Graphic design is everywhere you look; some of it good, some of it bad, and some of it just plain ugly. In this free video clip you'll learn the secrets designing logos that will ensure your promotional materials always looks their very best. Lesa Snider explains her approach to designing logos, make sure you check out the whole course to learn all the secrets.
One of the reasons that I was so anxious to teach this graphic design course for everybody is it's wonderful when you feel like you can take control of your own visuals. It's very empowering. And it's wonderful to be able to create professional-looking visuals to get more business and keep the business that you've got.
So we're going to start out with logos. A logo is really your visual signature, if you will. That's how it seems to me — your visual signature. So we're going to talk about logos that have graphics in them, we're going to talk about logos that don't have graphics in them, and then we're going to create a whole bunch together today during class and put them to use on business cards.
So the first ones that we're going to talk about are those that have graphics in them or are mainly graphic-based. And you might have seen these guys. So we've got Apple on the left, we've got Twitter in the middle, and then we've got Nike on the right. These are some of the best examples of graphic-based logos that you'll find around.
They're very simple. They're very clean. And as a result, they reproduce really well at small sizes, which is also important. If you think about all the different places that you'll use a logo, it may need to be pretty small if you need to have it on a letterhead, or there are so many situations where we need it to reproduce well at very small sizes.
Business cards too are pretty small — about two and a half inches by three inches or so. So these are some of the best logos around. You'll notice that two of them also infer motion. If you look at the Twitter logo in the center, that bird is tilted up just a little. Its body is curved in such a way that it infers action. It infers flying or taking off. So that's kind of an interesting thing. The Nike logo as well infers a little bit of movement or motion. So these are some of the best ones around. Now I do need to say we're not affiliated with these companies at all — I'm just using their logos for illustrative purposes.
Lisa: Now if you can't draw graphical elements like that yourself, of course you can purchase them from stock image companies. The thing about doing that is the different stock companies have different policies on whether they allow the usage of their illustrative art to be used as part of your logo.
The folks over at iStockphoto say that the art cannot be recognizable in the form you use it as its old form. So it has to look very different from the original art that you download for you to use it. The folks over at Fotolia are okay with using their illustrations in your logo. However, you cannot trademark it or register it. So that would be the caveat to that. If you can't draw some kind of a graphical icon like this, then you can always purchase it. But do realize that unless you change it so it doesn't resemble what it used to look like at all, then you just can't trademark it.
But is that a big deal? I'd say no. We talked about that a little bit yesterday. Unless you're on the same level as some of the logos we looked at a moment ago — Apple, Nike, those kinds of things — you're probably not going to need to trademark it. Where that comes in is if you think there's somebody else in the market space that will try to make it look like they're you, or that they're your product.
So if that is not a big concern for you — and I'd say for photographers, it's probably not, and that's just my humble opinion — I wouldn't worry about it too much. That said, you can always put that little TM that stands for trademark next to your logo anyway.
If you don't go through the process of trademarking it, basically what you're saying when you do that is, "Hey, this is mine. Don't take it." It kind of sends that message. Now whether somebody will still rip off your logo — who knows about that. For photographers and most businesses, smaller to medium businesses, I wouldn't worry about it so much.
Now, this is not the class for advanced theories and principles for branding experts and art directors. This class is called Graphic Design for Everyone, so I'm not talking about big companies. If you're doing a big branding campaign for a large company, then there are different concerns.
So we're talking about making your own designs for your own companies and your own products. This is an example of some of the art that you can download from Fotolia.com, and what I did was I just typed in "camera" and I made sure that I turned on their illustration database so I got back vector artwork. So artwork that's been created in programs like Adobe Illustrator or Freehand — it's not photographic. These kinds of things would work well in your logos if you would like. So just a little bit about that. No matter how much I would love to, I could not trademark or register this logo.
I could use it. I think it would be great for a heavy metal concert photography business. I would really like to do that. So this is an icon from iStockphoto, actually — the one on the left. I could trademark the name part of it, the text part of it. But I could not include the little hand, as much as I would love to.
