Transcripts
1. Course Intro: Hi everyone and welcome to my latest sculpture class. I am Jen lasagna and I'll be your teacher for this course. I'm a freelance graphic designer, illustrator and educator base out of the Midwest and I run Belen Sophia Creative Studio. You may know me from my previous courses here on skill share or from my youtube channel, the freelance life, where I share behind the scenes of running my creative business as well as creative design and art tutorials. In addition to my creative work, I've been teaching as an adjunct professor in higher ed for nearly ten years. Often teach marketing and design courses. And I wanted to bring one of my favorite courses to teach the fundamentals of branding and identity design. Digital space for small business owners who are looking to understand and establish their own branded entity. So we're going to do just that in this class today. Not only will you get a better understanding of branding and how it applies to business. But I've also offer insights and how I work on logo design with clients and how you can apply the process to designing your own logo and branding identity. You will also get to create your own logo and a simple and efficient way using open source assets from places like free picked.com or Creative Market. This will be the first in a two-part series dedicated to branding. So be on the lookout for my next class, elevating your brand with packaging designed for your Etsy shop. So what are going to learn in this class, in this course, we're going to be going over the basics of branding, understanding what a brand identity is and why it's important for your creative small business or for your Etsy shop and will also be designing a simple logo for your brand. Logos are a vital part of branding your business that will help to create recognition for your company within the market. Logos bombarded daily. Think about clothing labels, TVs, computers, even your toothpaste. From the moment we get up in the morning to the time we go to sleep, we're surrounded by subliminal advertising and logos, a stat from the brain longevity that I share with my marketing students at the university, that always blows their minds is that the average American sees 16 was an advertising, logos and labels in just one day, Reuters proclaimed in the nineties that mankind has produced more information and the last 30 years than in the previous 5 thousand mind you, that was over 20 years ago. And with the advent and growth of social media, I'm sure that that number has increased exponentially with happy, sad since we're producing so much more information than in the past, we're seeing branding and logos that are increasingly similar to one another. This poses a really big problem for companies that are trying to differentiate themselves visually. But then it also creates a really fun opportunity for designers and other creatives to create iconic identities that help sustained apart with the advent of sites like Creative Market, it also offers businesses the opportunity to design branding in a budget friendly or a DIY kinda way. Personally, as a freelance designer, I don't think these sites are putting designers out of business. Rather, I think they're disrupting the industry and making us really rethink our business model. Of course, as creative business people or small business owners who might just be starting out or don't have the traditional design chops. You may want to be able to brand yourselves in a way that makes sense to you. So I wanna go over an easy way to design a logo using pre-made open-source assets from places like free picked.com or Creative Market and to font.com and apply them to a logo and then utilize that logo on a business card. So this class is catered to the beginner designer or small business owners who are looking to create a logo on their own or rebrand. And a simple and efficient way. As I will walk you through the steps of using Affinity Designer while utilizing these pre-made open-source assets, some knowledge in Affinity Designer will be helpful, but I'll be sure to walk you through the basics of understanding the toolbars and the menus that we'll be working to create your logo with.
2. Course Project and Tools Needed: For our class project, you will be designing a logo using Affinity Designer and open source assets from places like Creative Market or website like free picked.com. These are meant to help you create a logo. If you already have them though, you can skip this section. Once we've designed your logo, we will be creating a business card using Affinity Designer as well. The business card will include your logo, a website link if you have it, social media handles for your brand, contact information that you would be okay with sharing a networking type situation. You can share a PDF of your business card and logo and the plastic Project Gallery. I'd be happy to give you feedback or to answer any questions you may have there. So the tools that you'll need to complete today's project include a sketch pad, a pencil or a pen, or a laptop or computer with Affinity Designer installed and access to the internet. If you have Affinity Designer on your iPad, you can probably do this class as well. The interfaces are just a bit different. But for the most part, you should be able to follow along while I'm looking forward to creating with you today, let's get started.
3. What Is Branding?: So before we begin the actual design process, I want to talk more about what branding is. So let's define branding. Seth Godin has a really great definition of brand that addresses what branding embodies. B, on your visual design it entity. He says that a brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories, and relationships that when combined account for consumers decision to choose one product or service over another. Essentially, your brand, your visual identity, the experienced the consumer has with your shop, your product or your service, culminates to how they see your company and your brand. And I believe that branding done right can truly humanized accompany. So then what is brand identity? A logo, packaging, Typography, and personality all represent a brand along with customer service, price, product quality, and corporate responsibility. But that idea of a brand is a bit more intangible as we discussed earlier. It's emotional, visual, historical, and human. It's this whole experienced that separates different products and services in a world where quality is often comparable or the same brand identity that on the other hand, includes things like the logo, the topography, the colors, packaging, and messaging. And it compliments and reinforces the already existing reputation of a brand. Brand identity attracts new customers to a brand while making existing customers still feel at home. It's both outward and inward facing. It's vital that brand identity be consistent. So when we talk about this idea of brand identity, we're thinking about it from a visual perspective. And it's important for it to be consistent because it's representing and reinforcing the emotions that people already have established about a brand. The message portrayed by brand identity components needs to be clear and it needs to be the same no matter where it's displayed. So all of that being said, what is brand identity design? Basically, its brand identity applied. Brand identity design is the actual process of creating the logo, the color palette, picking your type faces and other visual assets that will relate to your business or the business of a potential client. If you're working as a freelancer or a designer in the market.
