Mascot Logo Design: Bringing Brands to Life with Character Design

1. What is a Mascot logo?: Hey, and welcome to this mini course on creating mascot logos for brand designers. Now, this course is an exclusive module from my brand designer Pro program, which I'm sharing with the Skillshare community to help you guys understand the world of mascot logo design just a little bit better. And hopefully, as a result of this mini course, you're going to be far more confident when you're asked to create a mascot logo. You're also going to get an insight into my process as to how to actually develop mascots and characters for different brands. So by the end of this course, hopefully you can feel far more confident and comfortable when you are tackle mascot logo for clients. 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 brand agency, Clementine House to design this logo for a real life business. So I Kanawait the dive in with you. Let's get started. 2. Amazing Mascot Logo Examples: What actually makes a great mascot logo? Well, there are tons of different things that need to be taken into consideration when you're developing a mascot for a brand. For example, with the Jublingo logo, you are trying to be super approachable and super fun. Like, you know, if you've seen any of Juingo's content on social media like TikTok, for example, it's pretty funny. Whoever is doing their social media accounts, well done. However, another brand that is quite funny is KFC. Now, it depends when and in what context, but they do have some funny adverts when, for example, when they screwed up one time and they ran out of chicken in the UK, they had a little bit of fun it with their advertising and short little campaign. But the reason that they can do that and they can kind of switch things up is because they have the kernel as their mascot. And that whole story just helps to differentiate them with other chicken brands out there. There's just something really charming about the fact that an old guy was out there selling his fried chicken after failing many other companies beforehand. And you just kind of get a warm feeling about it. It's just memorable. It's a story that we can relate to. We all have a grandpa, right? And if our grandpa was out there selling fried chicken, one, it would be the best thing in the world because let's face it, everyone loves fried chicken unless you're a vegetarian. In that case, I'm very sorry. But it is something that we can understand. It's something that we can remember and relate to the chicken that we actually taste when we actually get KFC. I know that I get KFC, obviously, because I'm extremely healthy, but on occasion, why not? Now, the Michelin man, for example, from Michelin, is pretty much a similar story. However, again, it has a personality. It's just a tire company. They sell tires. That's literally it. So when you take a tire, it's pretty much the most boring product in the entire world. But because they have added a mascot to the logo, it just makes so much more sense, and it also gives you a story behind it. And then you can tie the Michelin man to, for example, advertising and campaigns for the Michelin guide, which is obviously, you know, campaign and pretty much the longest serving campaign and one of the most successful, I think, for Michelin tires because it literally links tires and the concept of driving to driving to the best restaurants in the world. So, you know, for example, a three Mision star restaurant is worth, you know, a special journey to go to whoever came up with that advertising campaign and that whole story and then relating it to the Michelin man coming up with that whole thing, genius. Now, the planets Mr. Peanut mascot is, again, one of those logos that just has so much character, looks so approachable. And who puts a peanut in a top hat with a cane. It makes him walk like that, memorable, right? Distinctive. That is, I think, one of the most important things when it comes to creating mascots, making them stand out and making them distinctive. I think that's one of the most important things for all logo design, but especially with mascots. If you're going to do a peanut logo, make it unique and distinctive. Don't just be boring do something different and be bald with it. Now, in the next lesson, we're going to actually start to look at developing a mascot for a brand. So on that note, I will see you in the next video. See you there. 3. Brief & Research: Okay, so developing a mascot logo for a brand, where do we start? Well, it always starts with the brief and discovery. That's always the first step. Now, for this particular mini course, I actually have a real life client who wants me to develop wave for it, a logo for a brand called Wild West Waffle. Okay? Don't ask me why Wild West waffle, okay? So what we're going to be doing is we're going to be developing a waffle mascot for this waffle brand, right? And for some reason, Wildwst. I don't know. But it's exciting, and the founder is super passionate about the project, and I love working with this founder. I've worked with her many times, so I can't wait. Now, there's a couple of things that this particular founder has said to me that she really, really wants as part of this mascot, right? She wants it to be fun. She wants it to have a very simple color scheme, but also one that is very realistic. She also says that she wants butter for her nose, which I think is kind of fun, and she also wants it to look quite cartoony. Shees want it to look super realistic