pxls2prnt
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Posts posted by pxls2prnt
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Watch the kerning in the word AZTEC. As they sit now, there is too much of a tangent between the A and Z; they are just barely kissing. They either need to be really pulled together so that they overlap a bit and form one distinct shape, or spread apart so there is a gap between them, similar to the other letters. Also, the E and C could probably be brought a touch closer together as well.
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2 minutes ago, Alfred said:
I hadn't noticed those details before, but I can't "unsee" them now!
Oops.
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8 minutes ago, Alfred said:
…and the icon background needs to be widened to make it square….
I'm assuming you mean to inform them the background of the Facebook icon needs to be widened to be square, and not the icon background placed in the back of the poster, correct?
I'd also point out that you likely don't need the "https://www." bit before the rest of the URL. Most browsers these days should auto populate that when you type in the URL. That would make the poster much easier to read quickly, and would help make the whole thing look less cluttered.
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I concur with the others...the 3D effect isn't really working well in my opinion. At least not when compared to the rest of the artwork with the cow.
Also, watch out for the small things. I keep getting distracted by the little tiny piece of dark blue "shadow" to the left of the upper swoosh on the "L," as well as the very tiny white dot in the space between the "g" and the "á." You could probably lose both of those from the design and no one would be the wiser.
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I never did say great job on this! Very reminiscent of the work that Julien Clauzier is doing.
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Hey, gravity waves! They were proven this year scientifically, BTW.
Technically, gravitational waves were proven early last year, or even before that. The first detection was announced in mid-February 2016 with a second set of waves being announced in mid-June 2016. I believe what was the third and largest set of gravitational wave detection were announced just a few weeks ago, despite being detected on 04 January of this year.
"You never know how many more signals we have sitting in the can that we're not telling you about." —Rana Adhikari
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I've loved them all, but the last two have felt a little off to me. The "drips" running off the gelato shape in the Village logo and the "water" running off the musical notes in the Waterfall Records aren't adhering to the rules of physics. It's making me want to go in and straighten both of those shapes out so that gravity can pull them straight down instead of at awkward angles. ;)
Great job overall though. Really cool series.
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You've got excellent control with the pen tool…your curves look great! It's funny how each of us becomes so accustomed to certain software. You mention Illustrator causing you grief and became overwhelming to work in, but that's where I shine. Affinity Designer is a bit of a challenge for me, solely because I'm more efficient with Illustrator (been using Ai for the better part of 10 years). It's the small things that I struggle with, like remembering to hold down the option (alt) key before dragging an element to duplicate it.
Just as a side note...be careful how you export your artwork. For some reason Affinity Designer likes to horribly rasterize some vector elements while exporting under certain settings, like what is seen on the first of the two new pieces that you attached. Other times it's just fine. I can't remember the settings I used to fix that issue, but I'm sure some of the more seasoned users here can help out.
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Nope. The font is Krungthep.
Which is essentially Chicago, just partially repackaged. You could also say it is Silom (go ahead, try swapping it out and see what happens).
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… What font is that, by the way?
Looks like Chicago.
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The choice of font, however, is my fault. It looked a lot better when I previewed it. (I was never good at choosing fonts.) This is a really tough assignment since plans keep changing.
I wonder if at this point, I should just give him something else of my own.
Choosing the right typeface for the job certainly is a difficult chore!
In the book Really Good Logos Explained, there are four designers that are asked what they believe the top 10 mistakes designers make when creating a logo. Rian Hughes says, "The designer let the client have too much input. The best designers know how to politely let the client know when he has suggested a lame idea. Then you offer him a much better one. That’s your job. (Here it helps to be a master politician; try to charm and persuade rather than pout and cry.)"
As long as you have a compelling reason and legitimate alternative to show your client, it can't hurt. But you have to make sure it's a very polished design worth showing. You've got to make sure the client knows they can trust your judgement, and providing a very nicely put together piece may do just that. But you've got to bring your A-game to the party.
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@pxls2prnt: :D Well, sometimes even in Switzerland it's hell. ;P
Naaw, I love this place too. I just like the pun. :) Are you swiss too?
Am I Swiss too? At heart, yes! I have relatives that left Switzerland for the U.S. back in the early 1800s.
While I was in school, I did some "study abroad" in Switzerland in June 2009 and June 2010. Easily the best summers of my life! We stayed at a hotel in the little town of Leysin, up above Aigle. Each day we'd catch SBB CFF FFS to different parts of the country. I've been fortunate enough to have seen and experienced things that many will never get to. I've been to Geneva, Zürich, St Gallen, Basel, Lugano, Zermatt, and dozens of other little towns and villages in-between.
