hey guys welcome back to D+B's channel the number one place for people who are design
art and all things creative my name is Laszlo i do graphic design and illustration and in
this video i'm gonna show you how i design type based logos and graphics in adobe illustrator
manipulating type and letter forms customizing typography sounds like a rather intimidating
part of graphic design which seemingly needs a lot of technical knowledge with all these
scary phrases like kerning or ligatures or baseline shift but i can assure you there is
no gatekeeping in this video most of the time when i do stuff like this i use the simplest
easiest to follow adobe illustrator tools for my work come let me show you
before we jump in let me set up the brief i'm working on in my previous video i have
mentioned that i'm working on a set of graphics for this wildlife magazine now they are called
conker nature in that video we focused on the illustrative parts of the project but this time
we're gonna work on the logo type now i have already presented some concepts to this client
in regards to where i think we could take their typographic logo they need something which has
a vintage handmade organic feel to it with a lot of character so i presented four ideas to
them the first one was this flowy very scripty looking logo with all these nice natural curves
and letters sort of colliding with each other onto each other in unexpected ways just like
wild plants in nature would right then the second one is a much more modest solution based on a
pretty much normal looking seriff font where the concept was to slightly tilt the o in conker to
make it resemble well a conker idea three was this elegant one which in a sense carries on the first
idea's concept of letters and ligatures joining each other but this time i wanted to use capital
letters to make the whole design feel a bit more sophisticated and the last concept was this
angular one which supposed to represent twigs dry tree branches in a fall forest landscape
in contrast of the previous soft flowy ideas so after presenting all these ideas to my client
they have decided that they like well all of them they like the look and feel of idea one
so this should be your template but they like the O being a conker from idea two as well they also
really enjoy this unique relationship between the letter n and k from idea three especially
when i started playing around and make it look like it resemble a foxtail and they also really
like the idea of dry twigs being in there as well from idea 4. so my job today is to create a new
hybrid typeface which assembles all these creative ideas into one final text-based logo
lots to do let's get on with it i thought first of all i'm going to recreate the joint n+k shape in
the word conker using idea 1's font and see where that takes me i believe this is going to be by far
the hardest bit to get right so i thought let's start with the heavy lifting as you can see i type
out the word in the right font and i outline the text by doing a right click then create outlines
and as the first step i use the direct selection tool to select some of these points of the letter
n and i bring these points down a little bit by hitting the down arrow key on my keyboard
something like that then i use the pen tool and i attempt to draw out the
missing ligature which is going to join this letter to the bottom part of the k
if you follow along take your time with this one as getting this right might take a couple of tries
once i created a connection i use the shape builder tool to actually unite these different
shapes together it is very roughly done so now i can go to each of these selection points and again
with the direct selection tool i have the ability to modify some of these curves and directions
now my secret weapon to make things feel a bit more natural in these situations is the smooth
tool you can find this under the shaper tool and what it does is if you repeatedly draw over a path
it essentially simplifies that bit of the design thus making it look more natural it's like magic
now for me this nk connection in its current form just doesn't work this k looks more like a b to
me so i'm gonna go back and try using a capital letter K instead so let's type this word out again
outline it redo the ratios a little bit with the direct selection tool then i copy and
paste the old version in place and i just erase the overlapping bits to see how this would look
now this already looks much better to me so again i'm gonna smooth things out with the smooth tool
and then i leave it for a bit so i can move to another aspect of the work
now let's start manipulating the o to make it look like a wild chestnut first of all i
think this idea worked well because of the sheer simplicity of it so i'm gonna try to do the same
trick and rotate the letter a little bit then i want to erase this overlapping fancy serif bit
just so we have more of a natural looking circle-like negative space in the middle here
yep now with the shape builder tool i want to turn this white space onto an actual shape
and move it to the right a little bit i think by having this not slap-bang on the middle
we will automatically create a more organic look to this conker
now with the smooth tool i'm just gonna rough some of these edges up a little bit and you know what
i'm gonna delete this bit where it joins the end then i put this aside this will do for now
now i really want to show you how i came up with this twiggy design for idea 4 because it's
actually much simpler than you would think the key to this effect is the add anchor point tool.
you can find this under the pen tool this little one with the plus sign (+) and what it does is
it lets you to add extra selection points to a shape path which you can manipulate later on
so what i did with the e in nature for example is i added an extra point to the bottom here
between the edges of the letter then selected it with the direct selection tool and i just
simply move this point a little to create this jagged spiky look that's all there is to it
so i go in and add some of these little spikes to my letters wherever it feels appropriate
on some of them of course i add some branches with the pen tool instead of
taking things away like this everything needs to be balanced out at the end of the day right
okay that's most of the heavy lifting done so now that things are shaping up and it kind of looks
like we might as well just get away with mixing all these creative concepts into one thing we can
go back and polish some of the finer details of this design so we can really bring this piece home
first of all this nk relationship still needs some fine tuning what the client really liked
about this idea is how it suggests a foxtail shape which let's be honest is not there in this version
just yet so i thought let's break this connection up here in the middle part of the k and create a
spike here i do this by drawing an overlapping white shape with the pen tool then with the
shape builder i subtract the overlapping parts by holding down alt and drag my mouse on top like so
now after all that work i have decided that i don't really like this conker O this rough
unpolished look with this font looks a bit amateurish so i brought in a new perfect looking
o from the original font i moved the negative white space to the side and i also brought in
this little twig from the N, overlapping into this just so it looks a bit more prominent
then as the last little step i thought i would create a zigzaggy breaking point into the k
just so it looks even more like a fox tail to recreate that effect
where the fox's tail breaks from the orangey brown color to white
now when i pair up this typographic piece with the illustration i did in the previous video
it looks like these designs let me know what you guys think i think it looks pretty decent
other than that i hope this video debunks some of the myths which might have been keeping you
from experimenting with letters and fonts in logo design just as a summary the four key tools that
i always end up using are the pen tool to create new paths and shapes the eraser tool to delete and
clear up the old ones the shape builder tool to unite or subtract all these new shapes and paths
and a smooth tool to polish things up needless to say there are millions of other ways and
methods you can do this kind of graphic design work my way is quite crafty and hands-on and i
guess it does require a lot of ground work to get good at eyeballing and chopping things up at the
speed that i do but at the very core of it it's a very simple exercise so if you want to steal
all these tricks practice and let me know how you get on okay guys if you enjoyed this video
feel free to join our creative crew as you just witnessed i'm all about digital art and branding
while Jacqueline's content is focusing on interior design and architecture insights, tutorials and
so much more you wouldn't even believe it other than that leaving a like is always nice because
it helps us to reach even more people with this channel and if you want you can let me know down
in the comments what do you think of this new haircut was it a huge mistake or do you dig it
okay i'm just gonna leave it at that see you guys this time next week bye
you