Creating a logo: from idea to realization

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Vladimir State University

CREATING A LOGO: FROM IDEA TO REALIZATION

Roschina A.I.

Creating a logo is a process requiring from the author some extraordinary combination of talents and abilities such as to think abstractly and differentiate the main idea of every project. Artistic taste and understanding of associations are also required. In addition, a man creating a logo should have an idea how human visual analyzer works. All these qualities are difficult to combine because they are simultaneously both scientific and aesthetic. But they can be developed by fantasy and tenacious brainstorm for making good logos.

In modern society, people confront logos every day. Obviously, a good logo must possess several basic properties: simplicity, recognizability, noticeability, brand compliance with psychology and the central one - originality. An additional option of logo is adaptability i.e. the necessity to look noticeably on any background. An ideal logo can change its look according to the context without losing recognizability.

Logos are an intellectual property so they must be registered.

We can highlight the following kinds of logos:

Logo-inscription It contains brand name written in some definite font. The drawback of this simplest idea is its low recognizability.

Letter-logo It is similar to the previous logo but does not use the complete inscription except several main letters from it.

“Coat of arms” It is a multicolored average detailed picture. This logo is not the best one, but very widely spread especially among companies with traditional branding. Among “Coat of arms” you can come across linearts - pictures presenting a thick detailed contour. Lineart as logo is widely used by artists, breeders etc. as simplicity in logo is not the main target for them, as distinct from exactness in details and originality.

Emblem This type of logo is rather simple. It is created in vector format widely using geometric figures. This logo is recommended for medium companies and some personal projects. logo image creative vectorization

Highest level It is the simplest kind of logo using minimum colors, lines and details.

To create such logo original and unique is very difficult even if you do that independently. The drawback of this logo is that it is often hard to guess its main idea.

I'll tell you how to create a rather simple logo called “emblem”. The main advantage of this logo is that you have high possibility to create something interesting, bright and original. So, I consider this type to be ideal for me.

The development of the idea.

To complicate is simple, simplify is complicated [1]. This rule is truthful in case of creating a logo. It's difficult to simplify the description of the whole project to the smallest visual association. The main method to do that is to reduce the whole project description gradually on the account of associations and then to combine them. It includes the following steps:

1. The choice of annotation

First of all we need to define our project creating a sentence that we want to form in someone's mind by the logo.

I'll illustrate this with my own example. Once I needed to create a logo for my art project I can choose for example the annotation “ABrier.Drawings” - the pictures of animals in pencil.

2. Division of annotation into keywords

We need to understand a previous description well and process every word as it is. It would be easy if you often use hashtags.

In my case it will be words: ABrier, drawings, animal, pencils.

3. Formation of individual association for every keyword

Associations should be visual in order you could transform them into pictures.

I devised the following associations: Brier is a wild rose as it's called biologically so the logo should be associated with a wild rose; drawing is lines or hatching; animals associate with the word cat; pencils are just a pencil.

4. Combining previous associations into one image

Now we can devise an actual logo. We can use fewer associations than in the previous step, but the main idea must be recognizable. We should imagine and sketch many variants of our logo and later realize several of them in order to choose the best one.

There are several main ideas that came into my mind: a cat with wild roses on his tail, a pencil in the cat's mouth, wild rose flower with pencil and cat with drooping tail. Finally, one idea has won. I decided to draw a cat eye on wild rose berry with a pencil in its vectorizing.

At first something could go wrong. So, you should devise new associations and images carefully and patiently. To get better results I offer 2 practical exercises.

When there is an opportunity to line on paper a little (your artistic abilities don't matter) try to sketch “a wonder animal”! At first you should make up a list of animals you want to sketch, just like for logo. Then find a unique feature of every animal, in other words what this animal is associated with. Do it the required number of times. Then try to sketch one animal using these selected unique features of other animals! Ideally any person watching your sketch should be able to name all of the animals combined in it. In the same way you may also sketch, for example, “wonder robot” or “wonder superhero”, etc. This exercise develops creativity and associative thinking.

The second exercise is called literal words. Try to imagine and sketch usual words as they are heard. In other words, you should make a picture with plot using one word. For example, the word “workshop” you can divide into words “work” and “shop”. Then we can imagine a shop doing some kind of work. My associations will be: a shop as a kiosk and sweeping as work. So, I try to sketch a kiosk sweeping the streets!

Realization of logo.

Modern logos are created in vector format. Such software as Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw is mainly used, but you also can use some free analogues, for example, Inkscape. I recommend to use Adobe Illustrator if your logo is original, consists of different lines and resembles a picture. It is better to use Corel Draw if you have many geometric figures in your logo. Inkscape is basically similar to Corel.

1. Lining

First of all, the logo designed in lines may be useful in future. Secondly, this is a great check of your logo simplicity. Let's make a vector logo using thick lines remaining the recognizability!

Pic. 1. Lining

2. Scale reduction

Scale down the logo and try to remove or replace all the unnoticeable details. There are a lot of ways to change the zoom level in Illustrator. In addition to the View menu options, you can use the Zoom tool. With the Zoom tool selected, click and drag from the left side of the document to the right to zoom in. Drag from right to left to zoom out [2].

3. Colorizing

Now it's time to color the logo. There are several ways of picking good colors.

- use the color schemes, for example, Goethe's color scheme;

- use some specialized services with professionally selected color combinations, for example, “In color balance” (http://colorpalettes.net/). Each palette on this resource is manually created and is the personal creative work of its main author - designer, colorist and photographer Alex Romanuke. That is why the creation of new color palettes are limited in rate and quantity [3].

- play with contour color. Main colors are not highly necessary if they are divided by right contour color. Use black contour to make main colors brighter. Use white contour to make colors gentle and clear. Black and white contours are the most popular, but you also may use other colors for your personal idea implementation.

Pic. 2. Colorising

4. Simplifying

Finally, we should make all the details maximally simple bringing everything to purified form. Every angle should be rounded to 0, 30, 45, 60 and 90 degrees. Every figure resembling geometric one (like circle, triangle, square, etc) is either corrected or brought to the geometric type. Finally, we should minimize all the unnecessary curves.

5. Testing

Let's test our logo in different conditions: as a watermark, a logo that can merge with the background, as a part of the inscription. We can also regulate colors and contours to create different variations of logo for representing them in inconvenient conditions. Now we should remove the very last inaccuracies on that step but if we see that the main idea was wrong, we have to start the creation process again using other ideas.

Pic. 3. Complete logo

We have demonstrated creation of logo from idea to complete image. If you encounter difficulties with vector format, we recommend to take some scenes from your favorite vector cartoons and outline them in your vector software just for training. Moreover, there are many complicated features in cartoon frames so if you train with them you will be able to vectorize any kind of logo.

As a result, we'll get high-quality image to use it immediately in advertising or after some elementary modifications.

Literature

1. Bruno Munari. Verbale scritto - Corraini, 2008

2. Brian Wood. Adobe Illustrator CC Classroom in a Book: the official

Annotation

The article discusses the process of creating a logo and its two stages: defining an idea and its realization. Some types of logos, several ways of simplification image, some exercises for developing creative and digital graphic skills and the technique of vectorizing image are represented in the article.

Keywords: logotype, logo, emblem, creativity, design, vector.

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