4. The Importance of Marketing + Branding: Now I want to talk a bit about the marketing matrix. All of this branding talk relates directly back to the marketing of your business. To me, marketing is a really vital and important aspect of the corporate role of the business world and even of the creative and small business world. Because essentially marketing is sales support and what do we all try to do if you're running your Etsy shop or you're working in advertising, or maybe your creative artists trying to sell your art. You're trying to sell your product. So marketing helps to service that sale, right? So marketing for companies is now really established part of most company processes. No matter how big or how small is important to have a marketing plan, it's important to have a marketing strategy. If you're a small business owner or a creative entrepreneur, you may be focused on designing and creating products. But the reality we have to face is that old idea of if you make it, they will come. It's actually a fallacy. If you make it, you have to market it in order to get people to be exposed to your product and then hopefully make a purchase of your goods or your service. What is even more important is that marketing and the branding that is related to that very marketing allows you to differentiate yourself from the other potential competitors in the market, the way a company communicates to its internal and external audiences. And when I talk about external audiences and thinking about consumers, it's really critical. For example, a big company like Nike. It's the company's marketing and message that has differentiate Nike from all the other shoe brands that may offer a similar product. Why someone decides to go by Nike's versus a pair of Adidas or New Balance completely relate to the brand identity that they've portrayed. So when we talk about Nike and we look at the brand identity that they've created, that idea of just do it right. And the athletes that they portray in their advertising, it's almost aspirational feeling. But then it also connects communities because they truly believe that anyone can be an athlete, right? So just going for it, just doing it really plays into this brand identity that Nike has established. And that's very different than something like say, a datas or New Balance. And often because of that brand identity that the company has established, people choose Nikkei over these others. So how does all this apply to a small business? Even a small business has to differentiate and market itself. You're not gonna sell anything. You're not gonna get clients as a freelancer, you're not going to sell artwork. You're not gonna be able to sell your product or your service if you aren't telling the world about it. And your logo is just the beginning of the identity and it will often influenced all of the following. Say you're an Etsy shop owner, your logo and the design within that logo, the color palette within that logo will influence how your Etsy shop or your website looks and feels the words that you use in your product description, social media posts that all relates back to the voice that you are giving your brand identity. The banner at the top of your page, the icons that you use on your social media should all be consistent to what you see within your logo and identity. The way you respond even to customer requests, the words that you use, the colors that you use in your shop, even down to the typefaces, him fonts that you use. You want to be consistent and cohesive across the board when it comes to your branding. So why is branding important to a small business? The reality is that people often choose their products based on their perceived value rather than their actual value. Thinkable, why people pay more for designer goods versus budget buys? What are their expectations of how those products will perform? An also, the perceptions that people in the world around them will have because they have that product. All of this plays into branding and even a small business can implement these ideas into their strategy to a better place them in the market so that they can be competitive and gain sales and gain customers and things like that.
5. How This Applies to Small Businesses: I wanna go over five concepts about why branding is important to small businesses. The first is that branding improves recognition. One of the major components of a brand is a logo. And that's because as the face of the business, it's what people instantly recognize. A professional logo design is simple enough to be memorable, but it's still powerful enough to give the desired impression of your company, where we're talking about Nike earlier. When you think of the Nike brand, what do you think of automatically, the solution comes to mind. This second idea is that branding creates trust, just as people are more likely to purchase from a business that appears polished and legitimate, they wanna make sure that whatever shop their purchasing from an Etsy is legit. Small brands that can use their businesses new logo on business cards, T-shirts, or things out in the outside world that they're setting to potential customers basically are giving the business a professional image. These people can easily identify the business as a trusted source or Center for whatever it is that they're trying to get, whether it be a product or service. Branding also supports advertising. Advertising is a really important component of a brand. Both the medium chosen and the demographics that you could potentially target for advertisements can help build a brand, even something as simple as adding a logo to apparel or packaging or printed materials that you're sending out with your final product in your Etsy shop can help you continue to spread the word and market your business. I, for example, always include a business card and any of my Etsy shop orders include two sometimes as well if it's a new customer, why? Because they know that they could potentially give that other business card to someone else. Branding can also generate new customers. Branding can also help a business get word of mouth referrals. It's as simple as handing out a business card with your logo and with contact information. And basically the work is done for you. The most profitable companies, small enlarge, have a single thing in common. They have established themselves as a leader in their particular industry by building a strong brand, starting with a Shuang logo. And then finally, as I said before, I really think, could branding can humanize your company as a small business owner or creative? It's really important that your brand highlights who you are as a creative or a shop owner. Your branding is going to be more than just your logo as it can add personality and flair to the work that you do as a creative good branding feeds into the voice of your brand and it can give customers a reason to connect with you on a much deeper level. This in turn helps to really solidify that trust that you're attempting to build, which will in turn bring them a step closer to making a purchase decision. Emotions play into the idea of developing brand loyalty as well as humans, we connect with ideas, stories, and products that touching emotional nerve in us and your branding, the visual, you use, the tone in your writing on your site or in your shop. And the personality that you apply through a visual medium can really showcase the human side of your branding strategy.
