From the course: Drawing Vector Graphics Laboratory

Process makes perfect

- [Instructor] Welcome to Drawing Vector Graphics Laboratory. When it comes to either illustration or design, I have a saying that applies to both, and that is process makes perfect. You've heard me say that before, and what I mean by that is you can have a disciplined process. But if that process is flawed, all you end up with is consistently created marginal work. So in this movie, I want to take you through a real world project, an overview of a creative process I use to craft original, precision-built logo designs. This is an actual client project I worked on, and the first stage of this project starts with thinking. And it's called Load the Chamber. Now, I got that terminology from Bill Gardner a few years back when I interviewed him about logo development, and it's all about taking in information and loading your chamber. Your chamber is your brain, your head and how you think. And this brings up the famous Saul Bass quote "Design is thinking made visual." It's all about making associations, taking in information. Whether it's a company, a product, or their service, you're taking in information and gleaning from that information cues that are going to help you in your design, that are going to lead you in certain directions and help you in a process called ideation. Now, ideation is all about using different methods to kind of capitalize on ideas. And this is a list of all different ways you can do that. You can obviously use a creative brief, and ask questions, and do follow up questions. You can brainstorm with other creative people to kind of come up with clever ideas and concepts. You can ask questions dealing with who, what, where. You can use synonyms and anonyms to do word association. And all of these different ways are all about formulating thought, formulating these concepts you can then capitalize on visually. And there's two rules of engagement at this stage. The first one is be unselfconscious. That is, there are no bad ideas when you're in ideation mode. Actually, you have to work through the bad ideas to actually get to the good ones. So don't edit yourself, just let it all flow out. And number two, let all your ideas steep, don't rush it. Give your brain time to play with this information. This is how you formulate clever ideas and clever associations. Einstein has a great quote, and it's that "Play is the highest form of research." So give your brain time to play with concepts and you're going to discover really clever associations. Really quickly, there's five different ways our brainwaves work. There's beta, which is normal consciousness, alpha, which is just prior to waking up and going to sleep. That's when you dream. Theta is another one, and that has to do with your subconscious. A lot of good books from the late '70s, early '80s, on subconscious advertising, by the way. And delta. Delta is when you're in deep sleep. But the one that is associated with clever ideas, those eureka moments, is called gamma. Gamma is actually a higher mental activity. And it's unsustainable, meaning you can't walk around in gamma mode all day long. You would be a superhero if you could. But it's being able to train yourself to put fear aside. Let these associations kind of steep, mingle, and you're going to have those gamma moments, those moments of eureka. And it's all about making associations. So with this project I worked on, they're dealing with the viticultural industry. So grape vine was one point. Cloud was another one. They're using cloud technology to communicate. And all of these things are giving their clients insight into what they're doing, which is growing vineyards. And this is how ideas are sparked and formulated. So this is the cohesive aspect of thinking that I did to come up with the idea that I moved forward. And this brings us to the next stage, which is Thumbnailing. This is where drawing plays a part in the creative process. Not fine art, we're talkin' thumbnails. We're talkin' small, little sketches, and they don't have to be perfect. It's to capture the essence of an idea. Here's a bunch of thumbnails. And on American dollars, you have a saying that's in Latin. It says E Pluribus Unum. What that means is out of many, one. And I like to say E Pluribus Create-um, out of many thumbnail sketches will come the ones that you can move forward with, the ideas that are the jewels of all the ones you've mined through that ideation process. And these are the ones we're going to move forward with. So on Stage 3, Aesthetic Choices. This is about picking an appropriate style for the given project. Now, obviously you're going to be thinking about this in the other stages as well, I just broke this down to communicate it clearly. So, with all of my clients, whether they're a dairy, whether it's a company product or service, I pick an appropriate style for their given business, for what they need to have their identity created for. And this shows you a overview of various projects that I've worked on over the years. The next stage is Craftsmanship. This is once you have your idea. You've gleaned that idea. You've figured out the style you're going to pull that idea off on. Now you need to build it. And when it comes to vector building, specifically on logos, there's a lot of associations between logos and iconography, because they use the same methodology to craft a brand mark. So here we have my rough sketch. Once again, I didn't bother to draw this perfectly, 'cause I knew I could take, in this case, three circles and a rectangle to make the content that I'm trying to pull off here. I'm going to select these two circles and go to intersect 'em. Pathfinder, select the circle and rectangle. Go