- When it comes to logo design,
sketching is a crucial part of the creative process,
for the designer to think visually,
get ideas out of one's head, develop one's thoughts,
and bring them to life quickly.
Initially, sketching can seem simple and rough,
which is fine for the designer in the early stages.
Though, once an idea is identified,
it's time to start thinking how the idea will work
as an actual logo design.
Now, one can jump straight onto the computer
and start putting together their design
after the sketching step.
But I like to use a technique
to continue to develop and refine my logo design further.
In the design industry, a technique that is used
to refine and sometimes present ideas
in the early stages is scamping.
If you're not sure what a scamp is, well,
it's basically a more refined drawing, or plan,
which can be used to showcase an idea
more clearly than a rough sketch.
A scamp can then be used to share with other creative people
or even a client to better articulate and present an idea.
So why bother with scamping
and not just create it all on the computer first?
Well, as Paul Arden once said,
"Rough layouts sell the idea better than polished ones."
When presenting polished ideas,
it is common for people to react subjectively
and fixate on minor aesthetic details,
like color and typeface and personal preferences.
When you're trying to sell an idea,
using a rough but clear scamp design
can help focus on the idea rather than the superficial.
In the last video, we looked at how I think
and sketched my initial ideas for my logo design.
In this video, I'm going to demonstrate
how I develop my sketches and scamp one of my logo designs
to test and refine it further.
So let's get into it.
(mellow dance music)
So at this point, I will have put a lot of thought
into my logo designs, sketched out my ideas,
and settled on a design or a few I want to develop.
If you want to take a closer look at my sketches,
you can get them in the course folder.
The course folder comes with
my complete logo design solution
I will be demonstrating on this course,
including all my design example files
and documents at each step to aid your learning experience.
The folder also comes with design resources,
such as a logo design process checklist,
process documents and templates,
a project folder structure, color sample chart,
and a logo proposal document example,
all of which you can not only learn from,
but use in your own design process.
To get the full learning experience
and use the resources to help develop your own logo project,
I recommend you get the course folder.
Download link with instructions is in the description.
So with the course folder open,
click into the Design Process Example folder,
click into folder two, Design,
into folder one, Visual Concept, into folder one, Sketches,
and click on the Illustrator doc
or the PDF labeled Examples Sketches,
and you will have the same document I have open here.
Now, these sketches will make sense to me,
but will they work as actual logo designs?
After sketching, I'll take the next step.
So here I am with my design process checklist.
Once we have identified some ideas
we think could work as a logo design,
we have checked each task,
we can now move into step two in phase two.
The second step in the visual concept and design phase
is refine sketches and draw scamps.
Now this is the process of redrawing
and rendering some of my earlier rough sketches
so they are more refined and clear.
Here I'll be paying closer attention to detail
and more of the technical aspects.
Now, scamps don't need to be perfect,
but will need to be clear enough
that you can show a client or team member,
and they would easily be able to understand and visualize
what your design intentions are.
To do this, I will typically use a pencil,
some drawing tools and a series of markers
and draw out on a graphic pad.
Though, I would recommend you use whichever medium
you feel most comfortable with.
The aim here is to develop drawings on separate pages
to outline a design or composition as clearly as possible.
Now, it's important to mention that at this point,
I like to work in black and white only.
At this point, I just want to see
if the shape and form works as a logo.
If I'm satisfied with the logo as a design,
I can always apply color later.
So here are the scamps I have put together
for my logo design.
Here you can see some very clear
logo development and compositions.
In this video, I'm going to demonstrate
how I prepared these.
If you want to take a closer look at my scamp logo designs,
you can get them in the course folder.
With the course folder open,
click into the Design Process Example folder,
click into folder two, Design,
into folder one, Visual Concept, in the folder two, Scamps,
and click on the Illustrator doc
or PDF labeled Example Scamps,
and you will have the same document I have open here.
Now, I don't want this video to be too long for you guys.
So for this video, I'll just demonstrate
how I developed one particular logo concept.
So looking back at my sketches,
one of the logo concepts that stood out to me
was Listening Love.
For this particular logo design,
you can see I have considered
how it could work in a variety of compositions with type.
Now, I think this logo could work
because it ticks a few boxes
and includes lots of qualities for the music festival.
As an icon, I thought this could be
quite bold, simple, and work as a good stamp,
but could also be used as part of a language.
So first I wanted to see how this would look as a logo mark,
and then develop from there.
Now, when it comes to sketching,
I will typically freehand it
to just get a rough idea quickly.
But when it comes to scamping,
I will start to be a bit neater and use drawing tools.
When attempting to draw a more clear design,
I will always start with a grid
and use a ruler to compose this.
Now, drawing a heart shape can be a bit tricky,
but here I worked out a simple grid
that would work for my design.
So first I drew a line down the center of my page
and across the horizontal.
