- [Voiceover] Every logo project
requires a choice of typography.
What type face will best suit the style or genre
you're creating a logo for?
What I want to share in this movie
is how I go about selecting type choices
and customizing existing letter forms.
The first project I want to go over here
and how I crafted the logo type that I did for it
was for a marketing agency who is working on
a branding project for a new cell service called Sky,
and that was the logo word for this project
that I was working with.
This is the manner in which I'll approach
figuring out what type style to use.
I'll literally just type out
in a lot of different font styles
the word that I'm going to be working with,
and I'm looking for certain shapes and forms
that are going to align with
the basic concept I have in mind,
and this concept I have in mind for this project
is when I think of skies I think of clouds.
I wanted to make a part of this logo type,
and I wanted it to be a logo type
not a modular system with a floating mark
that's separated from it,
but actually just a type based logo type.
I wanted to imbue it with a nice element
that alludes to clouds.
The one I settled on was this one right here.
This is the one I'm going to move forward with,
and I'm going to show you what type face that is.
It's Geometric 415 BT Medium.
Now there's some characteristics of this font I don't like,
that I'm gonna be editing out and modifying
to improve the overall visual aesthetic
of the final logo mark.
One of them is how it slants at the top of the K.
I don't like that.
There's an ever so slant at the top part of the S here
where it flares out at the top
and you can really see it at the bottom
where it flares out at the bottom
and it gets really sharp.
I'm going to modify those.
Then on the Y, I like how it extends down,
but I don't like the subtle serif
they kind of worked in to this typeface.
I'm going to be modifying all of those things
in the final logo mark.
If I show you how I customize that,
I can turn that on now and you can see
how this exact same font, I improved the kerning,
so I moved everything over.
If you look at the end over here on the S,
as I toggle this on and off you can compare
how it's sharp and I trimmed it off
both on the bottom and on the top,
also with the top of the K is trimmed off,
and I moved everything over.
Actually the kerning is vastly improved
from what you just type out with the font.
That's one thing I should point out is
when you're editing and customizing existing type faces,
you can't assume that whoever made the font
did a great job with their kerning pairs
when they created the font,
because a lot of them simply aren't done that well,
and you have to have a good designers eye
to fix the kerning, to improve the overall readability
of the logo type you're creating.
That's what I've done here.
You can see how I've also improved the Y
from the original where it was actually a little thinner.
I beefed it up and extended it a little bit more down.
Now if you can compare the two, this is the difference.
The Y is actually dropping down further
than what the original type face had.
That is because that's what I'm going to play off of
to create the cloud motif.
We're going to go to the base building shapes
that I use to create this logo type as shown here.
Exact same letter forms that I modified.
It's just in an outline form right now.
This is the format I like to work.
I don't like working with fills at this point.
I like keeping everything this magenta outline,
because then I can focus on shape and form,
and fills and colors don't get in the way at this point.
I actually try not to even think of color at this point.
I just focus on form and shape.
Now the first thing I want to do,
is I want to extend this Y down,
because I'm going to need it to extend
all the way down here.
Now, how do you grab an anchor point
and just pull it without it being a visual thing?
Well, there's a couple ways you can do it.
If you use the plug-ins like from Astute Graphics,
one nice feature is you can highlight an anchor point.
You can grab the passcribe tool.
Then if you hold the letter L key down,
you can pull it and it retains that angle,
which is kind of nice.
But if you don't have that,
another way that I've done it for years
is I just take this tool up here,
the Add Anchor Point tool,
and I'll just add an anchor point temporarily,
select both of these, and then I'll slide
this anchor point down to this one and snap it,
and it does the same thing.
It's just kind of a work-around to get it there.
But I want it this low, because I'm going to take
these elliptical shapes that I've created,
and I just match the width between
one circle to the next, by figuring out
what the width of this shape
of the descender of the Y was.
That's a nice thing to do as well.
To keep all of your visual continuity aligned,
I wouldn't want the cloud line
to be a different width than the Y that drops down.
It would kind of look off.
We're going to select these elliptical shapes now,
and I'm going to unite them together
using Pathfinder here.
Then the first thing I want to do
is I want to make an outer perimeter on this shape
by going to Object Path.
We're going to offset this path.
We're going to do it 10%.
What I'm doing here is I'm creating
the shape necessary to create a gap.
Then because I don't have to have all of it,
I'm only going to focus on the area I need,
which is here.
Then I'll do Pathfinder just to isolate
that one shape like this.
On this K, I want to make sure this drops down further.
