two, three, I think there's four buildings there. But we're just going to see these three shapes, and lets just as quick as we can, rebuild it. Now, you can trace it or just understand that it's just sort of a illusion of shapes, and we're going to build that first one. Make a circle or an ellipse. I'm going to show you how to do this quick. Put a point on there. Don't worry about those things aligning. Go intake and say, "What's the fastest way to make a shape that looks something like." We'll just draw it real quick. We want that little guy right there, so this shape. But don't worry about it being all like perfect, maybe you can hit it quick but just get the points drawn, and then go use your aligns to line those things up. So, I think you can all go align them along the top. You can make the three points, use your little horizontal distribute center to make those three points snap. Because if you notice here, if you drew that thing in a way where it's off this way, because we know we need one, two, three points in that little arc. You can go in a line that points I think snaps to the middle now. Now, bring that thing up just to where it feels good like what we're looking at right there. Then, put that little guy down here. You can see, well, this guy is is probably about 80 percent of that, so just quickly eyeball it, quickly eyeball it, and then say, "All right, we got our pieces built." There's a little icon of the Renaissance Center downtown. Now, dupe it, bring this little guy right here. So, these are all aligned to the points to the bottom and get them to feel right. Then, say, Okay, got those things." There's the Renaissance Center we just built it that quick, simple shapes. Now, give this a little bit of breathing room. Align those pieces inside there so they're all nice and see it in one snaps. Okay. Now, you can quickly take this little guy and plop him in here, and say, "We got some Detroit in there now." There's your thing and now to say, "Detroit." We could do it even a little bit cooler. We can say, "Man, what do we know about the Renaissance Center?" It's right by the water. What's that? Like here on. So, we're going to make some waves real quick, you know, water. Bringing those guys out. Keep all these pieces live, keep all these pieces live. That would be a little unite. Go tear all the stuff out there you don't need, and now give us a nice line. Now, that means on the water. Put that little guy right there and just give him a little bit of weight. Now, what you can do, is you can go quickly sample one of your other lines, to get that shit all consistent. Then, there you've got some water going on now, and Detroit's right there, and that means Detroit on the water, on the waterfront there. So, now grab this piece. Make sure those are all together grouped, they are, and align those. Now, you got some Detroit in there. So, as we pull back now, we can say, "Man, we got pierogi, we got Detroit." What else are we going to put in there? I think that's where we're going to shift to some type. But, you know, you can step back now and say, "Damn." Now, here's something that's really cool. Remember, if this thing's on a T-Shirt, like physically this big, you got your ruler to check out how big something would be. What happens when it needs to be this big? Because we'll watch what happens. You see it start to lose some of the detail. So, what we're going to do is we're going to test this. We're going to go in here and we're going to optically tune it up. The lines in between these guys get a little lost. So, the trick is, look at this space right here where you make a little dot there. Okay. Grab that space, that was feeling pretty good small and still the size, and now go and just make those little guys have something close to that. Use your math, use your clicks. Remember, one, two clicks, one, two clicks over there, get rid of it. Now, let's go look at this line, say, "They needs to be beefed up a little bit." Let's beef that guy up. Now, this is a consistency starting to happen here. Now, watch. Let me take this guy, let's get that thing to be of that line. Okay, cool. We can skate with those ones a little bit, but we'll bring this one up a little bit, and we go look back here. You see all those things are starting to feel like they all fit. Something is happening there for the draft of the family. Finally, all these years, somethings finally happening for the draft of the family. 7. Typography: All right. For typography, what you're going to see is, in my life, as I get older, I'm down to about 11 or 12 typefaces that are really my go-to guys. Then if something needs to get a little more letters set is a whole other pocket of stuff I go after. What's appropriate for the project, well, that to you figure out. So if your name is Draplin or whatever the hell it's going to be, you go look at things that look like they came from Eastern Europe. So if you could do a little research to see what those typefaces might be and then what sort of an English version would be because you're just drafting often. Yes, for this stuff, you start going down this sort of Walt Disney looking like Alpine's shit and that's fine. It does feel European. Don't mix and match 14 of those things. You only need two or maybe three and then use them sparingly in a proper set of rules and hierarchy. Let the big one be big and get a little supporting stuff whether run down to where it's just small stuff. Okay. So, just know your hierarchy. If you have thick lines throughout your thing, go find a typeface that's thick. It's about