Creating the Logo

The first step is to create the logo. It's best to create logos in Illustrator because vector art is scalable to any size. It's also easier to repurpose the art for print or Web use, as well as to easily apply spot colors, if necessary.

The logo you're going to create for Sunflowers will consist of a type treatment and an illustration. Launch Adobe Illustrator CS2 and create a new CMYK document.

Choose a Typeface

Choosing a typeface is obviously one of the most important parts of designing a logo. Although it might be fun trying to find a totally cool and unique font to use, remember that a logo has to be clear and readable. It's not just by coincidence that so many logos are set in fonts such as Helvetica or Garamond. You can always add little tweaks to the type afterward to give it a unique look, if necessary.

Press T to select the Type tool and set the words SUNFLOWERS. TRy applying different fonts to the type to get the look you want (see Figure 12.3). I chose Lithos Pro Regular because I think it gives a clean yet fun look.

Figure 12.3. I usually stack different type treatments and then eliminate the ones that don't work, leaving me with a choice few to make a final decision.

Change the type size to 18 point and set the tracking amount to 680. Turn on Illustrator's Optical Kerning as well (see Figure 12.4); letters spread out in this way evoke a feeling of freedom and open spaces, and will work well with the illustration you're going to be adding.

Figure 12.4. Setting the tracking and the kerning so that the characters look better as a unit.

Next you'll want to convert the text to outlines. This is usually a good idea with a logo, making it easier to send the logo to others without worrying about fonts. The last thing you would want is to have your logo look completely different just because the person who opened it on her computer didn't have your exact font. To convert the text to outlines, choose Type, Create Outlines. The typography part of the logo is now complete.

Create an Illustration

To add a graphic element to the logo, you can create an illustration that can quickly help identify what Sunflowers does or represents. Because the company name is a flower and represents sunshine and nature, here you'll create the image of a sunflower. Rather than attempt to actually draw a sunflower, you'll employ Illustrator's Live Trace feature to help create a realistic illustration that will surely draw attention. Remember that because you're creating this in Illustrator, it will be easy to repurpose this design element for other needs.

Did you Know?

It's always a good idea to plan your art in advance and try to anticipate ways it will be usedand build it to work for all uses. You never know where or when the art might be needed.

You'll actually be creating three sunflowers, to connect with the three words in Sunflower's tag line. First, you will place an image into Illustrator to work with. Choose File, Place, and navigate to the folder of images and locate the file ks16833.tif, which is a photograph of a sunflower (see Figure 12.5). The image, as it appears in your document, is too big for your needs here. With the image still selected, double-click the Scale tool, enter a value of 20% in the Uniform field, and click OK (see Figure 12.6).

Figure 12.5. The image of the sunflower.

Figure 12.6. Scaling the placed image.

Now you'll create two more copies of the sunflower. With the image still selected, double-click on the Selection tool, which brings up the Move dialog box. Enter a value of 1.0625 for Distance and 0 for Angle, and click on the Copy button (see Figure 12.7). Then press Command+D (Ctrl+D) to duplicate the last transformation, which gives you three sunflowers (see Figure 12.8).

Figure 12.7. Moving a copy of the sunflower.

Figure 12.8. The three sunflowers.

Using raster images in a logo is usually not a great idea because if the logo needs to be scaled up in size, you will lose resolution and detail. The Live Trace feature in Illustrator enables you to convert this pixel-based image into a vector-based image and also enables you to customize the look of each sunflower. Select all three images, click on the Tracing Presets and Options icon in the Control palette, and choose the preset named Color 6 (see Figure 12.9).

Figure 12.9. Applying the Color 6 Live Trace preset to the sunflower images.

The result of the Live Trace is a more stylized image because of the posterization that occurred as a result of the tracing the reduction to six colors. You will now change the appearance of each sunflower to be slightly different by using different colors from several different custom swatch palettes. Choose Open Swatch Library from the Swatches palette menu (see Figure 12.10), and open the Earthtones library. Use the same process to also open the Jeweltones and Tiki libraries as well. Now that the libraries are open in your document, you can use these colors for your traced objects (see Figure 12.11).

Figure 12.10. Opening a custom swatch library from the Swatches palette.

Figure 12.11. The three custom Swatch libraries.

Select the sunflower on the far left and click on the Tracing Options icon in the Control palette to open the Tracing Options dialog box. In the Adjustments section of the dialog box, specify the Earthtones library in the Palette pop-up menu (see Figure 12.12) and then click on the Trace button. Now select the second sunflower and use the same method to apply the Jeweltones swatch library. Finally, select the third sunflower and apply the Tiki swatch library. You should now have three sunflowers that look the same but have different color schemes.

Figure 12.12. Changing the palette of colors in Live Trace to the Earthtones custom swatch palette.

Now you'll create a border by clicking once on the artboard with the Rectangle tool. Specify a width of 3.375 inches and a height of 2.125 inches, and press the D key to fill it white with a black stroke. Send it to the back of the stacking order and position it behind the sunflowers (see Figure 12.13). Then select the text you created earlier and position it below the sunflowers to complete the logo (see Figure 12.14).

Figure 12.13. Positioning the border behind the three sunflowers.

Figure 12.14. The completed logo.

Save the Logo

Choose File, Save and click on the Use Adobe Dialog button (if the button reads Use OS Dialog, then you're already using the Adobe dialog box). This dialog box gives you direct access to your Version Cue project. Navigate to the Sunflowers Version Cue project (start by clicking on the Version Cue icon listed on the left side of the dialog box) and save the file as a native Illustrator document (.ai), giving it a comment describing what it is (see Figure 12.15). If you have enough RAM, you can leave Illustrator running, but if your computer has less than 512MB of RAM, quit Illustrator so that you won't be slowed down when working in other applications.