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Assignment 1: Sketching Continued

Lesson 5 from: Logo Design: Wordmarks

Michael Stinson

Assignment 1: Sketching Continued

Lesson 5 from: Logo Design: Wordmarks

Michael Stinson

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Lesson Info

5. Assignment 1: Sketching Continued

Lesson Info

Assignment 1: Sketching Continued

Are you guys doing on this? I'm seeing some erasers being used here is harder than it looks yeah have you attempted a thai fish caesonia a lot of people dio yeah you took a really long time teo I mean we're probably just talking about twenty six characters in the new numerals maybe and then you get thirty requests dook finish the side do all the eight hundred other glitz that go with it right where it actually becomes work yeah it's quite a challenge I get asked o tio you know hey what are you going to design a typeface and that's not really my my kind of training my training is morn specialized character forms like this in branding and uh maurine typography editorial fuel so but I'm uh I'm really convinced that you know typeface design is kind of more engineering more of an engineering mindset and it's it's highly specialized so on my mark here I noticed that these days you know they kind of dried out I noticed this from the beginning and this is a characteristic of office sena termin...

als and it also does it on the g it's showing on my computer screen so what I wanna do is what mine over and get the stem to it's going the wrong way so I need teo I need to do this might have to go through this over yeah let's do it this way so I wantto draw this see, I'm gonna do it here and draw this terminal here trace it but I needed actually backwards we're gonna put it here this actually needs to go here and that fortune or pick another one exactly do it's great to see people following along at home we already have some people posting to the student work section and we have a great example here that somebody took calvin klein made it into calvin klien keeping that same style solution yeah somebody good ideas out there yeah so if you've been doing this at home if you're following along and maybe you're not ready yet but once you are done with your design we encourage you to click on the student work we'll go there on the right side of the page upload your design and yeah, we want to see them and it's a great way for you to get some feedback on your work and you know people in the chat can jump in there leave some comments on your designed to help you improve it. So go ahead and upload your work so I'm just start tio adding my terminal to my g that's characteristic of office senior that's like this and does poke up quite a bit it's actually shorter it comes back in somewhere in here maybe in here and when I get a digitized you know I can see for sure but at least want tio get a good indication of how that thing is going to be built something like this you know, in this this chief this open counter in this geez kind of flared out in here in the tail here so I want to take note of that everything is really characteristic and what they changed you know besides these days is the, uh, amount of curve they put on these corners uh because the corners I believe in office sena are not that curb but maybe they are I have to make sure no quick. So if I go back to my my screen here just as a study I wantto confirm that to see if these air this same or not it would be great if they work because then uh there's less modification but it doesn't look like it I think they're more yeah. So see there's my confirmation right there that's a good thing to look at um so they modified it more just to make it. I think my guess is to make it a little bit more and this is all you know in, uh assuming that we have an accurate reproduction of the logo to make it a little bit more softer and inviting, I would assume but that's a question for turning ductwork course so you're just looking at the corners there the looking to see you because this is the native office una uh sounds and I want to see because uh off see the sands of the curse aren't is exaggerated I see so that's another custom element that I want to be aware of what I'm doing this great way had a quick question on as you're designing the g here we had a question should you try to turn the tale of the g to mirror the more closed top of the a are you trying to replicate the curve of the a when you're creating the g that's a good point that's a very good point I didn't see that um so they're asking this closed portion of the of the this the stroke here so that's a good point because we may want to use this I think what they're visualizing is is this if I may just to show everybody I think the person is visualizing this uh yeah if this works that this where this tale of the jew yep right? So if that's the case we may want to look at it both ways you know as an answer do I want to do that here? Um yeah, I think that's a valid you know point is to look at it that way because it could be a nice counterbalance to these two forms they're customized great yeah so we're not looking at the answers I've wanted looking both to see what would be appropriate yeah that's a great point thank you. I'm glad I have like five thousand art directors authored it helps you to watch over me a it's a good group activity no it's also yeah like I said before the more minds the better on these things yeah so yeah g how are the students doing here? You guys need any help from the chat rooms as well? Any suggestions? Yeah, these are looking great check to see you. Yeah, well three to come down here and take a look at the students works you see house coming along questions how's yours going so far okay, I made a d on each it's great. Um the s I'm a little more that's a tough one nervous about um but one so we're sketching is just an outline find t be trying to fill them in and just get the no it's fine but what I do that's a great question for you guys so way I teach eking newsletter forms and if I were doing it with technical pence's too you know, uh it's all geared toward you know again the thinking part is is geared towards what your abilities are some people have awesome hands and they can draw a straight line you know they're just there and so they can eat quickly um other people aren't so good at that so they want to do a rough and then just get it to digital as quickly as possible so it's really up to you um for this since you've got black layer me personally, I would be thinking it closer and tighter for that. Um but I think for years we were talking about was it again like those caddyshack and we're