- [Voiceover] More than likely you've heard the saying,
"The Devil is in the details."
Well what I want to go over in this movie
is the details of logo design,
as it pertains to both negative and positive space.
This is the minutia of creating graphic art
that only a designer would notice or care about,
and that is why it's important.
So let's jump into it.
So this is a logo mark I created
for a project called Movie Droid,
and it's actually the final mark that
the client actually went with.
You saw in a previous movie, you saw a different
exploration I created and presented as well,
but this is the final mark that I created
in context of that project.
Now when I work on a logo mark like this,
and what I'm about to show you really applies
when you're producing geometric-based,
iconic looking logo designs such as this,
but it also applies to some organic elements as well,
which we're gonna cover in this movie.
But when it comes to this, what really is gonna push
a design over-the-top, and make it work really well
is the visual continuity within the graphic itself.
So let me go into this, and explain what I mean.
We're gonna go ahead and tint this back,
and the first one I wanna go with is the negative space.
This is any area of the design that
shows through to the background.
So you have your positive space shapes,
which would be the components that make up the design,
like his claw here, or the base body here,
but all the gaps in between you can notice,
that these are the negative spaces.
And the visual continuity here is that we have these shapes
such as showing here, and if we go to transform
you can see that this shape is 6.301 points high,
and if I select this shape right here,
we go to transform again, you can see that
this is also 6.301 points wide.
So we're using that same tolerance,
that same spacing factor to create all the spaces
within this design to keep them all continuous.
So if I grab the spacing that's around the joint
in the elbow on this arm, and I clone this
by Command + C, Command + F, and then I just
drag this over and lock it with this one,
it's gonna match on this arm as well,
and that's true for all the other detailings,
such as the space in the foot.
If I go ahead and copy this, and bring this up here,
you can see that it also is the exact same spacing
that is going on in the hand.
So it's making sure the continuity of your
negative space all aligns, and all matches.
Now it doesn't just apply to negative space,
this aspect applies to positive shapes as well.
Those things in your design that are made up of
positive areas, not the negative space in between them.
So if we look at this, we can look at,
for example on the left-hand shoulder of this character
we have this size shape, and if I clone this,
Command + C, Command + F, and we slide
this shape straight up you can see that the same width
is at the base of the shape that makes up his ear elements.
And we follow through with this
same continuity through other shapes.
We take the shape that's on the rounded part of this,
and we can go up here in the top of the head,
and we can find out that this outer rim that forms
the shape of his head is the exact same dimension.
So it's keeping all of your spaces,
whether it's negative or positive,
and keeping them consistent, and making sure that
there's continuity between these.
Because if there isn't, it's gonna cause what I call
visual tension, you'll see what that means in just a second.
Now there's also relationships between both
positive and negative, meaning you can have
a positive shape space reinforce a negative shape space.
And what I mean by that is the positive shape of the eye
is the exact same size as the negative shape of the claw,
or the positive shape of the antenna is the same as
the negative shape of the elbow, so on and so forth.
So those are also attributes that will help
the visual continuity of your design and retain it.
Now the other aspect of visual continuity is also,
all the elements that have rounding.
It's the exact same radius of this round,
whether it's on this leg, it's gonna match
the radius on this leg over here,
and on the inside this radius is gonna match this radius.
The same on the body, this radius will match
the other side radius here, on the ears,
on the antenna, so on and so forth.
So it's about keeping continuity
not just with negative and positive space,
but even with the detailing on the rounds.
You wouldn't want different rounds on those shapes
because it would cause visual tension.
So let me show you a design where,
and I should point out before I show you this,
that to show you this design, this isn't actually
a working file, I had to build an example
that is poorly crafted in order to communicate what I mean
and we'll make a comparison between the two.
And the reason why I did that, is because
I'm paying attention to this stuff as I build, all the time.
So once again, here's our clean, precisely-built,
all the visual continuity is retained.
Now if I show you one with visual tension,
this is what you get.
You get the aspect of areas where it's too close,
and it's not uniform with the rest.
So if I just click, here is it without visual tension,
with visual tension.
Without, with.
Which direction is stronger?
It's pretty self-evident, this one is.
So it's paying attention to these details
as you move forward as you build,
making corrections as needed, because
sometimes you'll miss something.
If you notice it, go back, fix it, and redo it
so it's gonna work out, and work well.
Now the final design for this looked like this,
and this is the one they actually use.
Now how do I build a design like this?
Do I actually build it with just shapes,
or is there another way to build this,
look and feel and make it a little easier.
Well, there is so I wanna walk you through that right now.
All of these shapes, if I go to keyline view,
actually let's turn off this bottom one.
If I go to keyline view here, you can see
all of these are just one shape right next to another shape.
But it's appearing as if there's a gap,
a negative space in between them.
Well actually these shapes are just fills,
with a fat white stroke built in.
