Wednesday, 19 March 2014

Logo Creation In Illustrator - Film Logo Design 1

As stated in a previous blog post I wanted to create two different logos. The first was a media company logo, this was created and blogged about earlier. The second logo was a film logo. My media company logo was very simple and had a very simple concept and for this reason I wanted to create something slightly more technical and testing for my film logo. I started looking around the subject for ideas and found three different tutorials which I put to the test. I decided to create three different versions of my logo using these three different tutorials in order to have a choice over which I preferred. This post shows my first design.

The image below shows the tutorials version of the logo along with the web link to this tutorial.



 
The first thing to note when looking at the image above is that this logo was used for a specific purpose. When undertaking this tutorial I will hence follow the techniques but create my own design.
 
So what did I actually do?
To start this tutorial I firstly drew a curved line. To achieve this I used the arch tool. I then took the Ellipse tool and drew a circle at the top of the arch. I then used the direct section tool to adjust the size and curves on these shapes to create the below image. This is a slightly different effect to that which the tutorial suggested would be achieved however I still like this aspect even though it is really simple.
 
This stage was repeated three times to create a flower arrangement effect. This can be seen below. You can see I varied the size and curve of the arch in order to create a quirky effect. 
 
 

The next step in this tutorial was to create a tube/cylinder shape. To achieve this look I firstly created a large ellipse and then left some space and created a smaller ellipse. I then used the Blend Tool and selected Make. I then used the Blend Options to change various features. These will be explained later. The image below shows the tutorial step for this and what the desired look should be.
 
 
After working through this stage of the tutorial myself I decided that I actually liked the middle stage better than the end result. I felt the middle stage of this aspect was more unique and stood out better than the end result. For this reason I simple made the Blend and then used the Blend Options to adapt this. I firstly changed the spacing to Specified Steps. This referred to the number of smaller circles which would be created between my first and final point. I changed this option to 7. This can be seen below.
 
 
 
I repeated these steps and arranged this new feature with my initial step. This can be seen below.
The next step of this tutorial was using the Spiral Tool. This can be found in the same tool section as the Arch Tool. This tool can be used in two different ways. The first way is to simply drag and draw the spiral. The second technique is to draw a standard spiral and the use the Path, Offset Path tool which can be found in the Object Menu. This allows you to get different features of the spiral you wish to create. The settings which can be edited can be seen in the screenshot below.
When I was happy with this spiral I then added it to my design. This can be seen below.
 
The next step in this tutorial suggested that I should create a Twirl. I didn't like this effect and hence I skipped over this aspect however the image below shows what this should have looked like.
 
 
The tutorial then went on to add duplicated of the above features and show different effects and filters. These were all a matter of option and hence I adapted this to suite my own personal taste. Before I added these effects I added the extra elements which were required in order to create the design I wanted. This stage can be seen below. 
I then used one of the effects from the tutorial. This was a mixture of the Pen and the Blend Tool. This blend worked in a similar way that the Ellipse line worked. I first drew two lines with the Pen Tool and then used the Object, Blend Tool to create duplicates of this line between the two. I used the Blend Tool Options in order to adjust how many lines I wanted to create between the two. This can be seen below.
 




The image below shows this feature added to my design. This was the final feature I added to this design. The next step was to add a variety of effects. I wasn't initially sure whether I liked the idea of adding effects to this design and hence I saved a copy of this logo and then opened and saved another one which I was then able to add effects too. This stopped me from destructive editing my design.
Adding effects to my design was quite simple. I started by adding a Stained Glass effect to three of the arches. This was achieved using the Effects, Texture feature. The screenshot below shows the settings which I changed to achieve this effect and the image below shows this effect on my design.
 
 
The next effect I added was to the ellipses which sit on the end of the Arches. I used the Plastic Wrap Effect to make these look more 3D. I then used the Grain Effect for some of the Blue Ellipses in this design. These two effects applied can be seen below.
Looking at my logo now I felt that I needed to add an effect to the Spiral as the colour of this was too harsh and solid. I simply added a slight glow to the edges of this to break the fill. My final logo design can now be seen below.
The final stage in the creation of this logo was to add the film name. To keep my logo consistent with my film theme and style I used the same font that I have used for the film title throughout this project. This was Harlow Solid Italic. The image below shows the final logo complete.
This logo works well in terms of the design and colour scheme of my film. The quirky shapes and random locations make this logo stand out. It uses different techniques and effects which show the different skills I wanted to portray. I question how suitable this logo is based on the complete randomness however I certainly like this design and haven't ruled it out completely. I will evaluate this logo further once I have created my other two designs so I have something to compare it to. I feel this will make my decision much easier.

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