So now let's talk a little bit about typographic logos. Typographic logos are actually my favorite kind. They are timeless. You don't have to worry about the style of art that you use in your logo going out of style or looking out of date. Typography is timeless if you do it right. And we learned so many principles yesterday that we're going to put into practice today. I think you'll be amazed at how easy it's going to be for you to produce beautiful typographic logos for yourself and for other clients. So let's take a look at a few of those.
One of my favorites is FedEx. It's clean, it's simple. I'm not positive what font this is — it could be an Arial Rounded situation. Can anybody see the movement that's been inferred in this logo? Anybody in the studio? Raise your hand if you do.
Susan: Yes, there's an arrow.
Lisa: Very good.
Susan: I think there might be more than one arrow. Is there more than one arrow?
Lisa: I think there's one.
Susan: Okay, there's one.
Lisa: Yeah. As Susan wisely pointed out, there is an arrow. So look between the E and the X. And it's beautiful. It's natural, and it's subtle. And it's so perfect for FedEx because what do they do? They move packages. So inferring movement just typographically is quite brilliant. You would recognize this logo anywhere, and that really is the point of having a logo like this — it's brand recognition.
So you want people to know who you are, recognize it when they see it, and trust it. We talked about how visuals are what people use for their first indicator of trust. So this is a nice rounded, happy, friendly font. It's clean. It's also thick, so you get a sense of stability, boldness — like FedEx is going to be around a while. Nice big thick fonts tend to send that message. So this is one that I really love.
Another one that you have probably seen is the Coca-Cola logo. Now in this situation, it is extremely important for them to be able to trademark and register this, because you don't want to be drinking some other product that has a similar logo — it wouldn't be the same thing. This one is interesting because it's a custom type situation. Someone probably drew that and then created it. So it could either be something that you've drawn and then digitized.
Custom text is not something that anybody else would be able to come up with, because it's something that you've drawn. Or you can take a font and you can customize it yourself. And we're going to take a look at how to do that a little bit later today — you won't believe how easy that is.
Even if you don't want to go the route of creating a completely custom text situation like this, all you have to do is change the existing font just a little bit. Start out with the font. You can turn it into outlines in Illustrator or Photoshop and then you can tweak certain parts of it.
Now this logo is fake for "The Maintainers," but it might look similar to a movie franchise that was quite popular called the Transformers. The Transformers logo is copyrighted by Paramount Pictures and Hasbro. All the designer did for the movie posters was what I've reproduced here on this fake logo. They started out with a font, turned it into outlines — which means they turned it into an editable piece of art — and all they did was grab the little bottom of the M and drag that descending part down. They clipped it off at an angle and did the same thing on the T. That's it.
So it's very easy for you to do this kind of thing in your own logos. We'll take a look at how to do that today as well. This would not be nearly as difficult to create as the Coca-Cola logo, which, like I said, was either drawn by hand and then created as a piece of art, or was some kind of custom text situation that they had made for them.
We'll take a look at how to do this — and that's just a texture that I added in there. It's actually a picture that I downloaded. I think that one came from a photo, so I just clipped the texture so that it's being pushed through the text. It makes it look like it's made of metal. I thought that was kind of clever. So, Transformers — what's the opposite of transforming? Maintaining. The Maintainers. I have to entertain myself somehow.
So this is another custom text logo, or a custom type logo. We're talking about fonts that have been tweaked — start out with a font, turn it into a piece of art, and then you customize it.
This is one that my husband Jay Nelson made for a very special couple, very special friends of ours — Ben Willmore and his new wife, Karen Willmore. Ben does some teaching here at CreativeLive. We wanted to make a logo for them as a married couple. We have our own logo. So what we did was we took a B and a K, and we looked for a font that kind of resonated with them. They have a vintage bus that they live on, and it's quite curvy in its nature, rounded. The roundness just kind of fit with them as a couple — they're very happy.
So we looked for a round font and we found one and we turned it into outlines. Then we flipped the B and tucked it over on top of the first part of the K. That made it too thick there in the center once we overlapped those two pieces, so we just made that center piece thinner or narrower. Then we took the K and tucked that in a little bit, so it kind of squished it just a little bit. And once we were finished, we had something like this. Put it inside of a circle, and we made a lovely business card for them and presented it to them. They just loved it.
