Typographic Badges: Building with Type, Shape and Balance

1. Intro: Hey, it's Jerry and I've got another cool class for you. I'm going to be showing you how to design some badges. We're going to be jumping to Illustrator app and manipulating some type, playing around with some elements. What we're going to do, we're going to really look at how to build badge through hierarchy, balance, no topography, contrast, and really everything with the compact, little badge that we can use for our pretty project. Enroll in the class, jump right in, and we'll get right to it. Before I jump in to Illustrator or done my sketches, I went to Pinterest. I started looking at some cool badges. I looked up some scout badges, some old school police badges. Even if you pirate on badges, which is pretty cool. I really like this one. It's got some nice shape elements into it. I also start looking at some blocky gang jackets, because I know in Australia, there's a few bad gangs. So that was pretty interesting to look at how they place a topography and the illustrative element they used. Then I started looking at some designers, how they did they badges. There's a few different styles. You can do very illustrated or you can do more simple and topographic with just simple shapes. I'm trying to look for a consistent look and feel. I do like these have a badges, simple type, simple colors, and some lost shapes. Just some research, start looking at a style you like, and just really build that Pinterest board to help you do your sketches and start designing in Illustrator. 2. Sketches: So we're jumping to sketches right now. This is the good part of the process. Just going to play around. Don't worry too much about the details, but do rough sketches. Try and aim for 10, so then you can practice and you have a bit more choice to pick from, and you can even build them later on and use them in your own projects. It's good to make it a habit and sketch out some cool badges. When we're working with badges, usually I try and focus on the typography. What I'll usually do, I'll usually start with a shape. What we use is we call nested shapes. So you can see I've got circles, I've got these weird rectangle shapes, these triangular shapes, whatever it is. I'm just playing around and trying to combine my illustrative objects or whatever it is in my typography, and trying to put it within that shape. It allows you to focus on the hierarchy, the balance, the composition, the shape, and the layout. It really does focus on making it all fit well together in that little compact shape. So play around. You can see how to start with something simple, really rough, just try and fit some type in there, whatever it is. You can even play around with quotes, or if you want to make your own little hometown, about yourself, about your family store, you can do on top of that, or maybe it's going to be at full like a fake brewery bee brand or something, and you'll make it top of a vintage or a bit of a retro feel. Then you can just do that and use the inspiration that you found interest and try and use those elements. Really just play around because we're going to take you to illustrate of this and really manipulate the type and make it all fit well together. 3. Pinterest Board: Before I jump into illustrator or done my sketches, I went to Pinterest and I looking at some cool badges, now I looked up some scout badges, some old school police badges, even a few pirate arm badges, which is pretty cool. I really like this one, it's got some nice shape elements into it. I'll also start looking at some bulky gang jackets because I know in Australia there is a few bike gangs. That was pretty interesting to look at how they place a topography and the illustrative element they used and then I started looking up some designers, how they did they badges, there's a few different styles and you can do it very illustrated, or you can do more in a simple and topographic, just simple shapes but you can see how I'm trying to look for a consistent look and feel I do like these other badges, in a simple type, simple colors in some large shapes and yeah, decided to do some research, start looking at a solid you like and just really build that Pinterest board to help you do your sketches and start designing an illustrator. 4. Designing The badge: Once you've done around 5-10 sketches, you can start to jump in and illustrate and start building out your badge. You can see I've got some examples of what I've done. Some are more illustrative, some are more topographic, and some others simple shapes and simple texts. Just play around, have fun with it, and it can create some really cool badges. What we're going to do, I'm going to show you how to create these type of badge. It's really topographic using strokes as well as just simple shapes as circles. You can come up with something really cool and balance, but you can put it on a logo design or a t-shirt or anything like that. We'll just jump right into it. I'm going to go to this outboard over here, and then what we're going to do, doesn't matter what size, just start with your document. I'm using 2,000 pixels by 2,000 pixels at the moment and just get a dark background. We're going to start to build out is on. Press Alpha, the ellipse tool, and then we're going to hold Alt and Shift and drag out. That's going keep the proportions when we dragging out this circle. Use any color, it doesn't matter what color. I'm just going to use the spread for now, and I'm just going to align these in the center. You can see horizontal on that top corner, clicking those, now it's aligned. We go into the middle here and you can change the stroke size if you want. If you select it, top corner, you'll see that stroke. You can hold Shift and then just click up and down and to change the proportions, if you want it really thick or you can have a more thin. I think 40 points is all right. We've got a circle now, and now am just going to select it, press Control