This is what I'm going to trim out the S and the K with.
I'll just use this shape, and I'll select this,
and I'll go ahead and trim it like this,
so you can see how it's carrying
that profile of the cloud as if it's covering
that part of those letters.
That's kind of the effect I want.
Now, one shape that I'm going to throw away,
that I need to do right now,
is I need to modify a few things regarding
the initial shape we unified.
We need to trim this off like this.
The next thing I need to do is we'll draw another shape
we're just going to get rid of.
It's just for the purpose of further editing
this shape like this.
I needed that because now on these three elliptical shapes
I'm going to unite them together.
With the lettering and the original cloud shape,
I'm going to unite these like this.
Then I'm going to take this shape down at the bottom,
and I'm going to punch this through.
That gives us that nice cloud effect.
But I don't like how it's handling this over here.
So I'm going to take this shape and slide it down.
I should point out that if you don't remember
to hold Option down when you use the Pathfinder,
if I go to Appearance, this is actually a group.
You'll want to make sure it's a compound path.
You can always do that by going to
Object, Compound Path, and Make.
I have an F key set up for that.
Then this, with this on top I can select this
and then trim that off.
This is our base artwork.
It's at this point I'll start thinking about color.
I'll bring in a brand color like this.
I'll select the type.
We'll color it blue.
I really like the way this looks.
But this is another good example
of where I'll use rounding.
I'll go in on a shape,
and I'll use the Rounding tool,
the Dynamic Corner tool by Astute Graphics.
I'll just simply start rounding content on this.
It gives it a more approachable aesthetic.
It's not so harsh and sharp.
I'll do that on all the points,
especially on the bottom of the cloud
where it comes to a severe point here.
That'll be improved when I round it.
If I turn on the final mark,
you can see how I've gone back in,
if I zoom in on this area of the cloud
and I've rounded all of those detailing on this.
It works really well for the brand mark
exploration for that project.
Now, there's a couple things I just want to
walk you through further on type exploration.
This was another client.
They make underground grease trap containers
for restaurants.
Basically, their product that they sell to a restaurant,
or to contractors, once it's installed,
nobody ever sees it.
It's underground, so you just won't see it.
But, they needed a branding to represent
this product line in all their
print collateral and marketing.
So they hired me to create a logo for them.
The name of the company is Striem,
or the product line is called Striem.
That's a mix of two of the founders names mixed together,
but it sounds like water system,
and this is what their product is all about,
is water treatment.
I created branding.
Now, their product is considered very strong
and durable and dependable.
So I wanted to create a very strong, dependable,
and sturdy logo that represent that kind of quality,
and they could injection mold it onto the actual product.
This is a silhouette of what the product looks like.
This is one direction.
I used this same type face on multiple directions.
I just changed the modular system of the brand mark.
In this case, this one was more horizontally based,
but it still picked up on the water theme
with a subtle S in this logo mark.
Here's another one using the same type.
This was my personal favorite just because
you're talking about a system that's hooked up
to a drainage system, which are pipes
with water flowing through it,
and waste water goes into their containers.
I like the subtle S to reinforce the name Striem
in this logo motif.
Here's another one I did using
a completely different type face style
and a different motif to kind of
push forward the green aspects of their product.
Now, as with all logo projects,
I can't control what a client things at times.
They didn't like any of these.
Actually, they came back and wanted me to do one
which had a canoe in it,
which made no sense to me whatsoever,
but I did those as well,
and they didn't like those either.
In total I did about 12 or 13 explorations,
and when it was all said and done,
I couldn't make them happy.
It was somewhat frustrating,
but sometimes that's the way it goes.
You do the best job you can,
and you still just cannot get to that point
with some clients.
But that's okay.
That's the real world.
Now the process, when you select typography,
when you explore typography for a logo project,
it can get sloppy.
This is usually the way it looks
on any given file I'm working on.
It's not as organized as the original Sky one I showed you.
That was just to talk through the fact
that I tried different type styles.
I'll just start typing out the word,
and then I'll copy and paste
and plug in a new style until I get,
"Oh, that's the look and feel I think is going to work
"or align with the project."
Your process may be sloppy.
As long as the results are clean,
that's all that matters.
My method of selecting type faces
is most definitely a sloppy one,
but a good creative process usually is.
As long as the end result looks fine,
it doesn't really matter how you approach
your type choices or exploring type choices.
Just start exploring.
Just start looking through the fonts you have.
When you discover a type face
that will work well for your logo design,
consider customizing it to make it unique
to your specific context.