Tag: logo

The first step was to research Ed Roth (I googled him) and draw some conclusions about the style I was to emulate. This style included lots of line art, medical flies, exaggerated features and comic style colours. The next step was to “draw” the combine harvester and other elements in Illustrator CS (in my opinion the best software for designing vector artwork). I googled “combine harvester”, chose a photo of a harvester with a good angle and placed it in Layer #1 in Illustrator. I then used pen and path tools to draw an outline of the harvester on Layer #2 and selected shades of grey to show light and dark sides of basic parts of the harvester.

To create the skeleton, I used a clipart skeleton to get the head, then traced over that to obtain the paths and lines I needed (the clipart had solid blocks, rather than lines). I used another clipart skeleton to trace the ribs and arms/hands and manipulated these to form the body in the right shape. After adding a black cloak (with Ed Roth edges) I felt that even though the head and body were different in use of shading, they fitted well together and would be suitable as is.

After placing the skeleton onto the harvester, I created some exaggerated wheels with flames. I felt the wheels needed gradients to make them appear more exciting and to give the logo more detail and depth than could be obtained by line art. The flames were drawn in an Ed Roth style and coloured with red, orange and yellow to suit the logo.

On Layer #12 I drew the text from scratch in order to make “The Kultivators” a unique font and to get the letters a bit crooked, as suited the logo style. On Layer #13 I drew hundreds of lines using the pencil tool to show motion and to emulate the Ed Roth line art. Last of all, I added the flies, exhaust clouds, crows, wheat and scythe.

To finish the logo, I checked all colours were CMYK and that all black was a “rich black” (30% cyan, 100% black). I did this by selecting elements as “same fill colour” and “same stroke colour” to check the colours. The gradient black was left at 100% black in case of printer misregistration, so there wouldn’t be any blue contained in the wheels.

As is common in such detailed artwork, I scrawled a small signature in one of the exhaust clouds…but it would take an A3 poster to even make it out!

Creating this logo was lots of fun and a bit time consuming, but I am very proud of the result. It brought out my creativity and was a challenge to do and I especially enjoyed adding the line art and putting all the elements together. The Kultivators were very happy with their logo and commissioned me to complete a CD cover for them as well. Look out for their CD…they sure have some cool music!

Fig 1. The image I used of the combine harvester

Fig 2. Clipart I used for the skeleton head

Fig 3. Clipart I used for the skeleton ribs, arms and hands

Whenever I make a shopping trip for clothes or fashion items, I will definitely look out for its appearance and style. Ensuring that they match my taste and make me look good, feel good and stand out from the rest. The same rule, applies to Mode ID’s identity as well.

The client, a very feminine lady came up to me one day and ask if I could do up a whole range of design for her. She needed a logo, website and product tags that she can tie it to her products. So the first thing I questioned her was the company name and what’s the idea like. She introduced her company as “Mode ID” (pronounced as I’dey) and it’s “The Fashion Idea” in French.

The business aims to provide fashion ideas for woman by selling unique fashion accessories and apparels. As a female fashion apparels store, the client wants to ensure her logo stands out from the rest catching everyone’s attention. One of her requirements was that the logo must be vibrant, sexy and feminine. As a guy, to understand how a female client want takes a lot of research and talking to various target audiences on how they define a good fashion brand and what kind of designs they like etc.

I received comments like hot pink defines a woman and a tattoo defines a sexy woman. Some says woman like images of butterflies and angel’s wings. All this bits and pieces provided me with the inspiration for Mode ID’s logo.

With this information, sketches were done with working on the concept of butterflies, crown, tattoo, researching on some tattoo directory and finally came up with something which seems to fit the client exactly. Mockups were done for the client to see if it’s the kind of thing she is looking for. To my surprise, I hit the jackpot right away. She was hitch to the idea and the design of the logo. Excitingly after the first round of discussion, I began to work on the proper design of the logo in Adobe Illustrator, adding the colors and doing the vector illustration tracing.

After refining the mockups in the computer, the final result appeared as a hot pink symmetrical logo that looks like a symbol of angelic love. The whole process was just too lucky; a hit on the jackpot and all this thanks to the right research and sound judgment.

With the logo done nicely, Mode ID is able to successfully communicate the intention and personality of the business to her audiences. Through the use of effective color and symbol, Mode ID leaves a nice feminine impression in all her customers and thus providing excellent fashion ideas for all women.

A business’s identity is established through the habitual actions of its owners, sales managers and employees. It is how a business views itself and, most importantly, how the public views the company. An effective logo expresses a business’s products, services, goals and principles to its clients as well as its associates.

