The Logo Design Process. Layers Magazine Tutorial

In this tutorial Jacob Cass takes us through the different stages of the logo design process: researching, composing a design brief, sketching, reflecting, developing, color brainstorming and presentation...

"Logo design in today’s world is totally underrated. People don’t understand how important a good logo is and how valuable it is to their business. Let me guide you through the basics of what makes a good logo, while also walking you through the process of creating the identity and logo design for one of my recent clients, Vero, a limited liability company based in Miami, Florida. Hopefully, this will give you an understanding of what actually goes on behind the scenes while creating a professionally designed logo..." Proceed to tutorial page

What is Typography?

A lesson by from the Vancouver film school. www.multimedia.edu

Typography is the art and technique of arranging type, type design, and modifying type glyphs. Type glyphs are created and modified using a variety of illustration techniques.

The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading (line spacing), adjusting the spaces between groups of letters (tracking) and adjusting the space between pairs of letters (kerning). Read more

Serif Christmas

Typographyc animation by Matt Jake. (via meddesign)

Masking Tools and Type in Adobe Illustrator

A comprehensive and inspirational Adobe Illustrator tutorial, covering techniques with the masking tools and using type as influential decorational element. The tutorial is from the archive of Computer Arts Magazine. 

"Illustrator’s masking tools have long been a powerful part of its feature set. Here Martin Fewell shows you how to use masked images with typography to create an eye-catching illustration

Pioneered by the likes of Wim Crouwel and 8vo, using typography as the main focus point in place of an image is a very effective means of getting a message across. Type used in this way is popular today across a range of campaigns and is easy to achieve in Illustrator." Full tutorial and source files

Distortion of Type

"Organic digital effects are hugely popular at the moment, so it’s a good time to dig out Illustrator’s Distort tools and use them to add an unusual dimension to your work. Martin Fewell reveals how .

Illustrator’s Distort tools have been around since the application’s tenth incarnation. Located underneath the Scale tool in the Tools bar, there are seven Distort tools to choose from – simply hold down your mouse to reveal them and then tear them off the main Tools palette for easy access." Full tutorial and source files Computer Arts Magazine

Creating Fonts with Adobe Illustrator CS3

Here we have a great video tutorial from GoMedia, that explains how you can use Adobe Illustrator for designing your own Typeface.

The video also stresses on using pathfinders to merge your shapes...



Tutorial: Creating fonts in Illustrator and Fontlab - Part 1 from Go Media on Vimeo.

Typography Trends

"Design is about communication, and the written word – whether printed, hand-written or electronic – is a key part of this. Learning to work creatively and effectively with type is a crucial skill for graphic designers to master: while informed and imaginative font selection, placement and treatment can all work wonders in getting your message across, ill-considered use of type can drown out a message and damage the effectiveness of your design."

Full Article Digital Arts Magazine

How to manage your fonts ?

"Digital font technology has come of age. After nearly three decades of research and development, many of the problems caused by software bugs and platform incompatibility have been resolved, and the frustrations of limited character sets and typographic control have been largely overcome. At long last, designers have access to refined file formats and easy-to-use management systems and, with the introduction of OpenType, digital typography has become a pleasure..." Full Article Computer Arts Magazine

When Illustration Meets Type

"The artists and designers producing fascinating work at the creative frontier where illustration meets typography.
When it comes to conveying ideas, concepts and even descriptions of the world around us, words are extremely limiting. Meanings just cannot be definitively tied to them. That’s where design has a part to play: ensuring words carry their intended meaning into the minds of the waiting public...


According to one school of thought, the larger and bolder a message is written, the more likely it is to be heard. That might be true in laboratory conditions, but we’re surrounded by so much legible information that, unable to assimilate it all, we shut it out. Getting the message across now requires more work and more imagination. It calls for wit, for flair. It calls for illustrated type." Read full article.
Article: Computer Arts Magazine Illustration: zombie-keeper

Random Tip: Outlining Type

Many times digital illustrators /designers face problems when their work contains text typed with particular typeface and the client does not have the same one installed on his system. After receiving final projects some clients like to mess around with them which usually end as a major issue in press printing. Most of the times projects for the press are very expensive and it is a bad feeling when the printout looks totally different than what your client(s) saw on the screen.
In Adobe Illustrator all this can be avoided by simply outlining the type. To do this, select the areas (objects, layers) where you have text then click on Type > Create Outlines. You can never be insured against misspellings, so before outlining you can make a backup copy of your *.ai file so you keep a version of it with live (editable) text.