6. The Logo Design Process Part 1: Now that we understand a bit more about branding, identity and running design in general, I want to talk more about the logo design process before we actually jump into creating our logo. Before we jump into any of that, Let's talk more about what's in a logo, what makes a good logo? So when a designer first takes on a new project, they probably spent a lot of time trying to understand both the organization that they're working with and it's audience. We'll get into that process of what a logo needs to say a bit later. But first, let's talk about what makes a really strong and good logo in the first place. Most logo designers follow some iteration of the principles of great logo design. So what are these principles? Well, there's five principles that I like to look at. Simplicity, memorability, timelessness, versatility, and appropriateness. We look at the idea of simplicity. You want to ask yourself, is the design simple and clean enough to be flexible and easily recognizable? Is it not too busy, distracting or confusing? When we're looking at Memorability, we wanna think about, is it quickly recognizable? Will people only have to spend a second or two thinking about it to get it. Timelessness has to deal with this idea of longevity. Will it still be a great logo and 1020 or even 50 years? And then versatility, does it scale with different sizes without losing quality will work across various media within different contexts. When it comes to this, this is why we'll be working in Affinity Designer, which is a vector program and vector logos can be increase and decrease in size without losing quality. And then finally, appropriateness. Does it resonate with the desired audience? Does it make sense for the industry that it's in? So now that we have a better idea of what goes into creating a good in Shuang logo. I want to outline my process when it comes to actually working through creating a logo. So the first step that I usually take when I'm working with a client is researching the field or industry that that client might be in. In your case, if you are designing your own logo, it might be a good idea to really sit down and think about your industry, look at trends in the industry, and do some research. Yes, you may be an expert in your field, but kind of giving yourself a refresher is always really helpful. It's important to put your knowledge down on paper to help guide the direction of the creative work that you're gonna be doing while building your logo. While it's nice to think that design elements come to be a spark of great inspiration. The reality is that good design is informed by the world around you. Researching the field or industry that you're creating for really helps designers get a sense of the environment the logos can actually live in. This is especially true for designers who haven't done prior work in a specific field or an industry. And you need to get a sense of the trends, what's appropriate for the business, and what might work well for say, something like a fashion brand may not necessarily work well for a small mom and pop shop. Finding inspiration, pulling ideas from social media, going out into the field and even just doing simple internet searchers can really be beneficial. Helping guide the design process. You've got to see what's out there. And then you can start thinking about how to differentiate the new logo from anything else that's probably already preexisting out in the world. So the next step that I usually do, and typically I'm doing step one and step two simultaneously. And this next step is getting to know the client. Or if you are a small business owner, really getting to know your own brand, often alongside the industry research as a designer, I'm also trying to get a better understanding of what the client does and who their target audiences. This might be in the form of a phone call in person meetings or even something as simple as researching their website. I often utilize a design brief in this process and you can even create your own for your own brand. You're not a mind reader. So using specific questions about your clients needs and desires is the first thing that you want to get out of the way in this process. Some simple things that you could ask include things like, what's the organization name, the location, How many years have they been a business? What are the products or services that they sell? And who might be some competitors in their area. Then you can get into deeper questions like the vision and mission of the company. What words they want to associate with their company? What kind of logos do they think will appeal to their potential customers and why? And how does the company want to present itself in the market? The brief CAN BE notes that you take during these conversations on a phone, or even type responses to a questionnaire that you send a client or you create for yourself. And the goal behind it is to help you keep your design process focused. You wanna get a better understanding of what they do, what they think about themselves, and who they sell to in order for those ideas to better inform the function of the design that you're creating, Then there's the translation process. If your client is a restaurant, for example, but they talk a lot about how they're really family centered and family oriented. The idea is how are you translating that a femoral idea into something concrete that visually connects those two concepts with a potential audience. How do you capture the essence of that company in what you're creating from a visual perspective when this part of the process is done right? It involves a lot of back and forth asking questions and really pushing the client to articulate and deeply explained their value proposition as a business. For newer companies, these discussions can actually be really eye-opening and helpful for them. As these are the type of opportunities I enjoy when it comes to client-based work. A lot of companies aren't even aware of how they're different, especially smaller companies. And this is a time for them to realize that and utilize it in how they showcased their brand, their product, or their service to the world. These logo design discussions can even help them think more about what differentiates themselves from their competitors. If you're a small business working on your personal branding, this is the time to really focus on putting your ideas down on paper. Ask yourself and write it out who you are. What is your business brand product or service is about? And how can all of these ideas that we've discussed compliment the visual light entity that you want to showcase to the world.
7. The Logo Design Process Part 2: The next step in this whole, entire process is the fund steps. So ideation, sketching, presenting an iterating on initial ideas. So once I've done all the research, then I can begin the creative process. I usually try to present the client with between 23 possibilities when I'm working on a logo anymore than that. And you might find yourself doing a lot of revisions on all of your ideas and a lot of extra work with sets you up, a lot more work that you probably want. And then also with the client with a much higher bill. And it's important to establish boundaries. Now, if you're a small business creating a logo for yourself and you don't want to become overwhelmed either. It's really important to focus on three solid ideas, max, and then refocus and refine those concepts Downs, who went selection? Typically when I'm working on logo work, I'm hand sketching concepts and then vectorizing them in Affinity Designer. But since I wanted to cater this course to small businesses who may not be digitally inclined or creative entrepreneurs who maybe don't have the funds to hire out a designer or just want to try to come up with something on their own. We're going to be using premade assets from sites like creeping.com or Creative Market, and then will be manipulating and piecing together these vector files in Affinity Designer, the goal is to work smarter, not harder. So once I have gone through the whole ideation process, I've sketched out my ideas. I've presented two or three potential ideas to a client, then it's time to revise. Sometimes this step is only a little bit of work and a little tweak. Other times it's a series of longer revisions. Personally, I specify in the original contract that I create with my clients how many revisions I'm willing to do for a client, which then forces the client to be more thoughtful about each provision requests. Sometimes clients ask us start over from scratch. You can avoid this by doing your due diligence when you're creating the original contract. If we're working at your own logo for your personal branding, then you can revise as much as your heart desires, but beware of overworking your design. Sometimes progress is better than perfection. Be willing to also get outside insight from others and ask their opinions on your options. Ask them if the visuals makes sense to them and if it works for your brand, it's always helpful to get another set of eyes to review your work. And then the final step in my process is organizing and the final deliverable. So once the logos finished, then I have to start out with a client which file formats and other iterations that they might need and where the logo might live on and what that entails. So for example, if you need your logo on the bottom of a product or on a t-shirt or on a website. All the different file types will depend on those needs. So once I finalize all of these deliverables and I have a better understanding than I can decide if a client needs something like a PDF or a JPEG or a PNG file, or maybe they need an EPS file, vector-based file. So all of this is really important and again, it requires communication with your clients. And then also if you're basically making the sphere self understanding where you're going to place your file. Typically, JPEGs and PNGs work really well for websites. Pdf works really well for any type of printed materials. And then EPS files or any type of vector-based files like an Illustrator file or in our case, a Affinity Designer file will work well for something that is going to be required to be tweaked or utilize in its original format in the future.
