articles on
Logo Design: the 2017 Logofolio of Attila Hadnagy
We would love to share the work from Attila Hadnagy who is a designer and illustrator. Based in London, UK, he has a really nice combination of skillset and today we are showcasing his 2017 collection work on logos. I personally think creating logos are part of what I love doing the most about our work. Creating the visual identity, the very first step is somehow such a long and rewarding process. For which in the end will determine how your clients with go head-to-head into their business and goals. Attila's logo collection is filled with clients coming from all over different fields: Technology, Art & Design, Entertainment, Beauty, Food & Drink, Computer and more. My newest logo design collection from 2017. More Links Learn more about Attila Hadnagy at brandimension.com Follow Attila's work on Behance Logo Design
Logo Design: A Collection by Romain Billaud
It's been quite a little while since our last logo design inspiration, well here it is for you guys. This collection has been made and designed by a Lyon-based designer named: Romain Billaud. I liked the fact that this series goes in different directions and that's what makes it even more, interesting and inspiring. Based in Lyon, France, Romain Billaud is making a living & working as a designer. Behind the branding, graphic design and illustration; Romain have a beautiful collection of projects on his Behance, check it out. More Links Learn more about Romain Billaud via Behance Logo Design
Branding & Logotypes Work by Wete Studio
While most of our team and part of North of America is celebrating a holiday today, I am currently working on a branding/logotype project for a client. Scouting for inspiration on Behance, I stumbled across the work from Wete Studio where they shared their latest of their personal and commercial work. I thought it would be great to share it here on ABDZ, hope you like it! Wete Studio is a small and independant studio that specialized in typography, graphic design and art direction. Currently based in Barcelona, Spain; you can definitely find them via Behance. Few commercial and personal type works I did between 2016-2017. Clients: Desigual, Superism, Fortune Magazine, Overall Murals, Carolina Herrena, Aritzia, CdeC, LVMH, Agencies: 2x4, Creasenso, Havas Links Check out Wete Studio: wetecacahuete.com Follow them on Behance
Logo Design Process: Marvel, a Prototyping and Collaboration Tool
We would like to share this logo design process from our good buddy Paul von Excite who has done a tremendous job at redesigning the new Marvel logo through a custom logotype. From the sketching to the final result, let's follow an in-depth process through his words. I would like also to mention that it is the logo of the Marvel app, a prototyping and collaboration tool not what some of you might think! Paul von Excite is a designer that specialized his work into branding, lettering and logos. Located in Utrecht, Netherlands, we have featured his work before on ABDZ, make sure to follow his work on Behance and Dribbble. Marvel's co-founder Murat Mutlu reached out to me for a logotype refresh. I quite liked the old logo actually. Next to being awesome, Murat was pretty clear in his intend for style direction and after a quick call I was excited to get started. The goal was pretty clear, the new type needed to resemble a friendly, fun yet professional character with lots of personality and energy. The Marvel type also needed a stand-alone "M" character for smaller display usage. In Paul's Words As mentioned above the goal was pretty clear which made the hunt for inspiration much easier. I had a clear view in my mind on how the first sketches should look, image below was used as a reminder while sketching. Work included from Nick Slater, Sergey Shapiro, Mark Caneso, Leo Gomez and myself. Sketching Actually took a lot of inspiration from the previous Marvel type, especially the "r-v" and "v-e" connection were interesting to explore further. Murat was a big fan of the angled versions as it resembled an energetic character. In the following image it was time to reflect on the type and see what needed improvement. The top left "M" was favourite over the bottom left "M", used Photoshop to combine the two together. Final Sketch At this point it was time to improve the reflections of the sketch above and build the final sketch. With the above sketch underneath I used tracing paper to model the final sketch. The counters of the "e" and "l" turned out a bit too small but left it at that and decided to go digital from here and refine it in Illustrator later. Digital Version Below is a screenshot of the final sketch with the vectoring lettering on top. To position the characters correctly along the curved underline I started the tracing with the underline and used the underline as grid. The finished trace has a slightly less slanted curve angle, coming closer to an arch. Other aspects like kerning, stroke width and corners were also digitally refined. Alternate Version With the full logotype done we still needed a stand-alone "M", this particular one was tricky to use because it was so slanted and angled. This caused us exploring back and forth between different "M's" but after all we maintained the original "M". The stand-alone "M" will only be used at the smallest display's, on small to medium and above sizes the full Marvel type will be used most. We modified the original "M" from the word-mark to make it fit better within smaller sizes and make it look more extinct. Final Result Had an awesome time working together with Murat on the new Marvel logotype and really satisfied how the final result came out. Hope you like me doing this kind of articles more often, I would like to do this on a more regular basis and happy to hear your feedback for improvements! Links Find out more about Paul von Excite: paulvonexcite.com Follow Paul on Behance And follow him on Dribbble