So now they have a business card to give out for their personal married life, which was really neat. We'll take a look at how to create this logo in class as well.
Lisa: Some of the simplest logos to make, however, are typographic in nature. As you can see here, I just used my own name — one of my names — and I quickly came up with 12 different logos in the span of about 30 minutes. These all exude a different feeling, a different message. So let's talk a little bit about them.
The one at the top left — we've got good contrast going on here, because "Nelson" is so small in comparison to the word "Photography." That's good contrast. The reason this works so well is because there is such a huge size difference. If the word "Photography" were a little bit smaller, it wouldn't work as well because there wouldn't be enough contrast. Contrast is one of the principles that we talked about yesterday.
I shared with you that it was oftentimes my most challenging — it's challenging sometimes to build in enough contrast. Because you really do have to be brave; it kind of gets you out of your comfort zone. So you need to be able to go large with one of the words and very small with the other word in order for that to work.
That's the exact same font. So that one is Futura Light, and the "Nelson" part of it is about 38 point and the other part is about 82 point. So there's quite a big difference between the sizes of those two words, and we're going to take a look at how to create these as well a little bit later on.
When you're using Futura — which is what the first two in the first column are based on — it's a very round, happy font. So you get happy feelings, and it's clean and clear and trustworthy and visually pleasing.
The next one down is based on the same font, Futura as well, but using a bold version next to the light version. That also builds in contrast between the thickness of the first word and the thinness of the second word. And that's what allows you to shove them together where it looks like a single word — that's why it works.
But if "Nelson" were any less bold or weighty, then it would not work against that thin font. So the contrast part of this is really, really important, and you need to be brave and be willing to try out even black versions. A black version of Futura would be a little bit heavier in nature than the bold version.
It may be a little bit uncomfortable — might make you a little bit squirmy — making "Photography" in the first logo in the top left that big. Maybe a little bit uncomfortable for you, but the contrast is necessary for it to work.
So let's keep going down to the script versions. We're looking at the third one down in the first column. This one is a bit more classy, a bit more elegant. It exudes a feeling of grace a little bit. It all just depends on what resonates with your target audience. What kind of customer do you want to attract to your photography business?
Or whatever business it is — it really is worth spending some time thinking about that. That doesn't necessarily mean that the clients you have are the clients you want. But you want to design to the clients that you want. What kind of visuals resonate with that person? Do they need something very clean and clear? Do they need something that's cursive or scripty in nature?
The script version here on the left, third one down — no surprise, that's my favorite font. Adios Script Pro is the OpenType font that we looked at yesterday. If you highlight the N, then you could change it to a different contextual alternate or one of those swash examples that we saw that had the extra flourish on it, just to pop this up another notch — or like Emeril says, "kick it up a notch."
The script at a large size works very well, even though it's thin in nature and the word "Photography" is also thin in nature. But again, what makes it work is that the script is so different from the plain version underneath it. And I believe that's also Futura Light underneath the script there. I love Futura Light — well, the whole family of Futura is just fabulous. You can get so much mileage out of it because it's got a light version, a bold, a black, a semi-bold — it's just wonderful. What makes this work is the size of the script against the smallness of the lowercase letters of "Photography." I've also added some tracking here, so "Photography" has been spaced out a little bit.
Now let's talk about the one at the bottom left. The bottom row is really type stacks, and stacking type in this way works incredibly well and can be engaging. It gives you a nice, strong focal point on whatever visual you place this on, whether it's an ad or a business card.
Since the type is kind of stacked together and kind of weighty, your eye is drawn right to it, which is great. And even though I've rotated the word "Studio" so that it's kind of tucked up against the right-hand side of "Nelson" and "Portrait," it's still very readable because "Studio" is a short word. If "Photography" needed to be that piece that was rotated, it wouldn't work as well because that's a longer word.
So if you're going to do this kind of little rotation stacking — you can think of it as building blocks, which is kind of what it feels like because I try to kind of nestle it in — you'll notice that the S in "Studio" kind of tucks into the space that the T creates at the end of the word "Portrait." Can you guys see that? How it's kind of tucked in there a little bit? But they are not overlapping and touching.
