How to Make a Logo in Illustrator - KD #6

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In this episode, I go over how to create a typographical logo in illustrator! This tutorial is for everyone, so if you've never used illustrator before don't worry, I cover all the basics.

This tutorial comes from my complete Illustrator Quickstart Course which you can check out here: http://kelvindesigns.com/tutorials/pa...

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Closed Caption:

hi guys in this episode I'm going to
show you how to make a logo using
illustrator
hi guys welcome to common designs
my name is kelvin and a design that's
why it's called Calvin designs look here
if you wanna subscribe to my youtube
channel to get all these tutorials as
they come out and click right here to
get the source files for this episode
and every other episode that I do
so you can follow along with the
tutorial so in this episode I'm going to
show you how to make a typographical
based logo using illustrator if you've
never used illustrator before
don't worry it's super simple I'll get
you using a few cool effects and you'll
end up being able to make a nice cool
simple logo and it's basically a part of
a course I've done called illustrator
Quick Start which you can see right here
and it's the earlier lessons to kind of
get you started and there's a lot more
in this course and it really gets you
started let's a take a look at it
hello and welcome to this tutorial where
we're going to get started with
illustrator and we're actually going to
start pretty quickly with creating a
logo typographically based logo to start
I recommend using a program called
suitcase or extensive suitcase and you
can get it on extensions . com fault
management and it's called suitcase
fusion five and you can try us to try
for three days as you can buy it for
about a hundred bucks
it is a great font management tool that
opens a door to a lot of simplified font
editing so I've gone ahead and installed
it and the next thing you want to do is
once that's open is going to file menu
and you can enable Google web fonts and
what that's going to do is it's going to
create another set of fonts right here
if your own font library your system
fonts and then it as the google web
fonts and what it does is it's adding
all the fonts that google is making
available
which is quite a bit it's a 1122 as a
day
so once you have that you now have
access easy access to all the font that
Google provides and there's quite a few
and quite different ones i've gone ahead
and made a little selection
so just to give you a quick orientation
you can select the font and temporarily
activated or permanently activated
i recommend not permanently activating
it because it puts it into your system
folder and if you have too many
permanently activated fonts
it eats up a lot of your memory and
slows down your computer so temporary
activating it just activated until you
close it or until you restart your
computer
that's bring a choice I've gone ahead
and gone through some of the google
phones and I've sorted through here the
star which is favorites and I favorited
all the ones that you see here with the
yellow start
if you're at this point in the tutorial
i recommend you do that now and you
simply go to the fonts and click on the
star and it will add it there
I'm gonna take this one off because I
don't want it so abril fat face
advent pro sizzle sizzle decorative
corsa LC flamenco hair von Wilken horfe
home energy and i can't pronounce all
these lado lobster medulla Tilly and
token one
once you have all of these in your
favorites i recommend right clicking on
the Google web fonts and do new smart
set
what that's going to do is just like in
the finder on Mac it's a smart folder
and double-click this to name it i'm
going to call it google fonts
it's that and i'm here is in the smart
set
I'm basically telling what i want so I'm
saying favorite
yes anything that I favorite will
automatically be added to this set and
close this and as you can see i now have
this font this folder that only has my
favorites and I can go ahead and
temporarily activate all those fonts as
you saw it activated it you saw it was
pretty quick and it's a lot easier than
opening them individually with font book
or whatever other program you may have
and there are other good font management
i recommend suitcase because it has this
easy access to web the web fonts and
auto activation with the adobe suite is
a pretty nice
which means if you have a document that
uses a font that you have it will
automatically activate it
so you don't have to go and find it and
activate it all right now that we've
activated these f fonts and I just
minimize this and let's go to
illustrator and here i'm going to create
a new document and we will go to lab and
make it 1024 x 768
so it's a RGB document which you see
here and working with that
all right so then hit OK and bring it
over here
maximize it and I'm going to bring it
the view to a hundred percent or you can
do that here by saying actual size right
all right so I'm basically in essentials
if you have already opened illustrator
and moved around some of the pallets
recommend you go to appear at the top
right where your workspaces are and go
to essentials and if it doesn't look
like this
go to reset essentials and put
everything back the way it is right here
I
so now we're going to open extensions
and expenses so that's a suitcase and it
might take a few seconds the first time
and you see here I have a various
presets to have my own phone system
fonts in the google fonts and i'm going
to create a new set and then open this
up and say all my favorites and we'll
call this google it
let's go
all right now I have access to all these
different fonts that I made a selection
from and and it don't have all the other
fonts that i may have in my system like
helvetica and myriad times new roman'
and all those are the fonts
I just have the ones that I'm interested
in right now I'm just gonna treat this
for a minute
and so we're going to create a logo and
to start i'm actually going to type in a
text
that's going to be a logo this is a type