taking a quick graze and saying, "What are the parameters of that piece of type? Everyone has a couple of things: sharp points, round points, thick, thin, what's appropriate for the problem. How do we put a piece of type on this thing and that's what the world is incredible about. This design typographic world is that there's a scrolling things to pick from. Okay. So, now we're going to come to the typography section. So, listen. It was shapes and simple forms making complex stuff. But all along the way, really trying to keep it simple and uniform and fun. So, now we're going to put a little bit of type on tihis stuff. Just keep it fun. I mean, when you look at this thing and I say, "Okay. Let's go plop a big old Draplin on here." Well, I've already been playing with that one. I mean, what's going to come out of your mouse, I don't know, some kind of like whatever your default is. Let's just say it's a some kind of like Helvetica. That's just not going to feel right. Well, first of all, we can go look back here and say, "We've got this piece of type." Let's just make sure that it feels like the little crest that we've built so far. So what that means is you don't want to put something on here that is going to be super wispy. We'll just say it right. So, you don't want something that's going to feel unlike the rest of the weight. So make simple decisions and it's just not going to cut it or if it's some sort of collegiate sort of uppercase thing. I guess what I'm doing here is I'm talking a little too much but you get the idea. Go and experiment and try some stuff. Something's starting to happen. It feels kind of collegiate and sort of official. Let's pull out one of this side and let's go try something a little bit more. There's this one here that was feeling really good and it felt kind of old country, and it was this Tannenberg Fett. So let's just go with that. So now, that said, when you plop that in there, now you have to kind of look like the weight there in this dark here and this weight here, it all feels pretty good. You're just kind of going to start massaging these things. Keep track of all that riff raft. Just put it somewhere. Put it away. Get it out of the way. But now we can kind of start step back and say, "Okay. Now what are the things that are feeling good?" This sing's feeling pretty good. So maybe shift command O, outline, and now you outline that thing and you group it so now there just shapes. Take this thing and say, "Let's go apply that arc." Go back to your arc. Let's take a look. Now it kind of messes with the scale of it. You see it kind of pinches it because you just want that thing to follow that line. So instead what we're going to do is we're going to, that's not going to cut it. Maybe that worked for those shapes there. Instead we're just going to grab this line right here. Just grab your white tool. Grab that little arrow guy. Just grab the line so you just got the line now. Now go color it something that you can see. Let's just go cut the the Kresge Kmart Turquoise and now go get your little type on a line, type on a path tool. Click it on there and type a big old Draplin on there or whatever your last name is, the Fenkel clan. Now you're starting to see that things started to feel pretty good. Man, it's feeling pretty good. Give a little space to breathe and remember we can tune all that stuff up and then you can kind of take this. Now, watch. You can take your path and screw with it and you're type is going to kind of go around it. So let's just say if we just did this real quick and just messed with it. Be careful though, because if you look that might be just the path you're messing with or you're screwing with the width and stuff. Don't mess with the width, any of that stuff. So that little guy fits. It feels pretty good there and there's some opportunities. So what if we went here and remember this is a big one. You're only going to need really any project that would say two to three typefaces. Of course, I'll just go back to my old Futura Bold. I love it. It's been the bedrock of bad design and then manuals and just everything else good in the world that it was overlooked. I'll grab some of that stuff and maybe there's something to it and just allowing it to just be a couple little pieces and we'll just plop a couple little Draplin family or something. I don't know, The Draplin Family. So this just becomes a little bit extra verbiage. Cool. Of course, keep in mind, all this shit needs to be centered at all times. So something's starting to happen there. Now you can kind of mess with the scale because it's like it needs to feel like it. The hierarchy, that's the first thing you see. Then let's fill up some of these spaces with some more stuff. So it doesn't have to be super filigree or lions or tigers or helmets or whatever the hell. Let's just go back and look at our world. So if our world was Drapala brand or old country or whatever you want to call it, and yet Joseph and Josephine my Grandpa Joe and my grandma Josie. Well, maybe there's something there. So we'll go back here and let's just go back and do our little guy and let's just put some stuff on there. So let's get a little piece of type here and let's make it white so you can see it and let's do, Joe and Josie. So that's a tribute to my grandma and my grandpa. So we'll go back up here because this is what you did your research and that woman used to say ahtcha mahtcha kahtcha and some other shit but we'll grab that on the same flavor. Grab your little eyedropper or just go touch that thing. Okay. Now what