Today I'm going to be showing you some simple tricks and
hacks that professionals use that you can use right now to
make sure that your designs work every single time.
Plus, I'm going to be showing you how you can get some
amazing design resources for a good price this holiday season.
So stick around to hear more about Envato.
Let's use the Apian way logo here.
Designed this a couple of years ago and for a cosmetic company.
Generally speaking, cosmetic companies will have physical
products and they'll be in different shapes and sizes.
So keeping this in mind, I need to be able to test it in
accordance to how their products will be seen on the
shelves, how their website will be, and what their social media
presence will be.
But for every logo, there is a few hacks.
What I'm going to do first of all is I'm going to separate
this into two areas, or even three.
We're going to have a one full logo over here.
We're going to have one with just the type and one with just the icon.
Let's take the type over here.
The first tip is to flip it.
So we're going to highlight it, press O, hold option or alt, and
flip it so it goes vertical.
Now, when we flip type, what it does is it allows your brain to
see the shapes of the letters.
They don't let you see the letters as easily.
Sometimes when we're designing things, the kerning can be off
and it won't look right because we're still reading it rather
than looking at the shapes within the letters.
So you can see here, I like all the spacing in between this.
It's already been sort of finalized, this design, but
I like all the spacing in between it.
It looks good.
It looks very consistent and it has some unique values in there.
It has these strange A's with this pointed arrow.
Everything looks consistent all the way through.
These lines look good.
So that looks good there.
Okay, what I'm going to do is take this guy, which is the icon,
with every logo icon, it's important that it works
when it's small and when it's large.
But when we flip this, you'll notice no difference really.
That's because it uses symmetry.
I've talked about this in a previous video, which I'll link down below.
But symmetry is a really easy way of creating good balance and proportion.
Balance and proportion can come with time.
The more that you look at good designs, the easier it will be
to see the balance.
As to whether your logo is balanced or not.
I'm quite happy with that.
It looks good.
Now, the next step is to blur it.
So I'm going to take this one element here, Apian, and blur it.
So I'm going to go to Effect,
Blur, do a Gussian Blur and bring that down.
So it's kind of like I'm squinting my eyes.
I can even flip it back now.
I can put it back to its normal place.
I can still read the type there pretty easily.
And even when I scale out, which is the next tip, you can read it.
This is a great test to make sure it is not only readable,
but it's legible.
The difference between readability and legibility is
legibility is whether you can understand what is being shown to you.
Readability allows you to know whether it is readable.
And because of the uniqueness of the A's here, I can read it.
I can also understand it.
So blurring it really does help.
But if you've drawn something on paper, don't worry, you can
just squint your eyes and move away from it and see if you can
still identify some key components in the design.
I'm going to do the same thing here.
I'm just going to apply the Gussian Blur again.
Although it's harder to see when we scale in, we can still
get the outline and the image of this sort of butterfly icon.
Whereas if I take this other design from like Be Hippy,
which is a client that I worked with many moons ago, and I put
the effect on it, you cannot see it anymore.
Now, this blurring is a really good way of seeing whether
people with bad eyesight can see the design.
And we want the design to be accessible to all people.
It's also a good way of seeing how much you can disturb the
design before it gets ruined.
If you do this at any huge company like Apple, you'll
notice that the Apple logo is very clearly visible.
Just look at the back of your iPhone.
You can see the Apple logo in a tiny form factor and it is noticeable.
Or even on the plug socket.
You can actually see the logo on the plug socket information
and it is miniscule.
So far, these two designs have passed the test with the blur and flip.
Let's move to the next test.
Scale, scaling testing is difficult to do and there are
apps online that you can use to help scale your work.
But I like the old fashioned method, which is to zoom out.
Zooming out or even just taking your work and just scaling it in.
We can then apply the blur if we want to as well.
Obviously, it becomes illegible at this point here, but I don't
mind because at this scale I can still read it.
You guys can still read it, and I've got a considerable
distance away from my monitor as well.
Now, if the tests don't work, then it means that you need to
think about simplifying the design.
