How to build a hand lettered logo in Adobe Illustrator
How to build a hand lettered logo in Adobe Illustrator
The purpose of a logo is to communicate clearly and quickly to the viewer what your company does, what your values are, and what the identity of your brand is. This can be achieved through icons, logotypes, combination marks, or hand lettering. Hand lettering might not be the best option for your logo, but the reason it is an effective solution for some companies and brands is because of its innate sense of communication. The letters become shapes and elements of a larger composition rather than sections of a word. If graphic design is visual communication, then lettering is building a shape, style, and a composition out of the literal communication of the word you are building. This is an effective solution for brands like the one I built here, which incorporates multiple elements.
Jacob Zablowski Marketing Manager, Jabos Ace
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Here’s a helpful guide if you want to jump around:
0:02 – Import scan of logo sketch
0:08 – Vectorize “Cove”
4:43 – Vectorize “Gifts”
14:51 – Explore font options for “Home . Fashion . More”
15:16 – Explore font options for “The”
15:39 – Adjust spacing
19:06 – Scan in hand lettered “The”
19:29 – Vectorize hand lettered “The”
24:12 – Adjust serifs on “Gifts”
25:47 – Adjust spacing
26:16 – Adjust kerning of “Gifts”
27:10 – Final tweaks
28:15 – Check negative spaces
28:54 – Import to Photoshop and add a texture mask
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HELPFUL TIP: In Illustrator, I like to work on a very large artboard (I think this was 30″x30″) when working on type so that I can control the anchor points and bezier curves with more accuracy while using the nudge tool (aka arrows on my keyboard). The larger the artboard, the smaller the nudge.
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