but not too cartoony, as well, kind of somewhere in the middle. So with that said, I understand the brief. Now, what I would usually do with a clime is I would give them anywhere 4-6 different options of variations. For this mini course, obviously, I want to respect your time. So let's just do one together now, okay? So the first step is to look at some examples of waffle mascots out there now. Straight away, I just want to get kind of a feel for the different types of mascots out there just so I can kind of see okay. This is the style that I kind of want to do. This is how I want to use color. Do I want to go more simple or do I want to go more kind of, like, graphic we'll see what happens. So I'm looking at these now, and I'm just using Pinterest, Google, and this icon website that I sometimes use called flat icon. Now, I see this one and I like what I see. So I'm just put this one here. I like the fact that the colors are kind of flat. I don't like this black outline, but I do like the waffle kind of texture in the middle. So I want to see that Um, I do like this one's quite charming, right? I do like the fact that this one's quite charming. This one's cool, but again, I don't like the black outlines. I like this one. I love the eyes on this one. Look at the eyes on this one. Super cool and really happy, right? Like, happy and fun. Okay. This one's pretty cool. Look at this. Look at how happy and fun this one looks. That's the kind of vibe that we want to give, right? Okay, there's some butter there. No. Okay, so we're just getting some butter. I think this is quite a nice shape for the butter, actually. And what about for the mouth? What about for the mouth? Do I want to go for something a little bit like this? Or do I want to go for something a little bit more kind of like this where it's kind of like open? I think something a little bit more open and a little bit more expressive, right? Yeah. Something like this would be good, I think. Okay. Okay. Let's do that. Let's have a look at the waffle. So this is far too realistic. We look at this, far too realistic, and it looks like it's been done in three D, actually. Whereas something like this is far better, I think. I think it fits the brand better. I think it's going to serve the actual Kline a lot better. So I'm going to go for something a little bit more simple like that. So let's have a look at the butter nose. Buttered nose? Okay. Yeah, this is not waffle. Okay, this is not how I intended it to go. Waffle waffle character. Are there any with a butter nose or not? Okay. Interesting. So there's none that's actually got a butter nose. So that's cool. We can figure that out kind of maybe in the sketching phase, which is next. Yeah, I really like this kind of style, so I'm just looking at the different styles now. And you can see here there were lots of different ways that we could approach the project. But you can see here with these particular styles, they all kind of have a very similar vibe. Very minimal kind of outlining. We've got kind of different textures with different, you know, shades of yellow and orange and beige. I think this is kind of where we need to be in regards to the look and feel. I like the eyes. I like how we've got little cheeks coming out, which is going to kind of give it a more friendly vibe. We obviously need the butter for the nose. We're going to have a nice, smiley face. Okay, we're in a pretty good place. I also want to, as well, maybe try and incorporate some sort of, like, icon on top of this to kind of create, like, a little maple syrup, um, butter pancake or waffle or something. I think that's also going to be something interesting to look into. But anyway, I like where this is going. I'm going to move on to the sketching phase now to kind of really, see how we can take what we've got in the research phase and put it down on the paper, and then we'll see why we go from there. Anyway, I'll see you in the next lesson. See. 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 Pin test and Google, for example. Now it's time to start sketching our mascot. Okay, so we are starting to look at how we can sketch out this waffle mascot, right? We want to try and create a mascot for this waffle company that looks and feels great like these examples that we've brought together. Now this is obviously not a mascot, but what I'm trying to get is I'm just trying to get a feel for how I want it to look so that I can take inspiration from these different ideas, right? Now, you can see here, I said that this kind of texture and stuff was pretty cool. Now, we're not going to obviously be able to add any color at this stage. I've done, is I've just sectioned off my sketch pad into two phases like I always do. Phase one is just like a really rough sketch of just, you know, how things look. And then phase two is a little bit more of a refined approach, okay? Usually, I do around 20 different, you know, variations for phase one. Phase two, I'd do around kind of three to four and then choose the best one to take to the digital stage. For the purposes of this mini course, I'm only going to do maybe, like, two or three. And then for the main one, I'll just basically do one. I might not even do one. If I get it right in phase one, then I'll just basically leave phase two, and I'll just take it straight at the digital stage. It all depends, right? It depends how things go. And obviously, we don't know how things are going to go. So let's start. By just getting the circle right. Let's just