trying to create yes, right? Yeah, yeah, so yes, me personally, if I would want to see, um, I have a couple hundred black letters in here so I can cheat, so, uh, I can help you with that just to see where we're at again, I don't know the typefaces for all these, um let's tell me when I'm close to type face like yours like your age or distinct, you always want to look at the age, right? So two story a story is the stem to the belly is it closed? No it's open, so we khun go through these pretty quick than so you know, even with you know, you're not like a caroling and kind of stall script black player like this, you know, has single story is and I didn't get this from a book. By the way, if anybody is interested, I'm just gonna go to fit a factor because that's probably might be the closest, but I'm not sure no, I guess not many health there's a lot of similar when you think of black letter, and then when you're looking to match a specific one, they're also obviously makes me different and wrong. I know I always think of ah, funny story of my parents about this because they say, you know, you're teaching type those piece of cake meaning the same. Yeah, my grandfather said, what do you do? I don't get it. How much time do you have explain, right? Yeah, we actually common in the chat earlier about people going through and spending so much time looking at all these different examples and eventually their eyes kind of glaze over. I mean, do you ever hit a point where to go? Allow I've just been looking at this too much you're going to hit that that threshold I don't for me, I for me, I don't, because I am so as I'm looking at this, I'm only looking at age, ok? That's like an entire work, and that makes it I think a little bit easier to keep looking. I'm working overwhelm you. When we were in the photo types of the days I was taught to, you can tell typefaces between we used examples between knowing that I was talking to know the difference between cal's longer ramon. There's just eve characteristics the capital t the capital a's lower case eight and so on in type developers have probably better tools of assessment too but that's how I was taught there's certain characteristics of certain characters where you can tell those right away and um I was also taught if you look at all the capital a is you could tell it classic and all that all that is guys this is trying to get you to your decision making point faster it's a process of elimination, right? So but with in this case for you using black player since I can't remember last time he's black letter I'm not a student of black lawyer too much so I'm not sure because they're modern ones now to, um where we're at with callaway I mean, I would probably just start looking up callaway typeface brand that was where I would start and it probably end up just like, you know amazon okay it's office cnn's tweet kind of a thing so but what we also need to do is the next thing like for you lex is too look at the ones that air close toe since we're not kind of getting a matches to look at if I have to stoop to single story if I have open single story a's what's the ass look like so that's that's all we're looking for with alexis comment here is just to see what's going on with the us because in my classes you know when I teach the fundamentals of the type our feet in college and universities you know a lot of students haven't taken calligraphy I did as a kid so I know that what's going to happen based on my mind's eye of how I've drawn in s in the past and and that's how these characters air are designed so without without any otherway tio communicate communicate that feeling to you this is kind of another a way of doing it I'm sure there's better ways out there but this is one way to study on how to create a character with hints from another right because this to me callaway out let me bring this up since you're doing that I see here so calloway is this you know this could be custom tio I'm thinking it especially that why why doesn't even details on the baseline yeah I don't yeah it's probably custom and so this is a difficult one so so for you less you put the challenging one barely so again you know how would you if you have toward to mimic the strokes of this type of days you know I'm going to look to see ok you know in in black letter it's done with a flat edge nib anything on a forty five accesses thens anything straight or off axis is thick right so we want to make sure that we are looking as our cars are clues pile up the ayes open uh really open there's no stroke that comes back at a forty five, which I think is kind of typical with two story a's in here yeah, I see how it comes back around it doesn't have that because it just has a brush so I think if if you're doing the characteristics of this it's going to be an s like this but without the forty five slam so fed a fracture to me is still I mean, I don't know it's kind of cliches for this farce black letter but its characteristics are uh um I wouldn't say standard but common I guess as far as the strokes um the other thing I would look at too is that these characteristics you know, a lot of black liberal be boxed it's like a perfect square, you know, the gutenberg bible and all that uh so the ones that I'm looking at to compare is in a box or is it more like that? You know, if it's if it's a tight box or if it kind of flares out of the box, I'm looking at that as well, but looks like a lot of the classic ass is lax, so there's a more kalla graphic one and these they're open so it's like me with my g the tele gee that the, uh color our chairman per cetus is I have to really tend to options to look at here it might be the safer use so the s that's classic box or if it's more ah of ah roman character style yes here um so if you were to take I usually use carpenter pencils for my you know cause easier than using yeah and so if you were to actually discuss this real quick you know it comes back at a forty five minute comes back down and around and as you come back down you know it doesn't come back up this way it goes across so your actual s does this and this is slight and then it comes back around you know what that looks like don't you anybody know that brand mark suzuki um so um so you may have to assess their election as it as options there's another one right there but I don't think that goes with years very well I think your assets to see the distinction of these character assisted his wide open areas on the a's since there's three of them um your ass is going to complement those so you're asked to me that this stroke on the top is going to do the same thing like that all right and it's