Designing Logos - Graphic Design for Everyone

Learn How to Design Logos Using the Basic Principles of Graphic Design

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.

Designing Logos - Video Transcript

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 gonna 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 gonna talk about logos that have graphics in them, we're gonna talk about logos that don't have graphics in them, and then we're gonna create a whole bunch together today during class and putting them to use on business cards.

So the first ones that we're gonna talk about, are those that haves graphics in them or 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's so many situations where we need to reproduce well at very small sizes.

Business cards too are pretty small, so 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. Okay. So 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 guys at all, I'm just using their logos for illustrative purposes.

So these are some of the best ones around. >> 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, while you, the different stock companies have different policies on if they allow the usage of their illustrative art to be used as part of your logo.

The folks over at iStock photo, 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 okay, for you to use it. Then you can use it. The folks over at Fatolia are okay with using their illustrations in your logo.

However you cannot trademark it or register it. Okay so that would be the caveat to that. So if you can't draw some kind of a graphical icon like this, then you can always purchase it. But do realize that if unless you change it and it doesn't recognize 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 gonna 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 a photographers, it's probably not. Really 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 trade mark 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 kinda sends that message. Now whether somebody will still rip off your logo, that's, who knows about that. For photographers in 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. Okay, so obviously this class is called Graphic Design for Everyone, so I'm not talking about big companies. So 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. All right. So this is an example of some of the art that you can download from fitolia.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, and so it's not photographic, okay. So these kinds of things would work well in your logos if you would like. So just a little bit about that. So no matter how much I would love to do it I could not trademark or register this logo.

I could use it. I think it will be great for a. 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. So 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 kinds. 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 gonna put into practice today. And I think you'll be amazed at how easy it's gonna 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. Susan, do you see the movement?
>> 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, okay. So 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 visuals art. Visuals are what people use for their first indicator of trust. So this is a nice rounded, happy, friendly font, okay. So it's happy. It's clean, okay.

It's also thick, so you get a sense of stability, boldness. Like FedEx is gonna 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. Okay, 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. Cuz it wouldn't be the same thing. This one is interesting because it's a custom type situation. So some might probably drew that and then created it. So it could either be something that you've drawn and then digitized.

So 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 gonna take a look at how to do that a little bit later today and you won't believe how easy that is.

So, even if you don't wanna 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, so 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, okay. So the Transformers logo that's copyrighted by Paramount Pictures and Hasbro. All the designer did for the movie posters was what I've reproduced here on this fake logo.

And that is, they started out with a font. They turned it into outlines, which means they turned it into an editable piece of art. And all they did was they grabbed the little bottom of the m and they dragged that descending part down. And they clip it off in an angle and they did the same thing on the t and that's it.

So it's very easy for you to do this kind of thing in your own logos. So we'll take a look at how to do that today as well. So this would not be nearly as difficult to create as the Coca-Cola logo that 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.

So we'll take a look at how to do this file 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 photo, so I just clipped the texture, so that it's being pushed through the text. So it makes it looks 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. So we're talking about fonts that have been tweaked. So we start out with a font, turn it into a piece of art and then you customize it.

So 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. So Ben does some teaching here at Creative Live. And we wanted to make a logo for them as a married couple.

And we have our own logo. And so what we did was we took a b and a k, we looked for a font that kind of resonated with them. And they have a vintage bus that they live on and it's quite curvy in it's nature, rounded. And they just, 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. And then what we did was we flipped the b and then we tucked it over on top of the first part of the k. And then we made, because that made it too thick there in the center once we overlap those two pieces.

And then we just made that center piece thinner or narrower, okay. And then we took the k and we tucked that in a little bit, so it kinda 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, and they just loved it.

So now they have a business card to give out for their personal married life, which was really neat. So we'll take a look at how to create this logo in class as well.
>> Lisa: Some of the simplest logos however to make are typographic in nature. And as you can see here, I just used my own name, one of my names.