This can be a fun exercise, and for that one you really would need the text in at least two text boxes if you were doing this in InDesign, or a couple of different type layers if you're doing this in Photoshop, because you need to be able to rotate "Studio." You can get away with "Nelson" and "Portrait" on the same type layer or same text box, but you'd have to do a separate one for "Studio" just to rotate it.
By experimenting with size and these different words — again, three words, not four, because three is more visually pleasing than four — you can play around with the sizes and just kind of see how the type blocks can fit together naturally. I didn't know exactly how that was going to fit together until I started playing with it, and then I saw the S and the T, and I thought, "Oh, that's pretty cool."
It's exciting. It does wonders for your confidence and your self-esteem when you can create these kinds of visuals that you are assured are sending the right message for your company. It feels really good — feels like you're taking control of it and you're on top of it. That's good.
Now let's talk about the second column. We're back up to the top of the screen here. We've got "Nelson" at quite a large size paired with "Photography" in a very small size. We're building in contrast in the weight of the fonts here — thick versus thin — as well as initial caps with all lowercase. That's giving us an extra boost of contrast as well.
This one would almost make me think that he was a newspaper photographer, right? Because of the font that we used here. That font is American Typewriter, and it kind of looks like a typewriter. We talked about that a little bit yesterday. So you can see how these are sending messages and communicating — you need to think about what message you want to send when you're choosing your fonts.
That one would definitely make me think newspaper photography, or reporter. The second one down makes me think of somebody who shoots outdoors. Because the font — which I think is Caslon Antique, but I'll tell you when we get into this file and start creating these things — a couple of things are going on with that one.
We're in the second column, second one down. It's a distressed font, which means it has a little bit of texture in it. The edges are a little bit uneven. It makes me think outdoors, possibly western.
Lisa: It's also angled just a touch, which gives it a feeling of roughness or edginess. All that's just coming from a font. I didn't customize this font in any way — I didn't turn it into outlines or do anything to it. That's just the font itself, so you can see the power that fonts can have.
We've got contrast again, not only in font weight — the thickness of "Nelson" compared with the thinness of "Photography" — but we've also got contrast in the use of initial caps for "Nelson" and all caps for "Photography."
Lisa: And this time "Photography" is not tracked out. I used the same font, Caslon — I believe that's what that is. Caslon has several different styles within its font family. So I just used a version that didn't have that distressed edge on it, and it pairs very nicely with "Nelson." We've also got contrast in the slight rotation of "Nelson" between the perfectly horizontal "Photography."
Let's look at the next one down. We've got again thin paired with thick. Which word should you do in the thick weight or the bold weight? Whichever one you want to stand out just a little bit more than the other. Since there might be a lot of Lisas out there, I felt that the last name in this particular logo needed to be weighty, so that's why I used a black version of the style for "Nelson."
Again, we've got contrast between thin and thick, and then we've got contrast between the size of the "Lisa Nelson" block and the word "Photography," which is also tracked out, probably using Futura Light as well.
Now the next one down I have squished together with leading. We talked about that yesterday — leading is the control that lets you manage the space between lines. If you go into the negative leading values, then your text will start crashing into each other, and it can be a useful design element. If these words were any longer, it probably wouldn't work as well, but it works because these words are short. So if the words you're using for your logo are relatively short like that, then you might try this squished-together, negative-leading look to see what it would be like.
Let's pop up to the right — the top right of the slide here. Again, we've got contrast in the thick and thin. Everything is right-aligned. This logo might make me think children's photography — it's kind of happy and round and approachable. Doesn't feel formal in any way. It's all lowercase, and that's very approachable. Don't be afraid to use lowercase — lowercase is in vogue right now, it really is quite popular.
Now the next logo down — we're in the third column, second one down. I love this font so much. Does it look familiar to anybody? Anybody in the studio? Todd's shaking his head yes over here. This font is based on Star Trek. And it's called Federation. I cannot tell you where I got it from, but I have it. It's very bold, and doesn't it exude motion? Doesn't it feel active, just the way that logo is? So that's another look. It kind of conveys the feeling of fast, young, full of energy.