of graphically based logo
so I'm gonna hit the text tool and I
just click once and i'm going to type
photo and then I take the move tool and
click out so i'm not in that selection
hit the text tool again and click and
type in surg
all right so I now have this and i have
it selected I'm going to move it up a
little closer
select them both and i'm going to go
over here and just make it say 24 36
I said overlapping loves going to move
it over and I'm just trying to get a
feel for some of these fonts so they're
both selected by holding down the Alt
key or option key
it's going to make a copy and you see
the cursor changes to the double cursor
which means that if i click and drag i'm
actually going to be creating a copy so
i'm going to go ahead and do that
and bring it over here that one of them
selected and do that again and again for
and then I'm gonna make a couple rows
just do three like this right now I'm
ready to apply my font so i'm going to
select the first the top to open up my
expenses and we'll make it a real fat
face
see how easy that was i I don't have a
million of the fonts and while here in
this character thing I have access to
all my phones
that's my system that is currently
loaded and you can tell it's quite a few
and to make it easy
you can make on sets which is really
useful
so which is my favorites from google web
fonts
all right so go ahead and take the
second one and let's take a nap and
prolite something that my family
obviously have been pro as you can see
there's quite a few i'm going to go
ahead and just pick one of them things
probably nicer
all right and then the third one will go
with sins little black and so on and so
forth so I guess
Orson next
over here we go with the chief
and we'll go with the next day and then
this one I can't pronounce her then will
the north
ok and
yeah
and
let's go to go with the hairline and
after they - lobster take two bold
italic and after Laster Angela to tell
them that's too light right here and
it's up to finish and I've got to get
another copy here to bring it over here
and select open
alright so i cannot close this and so
that was an easy way to apply all my
fonts that I've selected as you can see
I already have quite a few choices and
styles and it really just took a few
minutes so we got some good headway
pretty simply
so we're going to start + first rule of
thumb in terms of logos
it's good to have a logo really drawn by
its shape and not so much
its effects or filters or texture that
you may apply to it
logo needs to stand well on its own
imagine that you have to cut out of the
wood block or engraving and metal
if there are a bunch of blurry lines and
shadows and so on you cannot engrave
that
so a good logo is a first logo that can
work in all formats as much on your
website as on a keychain or engraved or
embossed or foiled on letterhead for
example
so it's important to start with the idea
that your logo has to stand well with
simple
lines and hard edges alright so to start
I'm going to pick
let's just start with this one and I'm
actually going to some of these some of
these fonts work well on two lines some
of them that are kind of narrowed and
condensed were probably better than a
single line
I'm going to take this one here make a
copy of it and to edit the text you can
do this that number of different ways
one of them is to just click on the text
tool and then click in it you see how
the cursor changes and now just like in
any text editing programs i can edit the
text and the other way is when you have
it selected you just double click and
you see now i'm in text so I'm going to
add a bar which is above the return this
and type in surg all right
and just to get an idea of what this
could look like i'm going to make it
right
alright so this could be an idea of a
logo
all right I'm then i'm going to try and
take this piece and like this in one and
take this except i'm going to take the
first letter in make it lower case and
give it a little more style
i'm going to go to my text editing so
adaptive window scroll down to my type
and go to the character palette
alright so this is kind of an extended
of what i had up here for the text
editing is a little more in the in this
window
so I'm going to go and make this this is
right here is the tracking which is a
space between the characters and i'm
going to make that straight - 50 or even
- 75 and i can now make this a little
bigger so
like that well i'm just getting some
ideas down for so this could be it could
be something i like the idea of creating
some kind of contrast when you have two
words in a logo and even a single word
sometimes it's it's a nice to break it
up in some way and add some kind of
contrast it's almost like accentuating
and part of it
alright so let's take a another end of
their font let's try this one here in
the copy and let stay this one
we've used a piece of up here and
doesn't meet this need too much anything
I probably make this during the tracking
- 25 photo would have to be a little
bigger so to make this bigger i can
either change the font size right here
or in the move tool which the black
arrow I can take it
click and drag make a bigger note if you
notice i am basically stretching out the
form which I really don't want to do so
i'm going to hold down the shift key
which keeps the constraints proportions
so i can now make it big like that and i
haven't stretch it
it's important to know that most
professional fonts have a lot of work
put into them and it's unlikely that it
will look better if you stretch it or
condense it bonds are quite a quite a
just quite a lot of work if you ever
tried to make the font you
you know how how much work it's is
involved so and in a good rule of thumb
is respect the font try not to change it
too much especially you know squeezing
it in in in strange ways and to show you
an example if i took or not this one if
it took surge here and stretch it
because i needed to make it more space
it simply doesn't look as good and
there's many reasons for that
and each one of these lines thicknesses
are drawn in proportion to other parts
of the letters and here I've completely