really brush because it's got a little nip here thiss comes up here we should draw this better yes it's got a little thing on the top here and it's going to come back but where we appear somewhere way were something like that so whether it comes down straight if I'm sketching this one straight across and then it you know it does it straight thing again does that looks a little bit more classic I can't I don't know if I'm helping or hurting health income yeah that's a pretty natural asked to but it's it's a bit curvy for your solution your solutions pretty boxed so the s I think there's a more of a classic s there even though it's gotta support stem all right system meaning you know this this being the stem here if you're watching you know this so this one you know, that kind of splits it does this thing because the stroke would go like this yeah there is going to kind of get this down and halfway over another half and then down over and then back crossed so you see lex, I'm just sketching construction here just to see how they like this is one this is to you know, whatever three how they write it you know um so I'm just looking at construction of what would work best for you know your solution but free for you again I think the solution is in the determination of these days how they go flat instead of down we get the shot of the table so I'm looking at you know callaway marcus straight and it doesn't go down like the's dio that's one thing so like what we're doing over here is probably more appropriate you know where they're straight it's just a matter of if it's a split stammer non maybe I threw out too many details I think the splits them would make that s too complex compared tio sort of agree how they think because it looks more simple flight and it looks more flowy the anderson and then a strict you know really clean uh black letter really clean black letter like that yeah you know that's a long answer I'm john just kind of figuring it out myself you know try to get really helpful you know I don't work with barkley every day so as we get back onto the the amazon logo we had a question come up from tina smith in a couple of people voted on this they want to know when you're creating amazing can you just delete the dot over the lower case I or do you think that that's really important in this that's it for me again it's it's I don't know all the decisions that were made to minimise things when you do customers from turner what turning ductwork but um again it's about okay analyzing what characteristics are already there for this particular exercise right um so what I see overall is the shape of a brand mark is really important as well and maybe I didn't touch upon this but this is really important too because the actual indication of recognizing on this brand mark is not just the characters how far their part if the customized rounded you know, black green whatever it's also this shape if we were to pull this out is also the indicator of the brand so if we do sorry about all this with a clean sheet of paper so if we have this shape right the I question that you just had that we just had is this going to be an issue? I'm not drawing dark enough try to use a heavier you drink you know is this is this going to be an issue? I mean you could assess that, ok? Everybody knows that brand mark they all wear the genes at levi's would not be an issue that's what that's what we're really at here so do we want this or not that's really just a decision, you know? And this is just an exercise, right? So I mean it's a great question because I always get how far can we deviate? You know, because there's some subjectivity in there so my decision making when I'm doing this is how close can I stick to the original without totally dis manning the overall ended in uh, intent of the brand shape and all these other factors hopefully that answers that question so yeah, I mean it's again like the two tio two ah legs of the jeez here, which it was a great suggestion I'm going to be on the answer is just like any other creditor I want to see it. Yeah, right so I get I get to get eyeballs on it but that's yeah, the office you know, ofthis sena uh I is quite the state right? I also have to deal with this, you know, this armed it's on there that just tells me that's going to be taken off honestly, because that that tells me that there's an issue of spacing right there desperately close to dizzy or if it's altered in some way um, yeah, I think see this but I also wanted to look at and when I'm looking at this twos to see how much they customize this a because I know we know that they customize the top portion of it, but what did they do to the see? The bottom is completely changed. So if this has changed that much, I going to do it on the djia's well, if I'm going to do it or I guess the g might be straight because they did that to the m so for me it's ah yeah there's a lot of decisions to be made here and this is great to show because because when you do these you know um especially if you do these on your own and you're and you're not in a burning from where you would hire a specialist to do this right um it could get really complicated really fast if you're so you have to it can be aware of your own abilities and your firm's abilities to do this correctly especially if you're cut such a big brand like this you really have to assess upfront your plan of attack on this kind of a project um so for me I'm gonna I'm gonna mimic what they have here and use it for these characteristics so for me the g might be straightened just like this so I might go back to if I go back to my sketch I might make just make the executive decision here just keep it straight um just like the m is to sort of has the same characteristics because it looks like they did some they made some decisions here on minimizing like with this decision but they also made decisions tio exaggerate like these tales of these spurs of these days right? I think that you know just even just to get this curve hinted correctly and here maybe I don't know but I want to make sure that those were intact no issue I really have with amazon is the width of this at the scene because there's a lot of space in here these two triangles that's quite a bit of space in here you were to look at it my always whenever I looked this mark my always goes right here um see out the after so for my I d to keep going here going on everything that's a great recommendation aboutthe using the a's the arm of the a and the terminal of the a here as an option so I would want to look at that too and when I get these digitized I definitely want two I think he's in here to see mexican