The contrast is coming in here with size. We've got similar weights, but because "Nelson" is so large in comparison to "Photography," it looks like it's weightier — but it's really not. It's the exact same. There's only one style of Federation font. I reduced the leading so that the two words are crashing into each other just a little bit. When I add color to this — and we are going to do that later on — you'll see the top of that word "Photography" is laying on top of "Nelson" just a little bit. If we did two different colors for those two different words, that would be a really neat effect. So again, it's all about what message you want to send.
The next one down is really spaced out, or "tracked out" as designers would call it. This one to me exudes a feeling of grandeur and spaciousness. Very responsible, very trustworthy, very classy. I probably want to dress up. They probably don't take a lot of kids' photos — see how the messages kind of come through.
This font is called Copperplate. It's a great one because it's kind of narrow, so it's really great for spreading out like this and making it very wide. What I did is I set it in all caps and just added a lot of tracking to it to spread it out. Our contrast is coming from the size of "Nelson" in comparison to the size of "Studios." "Nelson" is set at about 45 points, and "Studios" is about 20 points, so there's about a 25-point difference there in the type sizes.
And again, the contrast — if you're going to get it from size — has to be to the extreme or it won't work. When we're creating these a little bit later, we're going to look at that. I'll show you the difference. We'll make "Nelson" kind of big and "Studios" kind of little, but you'll see that the contrast won't quite be there. You just need to go bigger, and that's the bravery — that's where that comes in. You've got to be brave. A little bit uncomfortable. Is that too big? Probably not. It's probably going to work just fine.
The next one down is set in — I think that may be Helvetica Neue, and I never know how to say that word. But anyway, it's a very thin, very clean, crisp, austere font. I would probably expect to walk into that studio — we're talking about the one at the bottom right — and see a lot of stainless steel, to be honest. I'd expect the studio to be very crisp, very clean, quiet. Not a lot of comfort, not a lot of cushions hanging around. Kind of minimalistic.
The contrast here — there's not a whole lot of contrast. But if we put that logo on a business card and that business card had quite a bit of white space around it, that would be your contrast. The contrast would be between the block of text and then the free space, or the negative space. It's very clean, very clear. I'd expect that to be family-friendly, happy, friendly, approachable, probably affordable. I would expect the one at the bottom right to be more affordable than the one above it. See what I mean? You can kind of send a message about your rates as well.
What would you expect the more expensive studio to be in these examples? Anybody have any ideas?
Todd: Yeah, I think the most expensive studio would be on the left-hand column, third one down.
Lisa: Yep, the script. Definitely. Isn't it fascinating, all the different messages that you can send with these things? And most of these fonts are on your system. Most of them have been installed with the Adobe programs. If you've got any of those, you've got some of these fonts already.
If you purchase the course, you will get this file as a layered Photoshop file. So that will help you re-engineer some of these things that I've done for you on your own, even without having to go back and watch this particular segment — which you could also do if you purchase the course.
Does anybody know why these are all in black and white — why we don't have any color going on? Anybody want to take a guess on that?
Bill: You want to make sure that it's printable, or usable, in a variety of ways first. Also, in black and white you can see better the balance that you've been talking about and the contrast between the elements. Then you can add color later if you're going to print them in color.
Lisa: Absolutely. We can see if the contrast is there — if enough of the contrast is there. The big thing is that if it works in black and white, it will work even better in color. So if you can get something that you like in black and white — and I always start out in black and white — then when you add color, you're going to be even happier with it.
So always start out with black and white, no matter what you're designing. I add the color last, after I've set the text. Another reason is that it is likely that you will use this in newsprint — pretty likely. This lets you know that it's absolutely going to work in newsprint.
All of these would work well. The only one that I'd be a little bit scared about putting in newsprint — but I think it's large enough it would work — is the one on the bottom right. That's simply because the letterforms are so thin, and newsprint has an absorptive quality. You just wouldn't want the characters to kind of get lost on the newsprint.
When you're designing ads for a magazine, or a coffee table book, or tomorrow we're going to design some branding for a photo book or portfolio — when you're doing that kind of thing, you know that you're going to be using what's called coated paper. Coated paper has a quality to it that keeps the ink from absorbing into it. So you don't have to worry about the ink kind of bleeding out a little bit. Newsprint is typically printed on uncoated paper, so it doesn't have that quality — expect the ink to bleed a little bit. You want to be careful using really, really thin characters.