Typolution

Animated film with typographical environmental minimalist flavor, punctuated by "Ratatat-Nostrand".

Graphic Design Olivier Beaudoin.

Done in Adobe After Effects. Écodesign 2007 de St-Pétersbourg Via www.kalomnie.ca ...

Vector Grunge

A free vector stock from mykolan. Download Note: To use open the PDF file with Adobe Illustrator

Type effects with Adobe Illustrator

"Many graphic designers, illustrators and digital artists use Illustrator on a daily basis for creating fantastic vector images, but the application’s typography tools are often overlooked – or at least, not used to their full potential." Go to tutorial page. by Digital Arts Magazine

Typographic Techniques in Adobe Illustrator

If you had any ideas or questions about designing type with Illustrator, take a look at this image-based tororial. It covers techniques like: transfering sketches type into vector-based format, using templates, stroke cap options, outlining stroke and balance. Click on the image to see the full tutorial.Thanks to inde-graphics

The Font Conference

collegehumor.com present the FONTS and their characters in their own Font Conference.
Starring: Times New Roman , Arial Narrow, Arial Black, French Script, Rage Italic, Baskerville Old Face, Bookman Old Style, Wide Latin, Old English, Jokerman, Futura, Ransom, Courier New, Century Gothic, Wingdings (the one that got kicked out by Times New Roman), Comic Sans, Broadway.

Typeface of the year

Parachute® and the Centro Pro typeface superfamilies won this year's The EDAwards award for Original Typeface. Highlights and more info about the event here.

Retro Logo Tutorial for Adobe Photoshop

"Get inspired by movie posters of the 70s to create an illustrative logo with a funky contemporary feel…

Your logo can be much more than just a corporate badge. After all, if you’re a design business, it ought to reflect the ‘design’ part as much as the ‘business’ part...

Here we’ll create a new twist on the classic 70s Blaxploitation illustration-based logo..." Full tutorial and source files via Computer Arts Magazine

Decoration Tutorial

If you feel frustrated or uninspired, get yourself confortable and take look at this tutorial. Topics covered: typography fundamentals and pathfinders and shape modes in Adobe Illustrator. ComputerArts.co.uk

"Recent Computer Arts cover illustrator Tom Lane reveals how he uses Illustrator and Fontographer to create impressive decorative typefaces that can be used to inject something special into your work.
Decorative illustrations, paintings and typefaces have inspired artists for centuries, and re-working historical design elements or even bringing life to your own sketches and doodles is a great way to create exciting illustrative elements with a contemporary edge." Full tutorial and files

Comments on the dirty logo

I'm not a big fan of TV Shows or for that matter TV at all. The logo of FX's television show Dirt, starring Courtney Cox from Friends impressed me though. I researhed feedbacks about the logo around the web and I found pretty interesting comments about it. So here are some post quotations from the forum of a typographic website typophile.com"any thoughts on why the “i” is upside down?"

"exclamation mark"

"To make it something more memorable than plain text.

To create an ’exclamation point’ recalling the sensationalism of tabloid press.

Interestingly, the ’i’ is shifted down, putting the dot below the baseline, perhaps a metaphor for something buried or underground, reinforcing the dirt. I was pondering this already, thanks to heavy advertisement featuring ’Digging in the Dirt’ by Peter Gabriel."

"I could swear this is a play on a British tabloid. Perhaps someone can comfirm. I see it as an exclamation point as well. In the media nothing can be big enough or bold enough. So, of course, they use lots of exclamation points thinking this is another way to emphasize the point."

"The negative eye, looking for the bad stuff, punctuating the dirt—Upside down as in “Down and Dirty” You can check the whole discussion here : http://www.typophile.com/node/30281

Groove

Quickly created in Illustrator while not paying attention in my Photoshop class. Done by overlapping serif characters and playing with pathfinders and shape modes, in this case "exclude". This actually reminds me that I've got to post more examples and tutorials about usage of type and pathfinders in Adobe Illustrator. More soon !!!