8. Starting Your Logo Design: So I want to jump into actually working on creating our logo design now. So once we've completed our research, we can begin the whole ideation creative process of designing the logo. First, I really like to start on paper sketching ideas out. Even if we're using something like premade vector files, this process gives me an idea of the shapes and concepts that we might want to search for to execute our design. I also like to utilize mind-mapping. Basically, using mind maps can help you consider different design directions and can help the actual visual sketching process. That is next, you start with writing a word that is central to the design brief. And then you can branch out from there writing other works that spring to mind that relate to the original concept that you first put down. These words can be used as search terms to look up other ideas and logo concepts, or in our case, searching for specific vector files. And the idea is to create like a thought cloud which gives you a helpful tool to refer to while you're sketching out your concepts. Sketches, and ideas on paper are important because sketching is helpful and it allows you to quickly visually plan out your ideas and shapes alongside taxed. And it will also help us to understand the shapes that we will be looking for when we're researching on sets like pre picked.com and Creative Market, these don't have to be perfect. What's important is getting some solid ideas out on paper that you can then translate into a digital format. So now that we have our ideas down on paper, let's jump into the computer work.
9. Working With Vector Files to Create Logos: So to start, we're going to want to launch Affinity Designer and then we are going to set up a new file. So to do that, once you've launched Affinity Designer, you'll be in your workspace. You can go to file and select new. And then we are just going to do a regular like 8.5 by 11 file just to start with. So we can play around with ideas for the concepts that we're going to create with your logo. So in your layout, you can change your document units from pixels are millimeters to inches. And then we're going to change our page with 2.58 and our page height to 11. So we are going to be in portrait orientation. We will create an art board. And then we want to change our color format from RGB to CMYK because we are likely going to be using this on a business card. So you'll want to be able to have the correct color format for printers. So make sure your color format as CMYK, you can leave everything else as it is and then select, Create. And this will create a new art board on our file. So before we begin building on this art board, I first want to go through some options that can help you with your concepts to find actual creative assets. So there are three places you can go to that I suggest. The first is vect easy. This is where you can download free vector art. You can go to create a market and purchase free graphics from the graphics section of their website. You can use. You can select objects, icons, and you can even search for things like logo packs or logo mockups or local bundles. These are all really great options for people who are looking for premade assets that will work well for their branding. And the next place I would suggest is free picked.com. The nice thing about these websites is that they just offer a wide variety of creative and graphic assets. They can range from Photoshop files to vectors. That's easy, is basically vector files. But free pick has a combination of both. Same with Creative Market. You can find anything from stock logos to icons set two, just any type of vector or raster based image concept that you might be looking for based on the concept of the logo idea that you're going for. So what we're going to start off with is just a really simple search. We can start with just searching all resources, but I really highly suggest utilizing the different filters that you can pull in with these websites. So here I'm free pic, you can differentiate between free versus premium. You can select vectors versus photos icons. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna select free vectors and we're going to look for icons. And then we are going to search for the logo concept that I'm going to work on is like a handyman logo. So we can search for terms that relate to things like handyman or tools or home renovation, things like that. So let's start with handyman and see what comes up. You'll see that there's tons of different resources. And depending on the style that you're going for, I was kind of looking for something that was more simplified. Shapes, text, maybe some sort of visual element. I like these carpentry logo types here. And then also like these really clean versions with a lot of very basic type and a visual element connected with it. You could, you could utilize something a little bit more intense like some of these other ones, but I think we're just gonna keep it simple for now. I like this carpenter logo type options, so I'm going to download that. You'd have to keep in mind what this attribution is. He'll want, if you use this, you'll want to attribute if you're using this whole thing as is. But also you can look at the actual licenses. You'll be able to download this in an EPS format. So we will be able to open this and Affinity Designer. But you can also see what the licenses, so this is free for personal N, commercial purpose with attribution, if you click more info, it will go into more detail on what this means. Now let's go look at creative market. Just as you might see with free pick or vect easy You can search based on different types of things. So logos, graphics, templates, web themes, font, even will go to graphics. And we can look up vectors. And again, we can use that same term, handyman and see what comes up. And the difference between things like free picked.com and back DZ and Creative Market is that Creative Market is a fully paid site. Whereas furry pig and vector z, you are able to find free sources as well. But they do have some paid options as well. With the paid options here I'm Creative Market though, you're gonna get a ton of different hits for this type of logo concepts that you might be looking for. Okay, so now for this, found the files that I think I like the fast what I'm gonna do is go into my finder window to find where my files have downloaded. And then I'm going to open them up. The vintage carpentry logos downloaded as a file. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go into that file and I'm gonna find the EPS file. You can try to open the diary I file, but I find it might be easier to just open up the data EPS found Affinity Designer. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna right-click the file that I want to open. And then I'm a select Open With, and I'm going to select Affinity Designer. So your dpi, you want it to be at 300, your color space. Let's change it to seem like k. And then what you'll wanna do is favor edible tax over fidelity and group lines of text into text frames and then hit Open. And then you'll see that your file has opened up. You'll notice that everything is kind of organized in layers if you want to turn off the background to make it easier for you to access some of these little items you can. So now what we're gonna do is just take some of these items and basically play around with them, see how we can rework them, recolor them, figure out what makes sense for your brand. So since everything is a layered, you might notice that different elements are all kind of expanded out and there's a piece for every single shape of what you'll see in here. The easiest way I've found to select these items are to use my direct selection arrow, my move tool, and then just kind of hover over them, hover over them and select them and then group them. And then I can copy them, bring them into my workspace. And you'll know everything is selected because there'll be outlined in blue. And then I always group them just so that they're easier to work with. And to group. You just go to layer group and it'll group all of the items that you selected. And then I'm going to go to Edit and Copy. And then I'm going to go back to my untitled document and I'm gonna paste it in. Okay. I'm gonna go back into my other option that I downloaded. I'm going to open that up as well. And then I'm gonna select another option that I really liked. And I'm going to group it. I'm gonna copy it. And I go into my file and I'm gonna paste it in. And just to make things a little bit easier to see, I'm going to add a background with my shape maker tool. On the left-hand side here I'm going to scroll all the way down to the square, which is the art of the rectangle, which is the Rectangle Tool. And I'm just going to take my mouse and I'm going to drag a shape that is about the equivalent of the size of my art board. And I'm going to make sure there's no stroke by clicking on my swatches panel. And then you'll see the colors. The area that kinda looks like a doughnut. I'm going to remove the color by selecting this little square with a red line through it. And that's going to remove the fill. And then I'm gonna go to the next one and I'm going to fill it with instead of this gray, something like Tanja so that it's easy to see. And then I'm gonna go into my Layers panel here. And I'm going to drag this rectangle layer all the way behind all of my different icons. That way I can see what I'm doing. So now what we can do is we can play around with the placement of each of these elements. I'm going to move, I'm gonna resize this third element a bit. I'm going to hold Shift and I'm going to drag in from this outer corner nodule and I'm just going to hold Shift and then use my arrows to drag it into so that it's a bit smaller and have more space to work with. And same with these two up here, I can select both of them by selecting the first one, old shift, select the second one. And then I'm going to hold shift again and Dragon from those nodules on the corner, if you notice that it doesn't stay in proportion, hold Command instead, and then Dragon, and it'll keep everything in proportion while resizing it. I just want to give us some room. So we have space to work with each of these elements. So what's nice is that with these, we can kind of take them apart and rebuild them. Say you didn't want three nails, you can select that element and you can delete it. And if you just wanted to, you could do that. See you like some elements from this logo icon and you like some elements from this one. And you want to include, you want to mix up the elements. What you could do is you could copy and paste the elements that you do like and then kind of build everything together. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna make a copy of the carpenter logo type. I'm going to select it. And then Command C. If you're on a Mac control, see if you're on a PC or you can just go to Edit and you can select copy and then edit, paste. And I want to keep the original, but I'm going to copy it and basically pull apart the pieces that I liked from each one to combine them and create something new. So I like the idea of the hammer and the nail together, but I don't like the shape of the Neill. I like the shape of the nails better here. And I don't want three males here. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to delete the pieces that I don't want on this side. And I'm going to take the pieces of the elements that they do want from the other logo. And to select them again, just hold shift. You can either go into your layers and select the first part and then hold shift and select the last item within the layer. And then you can copy it. And then you can paste it and drag it over. And obviously it's a bit too large. So I'm gonna hold shift or command and I'm going to resize this. And what I'm gonna do is I'm going to recover this and want this all the same color versus the different colors are showcase. So what I'm gonna do is I want them to be the same color as the outside texts and shape. So I want to recolor the hammer and the nail so that it matches the outside portion of this logo. So to do that, I'm gonna do a really simple process of using the eyedropper tool. So what you'll wanna do is first select the different pieces that you want to have recolored. So in this case, I'm going to select all the different elements of the hammer. And then I'm going to select my eye, my color picker tool all the way on the left-hand side at the bottom in the menu bar, in my toolbar. So it kinda looks like a little eye dropper. And then I am going to, once I've selected the eyedropper tool, I'll get this crosshair element and you'll be able to click on the color that you want utilize. So in this case, I'm going to click on the color of the rings around this. And it will recolor everything within that shape to be the same color as what I had in the outside layer. Once I've recolored the hammer, I'm gonna go back through and recolor the nail now. So again, I'm going to go into, you can either go into your layers on the right-hand side and your layers studio. And you can find the element that is grouped. Or you can just double-click inside of your logo on the nail and just double-click it. Using your mouse hover over the shape and then double-click inside and it will showcase where that item is in the layer. And then I'm going to select the top part of the nail as well. And then I'm gonna change my color options using that color picker tool. I'm going to select it and then I'm going to click on the area of the color that I want to match. And now everything is all one clean color. And it all matches. And I pulled in different elements from each of these logos to create the final piece that I like. So now you can update the Texas, Well, what you, what you might find is that all of the elements are individual. You can edit them if you selected that action as we did earlier. Or you can just create new taxon top. Problem is just making sure you have the correct font available. Luckily, they use Febreze new and it had this Iridium my system. But what we'll find is often they'll include a list of fonts in their, in their files and it'll tell you where to get those fonts and you'll have to install those fonts to be able to utilize them sometimes as fonts are free, sometimes they are not. But usually you'll find a font that TXT file and that will be where you can basically access the font that they're utilizing in their files setup. So in this case they have Font scroll.com, they using this Alessio and then you can download the OTF front and then you'll want to install it into your system so that again, the visual elements. All look similar to what the original was. But you can also change the font if you wanted to. It just depends on what your needs are. So once I've downloaded that font, I'm going to go into that file and I'm going to select all of them. And then I'm gonna right-click. I'm going to open with my font book and I'm going to install them. Once I've installed them, the fonts that were utilized should now be in my system. And we can double-check and yep, you can see that