Also, I think tomorrow morning is when we are going to get into designing for newspapers. But you want to be careful of reversing type. Yesterday we saw a couple of ads that had a color bar at the bottom, and we reversed the type and made it white instead of black — that's why we're saying we "reversed" it. You'd need a bold font anytime you do that, because there's so much ink in that one space. The text being white, it would need to be quite thick to hold up so that you are ensured that whatever is in that color block is still legible. And if it's your URL, that's pretty important.
We'll talk about some specific concerns for newsprint. But designing in black and white really lets us focus on the shape of the logo, the shape of the font that we've chosen, the message — without adding color into the mix, which at this point in the design process can be a little bit distracting.
I also tend to start out with sketches — super rough, thumbnail sketches. I've got some examples here for you. I just use a graph pad of paper, and I start out really, really rough with pencil drawings, just to kind of get an idea, and then I move to the computer. My sketches are really, really rough. It's a great way for me to start out and see what won't work, so I can quickly eliminate a few possibilities if I don't like the look or the shape that I'm seeing. Then I don't have to bother creating those on the computer.
But to be quite honest, you can be very fast creating lots of different typographic logos on the computer. Now the graphic-based logos — that takes a whole lot more time, and I would definitely start out with sketches. I would get the sketches pretty tight so that I knew what I was creating.
Because otherwise, first of all, you're going to be faster with pencil and paper. And I know some of the photographers out there are going, "I don't draw. I am not going to do this." It's fun. Because you're so fast at just little rough thumbnail sketches, you're going to be more creative. Things are going to come to you — ideas that won't come to you if you didn't have a pencil in your hand and a piece of paper underneath that. Ideas will come to you that you would have never come across on a computer. It's just a different medium, and it stimulates your brain in different ways. That's what I always do.
So we're going to add color to these here in a little bit and see what we can create from them. The third kind of logos that I want to talk about are logos that are mostly typographic in nature but also have a graphic element — so we'll call those "a little of both."
Lisa: This is a logo that I did for a large coaching company — not really psychotherapy, but a little bit psychotherapy-based. Coaching people how to work together. Big corporations will bring in this company and they will teach all of the employees how to work better as a team.
One idea that I came up with — again, starting out in black and white, post thumbnail sketches on graph paper (I use graph paper just because it's easy to kind of line things up; I prefer graph paper rather than paper that doesn't have any lines) — we started out with the one on the left, and this is another idea. Once you get your logo mostly typographically set, then you could be clever with the last word of it if you're using kind of like a type block.
This is another example of stacking type, and it works so well because it's equal in width. Anytime you've got words that are kind of similar in length — they don't have to be exact, but kind of similar in length — then you could experiment with this kind of treatment. It works very well.
We've got contrast with the thinness of "Kimura" and the thickness of the weight of "Coaching." Then we've got contrast with the uppercase of "Center" and the lowercase of "Kimura," and the thinness of "Center" versus the thickness of "Coaching." What we did to kind of balance out or anchor that block of text was to add a color block behind it and reverse the type. We reversed it from black to white, and it really anchors that.
Doesn't that black box make you feel like that company's a bit more solid — that it's going to be around, it's got a good base, it's strong? So that's another thing that you can do. That adds a little bit of a graphical element.
Another idea — and the one that they ended up going with — was the one on the right. I couldn't believe it: the I is so perfect to swap out for this little stick person, right? Because the I with the dot on it — well, the stick person with the dot is the head. It works absolutely perfectly, and it even helps convey what the company is all about. It's obviously a company that is working with people — it's all about people.
If you can put a little graphic element in your logo as well, it can oftentimes work extremely well. That particular graphic is a built-in shape in Photoshop. There's a slew of built-in shapes, and I'll show you how to find them. You have to load them — they're not all turned on or visible by default. So I'll show you how to turn that on. This is a good example of adding a graphic element to a mostly typographic logo that works very well. All of these would produce very well at small sizes, so that's also good.
Here's another example. This is part of the new branding campaign that I did for our favorite restaurant on Pearl Street in Boulder. I don't know if you've ever had this happen to you — if you haven't, you probably will have it happen now. Once you learn a few rules about typography and the way things are supposed to be versus the way a lot of things are when we see them, imagine going into your favorite restaurant over and over and over again and just being so appalled by the menus that you just can't take it anymore.