you're getting is you're just getting a little bit like no difference. You can kind of give it a little more a little more Ledon. But that stuff out there, but now we've got some some extra noise in there and it's like it's starting to happen. You're filling up these spaces. Let's go get a Detroit, Michigan on there and here's how you trick this. Instead of just taking any of the line like this guy and we want a little Detroit, Michigan along the bottom here. Here's how you do it. Ungroup that piece and we're doing offset path because we want the perfect line to relay that Detroit, Michigan down there. Offset path which I have it set up in my little key commands would just go offset path. Let's just say negative three point. Let's just see where it puts us. That's two for an offset, negative one point. Okay. So, that puts us in this little zone here and I'll give it a better. So, you can see it. And all we're doing is just trying to get to this nice line. Okay. So I think we're there. Now, go and you can just do a couple of ways. Touch that one point command x, delete all the other shit. Command f, that line goes in there. Now you've got a nice arc now to go put your type on there. So grab your little, what it's called here? The type on a path tool and then give it the right size, give it a little bit of tracking and you see how nicely that fits in there. That's it. Now when you pull back, you see that thing really fits in there nicely. You can kind of massage that thing because it feels like it's a little bit right. But you can just kind of pull it over a little bit. So what we're doing here is like the visual quality of what you're reading. This thing may get a little thicker and get a little bit bigger. But you're starting to lay these things in around. Let's just go through one little stupid more people, I don'to know, this attention Kmart shoppers shit on there. Let's go get that in there somewhere. That was a big one for my dad and I think I know he'd get a kick out of that that we had in there and let's just plop that in there and maybe just the way to do that is just center or on the bottom. As we lay this thing in here, we kind of say, "Damn, look at all that stuff." We got weird type. We've got little type. We've got a big old family in there and stuff and it's like, "We've got pierogies, grandma's pierogies." The width is a little weird on those guys. Let's just go isolate them and get to those and bring those down just a hair. Okay. It feels a little better. So you're optically making sure that shit all works and there's a lot of cool things you can do. You can see say here, "Well, I just want one more line here." Those points are just a little too weird. Let's just say we do this just a little bit. That just feels a little bit more like water now. Just take these guys and just quickly whatever, just grunge them in there and you can you know just kind of say there's a vocabulary going on now. We've got some linework over here. We've got some little Detroit on the water and then we've got a little pierogi steaming up here. So Joe and Josie what my grandma used to yell at us and stuff. And then some fun stuff attention Kmart shoppers. So that said, now when you're done, you keep this thing live and let's pull this guy over here. You can just kind of go, "Man, look at that." We've got a family crest. It took us. I don't know. What was that? A little bit of research on a Saturday making some graphics, no big deal. We got something we can go plop on a T-shirt. 8. Color: So, now we're talking about color, right? Man, I'm not afraid to go on that worm hole and go after and try new stuff all the time. Ellie, go grab that poster. Yeah. All right. Okay. So, here's the deal. Thought I should [inaudible] Here's 666 logos I made of every shape and size and whatever. Lots of different color, and sometimes it's spectrum color, sometimes it's a weird subdued stuff, sometimes it's real earthy. But what was appropriate for that piece, or that little mark? Well, it's the spirit of the project that guided it. How do you find that stuff? Just look around my shop man, let's go look at a record store, and see all the new stuff that's coming out. Some of the new and the new releases as well. You see so many new little colors that way. Right? Or go junking. Or shit is gone all over the web, collect stuff, and then go sample it, and then tune all those numbers accordingly, and you're a little swatch patterns. You have to be surprised sometimes. You can go into some of these cool little color aggregators cuter and all that shit. But man, sometimes it's predictable. So, you have to learn to be surprised. You'll also see some pretty rudimentary stuff in here too. I call those bucket colors. Because listen, when you go to a screen print shop. A bucket color is like, I want white, I want black, I want red, I want blue, I want yellow. Right? There's this a bucket of red, take a glop of that shit, and put on a screen, and screen that. That's bucket red. I also, if it's appropriate I love working within those restraints. Because sometimes that's some of the most refreshing limitations, right? When you get to 500 million different colors net damn swatch book. I get it. But it's also if it's appropriate, and your brand is about being frugal. Then learn how to use those bucket code. Because that's what's appropriate for your budget, and appropriate for getting in out of the job. Yet in the end, how the design fields in your hand, a one color thing on some newsprint. It was affordable. It was bucket blue and shityhole newsprint. That's