And I quickly came up, like in the span of about 30 minutes with 12 different logos. These all exude a different feeling, a different message. So let's talk a little bit about them. The one at the top left, so we've got good contrast going on here, because Nelson is so small in comparison to the word photography.

Here 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 cuz it wouldn't be enough contrast. And contrast is one of the principles that we talked about yesterday.

And I shared with you that it was oftentimes my most challenging, is 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 future of light and the Nelson part of it, it's 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 gonna take a look at how to create these.

As well a little bit later on. So let's move down one and also, when you're using Futura which is what the first, at least 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.

So the next one down is based on the same font, so Futura as well, but using a bold version up 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 and that's why it works.

Okay. But if the Nelson, if that were any less bold or weighty, then it would not work against that Finn 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. So a black version of Futura would be a little bit heavier in nature than the bold version.

Okay, so it may be a little bit uncomfortable. Might make you a little bit squirmy, making say 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, so the Scripts versions.

So we're looking at the third one down in the first column. This one is a bit more classy, it's a bit more elegant. It exudes a feeling of grace a little bit. So it all just dependson what resonates with your target audience. What kind of customer do you wanna 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 wanna design to the clients that you want What kind of visuals resonates with that person? Do they need something very clean and clear?

Do they need something that's cursive or scripty in nature? So the script version here on the left, third one down. No surprise, that's my favorite font. Adios script pro is the open type font that we looked at yesterday, and if you highlight he 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 Emeral says, kick it up a notch.

So 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 future light underneath the scripts there, I love future of light, well the whole family of future is just fabulous.

You can get so much mileage out of it cuz it's got a light version, a bold, a black, a semi bold, I mean it;s just wonderful. So what makes this works is the size of the script against the smallness of the lower case letters of photography. And 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 that you place this on, whether it's an ad, or if it's a business card.

Since the type is kinda stacked together and kinda weighty then it's a job that I write 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, so 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 gonna do this kind of little rotation, stacking, or you can think of it as building blocks, is kinda what it feels like because I try to kinda nestle it in. You'll notice out the S in studio kinda 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. So this can be a fun exercise, and for that one you really would need the text and you would need 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, same text box, but you'd have to do a separate one for studio just to rotate it. So by experimenting with size and these different words, again, three words right? Not four. Because three is more visually pleasing than four, okay?

Then you can play around with the sizes and just kind of see how the tight blocks can fit together naturally. So I didn't know exactly how that was gonna 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.

Oh, yeah. And 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 your taking control of it and you're on top of it and that's good.

Now let's talk about the second column. So we're back up to the top of the screen here. This one, so we've got Nelson at quite a large size paired with photography in a very small size. In where 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.

So 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, right? We talked about that a little bit yesterday. So you can see how these are sending messages and communicating, so you need to think about what message you wanna send when you're choosing your fonts.

So that one would definitely make me think newspaper photography, or reporter, okay? 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. So a couple of things are going on with that one.

So 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, okay. Actually the edges are a little bit uneven. It makes me think outdoors, it makes me think 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 into outlines or do anything to it. That's just the font itself, so you can see the power that fonts can have. So we've got contrast again, not only in font weight, so 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's not tracked out, and I use the same font, so 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.

And we've also got contrast in the slight rotation of Nelson between the perfectly horizontal photography. So let's look at the next one down. We've got again, thin paired with thick. And 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.

So 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 bolded, or used a black version of style for Nelson. And again, so we've got contrast between thin and thick, and then we've got contrast between the size of the Lisa Nelson block, and the photography word, and it's also tracked out probably using Future light as well.

Now the next one down I have squished together with leading, right, so we talked about that yesterday. Leading is the control that lets you manage the space between lines. And 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.

Now if these words were any longer it probably wouldn't work as well, but it works because these words are short, so if your words that you are using for your logo are relatively short like that, then you might try this squish together, negative leading look to see, what it would be like.

So let's pop up to the right, the top right of the slide here. So 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 kinda happy, and round, and approachable. Doesn't feel formal in any way. So that works out.