Generally speaking, the simpler the design, the easier it is to
see at small scales, which is why a lot of corporate
companies go for these simple designs.
Okay, now what I'm going to do is do it with the full design here,
which is the stacked method.
I'm going to apply a blur and I'm going to flip it.
Just because I know they work individually doesn't mean
it might not work together.
That works when it's blurred and flipped.
Let's get rid of those and scale this down.
Now obviously here the design is harder to see.
But that's okay because we can just move this around and find
a different composition as to where Apian can be seen easier.
So from here, I know that at this point that the design is
easier to see when it is stacked from left to right when
it's at small scales.
The next tip is one that you can do with your family or with a friend.
Get them to take a look at the logo and just see it for a few minutes.
Take the logo away, think about something else.
Tell them, ask a story, do whatever you want to do.
Then ask them a few minutes later to draw the logo that
they saw without them looking at it.
This is a good test for memorability.
Is it memorable?
Again, the reason why a lot of corporate identities are simple
is to allow for people to memorize the logo easier.
And this sometimes can get a bad rep in graphic design.
People don't like to have very simplistic designs.
But this is one of the key components for memorability.
The less there is to remember, the more of it you will remember.
For instance, take a look at Apian ways logo here. At the end of this video,
when you're onto the next one, try and draw the butterfly again.
Chances are you'll remember it because it's effective.
But wait until the end of the video to do that.
Let me know in the comments and follow me on Twitter to show me
how your drawing went.
The next tip is mockups.
Now this video is sponsored by Envato Elements and we're
going to be using one of the mockups that they have.
So I've just typed in cosmetic because the Apian is cosmetic.
And I'm going to go for this.
I'm going to download this here.
I'm going to create new projects in YouTube and I'm
going to quickly download it.
And all I did was typed in cosmetic mockup.
I'm going to open photoshop up just like that.
I've got my mockups here.
Now, the reason why I'm using mockups as a tip is because
using mockups allows you to see how the logo work in real life
without having to physically print the logo.
The goal of every logo designer is to take away the sort of
imagination of the client.
You want to show the logo and how it will work on real life
things without obviously having to print in real life.
So what I'm going to do is double click here.
I'm going to go ahead and bring in the logo in full colour here.
Save this.
Oh my goodness.
Look at that.
Now Envato Elements is the best place to get all your
design resources from.
As you've just seen here, I've been able to just find a mockup
and get it done within less than a minute.
Something that would normally take me maybe half an hour to
find a decent mockup, took me two minutes.
But not only do they have mockups, they have fonts,
they have music, they have intros for your logo.
So you can create logo reveals for your clients on the spot.
In fact, today we're using one to show a client soon, just to
give them a feeling without having to spend hours on the animation.
We use Envato Elements because it's simple, easy and it saves
us time and money.
If you hit the link down below in the description, you'll get
a seven day free trial of Envato Elements, meaning you
can design and use any of the assets that are on there.
And you can also get a 50% off the annual subscription.
So you're paying less than $20 a month for over 55 million assets.
You don't have to worry about the licensing either, it's all sorted.
Have a look at their licensing thing.
It's really simple. And there you go.
We can see here how the logo would work.
Obviously, if you wanted to spend more time in the logo or
in the mockups, you can create some labels and things like that.
For instance, here I've got this little mock up here from Envato,
I believe, this one is one of those little spray bottles and
you can see that I've added some more things in there like
bee juice, spot reducer and some 150 mil sort of thing.
So go ahead, click the link and check out Envato.
Now, the last tip is to use people or use poles.
There's nothing better than asking people for what they really think.
There's a website called Poll the People which is just an
example where you can use your logos, upload your logos in
context, upload different versions in different contexts
and ask people and poll them and you'll get great
information and great data.
Here's a great example, which logo design conveys my brand message?
This is just one of them.
Check them out on the link below.
Honestly, it's a great way of asking and getting information
about your designs to go back to your client to make sure
that they know that not only you have designed it well, but
that it actually works in practice.
Now, if you enjoyed this video, let me know in the comments
down below, subscribe and I'll catch you guys in the next video.
See you soon.
Goodbye.