That's what happened to me. Our favorite restaurant — we've gotten to be very good friends with the chef — and I just couldn't handle it. I said, "Guillermo, I'm going to redo all of your visuals and your menus and your logo and everything, because I just can't take it anymore."
It was really kind of frustrating and upsetting because it was reflecting negatively on his business. I mean, it really was awful. And you know it's expensive to pay rent on Pearl Street in Boulder. It's the pedestrian mall, so there's a lot of foot traffic. All the restaurants want to be right there, and the rent is insane — it's like $10,000 a month. So you've got to be pulling in a lot of money to be able to pay your wait staff, pay all your cooks, pay all of that stuff, and remain open like that. And there are a lot of restaurants on that strip.
It made me sad that I didn't feel like he was bringing in the business that he could because his visuals were so bad. And I mean awful — menus done in Microsoft Word that had no alignment, just really terrible.
So what we did was I sat down with him. He had me come out for lunch when it was real slow one day in the summertime. I went in at about 1:30 — and this is also a great way to get free meals. Great tip here. I'll never have to pay to eat at this restaurant again.
Anyway, we sat down and I had my graph paper and I just started asking him some questions. The owner and chef's name is Guillermo Casarubias, and he's Mexican, trained in France, cooking Italian food. So just try to wrap your brain around that.
He's very, very proud, and I started asking him, "Tell me why you're doing this." Just started asking him some questions. Before long, it came out that he makes everything fresh there. It's all homemade. Everything you get there — the pasta is homemade. His wife is the pastry chef. Everything is made there with love.
Then I started asking him, "Why Italian? Why are you doing this? Why not Mexican food? Why not French food?" And he said Italian is just so rich and it's all about family. Because in Italy, sitting down to a meal is a huge deal — it's a long affair, a two- or three-hour thing. This family sense started coming out. He loves feeding people, and he kept saying the word "fresh." Then I asked him, "Well, why are you offering some fairly simplistic items on your menu? Tell me a little about the items that you're offering." And he said, "I just want it to be approachable. It's not too heavy — it's stuff that you can eat every day."
So I was listening and kind of writing down little notes — whatever I intuited that I needed to write down, I was writing down. When I came home, I started looking at everything, and the word "fresh" just popped right out at me. The word "everyday" just popped right out at me. That's when I started to sit down and do some sketches.
We came up with this tagline for him that is very descriptive about what you're going to get should you choose to eat at this restaurant: "Everyday Italian." That makes it approachable — it's not "Oh, so filling you can only eat here once a month." And then the other important thing to him: "Made fresh here." That's very important — that sends a really big message. And that sets him apart from Antica Roma, which is the other Italian restaurant on the next block, and Jay's Pasta, which is like a fast food Italian place — probably as Italian as Olive Garden.
So that's the logic behind — and the kind of questions that I asked him to get to this point. Then what colors am I going to use? Start thinking about colors. Well, what's in the Italian flag? Red, white, and green. That's done, next.
Then I went into Font Explorer — we looked at that yesterday, font management software. I typed in "Trattoria on Pearl" and then I just started tapping my down arrow key to go through everything. I knew I wanted a serif font because I wanted to give it that solid feeling with a base. He's solid — that restaurant's going to be there, it's not going to disappear in a month. And I wanted a rounded-base serif. I found this font and it worked perfectly.
He loves sunflowers — the whole restaurant is decorated in sunflower paintings from a local artist that are quite beautiful. Sunflowers are kind of indicative of Italy, so I wanted to bring that in, something with a little color. I found a piece of art that was a sunflower inside of an illustration, but it had a whole lot of other elements with it. So in Illustrator, I just picked out the face of the sunflower. It had a huge plethora of colors already in this piece of art, and you pop it onto the I, and you've got a beautiful logo — at least what, in my humble opinion, is a beautiful logo.
We've done a whole new branding campaign with it. His menus are all new, his signage is all new, business cards are all new. And that restaurant has a lot more business than it used to. And like I say, I will never have to pay to eat there again.