Smart and Beautiful Logo Design by Spoonlancer
Spoonlancer is a a freelance designer currently based in Fukuoka, Japan. He has a set of beautiful logo design projects on his Dribbble page that are for us a great source of inspiration. The range of styles is something to be definitely highlighted, from simple lines like a giraffe or a frong eating a fly to more classic/vintage looks like the amazing Book Keepers one. In addition to that there's very smart ideas like for the Breakfast Bear, the bear nose is a fried egg. There's much more to get inspiration from his work and that's why we are featuring them here on Abduzeedo. It's important to notice that despite the fact we have been focusing a lot on design system types of projects, like UI/UX and branding, we truly admire and will always feature all types of projects that inspire us. This post on logo design is a great example and we look forward to posting more on logo design. If you have any recommendation, please don't hesitate to share it with us. For more information about Spoonlancer make sure to check out his Dribbble page at https://dribbble.com/spoon-lancer Logo Design
Logo Designs by Sociedad Anónima
With the year coming to an end, most of us will be publishing the work we’ve done during the past year. I stumbled across with the work from Sociedad Anónima who is a designer focusing his work into graphic design, branding and art direction based in Mexico City, Mexico. We are featuring a series of logo work that Sociedad has worked and they are quite beautiful. Playing with different approaches and style, it’s nice to see the work from different perspective. Selection of logos created during 2016. More Information: http://www.sociedadanonima.mx.
Case Study: Trampa Logotype
Over the last month, we have featured the lettering work from Joe Sutton and today he is back with a case study. I shall add that he is sharing a full complete A to Z case study from the start and finish. Thank you Joe for taking the time to give us a demonstration of his experience and also sharing his process for everyone. Let me stop talking and give him the mic and hope you will enjoy his breakdown. This is a client project of mine broken down from start to finish, I share all the details that was discussed with the client and let you know about design decisons and process. I've always wanted to offer a sneak peak inside my process as I’ve seen it done before in other disciplines and found it highly valuable. I want to put something together that wold have helped me when I first started. In his Words I was contacted to create a Logotype for Trampa. Trampa is an Urban Cycling Clothing Brand in its infancy. Their products have a Swedish design influence and a minimal and clean look that is functional, stylish and not out of place in a casual setting. Their target market is 16-30 year old male and females. I put together a document for the client to start with that broke down the the brand, goals, usage, keywords and competition. We put our focus on these as we found them to be the most important factors to focus on. After this I asked if everything align with their thughts and what kewords represented Trampa best. They wanted to try and represent Urban, Cycling, Swedish, Movement,Ffreedom, Exploration, Clean. Thet also also provided me with a few logos that he liked, they were very varied in style and so I knew that identifying which direction early on would be important. Sketching When I go into sketching I just write the word out in a few go-to style, all caps, all lowercase, joined, unjoined and cursive script with a mix of character variations etc. Through this you can quickly understand where the issues might be between letters and where there are opportunities to create some unique ligatures. I’ll list the points that I discovered below: The ‘r’-‘a’ gives an opportunity for a ligature. • The two a’s could be interesting to experiment making the feature point • The ‘p’-‘a’ join could be an issue • We could join the ’t’-‘r’ • The capital ‘R’ or ‘P’ could be legs pedalling (Huge Gimmick) • Type of ‘a’ and ‘r’ were open for experimentation. • Capital or Lowercase T Sorry if those sketches have made your eyes hurt, but it's all part of the process. After Identifying these I can target each one and try and make something interesting. I had a feeling the best way to go would be with a very simple san serif type with a slant, I felt like it’d be the most simple and reflective of the clothing and brand. Howver, I still sketched lots of other styles incase I found something better. Once I had exhausted all my options I selected 9 sketches, there’s no specific number I choose. Usually below 10 as too many options can confuse the client and with this I refined them to an acceptable standard, still very far from perfect. The reason I choose at the early stage is usually they are so rough I'm the only one who knows where they could potentially end up like. So by choosing the best based off my judgement, with the project goals etc in mind, I offer the client more accurate optinons. You need to realise they aren't lettering deigners