what it call for. That's I don't know it's a weird lead to like deinvent this stuff. So, learn how to work like always ask, what's my cheapest way in and out of this project? Always ask that because that might be refreshing. That might be the thing that no one asked about, because they wanted to get foils, and fucking things, and UV's and regulators, and fucking flaps, unfolds, and shit, and creases and stuff. You didn't need any of that stuff. So, always ask, and start at the bottom, because in my life, sometimes it's all we have. So, let's go plop this shit on a t-shirt. Let's get some color down here. Because, here's a deal. In my life, I've just realized that when you work, and you show stuff, you want to show stuff in context, and when we go and we say, all right. It's one thing to say, "Well, it looks pretty good in this nice big old PDF". But for my cousin Brian, might wear this t-shirt if I was to present it to everybody, and say "Hey, we made this Droplin family t-shirt crest", I would want him to look at it and say "Oh yeah, that feels like us". So, what might that be? I don't know. Let's just go and say, "Post family crest". So, what do we see? We're seen a lot of yellows, we've seeing a lot of reds. Of course Polish, Polish the whole member that's solidarity, was solidarity not ask you something like that, was that classic scary like lake Lorenzo? Wasn't? The classic like scary, incredible like freedom march, like Polish, fighting for their freedom things. Say hi to communism. Look at that. So, there's some heritage there, it's scary but there's heritage. So, we're going to do, is we're just going to go real fast here, and just for the sake of like just to show you, let's just go make a red, yellow, and white version. Polish, pride, my dad used to say "How come all the Polish people end their names and ski? It's because no one could spell toboggan, that's a little joke, don't take that the wrong way. Now watch it. You can take the singer here, we're just going to plop it on there. But you're going to see a couple of issues real quick. So, because we built it the way we built it, now we're going to go through and we're going to have to tune this thing accordingly. So, group it. Let's start just picking apart some of the color. So, let's plop a little bit of white. Let's go give this stuff some yellow. So, do that and get that thing yellow, and let's go put a nice red outline on this guy right here. Okay. Let's fill that thing with a white. Let's put this guy in a cool little red. Let's give this guy a nice little yellow. Now, let's go weeping in there, and let's make sure that these guys are all proper colors. So, let's get rid of all the fills. You can bust it out to an outline shape now. Make this all one color here and let's just call that white. Let's go mess with our parochial here's a quick way to do it. Quick way to do it, is to go through here, and just grab just your priorities, and go back to the white. Now, just do a quick little flip. So, let's try like this, let's just go back here and let's make this white. Let's get rid of the inside is, and go give those guys a little [inaudible]. You can quickly see with a couple little steps, are you kidding me? We got ourselves a t-shirt. You see everyone wearing that, hang out, whatever. I mean, as you step back, and you say, "Well what do we want people to see?" That could go a little bit mellower, and you've got ourselves a little cool t-shirt. That quick, that fast, that's us. That's all ours. You have to understand something like, I went and looked at a little bit of Polish reference, the flags, and the crest and stuff, but you have to understand that, you can see color anywhere, and find quick incredible little inspiration that punches you in the face, and I'll just show you how I do it. I'll go look at my Flickr. Have been taken photos a dead stuff for years, and years, and years. I'm just going shopping, for some interesting colored ways. So, I'm looking at my Flickr here, and I'm just going to go click on something. Let's just go find something. I don't know. Here we have A Fine Saturday of Junkin. I'm looking here, and I'm looking here, and I'm going to say let me see. Look in, I'm looking, and go, there might be something happening, let me see here, even just right here. Kind of go, here's a photo. I'm going say it we've got hot nuts, great, who doesn't like some hot nuts. Then take this thing, and take a quick little screen grab. Bring this back over here, plop that thing in your document, and now let's color up some stuff. So, we're just quickly, quickly, quickly, going to do this. Here's how you're going to do it. Don't spend a lot of time in this. Remember, this is meant to be fast, and fun, and weird, and whatever. So, let's just do it that way. We're going to lock call that stuff in the back, and I'm going to bring this guy down here, we'll go. Now, watch it. Take your little eyedropper, and go grab that little maroon. Let's put that on there. So, it's a little bit too maroon, but the idea is we just want a good maroon. We're just drafting off over here. Okay. Now, let's go through here and say, now remember, we got to clean all this stuff out. So, let's make that little maroon something that we can get to. There it is. A watch. Make it global, and a little color way. Now, just go and trip this thing. So, we want that thing to feel like it's a maroon background, so we got to get all those little outlines that were red there, maroon. This little guy will go quickly maroon. Now, let's go. Let's start coloring this thing. So, let's