And this is how I'll initially build the artwork
to get this look and feel, and all I'll have to do
is select a shape, or select all these gray shapes
like this for example, and then I can go to Object,
I can go to Path, and I can go to Outline Stroke.
And this will now turn these, and if I go back
to keyline view, it'll outline those strokes
so they're actual shapes.
So all I have to do is select this, go to
my pathfinder pallet, and I'm gonna go remove from shape,
and it will punch out the white from the gray,
and it produces the final shape.
So I'll just do that on all the shapes that I've converted
like this, like this one, and this one,
and we'll go ahead and do this one too.
So we'll go Path, and we'll go Outline Stroke.
We'll punch that through, and then I have
this circle shape on top, so I'll select this,
and I'll punch that one through.
So now what we end up with is all of our individual shapes
with that nice negative space gap.
So that's how I build artwork in this style.
It's just easier to build it with strokes,
and then outline the strokes and do some
simple shape building to get the final art you need.
So what I end up with is a design like this.
Now here's another one, the same principle applies here.
So if I pull this away, you can see
I have a shape sitting on top of this,
and this is gonna end up being the shape
that forms the top part of this.
But I have this wrench here.
Now I had to compose it like this initially,
just to figure out how it's gonna align with the hand,
but now on all these shapes what I wanna do,
is I wanna go ahead and I wanna create as I did with
the wrench, I wanna create all these to be their own shapes.
But first I'm gonna have to select all these shapes,
so we'll do that like this, and I'm gonna go
Command + C, Command + F, I'm gonna clone it,
so you can see I use that clone feature a lot.
And I'll fill it like this, we'll fuse them all together,
because we just need this to punch
through the wrench so we create the nice gap
and separate this from being one piece.
Now I'm gonna have to outline this,
so I'll go to Object, Path, Outline Stroke.
Now we're just gonna fuse this all together,
or unite into one cohesive shape.
I'll select the wrench, and now I'm gonna
punch through that wrench, and so we end up
with the shape that's now separated like that.
And now I can go back with this shape,
I'm gonna clone it which is Command + C, Command + F,
and I'm gonna actually make a couple copies of that
so it's just sitting on top.
I'll select this shape, I'm gonna punch that out,
select this shape and punch this out,
'cause it's gonna notch out of this finger like that.
Now with all of these shapes, I can now select these,
and I can go Create, Path, Outline Stroke like this,
and then I can go back and build the final shape
by removing from shape with the pathfinder,
and on this one as well.
So that's how I get that.
Now you can see I have this shape,
so the arm and the forehand, so I'm gonna have to
go back to that and outline the stroke on that,
and do the same thing to form that shape.
But notice I don't have this detailing here,
how do I get that?
Well I wanna show you how I get that is I have a path,
and this is where saving your artwork as you go along,
because you're gonna end up using the same shape sometimes
more than once, in this case this path.
I knew I was gonna want this detail
on the inside of the hand, so I saved it
on its own layer, and I turned it off.
So that's actually how I build a lot.
And I'll go ahead and select these two shapes,
fuse them together, then I'm gonna go back to this shape,
the path, select it, and then I'll go to Object,
Path, Outline Stroke, and now with that
I can select this shape with the arm,
and I can just punch through it,
and actually first thing we wanna do is,
let's try that once more, and we'll do that, there you go.
So the reason why that happened is,
at times when you combine different shapes,
you'll have one stray anchor point,
and to fix that you just have to go to pathfinder,
and click unite again before you start editing it,
so that's all I did there.
And I'll go in, and I'll edit out or remove content
I don't need like that anchor point, and this shows you
if we go to keyline view, the art is now
ready to go, and so moving forward as I keep developing,
as I keep working this out, I'll add type to it.
In this case, I don't want this red, I want this white,
and this was one of the iterations
that I presented to my client, One Stop Pro.
They didn't go for this direction, but ended up
using the wrench in the direction they did go for,
which was this brand character,
and I used the same methodology to pull off this artwork
as I did the flat-based artwork of the robot.
It's just more using strokes, using offset path,
so if I turn this on, this shows
all the uniformity between the negative spaces,
and I used the same principle when and if
there's any positive space as well.
On this design there isn't, so it's all the negative,
the visual continuity is retained.
So the final mark for this came out
like this, which is really good.
So if it's a geometric-based design, really iconic
like this one, it works really well, but it also
can guide you in a more free-form organic design.
So here is a mark I created for a Gyro Shack,
just a simple small business owner, sells Greek food,
and this is the character that I created for this.
Now if we zoom in on this character,
you can see I used the same principles of spacing
in terms of visual continuity to carry forth this mark,
even though it's more a free-form and organic,
not geometrically form logo mark.
So these principles work good for both type of projects.
Visual continuity brings a nice balance to design,
and when handled well, will make
a logo design communicate more powerfully.
This is a level of craftsmanship that your clients
may not immediately recognize, or even notice
for that matter, it's that standard of creative quality
you need to hold to, and reinforce in your own work.