C, Control F. It's going to copy and then paste in front of it. I'm just going to drag these a bit lower like this, and then I'm going to press front forward slash. Now it's going to get rid of the shrink. You can see how it gets rid of the shrink and my shrink can fill that empty. What I'm going to do now, I'm going go to my text panel. You go to the left-hand corner, you'll see it's type tool. I'm going to right-click on that and I'm just going to press this little arrow on the side there and it's going to get our text tool up by this so it's easy to see. What I'm going to do, I'm going to press the type on pop tool, click that, and then click on the path. Once you've done that, we're just going to click on the color white, so our text will be white. Then you can just start typing. You can type whatever you want. It can just be made up. For the project, I'm going to get you guys to design like a fake crew or fake gang type of batch. We can play around with words from your home town or anything really. It doesn't have to be realistic. I'm going to start at the top up text, and you see with this tool, it allows you to tap on any path, so it can be a shape, or just a stroke or whatever it is. Then you get these three little lines, as you can see here. If you move these, its going to move your text along. You can also drag it. If you drag it in, you're going to select the middle one though. You can Shift it how far you want it. If you want to cut it off like that, as well as you can make it go on the inside. You can see I'm dragging in the inside, which is pretty cool. You just drag the middle one and then drag it in like that, which is really handy. We've got our text team, might make a little bit bigger because this is our main text. This is the name of our group or our team or whatever it is. Then you can always just move it like this. If you want to check if it's straight, you can always just get press M for the Mockito and just get the shape tool up. I'm going to change the color on this real quick, and then you can always just drag this. Then you can always check to see if the top is aligned. That's what I'll do to make sure that it's pretty much straight. It looks balanced. I want to do that, Control C, Control F again. Whenever I say control, that means command if you're on a Mac as well. I'm so sorry if it sounds confusing. I'll just copy that, and then I hold Alt and Shift and drag it like we did at the start. Now I've got these texts. Then I'm just going to put established 1994, that's my birthday. Am just going to do that. I'm going to press T as well. I want to select the text now, and I'm going to press Control A or Command A. The trick here is because it's a secondary texts from the main text and we want it a bit longer to wrap around the whole semicircle. Instead of making it bigger, we can actually just extend the tracking and the coning. I can just go hold Alt and just press left and right, we're actually right. Then it's going to extend the tracking out. Just like that. It's most spaced out. You can see now it's starting to fit within that circle now. It doesn't have to be perfect. But you can see now we've got that space and it's neat. You can always just adjust your letters and try and get the space equal. We've got our text team. Now, I'm just going to go back to the circle Control C, Control F, put it in the middle. The reason why we're selecting everything and holding, constraining it is because they are all centered. Everything is in the center so we know that it's perfectly balanced. Maybe I'm going to put the SDK in the middle, it's like an acronym for the main heading. I'm just going to drop this stroke way a little bit. I shall make it 20 because you don't want it to be competing with the outer circle. Sometimes it's good to keep well the strikes the same depending if that's the look you want, or you can play around and make some of it's small. I want to make these big up because this is like our main element as well. I'm just going to make it wide. To make things bigger as well, you hold Control Shift and then you go greater than or less than. It's the fast way to make text bigger instead of just dragging out. I'm going to select these and the circle, and then click on the circle. This is a quick way to align it. I'm just aligning it to the center now, so that's aligned to the circle. It looks okay. Now what I want to do now is go to our shaped pedal, sorry. Then we want to go to the star tool, drag out, hold shift to keep it straight. I'm just going to get a star going on here. Then what I'm going to do, I'm going to round off the corners. If you press A for the direct selection tool, you can see you get these little buttons there. You can just drag it in like this, and it's going to curl up the corners. What I'm just going to do it a little bit, this is if you have say C and it's just going to round it off, because it's not too harsh, it's a little bit more softer. Then I'm going to select this star. Then an easy way to see the center of something is you press Control Y, and we can see the center of the main circle. What I want to do now, I'm going to press O for the reflect tool. Make sure your star is selected. You see my star is selected, press O for the reflect tool. You'll get this little cursor. What I'm going to do is I'm going to hold Alt, and click the center of that. Then it's going to vertically reflect it. I'm going to press preview, and select horizontal. You can see it's going to flip the style, and put it on the other side. Then I'm going to press copy. What it has actually done, it has actually copied the star across to the other side. We 100 percent know that the spacing is correct, and it's perfectly aligned. That's a quick way if you want to reflect something, you will copy it in the right position. This space should all be balanced. That's looking cool at the moment. Now, what we're going to do now is we are going to add some strokes, so press P for the pen tool. I'm