Specialization in Hand-Drawn to Digital Branding Design

Introduction

There's something magnetic about a hand-drawn line—it feels alive. In this journey through design history and practice, you'll uncover how handmade visuals create emotional depth, evoke authenticity, and offer a powerful antidote to the cold precision of the digital age.

2m

Influences | Jon Contino

Influences in a design career can run deep, but I will share with you some of my favorite creative things that help get me going when I’m designing a brand identity.

5m

Influences | Aron Leah

Now, I will talk to you about the people, places, and activities that influence me as an illustrator and designer.

6m

Influences | Sagi Haviv

In this lesson, I want to share two of my favorite design pieces of all time. Tom Geismar and Ivan Chermayeff are the designers, but also my main influences. The two men worked together for sixty years. Working with both has afforded me a rare perspective on the duality of life and the magical relationship that opposites can sometimes have.

3m

Influences | Alex Aperios

Next, I will share my influences, the brands I love, and the reason I got into logo design in the first place.

6m

Influences | Steve Wolf

I want to share with you some of my biggest influences when it comes to design and typography. These influences have shaped the work I’ve made over the years and they continue to inspire me to evolve and grow as a designer to this day.

8m

Keep It Raw

Don’t be afraid to let your ideas loose. There are no bad ideas at this stage of the process.

11m

Market Research

Once you’ve got your raw ideas on paper, it’s time to start doing some research to see what else is out there.

6m

Mood Boards

Now that you have a better understanding of where you need to be, it’s time to get serious about fleshing out your project.

12m

Develop Your Thumbnails

Pick a handful of your favorite or most effective thumbnails and start expanding on them.

10m

Self-Editing

Analyze your drawings as you’re making them—Self-edit, combine ideas where possible, eliminate bad ideas, figure out if anything can be made better, use your imagination!

6m

Clean and Ink

INK!!! Pick your top final drawings and ink them up. This is the point where you will get them ready to be brought into the computer for digitizing.

16m

Import Your Drawings

Import your drawings into Photoshop either by scanning or by PSD export in an app like Procreate.

3m

Creating Vectors

Make any final cleanups that you might want to do before vectorizing. Then, bring your favorite drawings into Illustrator to vectorize them and trace them.

9m

Adjust Spacing

Adjust the spacing of your newly vectorized logo to make sure it’s just right.

13m

Finally, Color!

Experiment with color and decide on what seems like the best color combination for your logo and your upcoming brand.

13m

Sample Your Brand

Start pulling in photography, textures, etc to figure out how the brand looks in real-life scenarios to test out how it works as a real brand.

9m

Adding Elements

Add additional elements to your logo to help create the brand identity and decide if you want to add additional elements like illustrations, icons, patterns, or anything else that will extend the visual language of your brand.

7m

Mock-ups

Apply your visual elements to various items to display the strengths and weaknesses of the brand.

6m

Brand Guideline System

Now that you’ve developed a robust visual language for your brand identity, it’s time to compile them into a handy reference guide to make sure you’re using everything correctly.

14m

Illustrative Logo Design

In this lesson, I'll explain what I feel makes a good illustrative logo. I’ll talk about finding connections between line work and typography and how using specific creative methods can create a vibe.

5m

Warm-up Exercise

We'll now start working on a warm-up exercise to help with the process of developing an idea. We’ll focus on iteration and find different ways to combine and communicate ideas.

13m

Asking the Right Questions

Here is where I'll start working on my project. You'll see how I use a questionnaire to gather the right information from the client. This step is an important part of the process as the information you'll gather will help you create the right logo for your client.

8m

Word Mapping

Now that I've gathered enough information from talking with Nick, I'll start mind mapping these ideas so as to further develop the concept. You'll see how this exercise can help you find new adjectives and take you in the right direction for the design of the logo.

4m

Mood Board

The last stage in my research process is to create a mood board using the information gathered from the client and the mind map I've just created. The idea here is to find images that find a good representation of the message and the emotion that we’re trying to convey.

3m

Loose Sketches

The first step is to start sketching out ideas for the logo. How do you combine ideas from your mood board and take into account the information the client has given you? You'll see here how I go about doing this. The important thing to remember is that this should be a fun process!

18m

Refining Ideas

Based on the sketches I made, I'll choose the one I think suits the project best and start refining it. When doing this, it's important to remember all the keywords and adjectives gathered earlier. This will inform the visual aesthetic and tone of the design.

10m

Vectorising the Sketch

Here you'll see how I transfer the sketch into Adobe Illustrator and digitise it using the ‘Image Trace Tool’. Vector-based images are quite useful files to share with a client because they can be scaled to any size and retain the same quality.

3m

Colour and Typography

The last step in the design process is to lay out the logo alongside the typography and chosen colour. I'll explain how you can find the right colour and create a visual connection between the illustration and the typography.

10m

Brand Illustrations and Mock-ups

Your initial loose sketches still hold great value! Here we'll look at the different ways your brand illustrations can work on things like merch, social media or websites. Laying these up on mock-ups is a great way for your client to visualise the value of these illustrations.

5m

Finding Work

Now that the logo is complete, I’m going to backtrack a little bit and tell you about how I started out finding work as a freelancer. I’ll share my experience in going the extra mile and taking the odd risk or two. Hopefully, learning about my journey can help you with yours.

3m

What is a Designer?