go grab a color from here. Net orange. Pull that orange over into here cool. Make it global. Let's go quickly. Now, remember, what was that trick? Select everything except for what you're working on. So, let's do a big old command S. Selects everything on the whole art board. Lock all that stuff, and now go through and try to just quickly get to these guys. So, if you go like this and you say, "Select same fill color." Then we're going to say, okay, we're going to hit that orange. Let's go make this thing. Let's make that orange. Now just stop. Just stop. Because it's like damn, that's feeling pretty good too just like that, a maroon with a little hit of orange. Okay, let's just pull this guy to the side before you go too far. We'll go back in there real quick, and go grab that yellow real quick. Pull that over in here, make it global. I'll show you why in a second. Now, go all the white stuff now, go and fill that with that yellow. So, let's just quickly go grab. I'm going a little too quick. Now, go in there and get all these guys. So, that was all the yellow over here, this is let's see. So, that's all yellow, and then these guys, all yellow. Go command Y over to your outline mode and quickly grab stuff without grabbing background and whatever. Then let's just make all this stuff the yellow. Now, you see it doesn't quite work there as well, right? You're seeing that. So, that's why now, when you step back it's like, damn it's not that bad. But the yellow is a little weird, so maybe he's a little brighter. So, you go over here, keep your preview on, and you can mess around with it. Ooh that looks pretty good. Looks pretty good. Okay done. I guess the idea is, you could quickly get around, and quickly make quick color decisions all just based on that simple geometry there. So, where should we go and look? Because here's the deal, not only that I make this little drop in one, but I also made this. I made a little chicken, little Polish chicken, or Polish falcon of course. Then pierogi and nalesniki, and my grandma makes beautiful pierogi nalesniki. That's what it looks like on that t-shirt. There's another version. I went through quickly, and looked at the reference I saw the Polish falcon. Just went and quickly would redraw it. It's just as simple as this, just as simple as this. Find this little guy right here, lamb down, get some gross color to contrast, and just start quickly outline and stuff. If you look, it's that. They're just shapes, they're just shapes. If you go isolate these things, they're just laid over that thing, and there's the guy back there but when you see him pop out of there, there's a little guy. So, we just made our own little version. Now, listen, it's tracing or whatever you want to call it, but we made our own little version of that guy. I don't know if anyone's ever made a little crappy, little Polish falcon that way I don't know. But when you go look at our t-shirt, that's ours now. It feels authentic to the brand, it feels authentic to the family maybe. Just some quick, quick, quick little decisions. You can do a lot of cool stuff. Be fast, and not take it too seriously and yet make something cool. I was starting to go down this line of all this K-mart shit here, and it was just like, "Well, let's go just plop in a big old logos." Let's go back here, on my big old poster. Though my logo 666 and my favorite logos on that damn thing. For sale all day long at the drop of design company confined it. Let's go find something here, and let's just see how it feels in there. Let's just find a cool little D logo of some sort. Which one would be. Let's just grab my grandma here at school, there's my grandma Josie. Let's go back here, let's put her in there. There she is. It's just like this little thing, actually much of [inaudible] listen it doesn't have to say, drop on family you can say anything. You guys could make it to say, "I'm pleased to call our grandma Josie". Detroit Michigan, and then attention K-mart shoppers but instead it could be. Let me open a can of peaches. Which I'm pretty sure that's what she said. The jokes always been made, but I'm pretty sure that's what she said. But there you go there's like a little soap for my grammar Josie too. Yeah. Right. So, all right. 9. Now It's Your Turn: As a big old overview, there's some rule set to how to do this class. If you're new to this game, follow along closely. If this is something you're watching because you need that little push over the edge and you understand 92 percent of what we went over, we can go ape-shit, there's no rule there. But I guess I would challenge you guys to walk it through. You'll see how these guys edited my message into something refined. Thank you, you guys. Thank you. Follow it along and see how that goes. You have to go one-to-one. The beauty of this guy is what is your story, and where are you from, and what are the things that come up? What are the colors? What are the forms? What's the language? I mean, If you're from somewhere far away, it's a whole different language, that is you. That's your family story, that's incredible. So, go after that. But in the end, I want you to make a nice little cluster of something, and then go change it 14 times. You saw at the end, I did a couple of new ones. Try it. Through your research and like calling up your uncle or something, you're going to learn a lot about yourself. Mind that stuff, and then make a visual representation. Have a little corral of that shit, and then go mix it up. So, hope that helps or have fun with that shit. 10. Learn More with Draplin: