- [Voiceover] When you approach logo design projects,
you want to keep in mind a general style.
But creating graphics is more than knowing
how to use software.
Developing your skills of observation
and visual deduction are of equal
or even greater importance in the process
of crafting an effective logo.
In this movie,
I want to explain how to analyze reference images
and visually deduce graphic representations of them
that can work in a branding context.
Or maybe a better way of stating it
is to condense visual shapes
into various degrees of simplified forms.
This is better shown than explained,
so let's take a look at how this is done.
So if we look at this visual image of this person
with a nice funky mustache,
you might even refer to this figure as a hipster,
which is fine.
We're going to approach this
by visually deducing this image.
And when you look at an image,
you want to analyze the shape and the form.
So obviously, the most characteristic aspect of this figure
is his mustache.
So it flairs and comes to a curve
and it's very captivating in that sense.
You look at his glasses.
Those form a very obvious shape.
The form or the outer periphery of his hair line at top
is also somewhat unique.
And the shape and form of his beard
is also a very unique attribute of this character.
And the first one I want to go over
is if I wanted to iconify this design,
I want to make an iconic design based off of this figure.
Now, once again,
iconic isn't so much a graphic symbol,
because a graphic symbol doesn't necessarily carry
any kind of literal, visual meaning to it.
But an iconic design does.
An iconic design, for example, of this figure
would look something like this.
Now this is just my interpretation.
You could iconify this face
and come up with a different look.
Maybe you handle the graphics
pertaining to his eyeglasses differently than what I did.
You could have the actual, just the frame,
and handle the eyes in a different matter.
But it's all about taking shape and form and simplifying it.
It's not that this is an exact replication of this character
because it isn't.
If you look at his mustache,
this mustache really does not look
exactly like this mustache at all, and that's okay.
This icon is just supposed to represent this figure
and it plays off of literal things.
The eye glasses, the mustache, the beard, and the hair.
But it breaks it down into simple shape and form.
It doesn't carry over all the contours, all the detailing,
but it can represent this character.
So if this was an actual personality
of a person who runs a business,
this could very easily be the brand character
to represent him in iconic means,
even though, once again,
it's not a literal interpretation of this character.
So that's one aspect of how you can handle this.
I want to show you the second one,
which is using stylized design.
And this is progressing closer to realistic proportions.
So if you look at the stylized design,
we have handled the glasses in a more literal sense
in terms of showing the actual area where the lens is,
capturing the mustache in a way
that represents the actual mustache,
and handling other such details,
such as the hair line and the beard
in a more realistic proportion.
Even though this isn't realism,
it's moving it closer to an exactitude,
closer to a representation of this character.
We just happen, in this iteration,
not to show any reference to any type of nose
or allude to it.
So that's the characteristic here.
Almost creating just the elements of the face
without showing the face itself.
Everything but the actual eyes
and everything to do with the face,
such as the ears, the eyes, the eyebrows,
and the nose, or the mouth for that example.
So this is what I would call stylized.
Proportionately and literally,
it's playing off of key elements in this
and simplifying down to a more stylized form,
but it's not close to realism.
We're gonna cover that in the next one.
So that's what this would be.
The next one would be creating an illustrative design.
And this is one where it would look more closer
to the real,
but it's simplified down in terms of its shape and form.
But if you look at the glasses,
they're styled almost exactly like the glasses
in the photograph reference.
And his hairline is,
although we've taken some creative liberty
and elaborated on the profile of his hair
and some of the details on his hair
just to add some nice character to it.
And I think that does improve the final artwork
that's shown here on the right.
But once again, it's representing this character
in a more literal, realistic fashion
even though it's been deduced down
into simpler shapes to pull it off.
All three of these approaches could be used
on a logo design for the final mark.
It just depends on what type of design you want to create,
whether it's more illustrative,
whether it's more stylized, or whether it's more iconic.
Now, there's some overlap here
in terms of what we're talking about.
If we go back and you look at the movie
on the six different types of styles
when you approach a logo project,
there's some overlap with that, but that's okay.
This has more to do with looking at reference,
looking at reference material.
Whether it's a face in this case.
It might be a device.
It might be a machine.
It might be a building.
It might be some kind of object
and you have to look at it and deduce from that
how you can pull it off in a graphic sense
to work in a branding context.
So that's what we're talking about here.
And in this case,
we're using this character's head to do that.
So if we look at a comparison,
here's the original source image at top
and these are the three kind of visual deductions
we've created from that image.
We have iconic on the left.
We have stylized in the middle.
And illustrative on the right.
All of them can represent this character,
but not all of them are literal
in sense of proportion and what we're elaborating
in terms of our logo mark for this character.
So this is an approach that you can use on any project.
And this is why using reference material is good.
For example, in a previous movie,
you saw me show you a brand system
that I created for a private school
and it had a lion in it.
I didn't just create that out of thin air.
I looked at the real reference of real photographs of lions
to deduce down those elements that make a lion a lion.
The shape of his nose, his mane, so on and so forth.
So this is a principle that'll apply
to any subject matter or theme
to help you iconify down and create a logo.
Let's take a look at some examples
that show this process to produce certain logo marks.
So we'll look at an iconic design.
You'll look at real photographs of an owl
and then you can break down and deduce those shapes
to form a simple, iconic design of an owl as shown here.
This owl in its final context showed up
in a couple different ways.
I nested it within a nice encapsulated kind of seal look.
And also within a logo type design
where he's sitting inside the letter O.
So that's how I handled iconic design.
Let's look at stylized.
Here's an example of stylized.
I was provided with these rough sketches
from a gaming company
and each of them were different characters in their game
and I had to look at these concept art
that other artists created,
illustrators who are creating
the full realized color fantasy illustrations used,
in this case, a role playing game.
And I had to take their rough sketches
because the final art wasn't even done.
And then from those,
I had to deduce how to pull this off
in a stylized iconic format
that could represent avatar icons for this game.
So this is how I pulled that off.
Now, on this design, it's a symmetric design,
so I only had to create half of it,
flipped it, and then fused them all together
to create the design that's shown here.
Here's some of the avatar icons.
There was a bunch more of these,
but these are some of my favorites from this set.
And that was a fun project to work on.
Now, an illustrative component,
in terms of using illustrative design
within the context of branding.
You've seen the previous one I did
with Printer's Distillery,
and that was based off of a supplied source photograph.
This was also the same type of project
where I was working with a company called Upper Deck
and they provided me with the reference material
for this stylized, this illustrative design, that is.
And this is of a pro football player, Dick Butkus.
And this was the design I created
based off of the reference photographs.
Once again, realistically proportioned.
I'm pulling out key elements
that represent this character, this figure,
but it's not an exact match.
So if you look at his hair,
I took some liberty with how I interpreted that.
Same with his mustache.
And I took a little creative license
with some of the details,
just to make the image better.
In its final context,
it was nested into a circle like this.
And they actually made patches from these
that appeared on the cards with the players on it.
Developing this skill of visual deduction
is one of the most valuable creative attributes
you can have as a logo designer.
It is one that will improve the more you use it.
So if this type of work intimidates you, that's normal.
Some of my best work
initially scared the daylights out of me
when I understood what I was creatively facing.
Almost all of the logo designs in this course
use this methodology to work out the directions I created.
And this skill overlaps with other methods we'll be covering
in the course as well.