We've also got, it's all lower case, so that's very approachable. Don't be afraid to use lower case, lower case is in V1ogue right now, it really, really is quite popular. Now the next logo down, so 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. Yay. And it's called Federation. And I cannot tell you where I got it from but I have it. And 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 kinda conveys the feeling of fast, young, full of energy, that kind of thing. So 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 exact same. There's only one style of Federation font. So and then I reduced the leading so that the two words are crashing into each other just a little bit. And when I add color to this, and we are going to that later on, then you'll see the top of that word photography is laying on top of Nelson just a little bit.

So if we did two different colors for those two different words, then that would be a really neat effect. So again, it's all about what message you wanna send. The next one down is really spaced out, or tracked out as designers would call that. This one to me exudes a feeling of grandeur and spaciousness.

Very, very responsible, very trustworthy, very classy. I probably wanna dress up. They probably don't take a lot of kids photos, see how the messages kinda come through. So this font is called Copper Plate. And it's a great one, because it's kinda narrow so it's really great for spreading out like this and making it very wide.

So what I did is I set it in all caps and I just added a lot of tracking to it, to spread that out. So we've, our contrast is coming from the size of Nelson in comparison to the size of Studios. And so Nelson is set at about 45 points, and Studios is about 20 points, so there's about a 20-point difference there in the type sizes.

And again it's the contrast if you're gonna get it from size, it has to be to the extreme or it won't work. Okay, so when we're creating these a little bit later, we're gonna look at that. So I'll show you the difference. So we'll make Nelson kinda big and Studios a kinda little, but you'll see that it won't, the contrast won't quite be there.

And you just need to go bigger, and that's the bravery, that's where that comes in, you gotta be brave. A little bit uncomfortable. Is that too big? Probably not. It's probably gonna 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. And I would probably expect to walk into that studio. So we're talking about the one at the bottom right. I'd expect 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. So 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.

So the contrast would be between the block of text, and then the free space, or the negative space. But 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 about that? So you can kinda, you can send a message about your rates as well. What's the other one in here? What would you expect the other, more expensive studio to be, in these examples? Anybody have any ideas? Todd.
>> Todd: Yeah, I think the most expensive studio would be on the left hand column, third one down.
>> Lisa: Yep, the Script, definitely. Yeah, 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.

And 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 do also 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 wanna take a guess on that?
>> Lisa: Yes, Bill.
>> Bill: You wanna make sure that it's printable on, or usable on 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, and then you can add color later if you're going to print them for color.
>> Lisa: Absolutely. So 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 if you're happy with it there, then when you add color, you're gonna 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 for that. 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 news print.

So all of these would work well. The only one that I'd be a little bit scared about putting it in newsprint, but I think it's large enough it would work, is the one on the bottom right. And that's simply because the letter forms are so thin and newsprint has an absorptive quality, and you just wouldn't want the characters to kinda get lost on the newsprint.

It's just paper. So when you're designing ads for a magazine, or a coffee table book, or tomorrow we're gonna design some branding for a photo book, a portfolio. When you're doing that kinda thing, you know that you're gonna be using, what's called, coded paper. And coded paper just has a quality to it that keeps the ink from absorbing into it.

So you don't have to worry about the ink kinda bleeding out a little bit. Newsprint is typically printed on uncoated paper, so it doesn't have that quality so expect the ink to bleed a little bit. So you wanna be careful using really, really thin characters. And also, I think tomorrow morning is when we are gonna get into designing for newspapers.

But you wanna be careful of reversing type So 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 the black. That's why we're saying we reversed it. You'd need a bold font any time you do that because there's so much ink in that one space.

And 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 dadgum important. So we'll talk about some specific concerns for news print. 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, and I've got some examples here for you. I just use a graph pad of paper, okay, and I'll show this around on the other side here in a second.