The second summer I was there we headed up towards Grand St Bernard Pass on bus, got off just before the tunnel, and snowshoed the rest of the way up to the Grand St Bernard Hospice. We spent a couple of nights there. While we were there we got to put together the dog kennels in preparation for the dogs to come up from Martigny for the summer. Something I will never forget!
Man, I really wish I could take up residence there! I've never felt more at "home" than when I spent a day walking the paths along the lake from Vevey to Villeneuve. It was so peaceful and calm. I LOVED IT! I can't wait to come visit again. I'm hoping for summer of 2018.
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I don't know how to say it without sounding rude...but I feel like you've taken a step backwards. Nothing here is really unique or memorable. I know you are just following the client's direction, but it almost seems as though they aren't quite sure what they want. Do they want something that stands out and will be remembered? Do they want something that "says" what they do visually?
Is the client asking you to emphasize the word LIVE in their name, or is that a choice that you made? If it was you, ask yourself "why?" The type under the diamond shape is really, really killing this whole thing. To be honest, it's bland and boring, and having the word LIVE bolded, in a contrasting color and all caps makes that whole line look rather awkward. The emphasized word isn't centered, so it makes everything feel very unbalanced. Go poke around on the internet to see how others have treated text. Play around with some different typefaces while you are at it. Maybe try stacking the words in the center instead of using a single line.
Just keep plugging away, don't get discouraged, and you'll get this figured out!
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The fonts are not parallel to each other. There might be some room to improve. (see image below)
You could also adjust the kerning between the letters 'E' and 'S' on 'RIDES. The 'S' stands a bit off.
Other than that: Looking fancy! Good job!
Along this same train of thought, everything would also look better if the vertical edges were running straight up and down. As it sits now, everything appears to be rotated a little too much. Here's what I would do: layout all your text and other elements (the banner with the 20 & 13 [should that be 17?], underline strokes, etc.) horizontally, skew all that by like 10 or 15°, then rotate by the exact same degrees.
I'd also recommend changing the line at the top to say, "Join us each week for a different ride." or "Join us every week for a different ride." I think people will understand what day it takes place by the giant "Sunday Rides" in the middle of the page.
One last thing...for JokeRat. Why do you think CH is HELL? It's my favorite place on earth! :P :D :lol:
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Also, just so I understand. Black and white is to start off. Right? Multiple colors and gradients should not be used, so I question why logos like this one sell. https://logopond.com/Jasondinalt/showcase/detail/270654
Starting in black and white is just to get the basic form down. The logo should be effective in black and white as well as in color. Multiple colors are fine, but as a general rule, don't go too overboard with them. But, these are just general rules, and can be broken. There are plenty of logos that use a full range of colors. Gradients in logos are often frowned up, just because they can become very difficult to reproduce across a variety of mediums. For example, if it's being printed in one color, embroidered, etc., it becomes difficult to reproduce with gradients, especially gradients between two different colors. There are also plenty of successful logos that use gradients. It all really depends on how it will be used.
So, your question about why logos like the one you linked to sell...because there is really nothing wrong with it. They stuck with the general rule (remember, it can be broken) of using only a few colors. Take a look at it again, if you remove the red from the image, it's only two colors; black and cream. Subtract that cream color, and you're left with just black and white...the starting point if you were using the approach we've mentioned. Again, the logo should be effective in black and white as well as in color (meaning, colors added).
Also, there is nothing inherently wrong with using a stroke around your design...so long as it is done appropriately. Take a look at this piece by Von Glitschka. Here he has a design that is littered with color: white, gray, blue, and two shades of yellow. He's got multiple strokes going on, but notice how he has used it? It's definitely a large part of the design, and not just added as an afterthought. Take notice of how he's also created an alternate design used for printing on the swim caps, the gym bag, and the building door. It's still the same general idea, just reduced detail for a different application. Von takes a very systematic approach to his designs. He starts with pencil and paper, works up a concept, then draws that out on a computer. He will print that out, go over the design with pencil to add more detail, and repeat. Similar to this here where he is working on the each level of detail at a time. That's likely how he got to the level of strokes on the scorpion design that he did. I just wish he had a photo of that project in process.
Anyway, I hope I'm not confusing you with information overload, or mis-communicating anything. Any other questions, just ask. I'll try to watch this thread closely.
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That is true.
Dang! I almost went for a compound boolean too. For some reason, the compound with the microphone and then the new gap space was rasterizing the art, so I just made a regular boolean. But I can still make a circle, expand, and then add.
Well the reason I do have an outside stroke is to give the text contrast. That particular dark background (for the text) may not work too well, but if the logo was on a light background, then the teal color of "Live" would ironically not look so lively. And the logo would most likely appear on various merchandise.
I'm glad you picked up on that little secret A. I know that some logos like Amazon have secrets (it has an arrow pointing from A-Z since they have everything from A-Z).
