- A logo usually
communicates all the essence
of something in a very
short amount of time.
But I believe the more
abstract and unique it is,
the better chance it has of communicating.
(funky music)
Hi, I'm Mark Winn.
I'm a designer and a painter.
Today we're going to draw
a logo, and make a logo,
design a logo, conceive a logo.
We're going to create a logo.
(click)
(whoosh)
To start off with a
uniqueness about it is a goal.
Everybody wants to be in
their own little world
set apart from rest of the products,
and the people, and
everything around them.
I wanna find what it is about me
that I wanna say or put out there
that's recognizable, has a logo.
(whooshing)
I already have a logo for myself,
but I'm going to redesign
a logo for myself.
(click)
(whoosh)
Personal logo is going to
evolve, there's no way around it.
Now that I live in the woods,
(sirens)
not about the city anymore,
(birds chirping)
I'm not about that street scene,
I'm more about living in the redwoods.
(fun funky music)
(birds chirping)
Look at all the words associated,
and I look at all the
things that could be usable
in a concept way, and I write those down.
The old logo is just, you
know, pretty standard.
Now I'll modernize it into,
like, all these things here.
There's an owl that, as I work at night,
is constantly going hoo, hoo, hoo!
I want to work that into
my logo as it exists now.
(click)
(whoosh)
In the sketch phase, this
would go over the course of,
like, weeks, you may have
page after page after page
of different iterations
on what you want to do.
Something kind of moves you within it.
You're like, okay, those four,
from the 20 that you draw in pencil,
those four I can take to the computer.
There's a couple ways you can do that
if they're complex, and
there's really some subtleties,
and you nailed it with the pencil drawing.
You can take a photo with your phone,
and just put it on Adobe
Illustrator, and then trace it.
Or, what I do often is I
just redraw in Illustrator.
(funky electronic music)
K, we're gettin' somethin'.
Doesn't look too much like Batman.
Oh, very important to hit save.
Illustrator is so powerful,
and you can go through
alotta studies on one
style of one concept.
And so I usually blow that
out in a straight line.
I draw it from left to right, and I start
with the first concept logo I did.
And then I'm like oh, if I
made the eyes more glowly.
So I go to the next one
and I fix just that aspect.
I'm like oh, the shape is kinda clunky.
So then I go to the next one, I fix that.
And so there's kind of that
Darwin evolutionary process
of where I was as I go,
and you can always go back.
And that's the beautiful thing
about the digital age, you know.
You can go back and like,
oh, this part I like still.
So you just take and steal that part
and put it with this part,
and then you can start
Frankensteining the pieces of it
(funky jazzy music)
'til you get to the end,
to where you kinda like it.
And somewhere in there I
kinda add colors sometimes.
And then I take it out and I just do
black and white or I do grey scale.
I work that out all the way through
to where I'm exhausted on that logo.
I just don't want to look anymore.
It's horrible.
Then I go to the next concept
and I work that one through.
It's easier to start with a typeface,
and then outline that
typeface with the computer,
and then adapt and make
it something your own.
Illustrator has a ton a
tools that will help you.
You can take a straight drawing
of this and turn it into,
you know, that.
It's gonna be symmetrical, so just draw
one side and then flip it.
(clicking)
Now fix the wings, refine the things.
You can spend days.
Sometimes I just sit on it.
I look at it for a while,
then I come back to it.
So, the one last thing I'd say
is that looks great on its own,
but let's think about what
we would do to put it in a shape.
So we could put it in a circle,
you know, is that something that is going
to make your logo work better.
So you could always have white inside,
or whatever, to make it pop.
But I'm thinkin' more like you try
to make the shape more your own.
There is no right or wrong.
Everything is right.
There's only,
in the end, are you happy with it.
If you're doing it for yourself,
that's the only thing that matters.
Now go out there and create
a logo about yourself
and share it with KQED Art School.
I'm sorry, I can't say KQED. (laughing)
- [Man] (laughing)It's cool. It's fine.
- KQED Art School.
There. (laughing)
