Final Draft Logo

Future Cougars Embracing Diversity gave me so much inspiration for the Photoshop project that I decided to use it for this one, as well. For my Illustrator logo design, I chose to use the acronym for Future Cougars Embracing Diversity, FCED. FCED is how all counselors and admissions staff, and most prospective students identify Future Cougars Embracing Diversity, since the full name can be a mouthful. I started to choose my topic by viewing all of the inspirational videos and articles posted in the course space and then writing down every topic I might consider creating a logo for. I started writing words, such as WSU, WSU recruitment, and WSU diversity, but I decided that anything specifically to do with WSU lettering wouldn’t leave me much room for creativity. WSU already has copyrighted text, and our department uses our own Communications designer to create print pieces and logos. I chose to use FCED, since it is a narrow topic and connects to my original work in this class, the Photoshop flyer.

 

To begin my logo design, I started sketching out ideas. I knew from the beginning that I wanted something simple with text. I sketched out various forms of FCED in different shapes and types of lettering. I was especially drawn to the blocky lettering that makes use of a lot of squares and rectangles. This type of design would also work perfectly with the acronym FCED, since it has four letters. The four right angles along with the four blocky letters creates a sense of similarity and cohesion. This also played well into my Photoshop flyer design, in which I focused on simplicity and minimalism.

 

After sketching my ideas and choosing my favorite designs, I started using Illustrator. I made my artboard the recommended size of 800x800px. I chose to follow the advice of graphic designer, Aaron Draplin, by copy and pasting every form of logo I create. I started by typing the text FCED in a blocky athletic-style font, Impact. I wanted the font to remind the audience of colleges and universities, since the logo is for an event for prospective college students. It is the same font as the one I used for the Photoshop project, which creates cohesion for my blog and the representation of this event. I copied and pasted the text and converted the new text to vector graphics, by using “Create Outlines.” This made it so that the text could easily be scaled and could be moved and changed as individual letters. On the recommendation of my professor, I added the text “Future Cougars Embracing Diversity” to my design, as well, so that people could identify the brand. In order for “Embracing” to not look so much larger than the other 3 words, I narrowed a few of the letters, so that the word would be shorter.

 

Once I could move all of the letters individually, I started widening the letters so that they would make a more square shape. I used the rectangle tool and the shift key to create a square shape. I used this as the outline for the logo. I wanted the stroke to be more interesting than plain black, so I changed it to a 2 point charcoal feather outline. I noticed that when scaling the logo to larger and smaller sizes, the new border I created stayed at 2 point. I had to use “Create Outlines” to make the border scalable.

 

I decided to make the newly wide, blocky letters multicolored. Because FCED is about diversity and promoting college as an option for all students, I used various shades of brown, cream, and pink to fill in the letters. I had to create new swatches for two of the colors, because I wanted a deeper brown and a pinkish-cream color. These colors represent the diverse students that the Future Cougars Embracing Diversity event is meant for. For my final design, I created more watches and added in a pop of color with a crimson/burgundy hue. The peach, black, and brown just wasn’t interesting enough. Other feedback I received about my first draft logo was in regard to the color of my border, which I chose to leave as is. I did lighten the brown color of one letter that seemed to clash with the border. I also used grid lines to make sure my letters were all close to each other, because that was an issue brought up by a few of my classmates. While I do not think my design is perfect, I believe that it is a good representation of my current skills with Illustrator. I hope to gain more skill with this program, because it is very applicable to my career path.