Complete Stationery Design and Continue Posterized Portrait

Today is an in-class work day.
You should be wrapping up your stationery design and posting the logo case study on your blog. Many of you have begun and are working your Ilustrator portrait.

Please don't forget to send me your blog address.

Finalizing Your Logo

At this point you should be creating multiple variations of your logo (in Illustrator). Experiment with color, typography, and layout.

Make sure you write down the color choices in hexadecimal colors and the typeface that you used.

Arrange at least 10 versions and choose your favorite.

Scan and trace your logo

Today you will scan your logo and begin tracing it into Illustrator.

At this point trace your logo using only black and white.

We will have a critique on the digitized artwork next Wednesday, November 6.

Critique - Wednesday, October 30

We will have a critique this Wednesday. 

You will display:

10 refined logo sketches from your best initial thumbnails

Integrate typography into at least 5 of those designs

Logo Design - Working with Typography

Typography Exercise - Your Name and Personality in Text
Type your first and last name in a variety of ways, arriving finally at five designs that visually convey your personality.
This exercise will help you integrate creative use of typography with your logo sketches.
After you have completed this assignment begin using these ideas into your logo ideas.
 

1. Using Adobe PhotoShop, on one page create an 8.5x11 inch layout in which your name (first and last, with middle name optional) is displayed 30 times, each time using a different typeface (font), sizing each at 16-24 points.
 

2. On a second page record three to five adjectives or brief phrases that describe your personality. Using the rest of the same page, make five designs for your name using typefaces that express your personality or spirit especially well.  

Give careful consideration to the positive and negative shapes within and between the letters. Make the proportions, textures, values, and directions of the letters important to each design. You are free to alter the look of your name by varying typefaces, weights, color, pattern, background color or texture, direction of the letters, and different sizes -- within any line of text.

3. On a third page create 3 design ideas that you could use in your logo.

Graphic Abstraction Critique

We will have an in class critique of your initial graphic abstractions next class, Thursday, October 17.

You will need to produce 10 abstractions of at least 2 different photographic images

Graphic Abstraction

This exercise will be the first part of a personal logo design project. Through the method of Simplification, you will abstract a chosen object down to its basic two dimensional parts exploring line and shapes. You will look for both the lines and shapes that make up your object as well as the lines and shapes created by the light and shadows falling on the object. Working through the design process (thumbnails, roughs, and creating a comp), you will draw your object first from different points of view, then create a series of thumbnails, refine those thumbnails into rough drafts, and finally scan them and draw a comp in Illustrator.

This exercise is all about observation. Observing lines and shapes and simplifying those down to their most basic parts. Observe where lines and shapes start and stop, how they are placed next to one another, how the object naturally divides negative space, etc. Simplification means understanding how to change what your seeing to a basic, easily understandable, representation of your object. You will also hone your skills at working through the design process, and understanding how to use Adobe Illustrator to create a vector graphic.