Brief

Once you have watched the video tutorial in step 4 spend some time considering your own personal interests, character traits and even hobbies, think about what makes you unique? Use this information to start a brain storm and create three ideas for a brand that can be conveyed in a logotype. Then follow the tutorial to create your own unique logo type before applying it to a bottle of some kind. Try and include the process and the developed idea in your art board. Save as a PNG and upload.

Full Response

Reflection

Although I have enjoyed every assignment so far on the course, this one in particular stands out as my clear favourite so far. I think it’s partly because the task in itself encourages creativity, and partly because the tools on demonstration in the videos supporting the assignment were excellently introduced.

I am quite happy with my response because the end result came out better than the initial vision I had in my head (which almost never happens!) The aspect I am most pleased about however is that EVERYTHING in the images attached was created in Illustrator. Before attempting this assignment I would have used a number of different applications to achieve the desired effect.

Admittedly the quality isn’t as good as if I’d have used Photoshop or a proper 3D modelling application to create the bottle and do the mapping, but I am surprised just how far the tools in Illustrator have gotten for this kind of activity.

There were some frustrations however (which indicate there’s still room for improvement Adobe). First of all, because the artwork is contained within a symbol, I couldn’t seem to get it to automatically update when I made a change within the symbol. This meant I have to create a new symbol and reapply it – which also meant re-mapping it on the object.

The other issue I ran into was the fact there appeared to be a line running down the middle of the lathed shaped when my bottle went from profile to mesh. I feel this might be the way in which we shown how to draw the bottle profile initially. I think (can’t prove it now as don’t have access to Illustrator until tomorrow) there is no need to connect the bottom of the bottle profile to the top. This should still allow a 3D model to be ‘rotated’ but then the “core” in the middle shouldn’t be present. I think it’s a hardware issue where it draws the core above the exterior of the 3D model. I will investigate further and share what I discover on Twitter.

UPDATE: Yes the issue was caused by closing my shape. You might not always run into this but follow the instructions demonstrated in the 3D Process file below to see what I mean by ‘don’t close your shape’.

In terms of my response being appropriate for the brief… I think this is perhaps the first assignment where I’d slightly lost focus of what we were doing. The theme of brief is concentrate on Typography and branding/logos. My response does feature a carefully considered font (see Artboard.png for breakdown of fonts explored), but that’s about it. There isn’t really a logo, but I feel I have established a ‘brand aesthetic’… and I must also admit I don’t spend much time planning this (one quick paper sketch) but the idea was so inviting I just had to give it a go!

In terms of font choice, the product is for kids and parents buying it for their children, so it needs to look “fun”. That’s why I narrowed my search down to “hand-drawn” style fonts. I eventually selected one from Typekit that I thought was the most legible and most fun. I tried to generate as much contrast as I could between the logo text and the background so I placed it as white text over the red stripe of the lighthouse.

I really enjoyed creating my response to the task this week and have learnt a lot more about Illustrator. I now feel confident enough to start teaching beyond the basics.