[Illustration] Jorge Restrepo, www.wonksite.

com

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Freelance design studio THINKDUST shows you how to create a
one-colour logotype that has a contemporary yet classic look…
W
hen it comes to brand identity, Thinkdust has always
stepped away from the corporate style. Creating
brands can be rewarding work, and an open brief
gives you the opportunity to experiment and get fully
creative. The most important aspect of brand identity is how it speaks
to its target market, so you should always be asking yourself, does the
identity reflect the company’s output, attitude and message?
The following tutorial will help you understand the process of
designing a brand identity, working with shapes and using your head to
see what is effective and what isn’t. When creating a new identity, you
should bear in mind that attention to detail is everything, and you need
to focus on letter spacing, overall balance, and form.
CAP107.tut_logo 29
Tutorial
We recommend using a grid for your identity design work, even if
this is just a set of rough guides. A grid keeps everything tidy and tight,
and also helps you add the final polish to your identity. Practise with
techniques such as using the Pen tool, creating curves, and taking
existing typefaces and recreating them in unique ways.
This kind of design work can sometimes be frustrating – if you’re
struggling to get results, take a break for ten minutes, refresh your mind
and then re-focus on the job in hand.
Expertise provided by Thinkdust. Find out
more at www.thinkdust.com or on page 35.
February 2008 | 29
9/1/08 15:06:45
 Part 1: The ideas stage
Sketch out some rough ideas and set up a document in FreeHand

2 Open FreeHand or Illustrator, whichever is your preferred program.

For brand identity projects we find that FreeHand offers us all the
flexibility we need.

1 Start by getting your sketchbook out and spending a couple of hours experimenting with
the word or words you have for the logo – in this case, the word ‘project’. Try to let
anything – and as much as possible – influence you as you sketch. Within these sketches you
need to look at the letters in terms of the overall identity you’re trying to achieve, and then
play around with shapes to generate some solid ideas.

Inspiration
Spend time
researching the
latest fonts. Visit
typography sites
such as www.
t26.com and
www.identikal.
com. From
these, you can
draw inspiration
and get a basic
understanding
of what’s
possible. It’s
good practice to
see what others
are doing and
think about how
you could
3 Having spent time sketching out your ideas, choose one that you
want to take through to completion. For this project, we will work
with a circles theme. Turn on your rulers (Ctrl/Cmnd+R) and lay out 4 Once you’ve drawn your circle, you need to start to work on
generating a custom look and feel for the identity. For this, convert
improve on
some rough guides to keep everything tidy. Then create a circle using the your circle to paths in FreeHand (Ctrl/Cmnd+Shift+G) – this will give
what’s out there.
Shape tool within the Tools palette. you an outline to play with.

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 Part 2: Get the look Keep at it
One of the best
Chop up your letters to get the right look and feel for your logo things you can
do as a designer
is practise. The
harder you work,
and the more
time you put
into creating an
identity, the
stronger it will
become. Great
design comes
as a result of
commitment,
hard work and
drive. Motivation
can sometimes
be low, but you
have to find

2 Now you can see where the identity is going in terms of look and feel.
A couple of good ways to keep it tight is by cloning the original ‘p’
ways of re-
energising

1 Once the circle is editable you can chop it up, something we’ll be
doing with almost all the characters for our ‘project’ logo. Slice the
circle at two specific points to allow alterations for generating the letter ‘p’.
and tweaking that for the letters throughout the word. This is done for the
letter ‘r’ by slicing the ‘p’ on the second grid line down to create an ‘r’
shape. Add a flourish similar to the style of the original ‘p’. Don’t worry
yourself, keeping
fresh, and
breaking the
mould. Never
Once this is done, change the weight of the line to 28.35, and copy the ‘p’ about the kerning or overall grid for now, because that’s something that
give up.
as shown using a couple of new guides. can be tightened up at the end.

3 The next letter is straightforward. For the ‘o’, go through the same
method as used in the first few steps. Create another circle of the
same size and then Convert to Paths, making sure the line weight is the
4 When creating identity work, it’s always good to look at re-using what you already have.
It saves time and it keeps the final piece nice and tight. So, looking at what we have now,
you’ll see that the ‘r’ can be transformed into the ‘j’ with one simple adjustment – clone the
same as the two letters you already have. letter ‘r’ (Ctrl/Cmnd+Shift+D) and rotate it 180 degrees. That’s your ‘j’ sorted.