they're there. So we're gonna do now is just update this text. And maybe you don't want it to say carpenter logo type, you can update it to say something like handyman services. And you'll just click inside of the text to update it. And then get rid of any text that you don't need by selecting it and deleting it. And you may see that you need to adjust sleek slightly, adjust some and that's totally fine. Utilize your Move tool to rotate elements, to move them, to nudge things together. And again, once you're done updating the text, I would suggest grouping all of those elements into a group. That way they're just easier to work with. And then once you're done, moving everything around and you like how it all looks, select all the individual elements, and select layer and group. Once you've updated your text, maybe you want to utilize the outside piece of that right side carpenter logo type. What we can do is just basically delete all the different elements that you don't want out of it. So I'm delete centerpieces of this. And then I'm going to keep this outside like Spike curb. I don't want this additional circle, so I'm just gonna move this off to the right because I might use it for something in a moment. But I just want to use these spikes so we can pull them over here onto our handyman logo. And now we're gonna do is we're going to increase the size of it. Again, hold Command or shift and increase the size of this. And what you can do is you can use this as an outside element if you wanted to. So I want a little bit of space between the spikes and the inside circle. So I'm just going to nudge everything around a bit. And I like how this looks, kinda pulled together pieces from this right side one, the yellow one, and then pieces from the left side one. And I created this new option that I think works really great and it's fun and it's interesting to look at. So now let us kind of pulled everything together. I do want to show another trick though, in the off chance you don't wanna have to manually update each individual item in the text. We can. And basically create tax that goes on a curve and I'll show you how to do that. But let's group everything together that we have in this final logo. And then we can work on the text portion. So I'm going to select layer Group. And now I can move everything together. And I think this is going to be our final logo for this, but I want to show you again, you can see we pulled these two items because we like different, like different elements from each. And I basically combine them to create this new finalize piece here. Play around with the one in the bottom in a second. But before we do that, I'm gonna take that circle that we pulled off to the side here. I'm going to select it and that I'm gonna go to the Layer menu bar and I'm going to scroll down to convert to text path. This will allow us to basically type words on this path. So if we wanted to update the font to something else, say we want to use Avenir. I'm gonna increase my font size to 20. And then I can, I can adjust these little triangles so that it gives me the direction of where I'm typing in how I'm typing so I can have it so that the text goes down into the right or I can have it till the text goes up and to the right. So if we wanted the text handyman services to go underneath, we could do that. And then we can replace this and put that there. And instead, let's see what that looks like. So I'm gonna delete the text and then I'm gonna take the new text that I created. I'm going to resize this down a bit so that it fits into the space that we're working with. And then I'm going to move it into this. And I'm gonna rotate it a bit. Again. I'm gonna decrease the size so that it fits. And basically any shape that you have, you can put text on it so that it follows that shape. And that's kinda what the the layer option four convert to text frame or to text path is four. We can also adjust these reading green elements so that the text goes above versus below. And you can just play with different options. Whatever you feel works for you. As just a simple way to add an interesting visual element with text by typing on a curve. So I think I'm going to keep this final piece here. I'm gonna get rid of the other elements and I'm going to set up my final file first. So let's save this. It's really important to save as you work. Just because software sometimes will crash and you don't want to lose the work that you are working on just because something out of your control happen. So I'm just going to save it. And then before we jump into bringing this logo into a final file type, let's work on playing with this third element here. What's really nice is that you can change color really simply. You can select your layers that you want to change the color of your right-hand side in your lays Layers panel. And then you can go into your swatches. And you can basically just change the color based on what your needs are. So instead of this gray, I think I'm gonna do something more off white. And then I'm going to select the orange outline here. And I'm going to remove the stroke. By the stroke is that outside circle that kinda looks like a doughnut. I'm going to select that little mini circle that has a red line through it and that's going to remove color, so it'll remove the stroke. And then I'm going to change that orange back to this charcoal black or charcoal gray. And then for the hammers, I'm going to go in and I want them all to be one color. So I'm going to have them be that charcoal gray color so that it kind of matches and blends with the logo and here as with the logo name background. So you just have to click on each element. And then you can hold shift and select all of them. Or you can just click on each one individually in the shape and just hold shift to select them all. Or you can just go into the layers as well and just select each of the items. And then I'm going to recolor them to that dark charcoal gray black. And then I'm going to delete the professional, the word professional. And I'm going to actually bring those hammers in a little bit closer. So to do that, I'm going to select all of the different pieces of the gamer. And I'm going to group them together just as we did in the other logos layer group. And this way I can move them more easily. So I'll select the first piece of the hammer and then just hold shift and select all the additional elements. And then go to layer and select group. And then I'm going to hold Shift and then select the other Hammer. And then I'm going to move stuff around. So mended, delete the Texas is Logo name and I'm going to select my Artistic Text Tool and I'm going to start typing something new and I'm gonna change the color to that. Kind of off white color and I'm gonna change my font to baby new like the other one. And I'm just gonna type in handyman. And then I'm going to delete the Texas as Carpenter. And I'm gonna change this to Services. And I'm going to use baby Sn2 again. It's really important when you're designing with text and keeping in mind topography in different fonts and things. When it comes to logos, try not to use anything more than one or two type faces in your work. It just makes it more cohesive and consistent when you only use one or two, it can get really confusing and distracting if you're using a bunch of different typefaces that are hard to read and difficult to look at or that don't seem to make sense together. If you're going to have something really scripty that and then combine it with something that's really lake. Like maybe a modern blocky block type face, things