unite, then select the leaf and this stem, and go unite again. That's how easy it can be. So if you can think in shapes, it's going to greatly assist your building efforts. We're going to turn on this layer. And now we're going to work out the cloud aspect of our concept. And once again, it's just circles. And then I've oft said it, the same width going out to create this wi-fi signal, if you were. So I can take this top circle, take this second circle, and we're going to essentially just punch it through using my niche shape on Pathfinder. And just so you can see what's goin' on, let's go ahead and select these and fill 'em with blue. So you can see all we're doing is creating this wi-fi looking type graphic. We're going to select all these circles, unite 'em with Pathfinder like this. And once again, when you unite with Pathfinder, notice it turns it into a group. So you'll want to go to Object, Compound, Make. I have F7. So whenever you see me create a compound, I don't go to this menu. I just hit F7. Creates a compound. I can select this rectangle shape, intersect it, and now we have all of our wi-fi graphics done. We'll keep moving forward here, and we'll go down. We're going to turn on the grapes! So once again, I'm going to take this first offset of this central grape here. I'm going to clone this, command + C, command + F. And I just want to trim the bottom part of our stem here, like that, so it's consistent. Then I will select these three offsets of our circles here. I'll unite 'em to create a shape. Let's go ahead and fill this with this color so you can see what's going on. Then I'm going to select these two grapes down here. And I'm just going to trim 'em with Pathfinder here like this to get this shape. Then I'll select these two shapes, unite these. Once again, I'll fill it so you can see what's going on. Select this grape and trim that. So you can see how quickly it goes to build precision graphics if you just think in shapes. Now, with this grape, it's actually going to be a magnifying glass to give that clever association, with insight being provided because of the cloud monitoring the progress of the grapes being grown. We'll unite these to form that. That's also going to play a part moving forward. As you see with these design samples here is, let's go ahead and zoom out so you can actually see 'em. And you can see the concept we just built is in the bottom left. And then I built the other three directions, along with other directions I'm not even showing here, to present to the client. And that brings us to the next stage, which is Presentation, and I like to use what I call close to final comps. So when I present ideas, this is usually how I present 'em. I give 'em both a vertical, horizontal layout and show them how it would work in a simplified format, like one color on a dark background, just so they understand how this is going to live in context. Sometimes, depending on who the client is, I might mock it up on something, like a van, or a sign, et cetera, just to sell the concept a little more. In this case, the client settled on these two, and you couldn't make up his mind. Now, the next stage I'm bring up not because it's an official part of the creative process. Usually after a client picks a direction, I will make micro-refinements that the client would never notice but I would. And this is the case here. So these are the two. He is trying to make up his mind. I suggested that he should go with the second one, here. And then I notice something, and that is my detail was wrong. So this was the design that I had presented, and I like it. But I noticed that somehow, in the process of creating, I wasn't paying attention to my details, and the negative space is actually not aligning in the wi-fi with the grapes down here. It was too wide in the wi-fi. Once again, my client would never notice this, ever. But I do, and that's all that matters! We're designers, we should notice when we have inconsistencies like this and fix 'em. So I went ahead and fixed this. And ironically, I didn't notice this until I put this presentation together. So I had to go back and redo all my brown files. So yes, I screw up in the real world like that. It looks a lot better if you look at this and compare it to the other one. I even made a change to the leaf, as you can see. I diminished it just a little bit. So once again, client would never notice this, but I do. And that's why you need to pay attention to the details. Now, I'll set up what the next stage is, a style guide! So I set up simplified style guides. I don't do this for add agencies, this is just for small business. Give 'em CMYK, spot, black and white, and also reverse. So if you want to know more about this, make sure to check out my logo course. I go over it more exhaustivly. And then Design in the Wild. This is when your logo gets out there and it starts being used. Now, the logo that I just walked you through, I developed for this company called Fidelis Greens. I branded them a couple years back. So the parent company is Fidelis, and this is their first technology service that they're creating to provide to the viticultural industry. And it's really exciting to work with a client like this, and I look forward to see where they go with their identity moving forward. Now, logo design is far more than using digital tools in creating vector art. The hardest part of the process is the thinking, to arrive at a clever idea that's going to translate to a visual design well. For more information regarding logo development, watch my Learning Logo Design and Logo Design: Illustrating Logo Marks courses. Thank you for watching DVG Lab. And until next time, never stop drawing.

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