Recently, my design firm was contacted by the owner of HR Directions, a human resource consultancy. They hoped to have an original logo designed for use on business cards, stationary, company apparel and a web site. The business owner, being a devout Catholic Christian, specified he wanted to include in his company’s logo, a triangle and/or a trefoil to represent the Holy Trinity. The triangle was to point upward to signify increased production. The final requirement was to include rainbow colors to signify better things to come.

Having such specific requirements in a logo design can be challenging. Often, under such circumstances, a logo can end up looking like the specified elements were thrown together rather than incorporated into a seamless image. The largest hurdle in this job, was the color specification: six completely different colors.

I wanted to meet my client’s requirements, but at the same time, I didn’t want to present something that looked like a pretty white winged unicorn would fly by. Since I found this to be the most challenging of the aspect, I decided I should tackle it first.

What I came up with was something that looked like it belonged on a Star Trek uniform and something that looked like a scene from 2001: A Space Odysey.

I wasn’t completely thrilled with what lay before me, and I wanted to give my client a third option. Working with black and white, I began to concentrate on the shape requirements.

Working in Adobe Illustrator, I lay a white trefoil over a black triangle. The triangle was already sitting on its base as if to point upward. After masking the center with the clover shape, I was left with three arrowhead shapes pointing in different directions. The decision to eliminate the bottom two arrowhead shapes was an easy one.

I quickly realized that the triangle tip I was left with had a 60 degree angle at its top point. To my delight, 60 degrees is exactly one sixth of 360 degrees! I repeated this shape five more times, rotating each repeated shape at its apex. Each new shape was then colored according to the specified colors. This turned into six arrows pointing at each other. After selecting an appropriate typestyle, I used the shapes within the type to aid in deciding which parts of the extra arrows to exclude.

The result of this process is a lasting symbol for HR Directions which communicates to its clients and associates its services, goals and principles. Each business card handed out, every letter mailed, and each piece of company apparel that carries this symbol helps unite the business. It also serves as a reminder to all associates that every action is a reflection on the business and should be made to help the business properly serve its clients.

For HR Directions, this logo is not just a symbol of who they are, but a visual reminder of what they want to be. Constantly striving for what their logo stands for, the habitual actions of their owner and associates will form the business’s true identity.

Art is in the process. The process is what keeps this artist going, and this artist believes the same holds true for every other artist. The process can be joyful and it can be painful. Into which mood the process puts us is irrelevant because we each start the process in search of the ‘Ah-ha!’

I am a graphic designer and I specialize in corporate identity systems, in short, logos. I choose to market myself as an identity designer because that type of design brings me the most ‘Ah-ha’ moments.

One of these moments which I recall most vividly is when I was designing the identity system for my own company.

Designers often name their firms after themselves, and I my firm is no exception. My last name is Eichhold. Spelled phonetically, it’s eye-cold, so I named my firm Eye-Cold Design.

The name was tentative at first, but I decided to stick with it because I liked the images that I was beginning to associate with it. I thought of an eye or set of eyes focused intently; something that would look cool on a private investigator’s office door. I began to think of myself as a design investigator in that I am one who is detail-oriented and collects clues to put them together to tell a neat, short story.

The ‘Cold’ part was interesting to me as well. I envisioned ice in many forms. It is solid and slippery. Ice cannot move, but it is able to cause much motion.

The first part of this particular design process began with a search for an eye that looked intently focused. Flipping through stock photographs I found these two to best match my criteria.(image a.). The eye on the right is a great pic, but I decided against having an intimidating eye staring down my prospective clients. The eye on the left I like because it had the intensity and focus for which I was looking, and it appears to have a gazing-into-the-future quality.

The next step was to make my eye look cold. Using the cool side of the spectrum, I set out to illustrate some sort of frost pattern over the eye or icicle eye lashes. I settled on making the eye brow look like an icicle, and making the iris blue.

As you can see in the picture, I did just that. I was pretty proud of the icicle eye brow I drew, but it didn’t go well with the picture. Besides that, the eye looked cold, but the flesh looked warm (image b.).

The next logical step was to illustrate the eye and remove the photo. Besides, this was supposed to be a logo, not a PhotoShop retouch. I was left with a floating eye and a floating icicle. The icicle was too detailed and was taking too much attention away from the eye, so needless to say, it had to go (image c.).

I then tried to simplify things by making a simple line drawing (image d.). I quickly realized that was a dead end. I needed to simplify even further.

I looked for the most basic shape in the picture. That shape was the elipse of the iris (image e.). That was when the ‘Ah-ha!’ hit. It hit so hard that I don’t even have any process work to show for the steps taken between the first elipse and the finished product. For this reason, I credit the finished product to Divine Providence. If you don’t believe me, take a look at what is left from this project (image f.). There isn’t a lot to show how I got from the elipse in the middle to the final logo at the top. However, for the sake of education, I will make up some process work to show what was probably going through my mind during this design trance.