like that. So just keep things in mind. Keep in mind. There are some released central rules that you can follow. When you execute a logo correctly. It's a really powerful asset that can really elevate your brand. So the goal is to make sure that they're readable and they're impactful and easy to see. So choosing the right font type and the right size is a lot more difficult than people realize. If the logo includes text within. So either as part of a logo or the tagline, you need to spend some time keeping in mind that the various fonts and you want to make sure the font is legible and scaled down, especially with script fonts. And typically one font is ideal, but like I said, you want to avoid more than two fonts. Again, this helps to elevate the overall appeal of the font and makes it more consistent, easier to read. And it makes it a bit more memorable. And it just comes off a bit more professional. And overall, the ideas to keep it simple, the simpler the logo, the more recognizable it'll be when you think about really good clean design. Some of the most iconic logos that you see in the world are often the most simple. So like Nike, Swoosh, like we were talking about at the beginning of the class. That's why within this font or within these logos at kinda took the important pieces of each. And then I basically simplified them but still made them impactful and memorable. I didn't want to use too many colors. Black and white is often the easiest to utilize specially because it can be placed on many different assets and things like that. We took away. The text that says carpenter, what we're going to put in is services. And i'm going to recolor it so that it is that same charcoal black that the above. Pieces of the logo are in. And then all the other elements I'm going to update. So kind of like move them in closer to the texts so that it's all spaced out nicely and evenly. And that I'm going to change the colors as well so that it makes sense for what we're using it with. I don't want to have too many colors. So I don't want it to get overwhelming. I like this since 2020. It kinda breaks everything apart. And I like the idea of having the stars as well. And the idea is that it's like a five-star service. So and so what's nice is that what we can do is we can utilize the aligned tools in the aligned functions to help space these things out evenly. So what we're gonna do is select all of the stars, or I'm going to select all of the stars. And then I'm going to go up into my upper menu and I'm going to go to my alignment functions. You'll see there's a little menu if between the upper main menu and it has all these different shapes and options. Up here are my align tools. If you don't see those, you could just go to View and then scroll down to the studio and then make sure that your, that your appearance options are tracked on. If you don't see these options, you can just go into your layer. Here, layer option within your menu bar and you can scroll down to alignment among you can align left, center, right, top, middle, bottom. You can space horizontally, distribute horizontally or vertically. So what we're gonna do is we're going to align at the top. And then what I wanna do is distribute and want to align throughout the middle. And then I want to distribute everything evenly, horizontally. So I'll go to alignment and then distribute horizontally. And it'll make sure that everything is spaced out evenly from left to right. And then I'm going to select layer and group. And I'm going to then kind of move everything so that it's aligned with the center of this entire logo. And this is my final finished piece and quite good at capped it similar to the original, but I updated the text, I changed some colors. And again, the ideal is just, you know, there's a lot of different colors going on. So we wanted to minimize that and just keep everything in once. And one or two simple fonts, one or two simple color palette. And now let's go to layer in group everything. And when I look at this, I have to decide which I'd wanna use for myself, for the client or whatever it is that I'm working on. And I think I'm going to go with this final option after I look at everything that makes sense, it's clean, simple. I like that. There's not too much going on, so I think I'm going to utilize this as my final logo.
10. Exporting Your Logo File: I'm going to save this file once more just so that we have it for future reference. I'm actually going to allow, i'm going to share this file in the assets of our class. So you can play around with the different elements to what we're gonna do now is we're going to set up a new file for your final logo. So I always suggest working bigger rather than smaller. So I'm going to select new and I'm going to create, especially since this is more of a rectangular square kind of shape. I'm going to create a square shape. And I am going to create a logo that is four inches by four inches. And then I'm going to keep everything else the same 300 dpi, my units are in inches. I'm going to create an art board. I'm going to make sure my color format is CMYK because if we're gonna get these printed on a business card, and then everything else is fine and then hit create. And then I'm going to go back to my original file and I'm going to select the logo that I'm gonna be working with. I'm going to copy it. And then I'm gonna go into my new four-by-four file and I'm gonna paste it. And then I'm going to increase the size so that it fills this shape nicely. And what's nice when you're working with vector files, you don't have to worry about anything becoming pixelated because they're vector-based files. Whereas if you are working with raster based like something like Photoshop, the likelihood of it becoming pixelated when you're increasing the size is very likely. So that's why I always suggest working in a vector-based program for any type of logo work. Once I've increased the size of this file, I can go in and save it. And I'll save it as my final logo, makes sure you're saving it somewhere that is easy to access, easy to remember. I always suggest just creating a folder on your desktop to start or maybe in your file system if you have an external hard drive and then you'll want to have your additional versions that can be used on places like websites or your business card. So this final logo is my editable version. I'm going to create a file on my desktop to have all of these in. In that file, I am going to create a new file that says editable file. And then I'm gonna create a file for the JPEG version, the PNG version, and then a PDF version. So what I can do is I can take that final logo and I'll take my practice pieces too and put them in that file. Also create a file that is for concepts. And that's where the logo practice file will go. So what we'll do is we'll go to File and then we're going to select Export, and we're going to first export it as a PNG. The purpose of the PNG is to be able to place your logo onto elements. A transparent background. The biggest stumbling block I see beginner designers as well as small business owners who are trying to DIY their own branding. The biggest stumbling block I noticed is that they don't always have the correct files that they need for what they're trying to do. So often you'll see Lake, sometimes someone trying to place a logo on a website and maybe the website is a different color and it's not white. And then all of a sudden you'll see a white, you'll see a white box around your logo. That's because it's a JPEG file with a white background. And in reality they needed a PNG file with a