Famous Logo Creation

Re-creating famous logos

Our most recent project was to find one of our favorite famous logos, and find a tutorial to help us create it in Adobe Illustrator. I chose this tutorial to help me create the well known Google Chrome logo. The tutorial went through several steps of drawing shapes with the pen tool, copying them, rotating them, and filling them in with different colors

My Chrome logo

My Chrome Logo

My version of the chrome logo ended up looking like this. The tutorial used colors they found were close to the original colors, but I had the original logo on my art board with my version, and I was using the eyedropper tool to get the correct colors. Mine isn't nearly as detailed as the original, though. Mine is mostly flat colors, save for the shadows where new color begins, while the original has much more shading.

What did I do this for?

We are getting ideas for our own logos, currently, and to get some insight our teacher told us to get ideas on logo creation from tutorials. We need to be able to use Illustrator better before we get started on our own logos, so the tutorials help us find new tools and commands to help us use Illustrator more easily.

Anatomy of My Name

Anatomy? For words?

Much like the human body, words have anatomy too! Typography is used to show how words and letters are made up of different parts. Some fonts have parts that other fonts don't have, like Malayalam MN (the font in the image) doesn't have serifs, but Times New Roman does.

Meaning of fonts

The font you use also holds a lot of meaning. You can't write a serious Shakespearean esque poem and use Comic Sans. You need to chose a font that matches what you're writing. Fonts that are straight, have serifs, beaks, and rough edges are typically used for serious writings while rounded, spunky letters are usually used for more laid back writing.

This project

I was told to choose a font that I believed fit my first or last name. I thought Malayalam MN fit my last name rather well. Since my name is German, which is typically thought of as a strong, but not scary language, I figured I should use a font that was more serious, but didn't have things such as serifs or beaks.

Choose Wisely!

Your font choice needs to be thought out well when designing something. The font needs to match the feel and idea of what you're trying to advertise. If you were commissioned by someone to create a logo or advertisement, check with your employer to see what they're looking for. You don't want to hand them a logo that doesn't fit what they're trying to advertise.

Color!

Our first project in Illustrator was to create a color wheel! This project was designed to get us used to Illustrator and to get us thinking about color and color psychology. We were told to look up "color wheels" on google and find the simplest one and recreate that as practice first. After we created our simple color wheel we were to find a more interesting one and try to recreate that.

My Color Wheel

Mine turned out like this: To do this I made one shape, and rotated 11 copies 30 degrees around the center. We were to show the primary, secondary, and tertiary  colors.

Color Psychology

Color has a lot of meaning behind it. Different colors can mean different things and ensue different emotions. Warmer colors tend to mean things such as passion, anger, love, danger, and intensity, while cooler colors tend to symbolize calm feeling, honesty, nature, health, freshness, purity, and life.

Colors in Advertising

People will carefully choose what colors they might use in advertisements, since colors can draw people to a product. If someone's trying to sell food, they may use red for desire, and if they're trying to sell gum or toothpaste, they may use green since when people see green they tend to think of mint or freshness. People will use colors that are associated with what they're selling, to try and get people to buy their product.

Lots of Meaning

A lot of thought tends to go into color choice. Color choice is typically inspired by emotion, and a person's favorite things. Most people will just choose colors they like, but usually there's a reason they like that color so much, right? The reason my blog's all pink is because it feels like a really organized color to me, since it's such a pretty color it feels like I can do a lot with it and organize it into different things to make my page look nice. Color is one of those things that has a surprising amount of emotion and thought behind it, but once you discover this it makes a lot of sense.

What is Graphic Design

Graphic Design is used in almost everything we do. It's used for advertisement, media, menus, brochures, comics, and so much more. Most people can find some relation to Graphic Design in everyday life.

Game Posters:

Monument Valley

One of my favorite things to do is play mobile games on my phone. Monument Valley's poster is a good example of a really great design to get people interested in a game. It's simplistic, has colors that look nice together, and a character with very little detail to them. The small amount of detail might get people curious and make them want to play the game to find out more.

What drew me to this game?

I thought the poster for this game was fascinating. It's simplistic, has colors that look nice together, and a character with very little detail to them. The small amount of detail on this character intrigued me since I've always been attached to minimalist-type objects.

Counting by 7s
by Holly Goldberg Sloan

Book Covers:

Books are another great example of graphic design's presence in every day life. Many people choose to pick up a book based simply on it's cover, which is a valid response since well design covers are one of the many things that draw people to a book.

Why did I read Counting by 7s?

As I said before, I'm attached to simple objects. The cover of this book really only consists of three colors: white, teal, and red. While the cover is very simple, the red pops out somewhat, which really made me notice it at the library.

Why does this matter?

As said before, people are drawn to what they find pretty. A well designed poster or cover can make people more likely to use your product. People try to find something they can relate to: whether it be colors they like, shapes, animals, certain settings, or maybe even just words.