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 Part 3: Modifying letters
Continue to re-use your letterforms to create the whole logo

1 You can now see the basic overall shape that the identity will take. We continue in this
vein with the letter ‘e’, by modifying the letter ‘o’. Clone the ‘o’ and take it to the position
where the ‘e’ will sit. Using the same method as before, take the Slice tool and cut a quarter of
the shape away from the bottom-right corner. 2 Next, move on to the letter ‘c’. First, clone the letter ‘e’ and rotate this
to reveal the shape of the ‘c’.

3 Once the letter ‘c’ is in place, make a cut at the very bottom centre in
order to create a straight horizontal line.

Find your niche

Find a way of working which suits you. If you feel you have a specific skill in a
certain area, such as identity design, run with that. Find ways of developing and
driving new projects to become stronger, unique and creative. You can draw
inspiration for great ideas from anywhere – it’s purely a case of opening up your
mind to all the possibilities. 4 After making the cut in the ‘c’, extend the horizontal bottom line. This extension will join
on to the remaining letter, which is a nice way of starting to create a flow within the logo.
We’ll come back to this in the remaining steps.

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 5 Now we’re left with just the letter ‘t’. For this, clone the letter ‘j’ and
drag this into the last character place. You may notice we’ve gone off
the grid at this point, but don’t worry about that for now.
6 Flip the cloned letter ‘j’ by 90 degrees using the Transform tool (Modify>Transform>
Reflect). Simply enter 90 degrees as the Reflect Axis value in the Transform palette.
This produces the letter ‘t’.

Part 4: Pulling it all together

Join up your letters to create a seamless and stylish one-colour logo

1 Once you’ve created the foundations of your logo, you need to

concentrate on making it tight. Drag the letter ‘t’ over to the left a
little so the horizontal line of the ‘c’ joins with the baseline of the ‘t’.
2 If your identity is hanging off the side of the page like ours is, drag the vertical guide left
a bit. Select all the letters and align them to the adjusted guide, so that everything fits
back into your working area.

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 Pulling it all together, continued…

4 Repeat the previous step for each letter, ensuring you nudge each
letter four times into the preceding one. What we’re trying to
achieve is a flow within the logo, so make sure all the letters meet
perfectly. You’ll see from the screenshot above that the letters ‘o’ and ‘j’

3 Align the letter ‘r’ so it perfectly meets the edge of the letter ‘p’. Once you’ve done this,
select the ‘r’ and nudge this left four times using the right arrow (without Shift selected).
This is the first step to creating a flow for your identity.
flow nicely into each other, with equal negative spacing throughout.
Zoom in to around 600% to make sure everything is absolutely spot on,
and none of the letters’ edges are showing.

5 Now repeat the previous step throughout the

whole logo so that all the other letters join
together perfectly. Continue working on your logo 6 Finish your logo by spending at least ten minutes making sure all the spacing is correct, so that everything
either meets another letter perfectly or is nudged exactly the same distance as the rest of the letters. Once
until everything’s looking nice and tidy. this is done and you’re happy with the finer details, you’ll have your final identity. ca p

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 Expert profile: Alex Haigh/Thinkdust
Nottingham-based design studio producing work in a diverse range of creative disciplines…

BACKGROUND:
Alex Haigh set up Thinkdust while working in dead-end print jobs
before landing a position at London agency Mook. After just nine
months at Mook working for clients such as PlayStation, Nike and
Mars, he joined Tribal DDB as a freelance designer.
“Tribal was brilliant,” says Haigh. “I worked with some of
London’s best creatives including creative director Andrew
Ferguson, an ex-AKQA key member for over nine years. At Tribal
I created over 110 pages for the new Volkswagen global site and
worked solidly for three months.”
Haigh recently left Tribal to concentrate on developing
Thinkdust. This independent studio based in Nottingham gears its
output across a diverse range of media including identity work,
design for print, and digital projects.

WHAT MAKES THE PERFECT LOGO?

“Creativity. A unique approach and something that speaks to the
target audience in an identifiable manner,” says Haigh.

WEBSITE:
www.thinkdust.com

ABOVE: Front page for a seasonal catalogue for Glo, a

French fashion brand.

LEFT: A full set of identities created by Thinkdust,

including a Ministry of Sound flyer for the Milkshake night.

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