- [Voiceover] Math is an absolute, art and design isn't.
So when you use digital tools, you have to remember
you're working with a computer based on math
and when you use the alignment tools in Illustrator,
you don't always want to accept the results they produce.
In this movie I want to show you how to align
design elements in your logo motifs based off of good optics
not merely mathematical algorithms.
So, let me demonstrate a problem within Illustrator
and that is I'm going to show you how the math is absolutely
perfect and correct actually, but it's not designed correct.
So if we take this little mark of a happy little
Sheriff badge-type star and I want to float it
in the middle of this shape, if I select this shape
I can isolate this one by holding Option and clicking on it
and you can see how it highlights it.
Then I can go up to Alignment
and align it to the center of this
and what it produces is this, this isn't what we want
but it's actually technically,
or mathematically that is, correct.
This is mathematical alignment to both of these shapes
but visually or optically it's not correct
and so we want to undo that so we'll bring it out over here.
Now, if you're building a design and the reason I bring
this up is in the context of creating a design,
in the process of creating a design, you might think of
something and it moves you in a slightly different direction
that you didn't think of in your ideation stage
and in this case you might build content before you realize
you want to add something else.
I created this element before I realized I wanted to
put a shape around it and so it makes it really tricky
to try to center a star shape like this
on a circle like this in Illustrator.
There is no easy way to do it.
So, if you can plan ahead, you can do it
if you know ahead of time that you want to do it
by going to the Shape tool, going to the star
and when you have a shape like the circle,
it'll have a center point and as long as you're on
the center point and you start there,
you can build a shape that centers correctly
onto the given shape behind it.
You just have to know ahead of time that that's what
you want to do and if I would have done that,
this is how I would have built it to make sure
that it's centered correctly.
So, how do we center this star on this shape after the fact?
How do you do that?
Well, once again, there is no easy way to do it,
but there is a plugin that does and here's the beauty,
this plugin is absolutely free
and once again it's by astutegraphics.com
so make sure to go grab it, it's called the SubScribe plugin
and that's these elements right here that I'm highlighting.
We're going to deal with this one, which is a circle
with these three points in it and I'm going to demonstrate
how this works, we're going to select this art work
and with this tool selected,
we're going to click on one anchor point,
you can see the one showing up there.
We're going to click on the second one too
and we're going to click and pull to a third anchor point
which is this one and release.
And what that creates is, let's color it differently.
So we'll go to Graphic Styles and Stroke
and make sure it's there.
And you can see it's centered the circular shape.
Now we can just from the center out, increase it.
I can select this shape.
Group it, go here, select this.
Focus on it, by holding Option down and then align it
with the Alignment tool and you can see it's now
perfectly centered and I can get rid of that initial shape.
So that's how I use that plugin in order to create
the designs I need in order to align things
that might not be perfectly aligned.
Then I can bring in type, select this type, focus on it,
and symmetrically align it to this
to get a final logo design.
So, that's how I would use alignment method tools
such as provided by Astute to do that.
But this brings up the whole aspect of
mathematical alignment as to optically align something
and I want to go over that now.
So we have these two marks
for a company called Heartfelt,
they're a social media company and these are two brand marks
developed for that, this is their logo type.
Once again it's a modular system and I want to
align these graphics with this type so we're wanting to
create a vertical mark here.
So I'm going to select the type, focus on it by holding
Option and clicking the type and then I'm going to center it
and we'll do the same thing for the bottom one.
Focus on the type and center it.
Now these are mathematically correct, meaning,
these are exactly where they should be
according to the numbers of math, but optically,
I don't think they look that great in terms of optics.
I think we can improve the visual appearance of them
and on this one, it's not so bad.
It's pretty close because this shape is almost
a symmetric type of shape.
We're just going to ever so slightly move it over
just a little bit and I think it balances better
with the whole, with the logo type.