and that you probably understand your vision more than anyone else, so explain everything. Presenting First Concepts Now I had all my first sketches to a point where it’s clear enough for the client to understand. Also not too far that it’d be a waste of time, I was ready to display them all. So I scanned the versions in and then played around with them in photoshop until they are darkened but not distorted, I find this again aids the client in visualising the options clearer. At this stage you're sharing the work to really to gain a better understanding of what the client's preferences are so you can get on the same page in regards to stylistic direction. It’s also the first point to explain my thoughts on how each one relates to the goals for the project. After initial discussions with the client and with the research I had done, I was pretty confident I knew which ones would appeal to them the most. They did select the ones which I advised towards being the best, which is always a relieving moment. I know that some designers don’t offer the options to their client at this early stage. I think it’s so important to keep them engaged from the beginning so that you don’t go off on the wrong path and face the revisions at the end. The client chose options 2, 3, 6, and 7 as his favourites and you can see the reasons below. 2: I love the underline, and the slight slant works well conveying movement. Maybe slightly harsh on the eye though. 3: I think it’s interesting and could be really cool or could be a bit odd. I think you could experiment a lot with it. 6: Is similar to 2 but feels more understated. Experimenting with the underline could work well here. 7: Surprised I liked this one but it feels like it has some flow to it. The capital T works well. They agreed that 5 and 9 were not clear enough and I agreed with what he said so onto the next stage. Refining Chosen Sketches I take the scanned sketches, scale them up a bit and print them off so I can go into more detail and refine them. I use a light pad to trace versions rather than using tracing paper, that’s just my preference. Along with this I have some notes for each sketch with what to focus on initially improving. I work on this until I have them to a point where they are almost as refined as I can get them on paper. With this particular project it was more straight lines due the preference of the more simple, san serif style. So I think the computer is where the larger refinements could be seen properly. On projects where the style is more rounded and cursive then I like working on paper and creating nice smooth curves for longer as I feel like you can capture more personalitly on paper. I offered each option with variations to show which ones could be experimented with further. The aim is exhaust all possible directions narrowing your way down to the perfect final logotype. The client decision was to take 1 and 3 further. I decided that making a quick digital rough would give a clearer idea of the final and help finalise it down to 1 version. Digital Roughs Starting in illustrator now I made both versions to a point where they were slightly refined but not nearly perfect. I also came up with a 3rd version which stemmed from option 3. This is now the point where you can really start to see what you’ve envisioned them to look like coming together. We decided that 1 would be the best option to refine completely. It had been the stand out for me all the way. It offered lots of options to experiment with underlines, fullstops etc. I made some small changes to it from the sketch, but it maintains the same character and basic overall look and feel. I added a fullstop as I know the client mentioned something about it. I think that we had a strong base to work off from here and now it was just down to the final refinements. Final Refinements Now it’s all about the details. The main thing I discover when refining is when I tested what we had on a dark value, it looked too bold. This logo needs to be versatile and work in many usage cases, so I concurred with the client and displayed thinner version, we both felt that even making the line weight a little thinner helped with that issue and we kept pushing on. When I come to create the final version firstly, I create a grid so that I can align all the horizontal and diagonal lines. After this I look at the letter spacing and the kern the final version. Finally I go over making use the letter endings are all the same. Not forgetting the most important part which Is checking the logotype optically and how it looks to the eye. Sometimes the grid might force things that don’t look natural enough so making sure it looks optically perfect and not just grid perfect is important. The adjustments I had to make to this were the curves in the m, they were too thick and similarly with the p. I also did a lot of playing around with the a’s as they were becoming a distinguishable feature in the logo. As we planned to do, I also showed thick and thinner options with underlines and small changes which you can see below. We ended up going with a rounded full stop which you can see on the final version. Final Logotype Here is the final version, on a dark and light value. There isn’t a colour palette yet as the project is in its very early stages. I've tried to share all the details I could, and hope this has been useful to some of you. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any further questions. More Information: http://joesutton.co and make sure to follow him on Dribbble.