just going to go change my color and then make it the stroke. Shift X to switch from a field, so its stroke. I'm just going to click on puffy and then go the bottom here and click that path. Then I'm just going to select this path and press I for the [inaudible] , and then I'm going to select this middle circle. It copies that same stroke width, which is really handy. I'm going to select this and then we're going to reflect this like we did to the star. Always try and find the center point. You see how I'm sucking the anchor, that's the center alignment of that circle. Hold Alt again and make sure it vertically reflect it and you can see how it's going to go on the other side, and then lets press copy. It's going to make a copy and reflect it. Now I've got a two lines. Now we've created some nice spacey. We can put an illustration, we can call it that spacing if you want to do whatever you like. But at the moment, we are just going to leave that, and we're just going to add some more elements. I'm going to add two more strokes. We're just going to select this and do the same, get the [inaudible] tool. Press O, reflect it. Just like that. Now we've got some of this spacing here. Then we're going to add some texts. Press T for the type tool, I'm going to type out now, we're just going to do TRB, which stands for trade. Then we do MRK for mark or you can do TR and MK like a trademark, maybe it's for a client and they've trade marked and licensed the name or the badger logo, whatever it is. That's why it's just cool edition and it's a good chance to play with type as well. Then we can just rotate this like that if we want. We can keep it like that. But it does look a bit wonky or we can go top on the path selected roughly where the middle [inaudible]. The we can set like that and then we can type on this path. But I'm just going to leave that, and I think am going to leave this straight just to keep it simple. I'm just going to move that. I might drag this line in a little bit, and then I'll go back and reflect it. It doesn't have to be perfect, you can just play around with it. I'm just doing it rough. What I want to do is I'm going to hold on and copy this across, I'm going to do MRK for mark, that's an acronym version. Then we can group those together by pressing Control G and we can just move it across. You can also make it centered as well. We select the circle, then click it again. We can center it, but you can see how it's going to put it a bit off because these letters look different. We're just going to move it across. Sometime you just got to eyeball it. Let's make it balanced. We've got that going on. Now we're going to copy these, type a P, Control C, control F. Then I'm just going to drag it in so you can see it, you can also rotate it holding Shift. Then I'm going type Australia or whatever country you're from. I'm just going to move this. As I said before, we're going to flip this in the middle. Make sure you select the right one because sometimes it just doesn't work. All right, there we go. Then I'm going to drag it out. Because the bottom part is not our here image and it's not the main part of the hierarchy. We can make the bottom smaller. You can see how, but we're going to try and make it align with this so the of spacing is correct. You can grab this transform tool and just drag the lining. It's matching with the top, the cap height of that topography. Then it'll be the same width. Then I'm just going to drag this across just like that. We can space out the tracking if you want, just not too much because it might look too busy. I've got that looking neat, I'm going to copy this. Do what we did before. We want to go East Coast because Sidney is on the East Coast of Australia. Then I'm going to make this smaller because you see it's too big, I'm just rotating like that. It doesn't have to be perfect, but just play around. I'm going to make it to be bit more space. 5. Using the Type Tool: I'm going to show you how to use the Type Tool, we were using before when we're creating our badge using the type on a path and just the Type tool by itself. I'm going to show you a bit more things that we can do with it. We can type in an area, within shapes, we can type vertically, we can also use the touch-type tool, which is pretty cool as well. I just want to jump right into it. I'm going to press "P" for the Pen tool. I'm just going to go to the right layer and you can see that you can do any path. I'm just going to click and drag with the Pen tool and you can see I'm making a path. Then what I'm going to do is turn off the stroke so it's an empty path, and then press "T" for the Type tool, which is this one. I'm just going to click on it, maybe change the color and then I'm just holding "Control Shift" and my bracket so we're going to right bracket the right greater than and you can make it big just like that really quickly. I'm going to change the type as well, and you can see, you can type on paths just like that. They can be whatever. You can see it doesn't matter what path it is, what shape or how long it is, you can type on it, which is really awesome. Another thing we could do is we can actually type within a shape. I'm going to make a circle and then I'm just going to get rid the stroke. As you can see here on the left, you can just press the "None" button and get rid of it. The second one is area type tools so if I click that and then I click within this circle, I can actually start typing. I'm going to make changes in the color and you can type within that circle. Actually, it's pretty handy if you want it to go within a specific shape, if it's a triangle or a circle, a star, square, whatever it is and I can scale that down and it's going to scale with the text and I can make it smaller, just like that. So it's pretty awesome. We've done type on a path. We've also got Vertical Type tool. If I click that and then click, what it's going to do is actually vertical type. When you're doing vertical