Thank you very much for the very strong support. Your suggestions make a lot of sense, but I wonder I should start a third time. I wouldn't say the logos I made look strikingly appealing, but I think I'm getting a better understanding. I'm waiting to hear back from my employer. If he's looking for something different again, then I need to cook up something really good and use the principles you educated me.
Always glad to offer pointers where I can. You'll eventually get there.
Then IMO, provide a version for going over black backgrounds or very dark ones, another for white/clear. Anyway, this should have been spoken with the client... Some would want that option, some not. Some know from start the logo, no matter what, will always go over a black backgrounds (or white). there are millions of situations. The correct thing to do is provide certain number of versions for different media, sizes, etc. The border (outline stroke) is a bad decision in most logos. besides looking a bit amateurish usually (unless certain special touch or matter justifies it). Go for plain body text instead, much more elegant, and offers no problems when reducing to small sizes. All what that border is gonna do in those is add blur and confusion. Also, as mentioned, it is not adding anything important.
The black and white for the shape.. yep, that's always said in schools (studied Fine Arts, later a master in design)... You can develop later on a certain habit, not necessarily do it so all times... (imho). Also.. about drawing the concept in paper... I'd agree, but... maybe some decades ago, back in '91 when I got my first digital tablet and pen, would have agreed more. Today.. Inking (like for comics or illustration line art) nope, not at all (doable but not preferring it), but sketching... almost the same than with a piece of paper.. . Creativity can also be "trained" , there are factors more important than if you are using a real piece of good old paper or not... (plus, there's great software mimicking greatly pencil feel. Even you can do so with clever settings on a simple rounded brush in 90% of the 2D packages. )
I agree with SrPx here. If you are worried about what background it goes on, switch the colors up. Don't be afraid to make it all one color. Here at work, we have three different versions of our company logo. Each is one solid color. One in white for black/dark backgrounds, and one in blue, another in black for white/light backgrounds, depending on the application situation.
However, don't feel like one color is absolutely necessary. One of our competitors has a "main" logo that is four colors. They also have a couple of solid, one color options, depending on how they need to use it. Best thing to do would be ask the client what they foresee their application needs being. Really, there could be a million ways they use it, and each can have a unique way of being displayed. Even something printed on the back of a t-shirt with a dozen other "sponsor" companies (generally one color) can be different than a banner hanging from the front of a stage (multi-colored).
And yes, as SrPx points out, don't feel like actual tangible paper is the only way to sketch. It's my personal method, but there are many other ways to do the job. I guess my main point is to not jump straight into Designer and throwing down vector shapes and hoping something nice comes out of it. Yes, it will sometimes work out fine, and many people are great at that. But I'm of the opinion that sketching out some concepts first will only help you realize what ideas are good, and which ones aren't, and can often be done quicker this way. It's a way to get the idea out of your head and into a format that you can see and have saved as quick as possible so you can move on to the next idea. Whether that is with pencil and paper, iPad or similar tablet, or a graphics tablet and any sort of app that will let you draw on your computer, the concept is the same.
Here's one final suggestion if you haven't done so yet. Hop onto Pinterest and search for logo design. Go poke around on logopond.com and logospire.com. Check out what other designers are doing. You'll see a lot of flat designs. You'll see a lot of simplistic designs. You'll see almost no text outlined with strokes. But most of all, you'll see some great logos that can and will hopefully spark some ideas. Best of luck, we are here to help offer pointers where we can. And remember, have fun doing this!
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Oddly enough, I started my schooling in Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning. After the first year of classes, I realized I wasn't as passionate about it as I thought I was. It was actually an assignment in my landscape graphics class that helped sway me into the graphic design field. Each student had to design a logo for an annual conference the university hosted. I loved the assignment and the final logo I came up with, as did the directors of the conference, so it was chosen as that year's branding. I have that drawing framed and hanging in my bedroom as a reminder of where this all started.
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Thank you for your honest feedback. It's hard to keep things simple and at the same time neat. Logo designing has been a tough job for me. And yes, I did not mean to off center the light in those versions. The snapping does not always work.
That's a really good idea.
Like a knock-out group?
I didn't realize until you mentioned it, that must be why the letters are overlapping in some of the designs. The stroke is larger. That was unintentional. I brought all of the logos into Affinity Photo, rasterized them and shrank them, so I could fit all of the concepts in a single image. I must've shrank some of the concepts first, and then rasterized them.
Logo design can be a very tough gig for sure. I try to start with pen (or pencil) on paper first. That really forces you to work on the ideas in...black and white! As one of my design professors always reminded us; the computer is a horrible design tool. It's a fantastic production tool, but with too many options at hand, it can't actually start to inhibit the actual design part of the process. Oh, and trust me, I know how finicky the snapping can be. It's always lining up to the wrong objects on me.