To start, I drew a square of two centimeters.
Then I divided the square into two.
Next, I added an extra half to my square
so now it's more like a rectangle.
And then I mirrored this below.
So now I have a rectangle grid above and one below.
Next, I'm going to take a compass
and draw a circle inside my top right square, like so.
Now on this occasion, looking at my sketch,
the heart shape is slightly cut into the middle.
So on this occasion, I want a more narrow curve
for my heart.
So next I'm going to divide the first column into two.
This is going to set my start and end point.
With this in place, I'm going to draw my curve
from the middle point up to join with the top of the circle,
and draw a curve out from the bottom
to the outside edge of my circle.
And just like that, I have my initial heart shape.
Now, I may want to refine this a little with a rubber,
just to clean this up a bit.
So for this design, I want the heart to pulse out in waves.
So to construct the waves,
I'm going to start with a compass.
So I'll extend the center line of my circle out
on the vertical and horizontal.
And from the end of my circle,
I'll draw dash every five millimeters.
Next, I'll take my compass and draw a circle
from point to point, curving around,
but just do this for the top right of the circle.
Soon, I'll have my circles like this.
Next, I'll extend the lines on the left
and draw points up and down every five millimeters.
So now I have my points,
I'm just going to carefully freehand this
and draw my lines to connect, like so.
On the top, I'll draw my line over,
and on the bottom, I'll join them below.
And I'll do this carefully until I have four stroke lines
around my center heart, like so.
And I'll use the rubber to tidy up the lines
until I have clean outlines.
Now, once I have drawn out the initial outline in pencil,
I like to go around this with a thin marker.
Then I'll rub away the pencil lines
and I'll have my logo outline.
Now, typically I'd fill this in,
but on this occasion, the design is mirrored.
So what I'll do in this instance is take my outline,
grab a fresh piece of graphic paper and trace my outline.
With my first half traced,
I'll then flip my outline underneath and trace this again
until I have two halves of my heart, like so.
Next, I'll fill this in with a bold marker.
And if I make any mistakes,
I'll clean this up with some Tipp-Ex
until I have my complete design.
So here is my Listening Love logo mark idea.
Here I think it's looking quite neat,
and I think it's working well.
Now, if you're following along with your own design,
you may not be creating a heart shape like this.
If you have a different design,
just be sure to try and draw out your logo in a clear way,
like I have done for my example here.
So with the logo mark composed,
I then wanted to see how the type would work
as part of the logo.
Now, looking back at my sketches,
we can see my plan here was really rough,
but we can see what I had in mind for the composition.
So for this logo design,
I wanted the type to have impact
and feel contemporary and appropriate
for a dance music festival,
and balance well with the logo mark.
So here I'm thinking of going minimal
with a sans serif typeface in all caps.
In the last episode, I discussed the type options
we could consider for logo design.
When it comes to type in logo design,
you have a few options to choose from.
One, you could use a predesigned typeface.
Two, you can customize a predesigned typeface,
Or three, you can craft the typeface yourself
and draw it completely from scratch.
Now there is no right or wrong way here.
The right way is what is right for you
and what is best for your design.
In this instance, I'm thinking option two
would work well for me,
perhaps customizing a predesigned typeface.
Later on in the design process,
when I come to creating the logo artwork on computer,
I look to research and find some typefaces appropriate
that I can consider to use for my design.
But before that, I just want to get a rough idea
of what I want.
So to compose my initial type,
I created a simple grid.
Back on my graphic pad I started again
by drawing a center line across the horizontal.
Now to fit my letter forms on an A-4,
I composed a height of four centimeters.
So I drew a line above and below.
Next, I drew a vertical line at the start
and another 2.5 centimeters in, and I have my first box.
Now, I didn't want the thickness of the letter strokes
to be too thick.
So here I set the stroke width to be three millimeters.
So next I drew lines on the vertical and horizontal.
Easy.
So next I drew a line one centimeter for my first box
and then 2.5 centimeters to create my next box.
And inside I drew vertical lines for the stroke size
at three millimeters top and bottom.
Next, I will continue to repeat this
to create the other letter form boxes
until I got to box number seven.
In the word Euphoria, The second to last letter is an I,
so instead of creating a wide box for this,
I just created a single stroke size
and placed the last box, again, one centimeter from this.
So with my initial letter boxes created,
I can now start to compose my letter forms inside.
Now, I don't like to draw directly onto my grids
because I may want to use them again later and to save time.
So next I'll just grab a new sheet of graphic pad
and start to draw my letter forms on top.
So to start, I wanted to draw out something real simple.
So using a ruler, I drew out the outlines
for my uppercase letter forms
and freehanded the curved parts
until I had an outline for my type.
With my outline, I then filled this in with markers.
So here I had a pretty minimal
and straightforward type treatment.
