How to design a logo - Part 3

            This is Part 3 of the series. To go to Part 2, click here. For Part 1, click here.


Digitize – Drawing: You will notice, just as you load everything up, that you don’t know where to start. That is pretty normal, and it does happen a lot initially, because you have just started converting your ideas from paper to pixel only recently.

            To get started, load up your image editing software (finally!), and make sure that you have a very high resolution for your canvas (atleast 3000 pixels each side). Start drawing/ tracing the whole of your logo by constantly referring to your sketch. If you have a scanner available, scan the paper and use it as reference.

 You will need to be familiar with the drawing tools of whatever software you are using, not only for shapes, but also lettering, in some cases. This is because, when we draw on paper first, we start fresh. Even if we have words or letters in our logo, we have to draw them out. If we start in software, we tend to use fonts for our lettering purposes. If not the system fonts, custom made fonts freely available off the internet. For formal logos, that may be fine, but for entertainment, definitely not!

            That does not mean that you have to start painstakingly drawing out each letter. You can use a font which resembles what you have sketched, and then modify that to match what you have sketched. Since you can edit your drawing rather freely on the computer, you will find that your logo takes on a much better look after you have completely drawn it out on screen.

             Last but not the least, don’t forget to save regularly!

NOTE: If your sketch is jittery, smooth it out in the software, unless you planned for jagged lines and jitters to be a part of your logo.

Digitize – Colours: Colours are the one thing most new logo makers can never decide on. After struggling with a few combinations, usually the logo is left black and white. To get out of this rut, you can use a colour scheme generator to aid you. Click here to go to one such generator. To use the colours you get, hover your mouse over the colour of your choice, and it should show a 6 character long hexadecimal code. Most image editing software have some way to input such a code to get the colour.

            To choose good colours, firstly, it should relate to the content of your logo. Unless you are planning a monochromatic logo, with different shades of the same colour, you will need believable colours. For Example, if your logo has leaves in it, you obviously will not colour them blue.

            That being said, if the logo has no realistic themes, but is composed of a lot of abstract shapes, you can use various colours from the scheme generator, and try playing around with which colour goes where.

Digitize – Background: No background. Yes, you read right, no background. A logo is something which is meant to be used on top of other things. It helps define a brand. Hence, it should not have a background of its own, but should be able to be used on different backgrounds, depending on the situation. If you add a background, it stops being a logo, and becomes an artwork. Leave it black, white, or transparent.

Digitize – Final Touches: After you have completed all these steps, zoom out to a full view, and look for any defects which are visible when you look at the whole image at once. Clean these up, and save your work. I would recommend saving the project file as well as exporting to an image format, as it would be useful if you have to make changes after getting feedback. For the image, I recommend the .png format, as it stores transparency values too.

            That’s it! You’re done! You are welcome to leave feedback in the comment section, or if you couldn’t understand any part of this post.

=]