get the circle in there. Obviously, it's a waffle. So I mean, we could do a square waffle, I guess, but I think a circle just looks and feels a little bit better. We could also do something a little bit like this. Let's test all of them. So we'll just see so we've got a circle. We also kind of have like this, like, sort of, like, waffleish shape, which it feels a little bit too kind of all over the place. It kind of looks like a splat, but anyway. We'll run with it, and we'll see what happens. Okay, there we go. Okay, we've got this. Then we've also got the square shape as well. So we've kind of got like a three D square shape, which looks and feels a little bit. I'll probably do it like this so it kind of looks up like this, like a square waffle. Okay. Okay, so let's do three different ones then. That looks good. Okay. Awesome. Okay, let's start with this one. Let's just tied it up a little bit. Again, we're not trying to create, like, you know, a perfect sketch here, but we're just wanting to keep things really simple. This is just getting some ideas down on paper and then kind of taking things from there. So let me just change my pencil, actually, just to get something a little bit sharper. That looks a lot better. Now, with the eyes, let's start with the eyes the eyes are really important. I like this little cheek effect here with this approach. These are actually exactly the same, but this is a better quality one. I'm not a big fan of this. I kind of liked, I do like this little cheek approach. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to just create like some cheeks on this. Let's do like little ones on halok and then also do this one, which is a little bit more kind of square, right, to match that. And then this one's like a little bit more kind of cutesy, and this one's like, just very cartoony and very kind of bubbly, right? Okay. Then with the eyes, I think I want the eyes to be quite kind of close together. Um, I mean, here they look wide apart, but it kind of looks a little bit, goless almost. Like, it just doesn't look very kind of, like, disneysque. I like how these are kind of a little bit closer together and a little bit more kind of concise. So let's actually edit this a little bit and get this a little bit closer. We go, and then let's just get these big like this. Wow, I like how this is looking already, to be honest. Okay, I got this one. And then let's do some here, which are a little bit smaller, so we've got something to compare with. We've got that nice cheek effect. And then with the square one, let's do, slightly more square eyes. Okay, let's see that. Okay, then we put some pupils in there just to see what it looks like. This one's a little bit, This one's it little bit **** eyed, I think, but this one is this one's going to look a little bit more kind of this one looks like it's got a sugar rush already, which is kind of I guess kind of relevant for a waffle company, but depends on how much maple syrup you stick on there. But, yeah, it does look a little bit scary, as well. So I'm not sure if we can fix that in Illustrator, but we can certainly try. But this one certainly looks a lot happier. This one looks a little bit weird, to be honest. And this one, we'll just do something like this, which should look a little bit better. There we go. Okay, so I mean, I'm kind of looking at this one to be honest. I don't actually like it. I actually want to just take this one out of the equation because it just looks a little bit crazy, but I think this one looks good. Obviously, it needs some refinement. But I also think this one looks good as well. Now, if you remember, the client said that she wanted, like, a butter nose. So I'm going to add a little kind of slice of butter here for the actual butter nose. This one actually looks more like a robot, to be honest. Obviously, we need to add the waffle effect. But yeah, like this one actually looks like a robot mow. Now for this one, obviously, that's a little bit too big. Let's look at this. Okay. This kind of looks a little bit like Thomas the Tank engine, right? So I'm not sure how much that's gonna change when we have the waffle effect, but yeah, anyway, once we've got that, I wanted to look at the actual mouth. So, again, I kind of like the mouth of this one, but I don't like how detailed it is. I don't want it to be super detailed. I kind of like this one. But let's do something kind of like this, but not as detailed. I don't want it to be as detailed as that. Um okay. Let's do something like this. And let's do, something, let's let's give him some teeth, maybe. And then like a mouth like this and then the tongue like that, and then obviously some shadow in the mouth. Okay. Okay, so we're kind of there with that one. This looks a little bit scary, actually, to be honest, at this stage, which I'm a little bit concerned about. And for this one, let's do something a little bit more like cheek, like cool almost. Laughing. Yeah, I think that looks a lot better, actually. I think that actually looks a lot better than this version. I mean, they're technically very similar, but I just kind of like how much cleaner that one looks. Okay, okay, okay. I don't think we're gonna give him ears, right? Should we give him ears? Do waffles have ears? No, this definitely looks like a robot. This actually looks like an actual character. Like, this actually looks like a decent, like, character, right? This doesn't look like a waffle at all. This looks a lot more like a waffle. I feel like a waffle