type, make sure you do it in all caps because it doesn't look very well when it's lowercase. Keep that in mind, always do it in big caps. These especially go well when doing like book covers or if you just doing a long way badge and you want the text to come vertical like that, then you can do it just like that. It's also got Vertical Type area as well, like we had before. It does the same thing except for it does it vertically. If I go click on the shape and type, you can see we've got some matrix action coming up here. You can do that, which is really handy. I'm just going to get rid of those. Then you can vertical type on a path as well, which is just the same thing. Click that, then click on the path and you type, and you can see how the type is going vertically and it's shifted that way, which is pretty awesome. We've done that. The last one I'm going to to show you is the Touch Type tool which is shift T, which is pretty cool. You see how my mouse changes. First, I just want to get some type up, so I'm just going to press "Type", type something out, but before you do this, go to window and go down to type, and then go to character. So we've got this up and when you click the Touch Type tool, there is also a button here as well. If you click that, we can actually select each character and edit it and we can edit it and manipulate the way we want to. So if I click on the T, I can actually rotate it by itself. I can also scale it and I can also move it the way I want which is pretty trippy. You really have flexibility and you have so much control with this tool. You can select any letter and it allows you to manipulate it the way you want. You can even make it bigger and you can use these functions from the character table and edit the kerning, the leaning, the size, make all caps, small caps, add subscripts, whatever you want. You can even rotate it or just use the Transform tool here. This is a pretty awesome tool. I like using it when doing some crazy type stuff or maybe you're doing like an editorial or maybe you're just making a weed badge and you want to have more fun with it, then you can use these tool. So yeah, it is a pretty awesome tool and I love using it. 6. Manipulating Type: In this video, I'm going to show you how to manipulate typo the right way. There's a few different ways you can manipulate typo. Commercially, the good way that I use. It's really handy and really fast and makes it really fun money doing some retro, vintage, logos or badges, which is really cool. We're going to do, if you can see on my right hand side, you see I got the symbols pallet, drag this out and you see how I have got all the shapes. You didn't arrive in the symbols, you go window and then get out symbols webinar. But these are custom shapes that are viewed and are dragged into my symbol palette. I'll link the video in the project description so you guys can check out how to make symbols properly. What I can do with these shapes is that I can drag them in really simply. Then I can just use it like that. It makes it faster when I'm working with logos or badges. I'm just a quick way to get some quick shapes into my Apple.Just like that. What we can do with these shapes is we can actually make the type go to inside that shape. Obviously get rid of that one. I'm going to show you with this one. I've got the shape. I'm going to type a word. I'm going to type hello. What I can do with this top, I can actually put this top within the shape note. Some people use the way by going, ''Object'', ''Envelope Distort'', and ''Make with Warp''. I'll do this way and I'll just go through these options and you can do this way. That's one way to move there at the type, using those options or even going to start with a mesh. Then you can custom build a mesh. Then you can move the points to edit the type. Let's make it trippy. But another good way if you want us to make the tough specific to a shape and this is the best I do. I'm going to type, I'm going to really talk about [inaudible] badge. I've my text scene. What we can do, I can make these texts go in the shape of this diamond heart, diamond thing, whatever we have is rectangle. What are [inaudible]. What I'm going to do, I'm going to turn the color of that shape. I've just got the path and I feel no shirt. Then I'm going to make sure it's on top of the badge. ''Control'', ''Shift'', ''Right Bracket''. Now the type is behind and this is in front. Then what I'm going to do almost like both of them got a ''Object'', ''Envelope Distort'', and go to ''Make with Top Object''. Boom, that's how it works. What is done is put the type and is fitted it within that shape. Then I can go edit the anchor points of the shape to get some cool shapes. Just like that. That's the best way to edit type. The good thing is that the type is live. If you go to [inaudible] select the top left corner, you see you got your editable envelope and then you've got your edit contents. This is like the shape of the effect and this is like the content with the type in it. It's actually live so I can go back in and type in it. Obviously, if you type more, text is going to be a bit off. Because it's only going to be the same number of letters in being proportion, but you can add more logos if you want. That's how you do it and it's editable. You always get back and change a word and this is the best way to do and make it smaller or bigger. That's one way to really play with type and put it within a shape. You can make some really cool badges this way. 7. Share Your Project: Thanks so much for enrolling in this class. I hope you enjoyed learning how to build a topographic budge in Illustrator CC. Let me know in the comments below of what you thought of the class. Also don't forget to post your projects up, post your sketches, your inspiration or in your final design and I will definitely comment on it and share your purchase with everyone, and I hope you guys enjoyed it, and thanks again and I'll see you in the next class.