Now, I like what I have here,
but I want to see how I could make this
a little more bespoke and feel a little more in sync
with the logo mark.
Looking back at my logo mark design,
we can see that overall,
it's a minimal composition with a lot of impact,
and the lines are broken in the middle.
Back on my type, I wanted to see if there was
anything I could do to tweak the letter forms
to incorporate this style in some way.
So with my Tipp-Ex, I removed some of the stroke lines
from some of the letters.
Here I thought this was interesting
and made the type field a little more distinguished
and bespoke and minimal.
Now, if you're following along with your own design,
you may not be creating the type the same as I have.
If you have a different design or type treatment,
just be sure to try and draw out your own type
in a clear way like I have done for my example here.
So once I was happy with my type treatment,
I wanted to see how this could gel
with the logo mark design.
Now, a neat trick I sometimes use to save me time
is instead of drawing everything over and over again,
which can be quite time consuming.
I will often scan in my drawings or take a picture
so I can quickly move it around.
So here in Photoshop with my image open,
I'll quickly copy the logo mark, create a new A-4 document,
make sure the color is set to grayscale,
and paste in my picture.
Now, if it's not looking too great,
I'll press Command + L and pull the levels in
on the left and right so it's really clear.
Then I'll hit Free Transform and scale it appropriately.
Next I'll come to my type and do the same
until I have both elements in the same doc.
With my elements on the page, I can now move them around
and place elements together real quick.
So after some exploration, I decided on a few comps.
At the top here, we can see the logo mark element
and the word mark elements separately,
and what follows awesome compositions.
Here I have a combination lockup.
I have a word mark with the logo mark as part of it.
I have an emblem style with the logo mark
and heart waves around.
I have an alternative comp with the ear on the left
and the type in an alternative stacked composition.
Same again for the next example,
but with the heart included, and lastly,
a different layout with stack text in the heart waves.
Now, what I have also included here at the bottom
are just a few examples of how I see the logo mark working
as part of a language.
Now, I don't need to do this,
but it's really good to see it working like this,
which really shows the potential for the logo mark
to be more than just a logo.
So very quickly, I was able to draw one logo mark,
and one element and quickly compose a bunch of layouts.
With these done, I can easily print them out
and place them on my project wall and share with others.
Easy.
So here you can see the process I have used
for one logo design.
Now, sometimes on a project, I may do this a few times,
depending on how much time I have
and how excited I am about particular ideas.
So now I have some really clear logo designs drawn up.
These may not be the final design,
but they do a good job to communicate
the intention for the design.
Now, this may seem like a lot of work,
but the good thing about scamping
is that you can rustle them up fast
by drawing, tracing, scanning, and recomposing
in programs like Photoshop.
This only took me an hour or so
to pop these drawings together.
If I tried to create all these on the computer,
it may have taken a while and wasted a lot of time.
So with my scamps,
I can either continue on in the design process,
or I could share with the creative team
or even the client to get initial feedback.
When showcasing ideas in the early stages,
sometimes a client will love the design,
or sometimes they will completely rule it out,
which means you won't have to spend the time
artworking the design on the computer.
Again, this is up to personal choice.
Some designers don't like to show early designs.
They just want to present the logo at the end
and hope the client goes for it.
Depending on the project and who I'm working with,
I can take a more collaborative approach,
where I will involve a creative team or the client
in the early stages to show ideas for initial feedback.
(mellow dance music)
Now, in this video, I demonstrated
how I developed my ideas and how I scamped them out.
If you're following along with this course,
and you have already undertaken the previous sketching step
for your ideas, I would recommend
you undertake your own scamps.
Now, you are welcome to follow along with my example,
but if you're following along with this course,
I would recommend you undertake the same process
I have demonstrated, but scamp out your own ideas
for your designs.
So if you're following along with your own design idea,
take a pause and carry out your process.
Before moving on, undertake the same process
I have just demonstrated, but scamp up your own ideas
and be sure to share your scamp drawings over on Instagram
and tag me @GarethDavidStudio so I can see them.
I'd love to see what you can come up with.
Remember, you will be able to use these soon
when we come to art working the logo on the computer
later in the process.
So this is how I scamp my logo designs,
and this is the process I typically use
when designing my logos.
I start with my initial sketches,
which are normally just for myself,
and when I identify some cool ideas,
I'll then develop them further
into much clearer visual examples.
Clear drawings of your designs
make it really easy to present
and show your thinking and ideas to others.
Now, as well as scamping up clear logo designs,
another really important technique I also use
to help communicate and sell my design ideas
is to use logo formulas.
In the next video, I'm going to demonstrate
how I make sense of my ideas and consolidate them down
into logo formulas, which, at a glance,
will sum up the thinking and concept
behind each logo design.
So see you in the next video.
(uplifting music)