is more round. Like, I'm not sure if I identify with square waffles. So I'm going to go off with a circular one, and let's just, for example, just put some sort of effects on here for the actual waffle, just to see how things actually look. I mean, obviously, this is gonna look a lot better anillustrator. I think one T one looks a little bit too human to me. So I think I'm going to move forward with the circular one just to basically see how it looks once I actually start refining it. And I think that's going to be the best option out of the three. Okay, so I'm looking at all of these, and I think that we can kind of make it look a little bit cheeky. Like, you see how this one's a little bit cheey. It's kind of got the eyes looking back. I think we can do something very similar with this. So let's take the circle approach again for the waffle. So let's just make sure that we've got the circle, right? And then let's start with the nose, actually. Let's start with the nose. And then once we've got the nose right, then let's try to add these kind of I think with these, like, this looks like it's like this literally looks like it's just inhaled, like a full bottle of maple syrup. I don't want it to look kind of so, like, energetic and stuff. I want to look more like, like, cool and, like, nice. I don't want it to look super, super, like, you know, like, I'm about to bite your head off. Like, I don't want it to look I want it to look a little bit more kind of, like, cool and chilled. Like, just happy. I want it to look more happy and chilled. Um, okay, let's maybe do this. Okay, let's do something like this. I still like how these eyes are, like, more, like, sort of rounded and stuff, though. So let's do something like that, maybe. And we want to be looking like, looking back. So let's do okay, let's do this here. And then the eyes are going to be looking this way. So let's do I don't really like how these like fill up 'cause it makes it look like it's like, ah, like, like, really, really energetic. I just wanted to be chilled a little bit. So let's just do, like, like, some pupils, but not like super, super, super crazy. Just do some, you know, pupils like this. Okay. Maybe put, like, a little light life flare in there as well, just to make it look a little bit more kind of chilled. Okay, we've got that. Okay. I kind of like where this is going. So we've got some color there, which we'll do. This is obviously the piece of butter, so this is like the I don't know. Maybe we'll put some maple syrup on there if we can, let's see. And then let's see what mouth we want to do. Now, obviously, the mouth is going to be smiling, but because this is kind of like we kind of have these little flicks, let's let's do, like, the cheeks up here. And then let's try and I don't know, maybe get um well, it kind of works. It definitely works with the cheek, so it definitely works with the eyes and stuff. And then let's do, like, do we do, like, a small mouth like this, or do we do, like, a one which is more like wide? I think if we do a small one, if we do a small one, it's gonna look a little bit weird look. So I'm like, sketching that already, and it still looks I already looks like a little bit weird. Even if we put, like, teeth, it just looks like goofy, right? Let's have a little look. And if we make it a little bit wider, let's check this out. So let's do it a little bit more white. And kind of welcoming almost, there we go. And then let's continue that shape with the teeth as well. So it looks like a little bit more, kind of, yeah, I like how that's looking, actually. And then we'll put it, like, a tongue in there or something, just to see what it looks like. Color this in. I mean, this is just, like, a rough sketch, but it's already looking so much better than these ones, right? And it's just because I'm taking a little bit more time with it. Obviously, there's still a lot of tidying up that needs to be done in illustrator, but it's still looking a lot better. I mean, from a character standpoint, it does look quite good. I obviously now just need to kind of start to look at where this waffle aspect can come in. Now, the elements of the actual, so the eyes, the nose, the butter nose, the mouth and stuff, that's all going to be sort of there. But then the actual circle itself needs to have some sort of waffle based effect. So now, I guess, if we look at the different examples, we kind of have this sort of, like, subtle background effect for the waffle. This one's a little bit more prominent, but I think if we did something like this, and we just had, like, squares, basically. So if we did, like, a circle here of the square that the squares can be in, this is kind of like the crust almost of it. And then, basically from that, we kind of have like squares coming out for the actual waffle. So they're kind of just in the background almost. I think that could look okay. 'cause it's kind of like the waffle face, but it's also letting the actual elements of the face, like, sort of shine through. And I know it looks super messy right now, but once we actually have the color in there, it's going to help to segment things a lot better and just help things stand out a lot more. Okay, so I'm actually really happy with how this waffle mascot is looking right now. And I think we're ready to take it into the digital phase where we can start really tweaking things in Illustrator and just making things look super clean and then adding a splash of color. And on that note, I will see you in the next lesson. 