then we want tio margie so I'm just ah, I've got the original here they discussed out and now I am going to take that recommendation that somebody had about using the part of the a as the tail here to see how it turns out here if I can do it see what it looks like here you guys do that so you can see I kind of done these before with students were you don't notice that I mean, you know it's a great called a notice it but you don't uh that's why I always have my students when they win when you analyze your marks today what I want you all to do is when you've got it all in digital form and you're ready to print your tests and look at it, I want you to look at it like that you do this technique? Yeah, this is a great technique because when we look at something we our brains nationally want to read it first. So we want to click that off in our brains so you look it upside down that way you can study form. Ah, lots of things come forward in your view negative space, because now that the readings clicked off and you have, you can look at things as faras if a baseline is out of whack, if something is not parallel, you start to see all the details come forward a little bit better. Ok, I use that technique for years. You definitely always want to do that with brand marks from scratch. So try and do that with your when you get to that point as a checkpoint when you're doing your brand marks, okay? And because what I'm seeing here, the reason I brought that up is when we were ever here looking at the a oh yeah, we can use it, but look what happens when I actually try to use it what do you see what's wrong with this year dissenters like too short, so if we were to actually look at the the box that this character comes when if you're over a piece of metal type right probably something like see how is it going to be some like this all right and that box of the eight you can always see here I don't know if anybody's noticed this but that's your actual form there amount of space around the character if that were a piece of metal type that black portion would be the metal so I want to look at that so if I were to do that with the g d c factor represent it's better here over here so I would want to know where this still not working very well for me is it? See here here we go. So there I want to notice this distance here that's what I'm looking at over here in my sketch so if my sketches here if I were to copy that what's on the screen there we really need a split screen start making the camera guys back for um so if I really were to mimic that that edge was out here somewhere on that box so that distance may like you guys were seeing was a little off right? So it needs to be like over here somewhere so we can use this this uh but it's gonna have to be modified mauritz going to have to come out and flew out a little bit more which why not work for this? Looks a little long and we've kind of got this shape going on where is the original does that any way back on the screen here it does it this the shape anyway it goes down but it's much shorter here but when I look at my sketch I keep going back and forth looking my sketch so maybe it's a matter of how far down below this is this is one detail that um you need to see is well back over here on the screen is this here? Do you guys uh this is a detail that I learned uh well, my first time's working with a mentor you see how this flares back in it's in his slight as it is there's a lot of purpose in that decision a lot because that's the problem back there in the sketch that I'm facing is I don't have anything that flows back in here I would have to make it happen over here so if we're looking at my sketch here what I have him it is d a that's that's here way we're looking at here right? But you saw me draw just basically this curve but this this portion right here doesn't work for the tale of the chief I needed I actually need it to not go straight I needed to flare toe work for four g it needs to do this because really where we're ending up is over here somewhere wait have to redraw this we're really ending up somewhere out here for the leg of my chief back to this you know I don't know if that's gonna work what's wrong so what we might dio is just use this this video portion of what we're doing with the original so my original was back over here when I was doing here gonna draw freshman I tend to use a tissue but I um no I just won like study if the original looks more like this a little bit of a problem here but I am doing this fast my decision here is this thiss terminal that we're looking at in the a how can we ended that way here or can we wait is appropriate there's one thing that looks similar here but I just true that's pretty nice there because that's already being done here so that might be a hit to keep it the way it is just in saying that I don't know if it's a case for keeping it the way it is or not but those air those kind of happy accidents to lead you on the right path so I don't know if we can finish it this way here because it's got to be he's got to come up abruptly it's gonna it may alter it too much maybe to get it to do this I think I might make a decision to leave it to the two designer of of office in his hands and stick to the original design of the character. I think that's, probably what I would do, I wouldn't. I wouldn't do this myself, but it's, a good thought. I mean, I probably if we had more time, I probably, um, flush it out into it and probably try and make it work. But I think it's going to end up right where I sketched it. Is that it's it's, too awkward of a of a finish for that tail, unless I'm drawing it incorrectly, I guess, but there could be more study here. I mean, if we're really studying this thing for a brand purpose than you, I've had more time to do, so, so for me, if I'm going to use this g is mine. My example.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Michael Stinson - Keynote.pdf
Michael Stinson - Whisky Type Overview.mp4
Michael Stinson - Whisky Type Slides.pdf

bonus material with enrollment

Michael Stinson - Logo Design -- Materials Needed For Course Activities.pdf
Michael Stinson - Wordmarks Brief.pdf
Michael Stinson -- Wordmarks Handout.pdf
Michael Stinson - Why is Type Important - Article.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

kathleenc
 

Great class. It's nice to see your sketching/thinking process. Love seeing the tracing paper and ruler.

user-b4d49e
 

Thank you so much for the amazing course. Learned a lot of stuff even as a beginner.

a Creativelive Student
 

Great course, thanks very much!

Student Work

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