Once I had the vertical elipse in place, I copied the elipse, turned it horizontal, and made it a certain percentage (about 300%) larger (image g.). Probably what happened next was that I filled the smaller, vertical elipse with a gradient mesh to make it look more like an eye (image h).

This googly eye was not the look I was going for, but I was getting closer. I copied the large, horizontal elipse, filled it in dark and placed it over the eye (image i.). I then searched for an appropriate type style (image j.), defined my PMS colors(image k.), and put on the finishing touches.

Then, there it was; my logo. The focused, intense look I was seeking had been achieved using just three elipses.

Looking at the finished product, the answer seems so simple and obvious. Often, when people see my logo for the first time, they respond with, “Wow.”

The funny thing is that I responded the same way when I saw my logo for the first time on my computer screen. I also catch myself saying, “Wow” upon seeing logos which I did not design. Such a response is the result of knowing that there is no other solution. That knowledge is accompanied by a feeling that the logo being viewed was meant to be designed for that particular company from the beginning of time. The logos that stir these feelings are the logos that are most simple and obvious.

The uneducated man will say, “I could do that.”

The truth is, the uneducated man could draw it, but he cannot come up with the idea. The idea, no matter how simple, is the result of hours of repeated jotting, sketching, collaborating and finally, eliminating.

The logo design process begins with compiling ideas (many very good), and ends when all but one remains. Logo design is not a process of building an idea out of nothing. Rather, it is a process of eliminating ideas until your business, its services and what it stands for is represented by almost nothing (such as three elipses).

Core Practice Partners is a leading international expert in Labor Management for companies that don’t work a traditional “9 to 5” schedule. Their clients have included such industry leaders as Kraft, BMW, and General Electric. Their approach to creating solutions for their clients is unique and their desire was to have a logo that was both professional and creative.

They approached my company with a few ideas of their own, but were very uncertain whether the look they truly wanted could be achieved. I first set up a phone conference with their president, John Frehse, to discuss the goals he had for the logo and how he wanted to be perceived by the clients he serviced. After our initial discussion I sat down at the drawing board to rough out some ideas for the logo. This is the normal approach that I take in the designing of any logo. It allows for the creation of many concepts within a short period of time and dramatically decreases the amount of time spent producing the initial concepts to be presented to the client.

Once I had 6-8 rough ideas conceived I then scanned in the designs and used them as templates for the creation of computer generated concepts. I typically place them in the background and insert text and graphics over the top. Once the groundwork has been laid in I then remove the sketch from the background and add the finishing touches.

The initial presentation to the client contained anywhere 4 concepts that I felt worked best with the impression they were looking to achieve. These first ideas were presented in black & white. I have found that clients will initially lose interest in a concept if the colors are not to their liking. On more than one occasion I have seen ideas rejected solely on the basis of the colors used without the client giving any regard to the overall design presented.

Once a concept was chosen by the client the design was revised, if necessary, and then rendered in color and resubmitted to the client for approval. There are usually 6-8 color renderings for the client to choose from, in this case there were 8. Most of these featured colors from the same palette (warm, cool, etc.) and there will be perhaps one or two ideas that could be considered “outside the box”. It is these additional color options that will either direct the client towards the preferred palette or will illicit a sense of excitement from the client about color choices they never imagined would be appealing. This can be one of the steps where a real sense of creativity can be injected into the design process.

The client immediately accepted one of the designs and now the only step left was to finalize the project. I provide most of my clients with a CD that contains their logo design in a number of different formats. Some designers may feel this enables the client to take the design and use other sources for the rest of their design work, but I have found that this merely gives the client a sense that they have recieved something concrete and if I have done my job correctly and have fulfilled all their desires then they will certainly use my services again.

As it turned out in this case I was hired by Core Practice Partners to design their stationery as well as numerous marketing materials. The logo of a company is an integral part of their brand identity. By establishing a good relationship with a client in this critical step towards creating the brand that will become their public presence you can build a solid foundation to creating a long term position as their designer of choice.

About The Author

Kevin Hadden runs his business, Signature Identity Design Studio, from a small office located in the beautiful Southwest Michigan wine country. The wines that are produced in this region have won international acclaim and it is his desire to have the same results for his designs and business. He has spent the last 17 years in the graphic design industry creating all manners of materials from logos and brochures to signage and point of purchase displays. In the past few years he has been able to increase his client base to an international level and have worked on projects for clients in North America, Asia, Europe and Australia as well as the Caribbean. He strives to provide unique designs and always look to push himself and produce the best work possible. The motto by which he runs his business is “He who has imagination has the wings to fly…come fly with me.”