5. Digitising & Perfecting Your Design on Adobe Illustrator: So it's finally time to take the design for the waffle brand and put the mascot into Illustrator so we can start adding color and bringing this mascot to life. And so with that said, let's dive in Illustrator. So we finally have our waffle logo in Illustrator. I never thought I'd say that sentence, but never mind. And now we're going to take it, and we're going to ultimately digitize it and make it look good, okay? So we're going to start off. And what I'll do is I'll show you kind of the start of the process. Of me taking this and, you know, getting it to a certain point. And then I'm going to go away. I'm going to spend a couple of hours really refining it and getting it looks super polished. So you can see what the end result should be like after a couple of hours, but I'm obviously not going to stream this or record this for a couple of hours because you'll be both stiff. So the first step is always to kind of create your structure, right? So you can, you know, create your shape you're just working with outlines right now. You're not doing anything super duper crazy, right? You're just literally getting the overall shape there, so then we can work with it a little bit afterwards. Now, with this, obviously, we've got the butter nose, which I think will be a nice thing to get in place first. Let's do that. Let's make this a little bit more of an rectangle. There we go. And we can sort all of the sizes of the lines out and stuff afterwards. That is not my concern right now. I think the pen tool is going to be best for the other elements. So we're literally just popping in each of these little details of Mr. Waffle's face or whatever his name is. And we will basically just continue to the faster you get with I'm not the best illustrated by any stretch of the imagination, but the faster you get with the pen tool, the quicker you'll be at doing this sort of thing because it does take a little bit of practice. But ultimately, you can get pretty fast, pretty quick, at outlining things and just with practice. So it's not, you know, it doesn't happen overnight, but once you get the hang of it, it's pretty easy. Okay, so I don't like how that looked, see, even though I made mistakes. Okay. There we go. Okay. We're good. Now, the thing to just remember with these lines is they're not 100% confirmed yet. We are going to refine things, we're going to make things a little bit tidier afterwards. But for now, we're not going to waste too much time. We're just going to get the most basic things in the bag so that we can then start focusing on the details afterwards. We're going to get the teeth in, get those teeth done, perfect. Then we're going to do the tongue. Perfect, perfect, perfect. Perfect. All done. Excellent. Then we are going to do let's do the eyes actually, let's get the eyes arranged. You've got the eyes, got these nice little parts outside. Beautiful. Then this one. Okay. I got these nice little cheap bony things out the side. Looks good. Looks good. Okay. Then we're just going to do this, do this, do this, do this. That's the first eye. And the second eye is going to go like this. And what you'll find is I'm not being perfect with it. I'm just trying to get the lines in place so that I can then refine things afterwards because I know from doing mascot logos before that things change, you know, little opportunities pop up with the design and at the moment. I know that if I spent too much time trying to get everything perfect and trying to fiddle around with things and follow the sketch exactly, it's just going to be a complete waste of my time by the end because I know for a fact that things are going to change. Once you get things into the digital format, you can change things however you want. You can add things, you can take things away far easier than when you're sketching. When you're sketching, you have to erase things. It takes time, it takes energy. You're almost scared to do something wrong with the sketch once you get on a good role. But with this, it's you're just moving lines around and you can duplicate, you can do as many copies as you want. It's just easy. So, okay, we're at a place now where we have kind of the main outline pretty much ready. So I'm just going to get this, get this there. This here. I mean, look, I mean, it doesn't look bad, does it from, you know, the first little draft, right? I just copying this. So what I'm going to do now is I think I'm going to create a circle. I'm going to make sure everything is unlocked. Then I'm going to lock that circle. Then I'm going to take this. I think I'm going to yeah. I think I'm going to copy and paste it because I know for a fine fact that if I don't copy and paste it, then I could potentially lose it in future, which is not going to be great. I want to put it down there. Then I'm going to take this maybe I'm not going to put it down there. Okay. I'm going to try that once more. It's like the first time I used Illustrator. An absolute disaster. Okay, so we're here now. We've got this here. We're going to outline this so that we have kind of a structure to what we're trying to do. Then we're going to start taking things out like for example, this and this, divide this, get rid of that, this and this, divide this, get rid of this. What else? This and this. Let's tire that up a little bit. We probably can put this here actually. There we go. That looks a lot better. Put this here a little bit, actually. There we