Halloween Logotypes
Halloween! Whenever you like this holiday or not, it’s always a great time of year to see everyone get in disguise and taking the time to Trick and Treating, playing pranks and more fun stuff. Designers, we take a different route, always! That’s why I love this initiative from Logobaker to assemble designers/artists all over Europe to create a series of logotypes on the theme of Halloween. Spooky, cheesy, predictable, we can’t help to enjoy the different types of style that would apply to these logo designs. We took the liberty to feature all of them instead of a few, hope you will enjoy! This collections has been created by designers from Logobaker community to celebrate Halloween. We hope you enjoyt it! More information on this project via Behance.
Logofolio by Shaivalini Kumar
Late at night, currently surfing the Web for a logo for a client project. One of the best parts of my process, exploring and get inspired. It might sound silly but letting my mind free while surfing does make a difference instead of trying to find something. I stumbled across the work of Shaivalini Kumar and I can't help to enjoy her logofolio from this year. It's full of great pieces and I like how she can co-exist a neutral solid colour with shadows. Hope you will enjoy! About Shaivalini Kumar Shaivalini is a designer currently based Los Angeles and she's focusing her work into Art Direction, Graphic Design, Ilustration and Typography. You should definitely check out her work on Instagram. For more information: http://www.supernovadesign.net.
Where brands meet people
Another awesome project by Charis Tsevis, the mosaic master this time strikes with an amazing project where he illustrate people using only logos from global brands. Check it out! The Advertising campaign for the world leader in outdoor advertising in Switzerland Clear Channel is one of the leading marketing companies of outdoor advertising worldwide. For their latest advertising campaign in Switzerland they have asked their clients to participate. Dozens of Swiss companies gave their logo to be used as tesserae to create three colorful mosaic portraits. I had the honor and the pleasure to collaborate with Alpha 245 Zurich to create these illustrations for the campaign. For more from Charis Tsevis visit tsevis.com.
25 Nouns Logo Collection
Spanish Designer Lucas Gil-Turner came up with the idea was to create a collection of logos based on a selection of some of the most used and popular words in English. This workshop is inspired in the research analysis of over a billion words performed by Oxford Institution in association with The Oxford English Dictionary. The outcome of this research was the top 25 most common nouns. For more from Lucas Gil-Turner lucasgilturner.com.
Animal Logos by Ivan Bobrov
Amazing collection of animal logos by the Russian designer Ivan Bobrov. Each logo is very colorful and created from a round shape composition. Enjoy! For more from Ivan Bobrov visit .
New Animal Logos Construction
Last year we posted about the first Animal Logos Construction by the designer Tom Anders. Today we are sharing the second edition of this project with more amazing animal logos and details of the process. Enjoy! For more information visit behance.net/tomanders and tomanders.com/.
Typographic Logos by Jorgen Grotdal
Jorgen Grotdal is a young designer from Norway specialized in typography and logo design. I selected some of his work, really like his style and that handmade feel that each piece has. Enjoy! For more from Jorgen Grotdal visit behance.net/JorgenGrotdal.
Marks & Monograms by Dimiter Petrov
Dimiter Petrov is a designer from Bulgaria who believes in the very idea of injecting plenty of meaning into a simple but aesthetic geometric shape has always fascinated me. The right decoding of the shape brings an additional pinch of fulfillment. Below you could see several experiments pointed in that direction. For more from Dimiter Petrov visit chadomoto.combehance.net/Chadomoto.
Branding work by Hiromi Maeo
Designing logos is an endeavor because a good logo or visual identity has to represent a product or a service with a great level of simplicity. Differently than icon design, logos require a level of differentiation in the form and there's the balance between typography and forms. Everything must be optically balanced and easy to reproduce in different medias and sizes. Hiromi Maeo, shared some really cool branding work he has done in the past 2 years and it's definitely worth checking it out. Hiromi is a creative director from Tokyo, Japan. For more information check out his work at https://www.behance.net/enhanced_hiromimaeo
Negative Space Madness by George Bokhua
George Bokhua is a self-taught graphic designer who has found happiness in simple, strong logo design. He's designs are very simple and yet very strong, he is a master of using negative space as you can see on this post. Enjoy! For more from George Bokhua visit dribbble.com/george-bokhua and behance.net/milash.