- [Voiceover] In this movie, I wanna show you
how I use both symmetry and asymmetry
to compose my logo designs,
and how, when combined with the modular format,
allows for a greater range of creative exploration.
Everything that I create, be it illustration,
icons, or in this case, logo designs,
all start off with drawing,
and when you're dealing with symmetry, drawing is very easy.
You only have to draw half of it,
and you can create the whole design from that half.
Now, in a previous movie, I showed you one exploration
on a project I did for Gallo Wines
for a product they had called Instinct,
and it showed a bird.
Well, this is that same project,
but a different species of bird.
I had just done a generic kind of bird based off of a crow.
That's what inspired that iteration.
And this iteration is based off of an eagle,
and it all starts off with drawing
and then using symmetry,
I'm able just to build half of it
to create the whole bit of art.
So this shows the half I created.
And the way I build, whether it's geometric shape building
as you've seen already in this course,
or it's more organic free-flowing shapes
such as the wing shape shown here,
I still use build methods
that facilitate both approaches
and make it go faster,
in this case, shape building.
So I can select this shape, select the head shape,
and just remove from shape
to get what I ultimately want,
which are these two separate shapes.
Once I have these two separate shapes,
this is when I can do additional building.
I'll select this, make a clone of it,
and intersect it with the eye
to create just the part of the pupil I want.
Then I can select the outer part of the eye,
and on this, I wanna go ahead
and punch it through on that shape.
And I'm gonna select the beak,
and this is also gonna be removed from the shape as well
using the Pathfinder, as shown there.
So I end up with this shape, as you see here.
Now once I have everything composed like this
and built like this,
it's easy just to select all my shapes, clone 'em,
Command + C, Command + F,
and then use the Reflect tool, find the center point,
click on the anchor point,
and then you can flip your artwork like this.
Once I get this, I can select only the shapes I want,
such as the head shapes,
use Unite, fuse 'em all together into one cohesive shape,
and then this allows me to go ahead and start colorizing it.
In this case, because I'm making the negative shape
of a wine glass, I want his head to be red,
which represents the wine.
And then I'm gonna select the other shapes,
we'll go ahead and color those.
I'll unite 'em into one cohesive shape,
and you can see how the brand mark for this exploration
turned out.
Now when composed with the actual type, it looks like this.
So that's why I use symmetry a lot in my logo designs
because it makes the process go faster,
and it's not super hard to work with.
Now this same methodology that I showed you here
in creating and crafting this brand mark
can be applied to more intensive, complex visuals
for branding.
So there was a company in Louisiana
called Blaine Kern Studios,
and these guys build most of the floats
that you see in Mardi Gras.
All the elaborate floats with all the effects
and sculpting on 'em, these guys create it.
So this was one of the initial explorations
I created for them.
They went with another design I came up with,
but I used the same symmetric methodology to create this.
Only had to create half of it,
flipped it to create the whole that you see here.
Now when it comes to using symmetry,
the modular format of logo design,
and make sure to watch that movie on modular formats,
really plays its part,
and works well with a symmetric and an asymmetric format.
So here's a symmetric format
applied to a modular,
well here's a modular design layout,
but it's handled in a symmetric way,
where all the elements are symmetric with one another,
centered, that is.
We're gonna show you another modular one,
but this one is asymmetric in how it's handled,
more of a horizontal format.
We'll show you the next one,
which is an additional horizontal format,
but once again, it's playing off of the modular aspects
of this layout,
but it's handled in an asymmetric way.
But it still looks like part of the brand family
to the fundamental one I've created here.
All of these work together.
Here's another one.
And this one,
I'm not sure if you'd call this symmetric or asymmetric,
I'm calling it asymmetric.
But it's also somewhat symmetric in that the elements
of the plane wing actually are centered
upon the elements of the type.
So that kind of gets categorized into
two areas there, I guess you could say.
And then, my personal favorite
out of this brand system I pitched
was this kind of encapsulated version
where it's held within a badge
or a nesting shape of the square,
and I like this one because obviously this technology
for this company is all about flying and for pilots,
so I like the aspect of the blue representing the sky
and the plane flying through the sky,
so it worked well in that respect.
But it's how you can think about using symmetry
and asymmetry within the context of modular formats
to really get a lot of different iterations going
that you can use in a brand system you pitch to your client.
Now let's take a look at another one.
Here's a simple logo identity I did for,
this is for IT company that creates network security systems
for servers,
and this was a product of theirs called ShadowMeter,
and it's about detecting problems within the network,
hence "Network Forensics."
And I played off of kind of the secret agent type thing,
and he's disclosing the analytics
that he's uncovered on the network.
And so this would be a good example
of modular symmetry in action.
It's modular in that the logo can exist on its own
outside the context of the type,
but it's symmetric in terms of how it relates to the type.
Here's a good example of modular asymmetry,
where it's the exact same elements,
but handled in an asymmetric fashion.
And this ended up being their horizontal version
that is part of their greater brand system
that you can see here.
So you have symmetry, asymmetry working together
with a modular format
to produce a nice assortment for this brand system
for this client.
Now this works with any type of client,
any type of modular system.
So let's say this is the logo
for a place called Joe Roasters,
and we wanna create a couple additional examples
that are asymmetric in nature.
This one would be symmetric,
and it's handled with the modular format,
but we wanna create a couple asymmetric examples.
So we're gonna copy this
and we'll go ahead and grab our type here.
And we can separate the type so they're two different shapes
and I'm just gonna start sizing this up a little bit.
And we'll go ahead and move this over.
And it's all about just looking at my design
and I'm just gonna make some adjustments.
We'll select this.
I'll move this over
like that.
I think that's a little too big,
so we'll scale it down,
and I think that looks good.
So here's one example of an asymmetric format
using the exact same elements.
Maybe it's more of the horizontal version
of this brand system that we're gonna work with.
We'll do another one here
and we'll get a little crazier with it.
We'll move these out so we can focus on the type.
We're gonna make this really big.
And what I'm gonna do here,
and this is where Smart Guides comes in.
Notice how I'm over the anchor point,
so I'm gonna select it,
I'm gonna snap it to the center anchor point on the type.
Then I'm gonna lower this one
until it snaps to the bottom one on the O.
So it's sitting behind the typography
so you can see that it's back there.
But I'm gonna get rid of this O,
and now it replaces the O with the brand mark itself.
That's kind of the look and feel I was going for.
Now I'm gonna select this and I'll snap it to that
to make sure it aligns with the O there,
bring it down,
and then I wanna drag this out
and kinda snap it to the end here.
Notice how I'm going over the anchor point of the E
so it finds the edge of that E,
and then I'll release it.
I usually pull stuff out like this
and then slide it back in
just so I can see how shapes are relating to one another.
Now the key here
is I don't want this to fall lower than the J,
and if I select both, you can see it slightly is.
So I think I have the roasting type too big.
So I wanna kind of bump that down a little bit,
like, we don't wanna do it too much,
so let's try it,
I don't know, right about there maybe?
And on this one,
I want it to be in a little bit.
It doesn't have to line up with the edge of the O.
And we'll select this,
and we'll isolate the type.
And on Align, we'll align with the bottom.
And I think that looks pretty good.
And so that gives us a second iteration
using an asymmetric format within the context
of a modular system for logo design.
So I love working with modular formats.
It makes creative exploration far more flexible
and adaptive to creative and clever compositions.
And symmetric motifs allow you to build your designs quicker
without compromising the craftsmanship,
and that's why I gravitate
almost all of my identity development
using a modular format,
because when combined
with symmetric and asymmetric solutions,
it becomes a powerful creative arsenal for logo design.