The client wanted a logo that was elegant, modern and crisp, something that would appeal to higher end clients. The client wanted to see a blue ribbon incorporated into the logo.

We started out with a few sketches.

We illustrated those same sketches digitally, and made some minor changes.

Once we had the black and white samples done, we put a little color into them.

Our client liked the top left logo, but asked for some color changes as well as incorporating the ribbon into the hat.

Here’s the final logo the client chose.

Be sure to visit BlueRibbonSweets.com

The client wanted a logo that was professional but not stuffy, he was using a logo that was tall and not wide, he also wanted to change that and make a wide logo. He wanted to use one or two colors maximum in the final logo. The client really didn’t have much direction other than that and pretty much gave us free reign to produce the samples.

We started out with lots of rough sketches of cameras and camera related items.

We paid more attention to certain sketches and made some roughs of what we want the first round of logos to look like.

Once we created those digitally, this is how the first round came out.

Revision 1: The client liked the third logo sample, but first he wanted to see the words
Focal and Finesse separated by more than just a capital “F” we opted to add the second color and also make the type on “Finesse” italicized.

Revision 2: The client liked the color combination but he wanted to try a more playful type. He also wanted to add something to the camera to bring it together. We added the bar below the camera to give it a more defined look.

Revision 3: Our client asked to see a few more typefaces for the word Finesse, he also asked to see what the flash would look like if it were a little more rectangular.

Final logo: The client chose the 3rd logo as the final logo, we provided the logo in both color and black so that they client may easily also use the logo as a watermark.

1. Choose a font and color you like and type out your desired word.

2. Right click and create an outline of the text.

3.  Sheer text with the sheer tool if desired, we made ours look like the image below.

4. Add a gradient to your text, we used a black and white gradient with a 90 degree angle.

5. Make a duplicate of the text (while the text is selected an easy way to do this is to hold down alt then click and drag) and select the pen tool and draw a curved line over the duplicated text.

6. Select the text and curve and choose the DIVIDE option in the pathfinder, delete everything that was on the top portion of the curved line.

7. With both the partial text and original text selected, use the align tool and select VERTICAL ALIGN BOTTOM.

8. Make any additional adjustments to the gradients if required.

9. Add a stroke to the original text.

The finished product should have a glossy look such as above.

McDonalds‘ is just an arch of the first letter in the company name.  Microsoft is just a font of the company name.  Nike is a graphic depicting their representation of a swoosh.  Apple computer is a logo of an apple with a bite out of it.  As you can see, the logos are very simple, not a lot of color combinations, etc..  It may be best to keep your logo with this “simplicity is the key” mind set in designing your logo.

There are a few things you should pay attention to when designing your website, pertaining to the type. Contrast should be a big part of the typeography, you want something easy to read and somethign that’s easy on the eyes. You can never go wrong with black type on a white background, though white on black may be a little more diffcult to read for long blocks of text. Black and white are ideal though they might not always work for your site, so be sure to pick colors that compliment each other and are easy to read.

Space is also important, it’s good to have a balance on a page, you don’t want to clutter the page with too much text when  you’re designing. Though it’s also important to have a good sized text, whether the text be too big or too small, this could be a problem. You want to keep any body of text at about a 12 pt, that’s an easy size to read for most people, but obviously you might want to have your headlines at a bigger size. Generally people are going to skim a site until they read a headline that grabs their attention, so it important to differentiate the body from the headlines.

Following those general rules should help with your site, though the true test is you or someone with a keen eye check it out to make sure it looks good.