Modular brand logos - Illustrator Tutorial

- [Instructor] In my Learning Logo Design course, I state that a logo is not a brand. It's the capstone and the arch of any brand. It's a key identifier to the company, product, or service that will never tell the full story, nor should it. In this movie, we're gonna take a look at the most flexible logo format, in my opinion, that you can create with for an identity system. So let's get started. So we're gonna go over specifically a format that I would say about a 95% of all the logo projects I work on, all the brand-centric projects I work on, that is, I use what I call a modular brand logo. And this is what you see right here. Everything's centered and aligns from the center point, but you have the logo mark, the name, whatever the name of the company would be, and maybe a subhead or a subtitle that falls underneath it. This can also be carried forward modularly in a horizontal format. So you might have the logo mark and then the name runs off to the right and then it's flushed right in terms of the lining, a subhead, or a byline under the name of the company. You can also flip it around where that logo is now running to the right of the name and the subhead and it will align and look like this. There's other alternate ways to align all these individual pieces of the modular system. And that's the beauty of a modular system, is that you can pull out the logo, the name, or drop off the subhead, and you don't have to worry about it overall affecting the motif itself. It's made to be kind of pulled apart to make usage easier in all the various forms. And we're gonna be showing you a lot of those moving forward. Here's a couple more alternate ways. Now, the bottom left one, you don't see that a whole lot, but it is a way you can pull off a modular design. There is actually a design I'm gonna show you here in just a second that kind of aligns with that, but it's not the most effective way, in my opinion. So these are definitely what I would call alternate formats. The bottom right is very useful, though. I do this all the time, where maybe I have limited real estate space within a given layout or a design, so I'll format a secondary usage of their identity that has the logo on the left. This can also work the other way, where the logo falls on the right. And the name is flushed left or if it's flipped with the logo on the other side, flushed right. And it makes the reduced space a little less than this one up here that's the full horizontal mark formation, whether it's this one or this one right here. So a lot of different ways you can format it. But the beauty of a modular system is you can take whatever mark you come up for your client or the business that you're creating an identity for. In this case, this was an exploration I created for a company called Slick Plan. And what they do is they develop software that allows people to collaborate via online web app and produce a website. And it makes the whole experience very enjoyable for all parties. Hence my concept of kind of a flowchart that makes a happy face. This specific design, they didn't move forward with it, but it's a good example of a modular system. So I usually start off by creating a mark like this and if I'm gonna compose this, then you know, I'll start figuring out how exactly I'm gonna do that. Actually, let's do this. I'll just make a copy of that, bring it over here. I'll make a copy of this and we'll bring this over here. And I'm gonna find the alignment. So I'll focus on this one, use the Align tool to align it. Now, not all the time, you'll wanna do a mathematical alignment. Sometimes, based off of the letter forms or the specific style of the typeface you're using, it might look better to not let perfect mathematical alignment work. You might want to move it one way or the other to visually balance it, even though mathematically, it wouldn't be correct. But in this case, the mathematical way of alignment is gonna work, so we'll make a copy of this. And so if I pull this one together, let's go ahead and focus on that and align it, this would be basically the vertical format of this. If I take this now and go down here, maybe I wanna make a horizontal format for this design. In this case, I would align it with something in the brand mark. So I'd go here and align it with that part in the brand mark, slide it over until it has a nice breathing room. I'd select this, select the type, focus on the main type, and align it to the right. And I'd pull something off like this. I usually group them together, so if I need to move them around on a layout, it doesn't mess up the tolerances I have set at this point. And so you can see how very quickly with a modular system like this, you can get a pretty cool alternate format. Whether it's vertical for some usages or horizontal, it's gonna make usage a whole lot easier if you kinda think this way from the very beginning. Now, I pointed out that alternate format for alignment and this is an alternate design. And this one, they didn't like either. But instead of being nested like the one previously in a circular shape, I pulled it out and they just didn't go for either of them. That's okay, that's part of the creative process. But as we move forward in this course, we're gonna focus primarily on two identity systems. And the first identity system is Tusk Industries. This will be something we move forward with and I'll show how to carry off all the various iterations of the brand system utilizing this very flexible modular system that's shown here. So the primary, I would consider this one, which is a vertical base design, everything's centered. And then I have secondary ones such as different formats, that is, it's not a secondary mark. But this one allows me to move the brand mark, the T with the tusk, over to the left and align the type to the right of it. Here's one where it's flipped, where the alignment has the brand mark on the right side. And then a secondary mark down below, which is the actual brand mark replacing the T in the name. So this is a very flexible system and you're gonna see this moving forward in a lot of different iterations. Here's the second one we're gonna be using as we move forward. This is Mosaic Interior Design. And it shows the primary design on the left, which is vertical. And you have a horizontal, these two are the same. The only difference, we flip the brand mark from the left to the right just to make flexibility of use easier. Nobody'd would look at any of these and think it's not the same company and that's really important to retain that brand family look and feel that all of these are gonna be utilized within all the various components of the system to pull it off and to retain continuity, which is very important. Now, when I approach any design project, I obviously do a lot of exploration. This was for a project for a financial investment company. They help companies set up retirement plans, that is, for individuals and for companies and their employees. And it's called Pace. And we renamed the company. It wasn't called that initially, so I helped them come up with a brand name. And we came up with the name Pace, with the idea of on-pace for retirement, that type of thing for branding. But these are all various brand marks I came up with. We settled on this and this would be the final iterations of their brand identity design. Now, both of these are more horizontal in their design and format and layout. And that's okay because it just didn't work well in a vertical format because of all the type that had to be in it to communicate what needed to be communicated. But these are gonna work great and you're gonna see more examples of how these flesh out moving forward. Now, I showed you previously the alternate format that isn't so useful and you don't see it a whole lot, but it does have its own context of use that works really well. And that is a format where it has the brand graphic in the middle with the name encapsulated on both sides like this. Now, this isn't as flexible as the other modular brand logos I was showing you. Yes, we can grab the brand mark and we can move it out, but it doesn't really make the rest of the design very useful. It really is dependent on one another's relationship in this whole motif. Looks great as is, but not quite as flexible as a modular logo should be, in my opinion. So the vast majority of logos that I create are gonna be utilizing the modular system. Now, I should point out that the Tusk and Mosaic designs that I just showed you are both fictional based entities I approach with the same real-world mindset that I do any branding project. But throughout this course, I'll be showcasing real client projects as well that utilize the methodologies I'm gonna be covering throughout this course. Now, like I said, the vast majority of logos that I work on with clients, I do so using a modular format. I prefer it because it's the easiest to make work in almost any context of use. Now, that said, there are always exceptions and I'm gonna be showing you those as well moving forward.