What is really a designer? How many things do we have to be good at?

3m

The Responsibility of Expertise

It is important to have the sense you are an expert and think of yourself as an ideas person (always start from an idea). It is an attitude. Let's talk about this.

3m

What Is a Good Logo?

This lesson is an introduction to what is a good logo and misconceptions about logos. What is a good logo?

16m

Logotype vs. Symbol

In this lesson, I will explain the differences between a logotype and a symbol and when to use each of them, or both.

5m

Student Logos Analysis

In this lesson, I will make an analysis of a few logos that Domestika’s users have submitted.

12m

Choose Your Client

In this lesson, I want to encourage you to go out and find your client for the course project.

15m

Understand Your Client

To help you understand the client, I am going to introduce the Harvard University Press client and share the answers to the questions of the previous lesson they gave me.

11m

Concept Development

In this lesson, I want to help you move from this understanding of your client into the concept development. I will be showing some of the proposals we had for them.

16m

Refinement

Here I want to talk about the importance of refining the few sketches you have selected out of the pool of original sketches.

10m

Typography

A good symbol is nothing without typography. The name is the most meaningful thing about the logo. You can't change the name, you don’t choose the name, so you have to design the name with meaning.

5m

Applications

In this lesson, I will talk about the importance of the applications. I will guide you through how to do it by showing you examples of how we did this for Harvard University Press.

12m

How to Build the Case

Many people can design nice logos, but what separates good work from great work, is the logos to manage to see the light. Until now we have talked about design, now we are talking about the other element on the other side of the table, that is not completely under our control: the client. 60% of the time I invest in a project I dedicate it to build the case, let me explain why.

5m

Bringing the Client Along

In this lesson, I will share some final recommendations to approach a client when they don’t like the proposal.

18m

Intro to Logo Design: Rules and How to Break Them

In this lesson, I will give an overview of the software and tools that will be used to prepare the practical parts of this course. I will also introduce you to the elements that make a great logo, the logo design principles, and the rules that can be broken and why.

15m

Discovery Meeting and Brief

Next, I will go through what a discovery meeting is and why it's important in building trust and getting to know the client better.

11m

The Research

Now that we know what the client wants and understand the client brief, it's time to begin the research process and collect visual inspiration for future reference.

8m

The Mood Board

With the brief clear and the background research complete, the next step is to gather your research together to develop a mood board. Let me show you how to do this!

7m

Sketching

Now that the preparation is complete – the client research and the mood board – it's time to get started on the more practical steps like sketching out your ideas.

19m

Starting in Illustrator 1

In this lesson, I will model how to transform simple sketches into high-quality vectors using Adobe Illustrator.

18m

Starting in Illustrator 2

Here, I will continue to demonstrate how to build a simple sketch in Adobe Illustrator.

15m

Selecting the Final Logos for Presentation

Once you're happy with the final logo, the next stage is to prepare the presentation. In this lesson, I will give you tips and tricks on how to achieve this.

6m

Refining the Logos in Photoshop

To end this unit, you will learn how to give your logos some extra depth and personality by adding texture and roughness. This will enhance your logos to make them stand out.

6m

The Presentation

By now, your design should be near complete. In this lesson, I will show you how to finalize your work and prepare the final presentation.

9m

Presenting Your Work Online and Developing a Portfolio

Next, I will share some tips and tricks on how to upload your work online to attract clients.

9m

Mock-Ups

At this stage, you have already learnt how to place your logos on mock-ups. Now, I will provide some places to discover your own mock-ups to make your brand stand out.

7m

Principles of a Good Logo Design

In this lesson, I’m going to show you the principles that help constitute a successful logo. These principles act as the foundation for logo design and also as a reminder to have in the back of our minds as we start to design our logotype.

8m

The Basic Concepts and Anatomy of Typography Design

Now, I will go through the basic concepts and anatomy of typography design.

6m

Add Meaning into Your Logotype and Make It Relevant to Your Client’s Industry

In this lesson, you will learn about different ways you can incorporate meaning and style into the letters you create for your logotype. Adding meaning into your logotypes helps add another level of depth into the design.

5m

Knowing Which Letters to Customize for Your Logotype

Here, I will talk about which specific letters to look for when customizing type for your logo. I will also show you different variations that can be explored depending on the style of logo you are working with.

10m

My Creative Brief

First, I’ll be describing the project brief for the logotype I’ll be designing. Make sure you ask the client the right questions will help ensure that the design aligns with the brand and its intended audience.

11m

Getting Inspired and Sketching Your Ideas Out

In this lesson, you will learn about the benefits of sketching before designing. Sketching out your initial ideas on paper can help you achieve a final solution that can be used for the design phase.

9m

Executing Your Final Logotype Designs

Now, you will learn about executing your final logotype designs based on your sketches to ultimately craft your final design. You will see what I do as a base reference of how I execute logotypes in my design process.

19m

How to Evaluate Your Work and Make Small Adjustments to Refine

First, I will go over the importance of making a strong and polished presentation to help sell the work created for the client.

4m

Best Ways to Present Your Logotype Work to Clients

In this lesson, I will share the most important items to include in your presentation so that the client can visualize and understand the work you created.

13m

How to Share Your Work on Social Media and Design Portfolio Sites

Finally, I will discuss how to share your work on social media and design portfolio sites to build your online presence and attract potential clients.

5m