Week 5. Final Logo Deliverables
This week I finished the Logo Design project. After deciding on my final design last week, it was now time to make all three deliverables: the 5" logo, the brand sheet, and the substrate examples.
The first thing I did was make the 5" logo. To do this, I copy and pasted my logo from one Illustrator sketch to another, and scaled it down to 5".
The second thing I did was make the brand sheet. To do this, I first made a new artboard and copy and pasted the logo again to make a 4", 2", and 1" version. I also decreased the line weight of the 2" and 1" versions to better suit the smaller sizing. Next, I made the color palette. To do this, I created three rectangles, took all three colors from my logo, and filled each rectangle with one of the colors. I also pasted the hex code next to each rectangle.
The next thing I did was create the black and white 1" version and the full color 1" version, since my logo was monochrome. To do this, I copy and pasted the monochrome 1" version then focused on the black and white version. I made the whiskers, eyes, ears, and outer nose part black, and made the inner nose part white. I really liked this version — I thought it looked really cool and worked really well. I then moved onto the full color version. This was the hardest part of the brand sheet for me because I was not sure what colors to use. I first tried various analogous palettes, but I thought they all looked too similar to my monochrome palette. Then, I tried a complementary palette of purple and yellow. Since this was a personal logo and I have always liked the combination of purple and yellow, I decided to go with this palette.
Then, I saved the brand sheet as a PDF. However, when I opened it, I noticed there were visible vertical lines in the middle of the inner nose of each logo version. I suspected this was because each nose was made up of two separate, symmetrical halves, but I was not sure how to fix this, so I emailed the professor. In this email, I also inquired about my full color palette. He emailed back saying there were a few ways to fix the vertical lines — one of which was to unite the two nose halves. So, I went through each logo version and united the nose halves, and this ended up fixing the vertical line issue. He also emailed back saying the purple and yellow palette did not suit the personality of the logo, and to try an analogous palette. So, I tried more analogous palettes, and decided on one I liked.
Now, the brand sheet was finished.
Next, I made the three substrate samples. To do this, I first took a picture of three household items: a paper bag, a plastic cup, and a white sock. Then, I pasted the logo onto each item and tested various effects to see how to best incorporate the logo into the substrate. As I expected, this was quite difficult. It was not easy to make a flat object blend into a real-life substrate. However, I believe I was able to achieve decent results.
Then, I printed out my 5" logo and brand sheet and brought them to class for critique. During this critique session, I only received two pieces of critique, both of which were positive. One said they liked how I made the inside part of the nose more defined, and the other said they liked the color scheme, addition of the ears, and delicate linework.
Ultimately, I was happy with my logo, brand sheet, and substrate samples, so I turned them in.
This week, I also began to learn about typography. The first topic we talked about was type voice. I learned that there are four main type styles: serif, sans-serif, script, and display. I also learned that sans-serif typefaces were not invented until the 20th century, and display typefaces are designed for one set of content or a very narrow set of content.
I also learned about font families and superfamilies. A font family is a bundle of all the different letters, numerals, and special characters of a typeface in all their different weights and italics, and a superfamily is a font family that bundles together different type styles, such as serif and sans-serif.
Next, I learned that fonts can be of filetypes .pbf, .pmf, .inf, .ttf, .tte, .otf, or .otc. However, .pbf, .pmf, and .inf are mainly obsolete nowadays.
The second topic we talked about was visual hierarchy. I learned that this refers to the arrangement of visual elements, from most prominent to least prominent, and is based on the relative emphasis of each element. To improve visual hierarchy, someone can chunk information together, vary size, vary color, vary weight, and create some sort of visual voice.
To end the week, I was assigned the Typographic Hierarchy assignment.