go. That looks a lot better. Okay? Were there, were there were there. We'll sort those out afterwards, I think. Okay, okay. Okay. Everything looks okay, to be honest. Okay. We're good. Right. Now the next step is to basically, we've outlined everything. Everyone's happy. We've secured that. Now we're going to not do that because that's not a good idea. But what we will do is we'll get this. We'll create the fill effect just to get those out, just so we know for a fine fact that they're not going to come and bite us afterwards. Then we have this stage. We're going to create this circle, which is essentially going to be bright green, just so I can show you exactly what's happening. We're going to copy and paste this. This here is two versions here. We now have this version here. Which is together completely. We also have this version here, which is also going to be together completely. Let me put that back on top. Then I'm going to put this in here. And then I'm going to take it and I'm going to cut out the sheaf from the green. That's all I've done. I've just taken the sheaf away from the green I'm going to delete everything else I don't need it. Okay, so now all I've done is I've taken away now all I'm going to do is I'm going to take away the shape from the green. I've got two copies. I've got this copy as well, but this copy is going to go afterwards. I'm going to take this shape away from the green right now. We're going to end up with an outline of the actual mascot. Now, this copy is the actual outline itself. I'm going to show you why this is important in 2 seconds. But for now, we want to take this. We want to get rid of that because we don't need it. Then we're going to take this and this and we're going to ultimately get them pretty much directly on top of each other because that's where we need them to be. Then once we do that, we can then start to color this character in and start to add some effects and do some other great stuff. So when we get to the stage, we're now at a point where we can start with that, there's just something now which has crept in. So now we're at this stage. We can now start to be a little bit more creative. Now I'm going to ungroup everything. So I can pick up separate parts. I don't need that anymore. I need this. I need that, I need that I need that, I need that, I need that. Now I'm going to do is I'm going to get some references in regards to color from the examples that I had before for the waffle logo. And so here we are. So now I have the colors that I can use for this logo design. I can use this color for the butter. I don't have to use this exact color. I can edit it a little bit and make it a little bit more unique to what I need, but it just gives me a really good starting point. Obviously, this part is going to be white. This part here is going to be white or an off white almost. This part here is going to be a dark color, like a blacky color, I'm assuming, something like that. Maybe, let's make it a nice blue, a nice blue. That's going to be cool. Let's do that. Then let's make these nice blue eyes. Cute. Okay. Yeah, similar that doesn't look too bad. Perfect. Okay. It's now we've got that. The next step is going to be the teeth. Let's get the teeth in play. Let's get this. We want to use similar colors, to be honest. We don't want to stray too far away. Let's just get this yellow and then we can move that up to the red. We have the same type of color. So this yellow and this red in the same family. Obviously, it just creates a color match that is just a little bit more harmonious. Then we've got the actual waffle itself. Which is basically here. And then the outside crust, which is basically like I don't know, like the slightly burnt part of the waffle. Okay. And then I think this is a little bit too I want this to be a little bit lighter. Do I want it to be lighter? Actually, I quite like that how it is. Okay. But let's make this a little bit more yellow, so it kind of stands out as being butter I don't think it doesn't it currently stands out as being butter. I'm going to add probably some effects and stuff to that afterwards, but for now, it's not really worth it. Okay. So we've currently got this, which is okay, okay, okay. I'll probably add some. I'll figure that out afterwards. I'll figure out how I want to kind of refine things and stuff after. But anyway, that's beyond the point. I can take some time afterwards in a few hours to refine things, but at the moment, it's not really a massive issue. Now, you can see here how they have these these waffle shapes. They're kind of squares almost. And they're essentially like pieces of the waffle, but in front of the actual waffle shape. So they're in the background. So I don't think it'll be full transparency. They're probably like, so it's just like a behind the features element. Well, you can probably put them diagonally, just to try and make it a little bit more realistic. But basically, that's what it's all about. It's all about trying to get the feel right. Okay, we don't need this one. That's fine. Then afterwards, what we can do is these go the same? Yeah, they do? Okay. I was going to do them like diagonal like bricks, but then I realized this isn't a house, this is a waffle. Okay. Got this here, got this here. Got this here. Okay, this should look. Once I pull all these behind the actual features, this should look a lot better. And again, I'm just speed running this. Like, I'm not doing this with any real kind of detail or care at this point, because