Hello everyone, 

for my project I choosed to work on a concrete task - creating a logo for a search engine for food containing no palm oil (design contest). 

The text is in Czech, but it says either "Without Palm Oil", or "I Shop Without Palm Oil".

The logo is to be used on the website and on different sorts of merchandising products, like t-shirts, tote bags etc. 

The project assignement said that logo should contain a head of an orangutan, because orangutans became a symbol of the palm oil problem (production not using sustainable measures, deforestation, habitat degradation, climate change, animal cruelty etc.).

The monkey should be happy and grateful that you are not using palm oil, the logo should be positive. Target group are people who care about enviromental issues and healthy life-style. 

So this is how I started - I made some sketches in hand first. Then I used my Photobooth (yeah) to take a picture of a sketch I decided to use. That one:

I put it in my Illustrator and started to draw over it. 

This is the first "raw" monkey head:

I knew I would not be able to make this face more positive, so I decided to keep it as it was and work on a shape of a head. 

I came to this shape and was quite satisfied with the result so I ad a text as well: 

I still wanted it to look more like a logo and not just as image with a text by its side. These are some ideas I finally left behind: 

Then I had this idea of combining the monkey head with a sign of a refresh button - why? The logo is principally made for a website (a search engine) of a same name and I was looking for something that emphasizes that. Refresh button is a symbol for renewal - here the renewal of a nature or a natural habitat of orangutans etc.  

So this is my final presentation I made to participate in the contest. I made two version of the logo - one rounded and one with a text on a side (I think I prefer that one). 

This class was a huge benefit for me and I feel I made a big progress by completing this project (it took me almost two days!). My previous experiences with Illustrator were rather frustrating, as usually I rushed in, never knowing exactly all the features and not being patient to start to learn from zero - as I did now and I'm glad to do so.

I will definitely continue to take other Brad's classes. 

Cheers, 

Jitka