gotten rid of all those proportions so
it doesn't it doesn't work well
alright so let's try another one let's
take let's take a thin fall like this
and let's double click again to go into
attacks go to the right side and i'm
just going to type in surg I'm gonna try
an interesting thing here
I'm gonna add a little block so i take
the click here on the rectangle tool and
I'm going to click and drag and to make
it a perfect square i'm going to hold
down the shift key and there you go
made a black box that easily
and then I think the selection tool and
I'm going to right click on the box and
arrange centre-back what that means is
right now it's in front of the text i
wanted to be behind a text so granted
it's black tax black box you don't see
which is from the front of which but if
i take this text now select it and go to
make swatches and hit the white
now i can see it's a front all right i'm
gonna pick this text at the center align
on the text and now i can select them
both and by clicking once more on the
block you'll see that it has an
additional outline which means it's my
reference object and in here which is
the align to you have a line two key
objects I've made the square
Mikey object alright so if I hit the
center
it's going to center based on Mikey
object which in this case was the square
if I've done it the other way around
meeting i select them both but I just
click once more over the text you see
how this has a
second selection over it and now I hit
Center
it's going to center based on that so
it's a little trick I'm gonna bring this
up a little bit and to give it again a
little bit of contrast that's it let's
make this text read so that's pretty
simple and that it could be a lot of
itself
all right and let's try another one
let's take strength this straight these
to hear this over and cuddle up photo to
give it a little a little more contrast
going to make it cold
that's pretty good all right the
tracking is a little large so I'm going
to bring it down to see when it's 50
ok and serve looks all right
and it's a little thanks when you have
bold text and thin text bold text as a
tendency to look bigger
just because it occupies more space yet
in terms of height is actually not
bigger but visually it is so sometimes
it's a nice design a trick to make thin
text big bold text smaller and you get a
nice balance in their eyes that change
tracking here - 25 and we've got another
little logo and shrink a little bit so
that the right side is a little more
aligned
alright so we now have five basic
typographically based logos and you can
always edit them and a really important
thing is you have hard edges everywhere
these every single one of these logos
could be in boston grave
oiled what what not they don't depend
on texture and blurry lines
that's very important you can obviously
add more effects and that's fine but do
so once your logo is final
so if let's say we said okay this is the
final logo I'm really happy with this
however on my website I want to give it
a little bit
that's let's give it a drop shadow or
shadow
let's try that so go to the ellipse tool
and I'm going to click and drag and i'm
going to hold down the shift key to make
it a perfect circle
i'm going to go to my gradients here and
click on the gradients very simple on
the type of this here radio and I want
the black inside and the white and on
the outside so i'm going to invert
simply like that
all right now I'm going to take the move
tool and bring it up here i'm going to
actually move nail art for a little bit
so it gets better
all right and i'm going to right click
it arranged sent back because I went
behind my text and then i'm going to
shrink it in height and I'm gonna make
it wider something like that
you want the gradient a little closer to
the center so bring this in like this
so squeeze it down a little more and
look too much
something like that it's a little start
you know let's go to my at Transparency
here and say will make it sixty percent
no it's a softer so it kind of gives the
effect that the ground is break below it
for the floor whatever and the text is
above it and it's casting the shadow
there's another type of shadow which we
can try on let's say this one
this text right here and going to go
here up to affect affect stylize drop
shadow and we get this little window
here and by default it has this
775 so the opacity the offset the X
offset the y offset and the blur
so for this example I'm just going to
leave it like this except i'm going to
bring it a little closer to the objects
and say for all right and then okay
except my text probably be white because
black with a black drop shadows not too
clear
so let's make it quite alright so now
you can see this is a different type of
shadow and she better here is probably a
little too blurry so i'm going to go to
the appearance palette which is here and
it says okay this has a drop shadow so
i'm going to click on this which lets me
edit that effect and i'm going to reduce
this little bit
preview button since you been doing
maybe make it a little closer
three and three mmm a little more blurry
something like that
all right and this is an example of the
kind of treatment you can do once your
logo is drawn and probably a nice little
change to this would be a
this red and that's a little bit
right right I'll go with a darker red
something like that and there you go
alright so this is a good start and
whether you're doing this longer for
yourself or applying or friend
it's always good to have choices having
multiple choices also helps the person
pick the one is actually going to like
because if the person really didn't like
these two
for example but likes this one
if you just show them this one alone
you'd see how i like it you know it's
going to like it
if you showed him multiple ones some
that you like more than others
the one that he likes will actually
stand out considerably compared to the
ones he doesn't like so it helps in not
only for choice and also because you can
say well I like this font gonna like
this treatment
so we can mix and match alright guys I
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I'll see the next episode