to be honest, it doesn't really matter. I'm just trying to get an idea of what's working because I've got the outline. I know kind of roughly what he's going to look like. But the details are going to come later. I'm not going to spend all my time going through super fine details. Group those. Perfect. We don't need this one, we don't really need this one. Yeah, I'm not going to spend all my time going through all these details when they're not going to matter. Once I get to the refinement stage. Okay. There we go. Okay. So that looks a lot better than what it did, but there's still obviously some things poking out here which are not great. There's like white lines and stuff around, but I'm not worried about that at all. I'm going to figure that out afterwards. But you can see here how we've went from, you know, literally this outline on this and we've literally create something in real time, like it hasn't took an incredible amount of time, which doesn't look half bad. I definitely think we can work on a few things. I definitely think that this is a little bit too, I don't know. It's a little bit too prominent. I think it would probably look a little bit better if it was a different shade or something. I mean, that looks good. That looks good. I can probably put some shading and stuff in between each of them. Like, if I really take the time, which I will now, and I really kind of, you know, added shading in certain places like the eyes, like the tongue, these little crevices, if you could see on the previous versions, see how they've got little shadows and stuff inside. If I can do that, then it's going to look 1 million times better. So through the power of time travel, I'm going to refine this, get it looking a little bit better, add some shading, add some magic, and just like that. And you can now see the difference between version and this version. I did a couple of things. I kept the nose pretty much the same. I took away the outline, and I just added some outlines between the eyes and the mouth and stuff just because I thought it was a little bit too cartoony. I added some shading to the butter here, which I think works well. It just helps to elevate the butter a little bit. I also added little things as well like shadows, for example, behind the butter just to elevate it a little bit more. I changed the direction of the eyes. I did actually like how these eyes were looking at the same place, but I ended up making them a little bit more around them, bringing them a little bit further into the center of the eye. I created some outlines here which basically were a little bit more I don't know, kind of interesting. Cause usually when you use, like, really structured lines, and they're all kind of the same thickness, it just looks a little bit uninteresting. So that's why I kind of wanted to edit things. I made him look a little bit more goofy. I thought that looked a little bit cooler. I created a cool little effect with the mouth, as you can see here, where you kind of have like a gradient with the darkness in the back of the throat, which just gives a little bit more depth. I added a little chin under here. And also, as well, I did a gradient where essentially the orange, sorry, on the right or the brownish orange gets lighter as it goes to the left, just to add a little bit more contrast and also added some shading to the actual crust of the waffle, and that's pretty much it. I mean, you can see here the difference and the development on the first version to the second version to then the version which I would send to a client, which is basically this version here. And the difference between this here, which is essentially the first sketch that I did from the research phase. This step here, which is essentially what I just whipped together within 20 minutes of talking to you on this video, and then this version here is time. I took the time to think about, okay, what do I like about this? I went back to my research and the examples that I liked. Okay, I like how this is like this. I like how the smile looks a little bit better when there's more teeth showing and it's kind of a little bit more structured. I liked how there was shading and stuff within the actual waffle, so it made it come to life a little bit more as opposed to being flat like this. It all comes down to refinement. If you can just go away, grab yourself a quick coffee, then come back and just refine things a little bit more, you can create incredible logos like this for clients that, you know, they're going to love. And what most people do is they probably design something like this and they'll sell it to a client and expect them to give feedback, and they'll just want to get the project done. Don't do that. It's the stupidest thing you can ever do. What you should be doing is refining yourself and going back, having a coffee, coming back and saying, Okay, how can I make it a little bit better? Okay, I can add a little bit of a thing to the butter on the nose. Okay, maybe I should put a top hat on him. No, no, Top had probably isn't a good idea because that's going to be too much. Okay. Let's pull it back. And making those decisions is over time going to help you to create much better logos. I hope this lesson has been helpful or at least it's giving you something you can add to your own process or you've enjoyed yourself, and I look forward to seeing you in a future lesson. So that note, I'll see you soon. Take care. Bye bye. 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.