Your latest upload...getting somewhere! I'd shrink that gap between the center object and the outside ring though (the knock-out area). Maybe about half that size, but not too small. Right now it feels like it is about the same weight as the ring. About 1/2 to 3/4 the weight of the outside ring may feel better.
You could probably ditch the stroke altogether on the portion below. To me, it feels like an afterthought that serves little to no purpose. Take a look at the thumbnail in your spoiler. That stroke isn't even visible there. Also, that thumbnail is a pretty good indicator of how legible your logo is at a small scale, both as individual elements and as a whole.
The only other thing I think I'd suggest at this point is to maybe push the "A" in the center to read more as an "A". It does a pretty good job of that now, but that's because I know what the company name is. Play with it and see if you can get it to still read as an "A" while still utilizing the negative space with the microphone. If not, at least you explored that avenue.
Oh, and feel free to apply some of these suggestions to your other concepts. Good luck, and great job!
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It is time for Round 2. I was having a really hard time trying to figure out how to make the art actually look like a logo and not just a picture. Then I realized Ros' idea to add outlines. I thought, what a brilliant idea. So I ended up adding outlines to outlines to outlines. I also tried to make things look simpler. Some of these designs might still look a bit complex for a logo. That is because I had to implement the type of company I'm advertising. I think the last one here is my best.
Edited one more time.
(After making the first five, I realized they look too complex for logos, so I simplified the second five. And I have no idea why the text came out like that in some of them.)
The last five are finally approaching "logo" territory. My personal opinion is that the third to last is your strongest one (just plain white, microphone in the negative space). In the last two, the microphone and light beam are severely off center, and I'm sure that wasn't intentional. Utilize your alignment tools. Center everything to each other.
Here's a pro tip with logo design...start off in just black and white. Once you have a design that will effectively work in black and white, and is still legible at around 1cm (1/2 inch), then you can start to introduce some color. Not a lot of different colors though. You'd be best to limit it to a few colors (which you've generally done). Try to avoid gradients of any kind.
Here's an example of what you could do. Take your third to last design, the solid white one with a silhouette of a microphone. Make the outside ring the teal color. Add a little bit of a space between the thick outside ring and the inside shape. Tada! Simple, scaleable, and also works in just black and white.
Also, beware of strokes, especially added to text. That can be a designer's worst enemy. Strokes are not always your friend! I'm guessing the reason why your text came out that way is because you were adjusting the scale of objects, but the stroke didn't scale with it.
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Oh heck yes. The 90s were awesome. I really like how you stroked the logo. You've made a retro look in a more modern vectorized style. Very cool.
Vectors existed in the '90s. :P :lol:
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Such a great redesign of the package. I do have a couple of little nitpicks to watch out for in future presentations though.
At first, I was questioning why a rough, wooden surface was reflecting the packages. Then I thought, maybe it is meant to be a glass surface appearance on the table top. But the back wall isn't reflecting at all as one would expect. I also noticed that the reflection was actually a rotation of the three packages and not a true "reflection."
Overall, amazing job with your design, just be aware of the small details in the future.
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The mighty mouse ball is super easy to clean. Just place a piece of paper (plain white) on your desk and then turn the mouse over and gently apply some pressure and make the ball turn over the paper and it will clean the ball. My Mighty Mouse's scroll ball wouldn't work and I thought I was going to have to get a new one (3 years ago) and I read about this trick and I tried it and it works great. It has kept my Mighty Mouse working perfectly.
Tried that many times. Like I said, it works fine until enough gunk builds up in the very tiny little box chamber around the ball that it works its way out into the area where the equally tiny optical encoder wheels that translate rotation of the ball into digital quadrature signals & clogs them.
It isn't the ball itself getting dirty that is the problem, it is that there is no way to get to the stuff that gets trapped inside the mouse out of it.
I tend to agree with R C-R on this, although I never did try the paper trick. I did try other methods of cleaning that I read about online, and none of them worked. I believe my mother still has a dead (clogged) one laying around somewhere at her house. Next time I'm over there, I'll have to dig it out of the junk pile and try this cleaning method to see if it makes any difference.
Also, went and picked up a Logitech Anywhere MX last night. I've yet to try it out with the Affinity software, but I do need to commit to working on my wedding announcements at some point this weekend, so I'm sure the opportunity will arise. I sure hope this is the solution! It's going to take some getting used to a new mouse, but it may be worth it.
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I agree with R C-R. I used to use the Mighty Mouse at work. I actually went through three or four of them before my computer was upgraded and came with the Magic Mouse.
I may go pick up a Logitech Anywhere Mouse MX for $20. For as little as I'd use it, I don't want to break the bank.
Halloween Ghost
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Ogden? Salt Lake City? Hey, I've been there before!