How To Design A logo

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Promote yourself shamelessly with a personalized designer logo.

Adobe Illustrator can make an artist out of us all! Join us for this series of videos and discover how simple it is to create a personalized logo using vector based images, which can scale to any size without losing quality. We’ll lay the building blocks for your logo in this first video by drawing some basic shapes in Illustrator. And if you need any help ask us anything in our tutorial forum.

Set up a new document (0:23); Draw shapes (1:08)

Manipulate shapes like a pro.

See how easy it is to use the tools available in Illustrator to tweak the shapes you just created to get them looking exactly how you want them to look for your logo.

Unite shapes (0:15); Direct Selection tool (1:00)

Coloring graphics is a snap.

Fine tune the coloring and shading of the shapes you just created as you get familiar with the color and gradient tool options available in Illustrator.

Manipulate colors (0:06); The Gradient tool (0:33)

Don't look now, but you've already drawn your logo.

If you thought drawing and coloring shapes was easy, wait until you see how easy it is to add and edit pre-defined shapes to your design using the symbols library available in Illustrator. With just a few clicks you’ll see how simple it is to bring your logo to life!

Add symbols (0:20); The Layers panel (1:40)

More magic with symbols.

Now that you have all of your symbols in place, see in this next video how editing your symbols is as easy as editing your shapes as your logo starts to come to life.

Edit symbols (0:14); Direct selction tool (0:36)

Spicing up your design with effects.

No design is complete without adding in some slick effects and your logo is no exception. Finish off your design by adding in a nice drop-shadow effect with a few clicks.

Apply effects (0:04); Add a drop shadow (0:30)

And the final touch...

And finally, personalize the logo and make it your own by adding your name as text to the final design. Now get out there and use this logo to market those newly minted design skills!

Lock & add layers (0:15); Add text (0:40); Style text (2:26)

Let us know what you think

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More on this topic

• Selecting colors
• Editing paths
• Symbol tools and symbol sets

 

Paul Trani

Paul is an award-winning designer, an Adobe Certified Instructor, and a courseware developer with 15 years of experience. A writer and prolific trainer, Paul has earned top author status atLynda.com and has created a steady stream of content for AdobeTV and Creative Cloud Learn as well as paultrani.com.