And I just start out really, really rough with pencil drawings, just to kind of get an idea, and then I move to the computer. So my sketches are really, really, oops, really, really rough. So it's a great way for me just to kinda start out and see what won't work, so I can quickly eliminate a few possibilities if I don't like the look or if I don't like 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, and I would get the sketches pretty tight so that I knew what I was creating.

Because otherwise, first of all, you're gonna be faster with pencil and paper, and I know some of the photographers out there are going, I don't draw. I am not gonna do this. It's fun. Because you're so fast at just little rough thumbnail sketches, you're gonna be more creative.

Things are gonna 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've never come across on a computer. It's just a different medium and it stimulates your brain in different ways, so that's what I always do.

So we're gonna add color to these guys 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, so not really psychotherapy, but a little bit psychotherapy in base, so coaching people how to work together. So big corporations will bring in this company and they will teach all of the employees how to work better as a team, okay?

So one idea that I came up with, again, starting out in black and white. So this was post thumbnail sketches on graph paper, and I use graph paper just because it's easy to kinda line things up. I prefer graph paper rather than paper that doesn't have any lines, so it's real handy.

We started out with the one on the left and this is another idea. So once you get your logo, most of it typographically set, then you could be clever with the last word of it if you're using kinda like a type block. So this is another example of a stacking type, and it works so well because it's equal in width.

So anytime you've got words that are kind of similar in length, they don't have to be exactly, 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.

And 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. So what we did to kind of balance out or anchor that block of text if you will, is to add a color block behind it and reverse the type.

So we reversed it from black to white, and it really anchors that. And doesn't that black box to you make it feel like that company's a bit more solid, that it's gonna be around, it's got a good base, it's strong? So that's another thing that you can do.

So 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. So, I couldn't believe it, that 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. So if you can put a little graphic element in your logo as well, then it can oftentimes work extremely well. And that particular graphic is a built in shape in Photoshop.

Really, there's a slew of built in shapes and I'll show you how to find that. 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. So 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. So 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 suppose 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. So 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 gonna redo all of your visuals and your menus and your logo and everything because I just can't take it anymore.

It was really, 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, so all the restaurants, they wanna be right there and the rent is insane.

It's like $10,000 a month. So you've gotta 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's a lot of restaurants on that strip. So 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 Word that had no alignment, Microsoft Word, 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. So 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 ever eat at this restaurant again. So anyway, we sat down and I had my graph paper and I just started asking him some questions. So 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. Anyway, he's very, very proud, and I started asking him, I was like tell me why you're doing this. Just started asking him some questions. And 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 pastry chef. Everything is made there with love. And 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 and it is a long affair in time.

Two hour, two or three hour thing. And so this family sense started coming out and loves feeding people and he kept saying the word fresh. And so then I asked him, well because he has some fairly simplistic items on his menu, why are you doing that, Guillermo? Tell me a little about the items that you're offering.

Well 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 I was kind of writing down little notes that he was saying, whatever I intuited that I needed to write down I was writing down.

And 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. So that's when I started to sit down and do some sketches. So 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. So that makes it approachable, right. 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 Antigua Roma, which is the other Italian restaurant that's on the next block.

And Jay's Pasta which is like a fast food Italian place. It's probably as Italian as Olive Garden. So that's the logic behind and the kind of the questions that I asked him to get to this point. So then what colors am I gonna use? Start thinking about colors.

Well what's in the Italian flag? Red, white, and green. That's done, next. [LAUGHS]. So 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 to serif font because I wanted to give it that solid feeling with a base.

You know, he's solid, that restaurant's gonna be there, it's not gonna disappear in a month. And I wanted a rounded based serif. So 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.

And some flowers are kind of indicative of Italy. So I wanted to bring that in, something with a little color. So I found a piece of art that was a sunflower inside of a, it was 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. And it had just a huge plethora of colors already in this piece of art and you pop it on to the eye, and you've got a beautiful logo. At least what, in my humble opinion is a beautiful logo..

So we've done a whole new branding campaign with it. So 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 you say, I will never have to pay to eat there again.