The Personal Logo Design project will introduce you to some of the functions typeface in Illustrator. You will learn how to search for new typefaces to download and convert type to objects so you can customize letters to fit your needs. You will also learn a few basics about logos and design concepts.
The Graphic Design Problem: Your client (Mr. Hanson) would like you to design a type based personal logo. The logo will incorporate text and relate your name to art or graphic design. Imagine you are a graphic designer or artist and you need to create a logo to go on your business cards, letter head, and website.
Specifications:
For this project you will need to produce a page of brain storming ideas, as well as a page of thumbnails. Of the thumbnails you like best you will produce rough drawings to work out the details.
You will print at least three versions of your logo on 8.5″x11″ paper, there will be no printing within a 1/2″ of the edge of the paper to account for the printer. Your versions will show that your logo is effective without the use of color, scaleable (1″x1″), and also uses color effectively, and also works well on a dark background as well as a light background. You may also incorporate other elements to your design such as a border, descriptive type, or additional versions.
The Research:
Look at the Logo Pond for a variety of logo ideas or Logo Lounge for thoughts on the latest logo trends.
Some other resources are: DaFont.com, a place where you can find thousands of different font types, download them to your computer, install them and use them in your logo design.
Graphic Designer David Airey has some good rules of thumb for logo design. Check out some of David’s thumbnail sketches. Check out his portfolio of logos he includes a link to his design process sketches and brain storms. I expect you to sketch out several different ideas for your logo before working on the computer. He also has some great tips to making an excellent logo.
Did I mention sketching is how you need to develop your logo ideas before using the computer?
As David says:
- A logo must be describable
- A logo must be memorable
- A logo must be effective without colour
- A logo must be scalable i.e. effective when just an inch in size
Brainstorm:
Begin to brain storm ideas you have about your personal logo design. Begin by writing lists of things you are interested in, your family heritage, personal interests, favorite colors, favorite animals, birth sign, or anything that represents you. Write down all of your ideas, bad ones and good ones.
Sketch:
After you have come up with a page of ideas begin to turn these words into images. This will become a page full of thumbnail sketches which convert your ideas into images. Once you have developed several ideas into images choose the ones you like best and draw them larger as roughs.
Then Compute:
Once you have some work on paper created you are ready to turn your roughs into vectored artwork. You can scan your logo into the computer or create it using the different tools we have used. Begin by creating your logo without color, use only black, gray or white. This will help make it effective without color. Once your design is complete then you will incorporate color.
Turn it in:
You will place a copy of your .AI file into Personal Logo Project->F09.Logo.AI.DropBox Make sure this file incorporates your first name, and logo and the file extension .ai (ex eric.logo.ai). You will place another file in the f09.logo.jpeg.dropbox folder. This will be a .jpeg version of your project. The next paragraph explains how to do this.
From your .ai file you will export a .jpeg file, which you will use to print your project. Open you project in Illustrator and then go to Effect->Document Raster Effects Settings and make sure your project is set to 300dpi. Then go to File->Export (this is kind of like “save as” but different). You will export a .jpeg file type. Choose the folder F09.JPEG.Logo Dropbox. On the .jpeg options screen you need to again make sure you are exporting a maximum quality jpeg and also resolution is set to 300 or high.
Once you have done this you can print your .jpeg file using Photoshop from the printing and scanning computer station. When you get to the G4 you will need to connect to the server and also turn on the printer.
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