Logo Design Video Tutorial – Custom Lettering – Video 4 Of 6

Logo Design Tutorial – Video 4 Of 6 – Transcript:
In This Video Tutorial Series, I’m Going To Show You The Entire Process Of Logo Design From Sketching Logo Concepts, To Selecting The Perfect Fonts, To Custom Lettering In Adobe Illustrator, To Complete Logo Design, And We’ll Wrap It Up Designing A Business Card Using Our New Logo.

Welcome back! This is Video 4 of my logo design tutorial.

Now we get to create the sexy ‘X’ shape. Now that the ‘L’ and ‘U’ are complete, we can duplicate the ‘U’ using ‘Option + Shift’ while you drag, and use the ‘Shear’ tool to angle it in position. See I use the wrong tool there, I used the ‘Size’ tool, I want to use the ‘Shear’ tool. And I did it again.. You’ve got to keep working it into you get the right tool for the job. Now I could’ve deleted this for the video but I wanted to show you that basically shit happens.

There it is, the ‘Shear’ tool. Angle it and it starts to drop right into position. Even working in illustrator since the late 1980s, Illustrator 88 came out and I was using it. Even using it THAT LONG sometimes you just grab the wrong tool. But it looks like I’m getting it here now, that shape is getting close. It gets us really close to that big diagonal shape on the left there.

You can grab those points that you don’t need, and just delete them. Boom!
Now I’m going to ‘Command Z’ that action. Because I’m going to use those shapes you complete the other side of the ‘X’. I’m going to make a mirror image of that shape customize it. Drag it over and start deleting points that I do not need.

So I’m not quite sure how I’m going to finish off this shape because it’s very unclear in my sketch. I’m going to make some generic shape at the end of it for now, and see how it comes together. The angle is still clearly wrong, but I can use the ’Shear’ tool to force it into position.

That connecting shape is going to be interesting. Because I want to be able to finish one shape and it’s entirety before I connect them, so that I can duplicate it to finish off the company name: Luxx. Each of those points need individual attention. I just select and use the arrow keys to maneuver the shape.

See that needs even more shearing action get it just that right angle you need it to be. And just to see how things are working a duplicated of that over, and you can kind of start to see how it come together. It’s starting to get there.

Now I just used ‘Command 3’ to hide elements on the page, so that I can see a clean version of the work in progress. Still playing with that shear angle. But they have to be the same, you can have one a different angle than the other one. I do a lot of zooming in and out because you have to see how it looks when it smaller.

In order to thicken up that shape, duplicated it right next to itself. Now I’m going to merge these two. The detail work can really pay off, because your eye catches everything. So I can select those two and merge them using the Pathfinder tool. Now that shape will hold up better when it’s viewed small or large.

These extraneous points happened when I merged those shapes. So you go in and clean it up, take out all of those additional points you don’t need. That’s the beauty of vector, you have complete control over the shapes. Now I’m in a better position to connect those shapes – those two ‘X’s. And you want to get the spaces in between the characters just right, the ‘tracking’ as it’s known in fonts.

Ok now I need to connect these two ‘X’s. So I duplicate the whole shape, so that I can keep and retain the original I created. I’m using the Erase tool. The Erase tool is nice because whatever shape you have selected you can just go in and erase, and it really works. But now I’m trying to just maneuver these shapes together that I have a really cohesive smooth line that connects them. It takes a little trial and error sometimes. Think I’m going to need to add a shape to make that arc perfect. So just create a custom shape that merges those two shapes together, and you can always connect them at the end.

We are definitely seeing progress here. You’re very close to starting the business card design. Stay tuned for the next video.

Thanks for watching!