transparent background. So I always suggest saving an editable version and then the PNG and JPEG send a PDF. I'll also show you in a moment how to export as an EPS file too. Because that's something that people who have a different program that's not Affinity Designer, but a program like Adobe Illustrator will be able to open it in. Alright, so we're going to select PNG. We're going to select, we can just keep bi-linear. You're going to select the whole document or art bird one because it's basically the file that we're working with. And then we're going to select Export. And then we're going to go into our folder that we created on our desktop and we're going to select the PNG file. And then we're going to select Save. And then we're going to repeat that process and we're going to export as a J peg. Make sure best quality is all the way up art board one is selected and then hit Export. And we're gonna select our JPEG file. And then we're going to select export on that. And we're gonna go to PDF. And then PDF for print, raster dpi 300. Your area should be art board one, and then select Export, and then go into your PDF file. And then finally, we're going to export an additional editable file that we'll be able to be opened in. And any program outside of the Affinity Designer that relates to vector in any vector-based program. So specifically something like Adobe Illustrator. So we're gonna go to File Export, run a select EPS, and then we are going to export it. We wanna post Level script of three, which is the highest. Or raster GPA will be 300. Select art board one, and then hit export. And then we'll include that within our editable file. So the goal is just to have different options for different scenarios and different situations. And it's always, always, always helpful to just have them all saved in an area that's easy to find because you don't want to be going crazy looking for your logos, looking for your files, when you need to send them off for use in some sort of branding, packaging, product, whatever it may be. Okay, so that's it. We have our final file. Now we're going to jump into the next lesson, which is adding that file to a business card.
11. Creating Your Business Card: So now that our logo is done, we are going to jump into creating our business card. So the first thing we need to do is of course that if our file, so Walmart Affinity Designer, we can just select File New. And then we are going to create a traditional business size size business card. So the page width should be 3.5 inches and the page height should be two. We're gonna keep our dpi at 300. We're going to create an art board or color format should be CMYK because this is for a printing Project. And then we're going to select query. You'll see we have our airport in the size of our business card. If you wanted to create a front and a back, you can do so. You can actually do that all in the same file. We can select our art board option and our toolbar here on the left-hand side. And then you could select insert art board and the size would just be the same as the document. And then you could have two for a front and a back. Just for the sake of ease for this class, we're just gonna do a front with me. If you to delete an art board, you'll just select that layer. And then there's a little garbage can on the right-hand side here and your Layers panel, and that will remove your layer. So what we're gonna do is give ourself a background. We're going to go to our rectangle tool, and I'm going to make sure that I don't have a stroke. I'm gonna trimming stroke off here. And then I'm going to change my color to to a white color. And then I'm going to drag over my art board to create a rectangle that is the equivalent of the size of the art board. You can just double-check by kinda zooming in, but you'll notice that what's nice is your items will snap to the grid and you'll get these green and red lines, which shows that you are exactly in the parameters of what you need it to be. And then what we can do is go to our logo. We can do one of two things. We can either place our logo or you can just go to the original file and you can copy it and paste it in and then resize it based on your needs. Or we can place the file that we exported so we could do File Place. Then you can go to your new logo file, go to your PNG file, and then select your final logo PNG, hit open and then you can place it in. And yes, it will be much bigger and that's finally won it that way. So we will select the corners, will command or Shift, and drag it in. And then we want to resize it to a size that works and makes sense for you. I'm gonna resize it and center it. What I wanna do is, uh, leave enough space, select the bottom so I can add text. So like we talked about earlier, we want to keep in mind the different typefaces and fonts that we're using in our overall design. So if I'm using the baby IS font that I'm likely going to use that font throughout a lot of my marketing collateral Just so that everything feels cohesive and matches and things like that. So what I will typically include on a business card is my name, my position, a contact number, and an email. And if I have a website, I would include a website as well. So the idea is to utilize the hierarchy of information and design in this type of project, you want to make sure that the information that you're including is laid out in a way that's going to draw the viewer's eyes to each of the most important and pertinent pieces. So what we can do here is typically under my logo, one of the most important things I'm going to have is a website, and I'll include that underneath and then contact information below that is typically you'll want a person to initiate business calls or query is through your website. So that's why I would suggest putting your website first. And keep in mind sizes. Well, you don't need it to be super huge, but you do want it to be noticeable. So I think 99 font should work well for what I'm doing here. And then I'm going to center this underneath my logo. And then, and because babies new is kind of a really bold font, in this case, I think it would be okay to use one other typeface. And what I'm thinking is something nice and clean and a little bit lighter. I'm going to create another textbox here that will go the width of a card because I'm going to have my name and email and a contact number in here. So I think I'm gonna use this acrobat font because it's thinner. And then I'm going to increase the size too.
12. Course Outro: Thank you so much for creating with me today. I hope you found this class informative and that you were able to create a brand identity. That means something special to you or your business. If you'd like to see behind the scenes, in terms of my freelance work, make sure you follow me over on YouTube app the freelance life. If you want to learn more about me in the work that I do for my studio. You can do so at www dot Bella Sophia creative.com. If you want to connect with me and show me your work on social media, feel free to do so at Bella Sophia creative, you'll find me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, all at the same handle. If you have any questions at all, please feel free to leave them in the class discussion forum. And don't forget to upload your final logo and your business card project to the class project Gallery. I'd be more than happy to share feedback or answer any questions that you might have. I can't wait to see what you've created. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next one. I.
Jenny Veguilla-Lezan, Latinx Designer & Illustrator