We're going to go down to this one and if I select this one
and I select the type, you can see,
mathematically these spaces on each side there and there,
are even, so it's mathematically-aligned
but it looks like it's leaning to the left
or it's heavy on the left and light on the right.
That's because we have this big white area here.
So, math doesn't take into account the negative space,
so what we're going to do is we're going to improve
the readability of this mark by sliding this over.
We'll do it right about there.
And I think this balances far better now
than what we had previously.
So that's all there is to it when it comes to
mathematical alignment and optical alignment.
It's about balancing the whole and making it work better.
So if we look at this design here,
the ones on the left are the mathematically-precise ones
and the ones on the right are the optically-precise ones,
the ones that balance better, that is.
So keep that in mind as you're composing your layouts
for your various logo iterations.
Now here's another example.
We have this nice brand mark up here.
We have the type for the mark down here,
and if I select both and I focus by holding Option down
and clicking the type on the type
and I align it to the center, like this,
you can see we have the same spaces on each side
and it's mathematically-perfect
but when I bring it down, it's kind of hanging to the left
a little bit, it's weighted down too much in terms of
hanging to the left and I think we can actually make this
a little more compelling by adjusting it a little bit.
So what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead
and bring this over and we're going to align it
right about there and I think what we're,
actually I think it can go down just a little bit even more.
I think that is going to work far better
for the final design.
So is the math correct?
Well, no.
In the math it says, "This is way too far to the right."
But optically, it's balanced and it works well.
So that's kind of the trade-off you're going to have to do.
You're going to have to visually look at it
and make these kind of decisions.
Now, this is also where subjectivity comes in to the
design process, but some of you might be looking at this
and going, "Well I liked it the way it was before."
And that's where your own prerogative is going to come in.
I happen to think it looks better this way.
You might disagree and want to go the other way.
It's not that one is right or wrong,
but I tend to lean more heavily on the optical alignment
as being the right way because once it feels right,
I feel it is right and that's what I'm striving for
and in this brand system, this is what I ultimately
ended up working out for all the various iterations.
Let's take a look at another one.
Here's one for a skincare product called Noorish
and when you have a mark like this,
this is a very symmetric mark.
So let's say this type is the way it's supposed to be
symmetrically, I could focus on this,
holding Option down, clicking the type and aligning it
right in the center it's going to perfectly centered
on this type because the type itself is symmetric.
This is easy to align.
But when it comes to creating a horizontal format,
if I select the same type, focus on it and align it,
and do this, it's going to be too heavy towards the bottom
because all it's taking into account in terms of
the alignment is the top edge and the bottom edge.
It doesn't count all the negative space
and because this is very light at the top,
it's very heavy at the bottom,
so it can't really hang down that far.
We want to handle this better, we want to balance
the look and feel of this better
and to help us in this respect, this is where I'll
drag down guides and I'll do this
to establish the top and the bottom where the type is,
then I'll drag my mark out, then I'll drag it back in
and I'll just see where it aligns
and just use this to kind of guide me.
And in this case, actually let's drag it out this way
and then drag it back.
In this case I think that looks pretty good.
We can get rid of our lines
and maybe bump it over a little bit.
Like that, and that's how I would align this mark
to balance it out.
It is mathematically balanced?
No, it's way off mathematically.
You've got all this space and just a little space down here
but optically it looks balanced,
it looks it's going to work well
and the full brand system for this design
looked like this.
Now, there is another trick when I'm working with
a design that's a modular format like this,
and it comes down to the point where I'm building it
and sometimes when I create iterations of the logos
I might have the same brand graphic element
but the type changes for different contexts of usage.
This is very true with a larger branding project,
and in which case the client wants the type to remain
editable, meaning in a font format like this one.
We're using Sholay for this type face
and because of the way fonts are designed,
some are produced really well and the container box
that holds the type is somewhat centered
and it's not a big problem.
This one isn't a huge problem because it's balanced
pretty well and the font's been manufactured really well
in terms of the production of the actual vectors
that is contained in it.
