Draft Logo Project

 

For this project, we were asked to make a rough draft of a logo. For my logo, I really wanted to make something that a company could use on  water bottles, t-shirts, mouse pads etc. It could be something to promote my brand, blog or company.

My draft for this project turned out differently than my original sketches which can be seen here.  As stated in the page I earlier linked to, I was really hoping to put together some symbols of what it means to be in the Pacific Northwest.

For inspiration on his project,  of course I read all of this week’s class readings on logo design, which was very helpful in learning about simplicity and other  design aspects. I also researched brands that represent similar companies, such as Pacsun, Volcom, Yonder Washington, etc. to see if they had any pieces of their logos that I could draw from.

I am going to list the steps that I used to create this logo, so you can see what my basic design process was.

1. Create a 900 by 900 px workspace/artboard
2. Find a photo of a tree that I had in my camera, and use it to trace a tree with the pen tool, making sure to lock the image in place before tracing it.
3. Move the traced image of the tree aside and create the waves. This was tricky, but I used two circles from the polygon tool, and placed one on top of the other, slightly askew. When I had created a crescent that I liked, I used the shape builder tool to get rid of the excess circles.
4. Once  I had the general shape of the waves, I used the direct selection tool to move around some of my anchor points, making the wave look more natural.
5. I then held alt and copied and resized the second, smaller, wave to mirror the first wave.
6. I set the waves aside, and created a large circle around my tree shape that I had previously traced. I noticed that I wanted the tree to be larger, so I pulled it upwards using  Control+T.
7. When I had the tree in place in my circle, I put the waves towards the bottom of the circle.
8. When all looked good there, I made a second circle around the one containing the waves and the tree.
9.  I then used the shape builder tool to combine both circles, the trees, and the waves, so that they would all be one closed object.
10. I then used the line segment tool to create a flat line on the bottom of the circle, and used the direct selection tool as well as control+x to delete all of the remaining circle.
11. Now, I began making triangles using the polygon tool around the circle, to mimic sun rays, about halfway into this process I decided I didn’t like it, and they were deleted. Hence why you can’t see them.
12. After looking at some inspiration, I decided my logo needed mountains, so I traced the top of a picture of Mt. Pilchuck, that I took on a hike with the pen tool, in order to get the nice mountain shape.
13. Finally, I combined my traced mountains to my already created logo with the shape builder tool.
14. Next, I added a gradient of colors that I wanted to look at for possible color options, and chose a font to write “Pacific Northwest” on the bottom. Both the gradient and the font are subject to change still, and I am open for suggestions.
15. I then exported my logo using file export, and here it is.

This was a very long process, and its hard to make step by step directions in 300-500 words. So, here is as best of a summarization as possible. I can’t wait to see where my logo will go!