Some logo designers sketch up a logo in Illustrator after looking at their
hand-drawn sketches, you know, on a piece of paper.
Other ones actually scan them in. So I'm going to show you best practices for
scanning it in as far as adding a little bit of contrast first in Photoshop if needed,
and then we're going to start tracing over some of the sketches that we did
earlier for a logo. Then later we'll add color and add some shapes to create a
handful of logos for a client. I've got Photoshop up here so go to File, Open and
open the scan. Obviously, it's sideways but I scanned in some of the sketches from an earlier
sketching session and I just want to show you this tip in case your
background is just not, you know, contrasted enough from the foreground or
the actual content there. One thing you can do is go to Image, Adjustments and
then you can go to Brightness, Contrast and bump up the contrast over here.
So this is before and after. If you're not worried about the background and you just want to be able to
see some content better. If you're drawing it with the pencil and it just
isn't very dark, you can also go to Image, Adjustments, Threshold and just drag that
over to kind of at the beginning of this mountain range, maybe bring it over to the
left a little or something like that, and see the before and after, it's a bit
darker. You can also do this as an adjustment layer so click, Add Adjustment Layer
on the bottom Layers panel and then just go to Threshold. You'll want to bring that
over. It's the same effect, it's just a live effect so you can even double click on it and just
affect that. We need to see that it just stands out a little bit more. Now you can
save this as a PSD scan. This is a PNG which is fine but you can save it as a
PSD or PNG or even a JPEG and just place it into Illustrator which I'll do next.
So I'm not going save this. I've just shown you that technique. So to go ahead and start
tracing over something. Go to File, New in Illustrator and I'm going to hit OK.
Kind of a default letter size and I'll just go to File, Place and then select the scan here. Click place,
click and let go.
It is sideways so we need to rotate it. So I'm going to hover over the edge with the Selection
tool selected until you get that double sided arrow. Then just click and drag, hold
SHIFT if it needs to be perfectly horizontal and the artboard, it's going off the
artboard a little bit. It's not a big deal in this example but let's just say we wanted
some more space to work with though we're not putting this specific size. So we'll just
pull that over with the Artboard tool on the Tools panel. So I'm going to zoom in as well.
CTRL + on the PC or Command + on the MAC. So we have this as a placed image
but we don't want it edit it. We just want to use it as a background. So what
we can do is click right there. It's going to toggle the lock and now I cant
edit anything on that layer right there. It's locked. I can't edit it.
So click, Create a new Layer and then select the Type tool, and then click and let go.
We'll just type in Fuson and choose an appropriate font. Click and drag the corner there and
you can bring it over here. I hold SHIFT to maintain that proportion. That's one
way to resize it. You can also of course change the size of a font up here and you
can also click Paragraph and you can click Character. That'll bring some other
settings like you have Tracking and Kerning. Like Kerning is just, you know,
this space between two characters and then Tracking is a space between all the
characters that you've selected with the highlights. So another way is we can also
Create Outlines which we'll do. So we had the text here and we need to add the
Enterprises there so ALT, click and drag or OPTION- click and drag on the MAC, hold SHIFT if
you want to perfectly align there and I'm just going to double-click on this, click and drag it over
with the Type tool. Type in Enterprises, so instead of changing the font size up there, I'm going to click
and drag the corner and hold SHIFT for a proportion, original width to height.
So what we want to do is just toggle that, so hit the icon and toggle it before and after.
And for this one I just wanted a basic, you can't really tell from this, but this
sketch, but I just want kind of a box in the background that's not too obvious but
still looks professional. So we could use the Pen tool but I think I want
something a little more corporate looking from the client's advise. This is
probably a little bit too informal if we were just sketching something in with the Pen tool
So what I'm going to do for this example is, use the Rectangle Tool and click and drag and
hold SHIFT for a square here and I'm actually going to click and drag
this sideways, almost like a diamond ring. May be a little bit larger out there.
And I'm holding SHIFT so it maintains that, and so we have this diamond because I held SHIFT and
then I rotated holding SHIFT so we've got a perfect square that's rotated, so it's
kind of a diamond here. My idea here is to make it a little bit more compressed. There's too
much space up here and then almost to simulate movement, I'll show you what I mean.
What we need to do is use the Pathfinder. We use the Rectangle tool. Click and drag this
over like so and then I'm going to select both of these like that, and then with the
Pathfinder, if you hover over it, if you remember where it says Minus Front, we'll click that, great.
And I'm going to click and drag this one over here there, and then select both of these.
Minus Front, alright. And then I want this to be almost like from point A to point B but we
will be going that way so I would need to bring this in a little bit. Couple
different ways to do that. I could add a new anchor point there, new anchor point
there and bring that in but it would'nt be perfectly symmetrical. So instead of that, what I can
actually do is click and drag the square out holding SHIFT and I'm going to click and
drag and hold SHIFT again as I rotate it off the corner and notice that smart guide.
Now I'm perfectly aligned at the middle there, something like that.
So I'll bring it in a little bit more, right, and then click and drag again, Minus Front.
It almost looks like a price tag too and it's also, I think it's conveying
movement to an extent. I'll go ahead and just go really in detail and make sure
these proportions are right. I want consistent spacing around the edge there
so I'm probably going to bring this up,
bring it in a little bit, but for time's sake that's our first one so I want to create
something like this for a monogram style just as another example. So you could draw
that in with shapes or with the Pen tool but I think I might just type it in for this and then
just select a different font and then outline it so then we can still
customize it after the fact. So for this one,
use something like that, click and drag it down with the Selection tool and just
right click over it or CTRL-click it on the MAC and then just Create Outlines.
So now we've got, you can use the white arrow and really customize it, right, however we need.
How do you get it to distort to the side like that? What you can do, we really
will need to draw the side there first. So if you click there holding SHIFT, it's a 45
degree angle right. So we need to draw the side angle here first and that's a little
bit. So what you can do is just click and drag it over the top and make it a different
colors so it's differentiated, alright. So we get the F here and then this is on top of it, right.
So select them both and then go to Object, Envelope Distort,
Make with Top Object and it will distort it down like that, alright.
So we need to repeat the process for the E. So go back to the Type tool, click and let go, E,
click and drag it out here and of course we'd want to get the specific point size if
we want it to match but we're going to, you know, create and I could
just reflect, one to the other, right. So when you create one you want to
create the other and just reflect it. So with this one, I'm holding SHIFT, I'm just trying to
do some of this faster for time's sake but not too fast. I'm still trying to show the details.
So I'll show you what I mean. If I have this one to begin with and you go to Object,
Transform, Reflect or you can use the Reflect tool. Then you just do Horizontal, do Copy
and then you've got two. So you have this one here.
So we have this, I'm going to ALT click and drag it so
we're duplicating it so then we can still use the shapes if we need them.
And then bring this over here, right click and drag over both, then Object, Envelope Distort,
Make with Top Object, alright. So now we've got kind of a box shape, right and you
if find that they're not exactly aligned,. we can still edit it down right, like we can
still adjust it if we need to, but I think that looks pretty good. And what's
cool is in Illustrator and it's not just about creating the finalized version.
You might even want to brainstorm in Illustrator which I'm going to show you in a separate lecture and then
I'm going to experiment with a couple of different looks for this top area here just to give
the client a couple of different options as far as a monogram, as well as the
typographic logo.