So if we select this and select our brand mark
and we focus on it by holding Option down,
and align it horizontally speaking, it looks
half-ways decent but there's a couple problems here
and one problem is, this is mark is heavily weighed
up the top because of this shooting off.
I actually want to align it based off of this edge
and this edge, and this doesn't matter.
I don't want that to play into the equation of alignment.
So how would I do this?
Well I'll show you one way I do it quickly.
Is I take type like this and I'll clone it.
Command+C, Command+F.
And so we'll do that here and then I'll convert it to paths.
Now to convert type to paths just go to Type,
and you can go to Create Outlines right here.
You can see I have a keyboard command that I've been using
for about 20 years that goes back to the FreeHand days
that I have assigned to it.
So I can just hit my FreeHand command and I get the type.
We're going to ungroup it.
And then I'm just going to toss everything but this letter O
then I'm just going to size it and this letter O
is going to be our sizer and what I usually do is
I fill it with nothing have no stroke on it
so you can't see it, but it's there
and then I'll group these together.
So it's going to base my alignment off of this large space
that I know is right in the center of what I want
to be the center point of this design.
That way I can center it a lot easier.
Another thing I'll do is I'll go over to this design.
I'll grab a piece of it like this inner-circle.
I'll copy it and then I'll paste it in place
and I'll go do the same thing I did with my type like this
and then I'll select my type with this other one.
Focus on this shape on the left,
and then I'll align it and so now
my type is perfectly aligned the way I want it to.
And that's like,
it's kind of a dirty little trick to pull this off
but that's literally how I do this kind of alignment.
It just kind of works easier.
It makes the whole process easier.
Now on this one, I'm going to select this.
Copy and paste it, bring it down here.
And actually, once I'm done using this I'll go in
and delete that and of course delete this one too.
So when I give the project to a client, if they want
editable type, this is what I would provide to them.
I'd group it so it's one element
and then they can click in using Isolation mode
as shown here and edit the type
to whatever they want it to be.
And yes, this is a fake logo.
(chuckles) There is no techno pizza.
I don't even know what techno pizza is.
I just liked this mark I created.
I actually was in the process of creating a logo
and just started playing around with shapes
and came up with this so I'm using it for this movie
to demonstrate this.
The next thing I want to do is I want to create
a way to align it with type
such as this where I've stacked it and all I've done here
is I find a basis for the type here
which is this bottom-left anchor point,
so I'm going to click and drag a rectangle up to the
flat part of the N and that will be
an alignment shape I'm going to use for this.
Once again, fill it with nothing so it's there.
Then I'll select these.
Actually, I don't even need to group those.
I'll select this with the alignment shape.
And then I'll select this alignment shape.
And now it'll align it based off of this rectangular shape
I created so I can move this over and what this does
is it bases it off of the circular shape in this motif,
not the extended part.
Now, one thing I noticed when I did this
was I actually didn't like this.
Even though it's mathematically-perfect now in terms of
this type matching up with this,
or optically-aligned, that is,
I think this is something that, in the process of designing
you discover things that "Hey, that actually worked better."
And I think that's the case here.
I actually thought if I snapped this anchor point
to the top of this A,
the reason why I'm doing that is, notice I have this
negative space running through these two words.
I want it to continue through the shape
so it's what I call contour-continuation
and I think it's actually works better
if I handle this layout this way I think you get
a better result and I group it
and this would be the artwork I send to the client.
So when it comes to design,
there's a lot about it that's discovery.
You can try to pre-plan things as well as you can
but in the process of building, you're going to discover
little things like that that actually work better
and it's smart to be open to that because that's what
leads to some really clever
and unique designs as you're working.
So computers are great.
I love the digital workflow.
But when it comes to good design, you can't let a machine
steer the graphic ship, as it were.
You have to override tool-driven methodology
and improve a logo composition with the designer's eye
to find the optical sweet spot that works best.