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Assignment 1: Analyze the Mark

I like to just do a little round robin you know as we get started here just to ask your name and maybe tell me a little bit about what you want out of this course started a a um I'm lex um I went to school for graft to sign and I currently work as a graphic designer I have always had an interest in typography and one of the things I've always struggled with is getting from paper to digital so that's what I'm great hoping to learn we will fix that today hi, my name is kim I'm a student here in san francisco I enjoy designing typefaces and and doing logo's and also with legs uh I'd like to learn howto tada manipulate letters like on the computer go from paper to digital great hi, my name is leah and I'm a freelance illustrator um I've always been interested in making my own front so I just want to learn more actually marina um I'm I guess a seasoned graphic designer um and just I think as you go on in the profession you end up working a lot with you know, typefaces that you you you end u...

p knowing so I'm looking to, you know, brush up my skills and expand my type horizon I mean, I'm always looking to prove myself and I've been in this for a long time so great great everyone so let's talk about our first assignment today way have to today and so for this when we're talking about word marks um in our brief that we have usually go over the brief this point um we have in our assignment our goal today is to, uh taken existing brown mark one like barbie or some of these that aaron are folders that we've we've given to um and the goal here is is to try to re conceptualize this brand just for the exercise of typography to get to know these letter forms that are so inherent to that brand and to come up with an idea that re purposes it and then tio redesign it using the characteristics of the type it's already there and put it back together so it has a new meaning for you ok? So when we're looking at the first thing you're going to do is go through a list of, uh, logos that we provided and what I want you to do is to start to think about ideas usually personal ideas because a lot of you will have uh you know, personal connection is a lot of these products or, you know, browns and oh started re stake of what they're actually saying in that brand mark but what I want you to do is try to focus on um not changing the first initial the first initial is there really really important indicator of that brand so like if we change the deion disney to in a we would never see it as disney anymore you guys got it yeah same thing with barbie if we change this tune to some completely different character that doesn't even look like a b set like if we made it appear would be somewhat close but we put an end there it's like way off right and the same thing that when you're looking at these low goes as concepts are rolling through your mind is also start to notice how they're constructed some will be slanted some will have curved baselines like this try to notice a lot of the details how close the characters are together like the whole thing is in curved here it's just the top so you wantto kind of soak all that all that stuff in it what's been designed they're okay what kind of characters are being used are there you know sometimes there's repeat characters because when I when I d'oh a brand mark like this it's I always try to analyze how involved is it going to be if you're doing something where you're making type of guitar that's obviously very illustrative okay you want to know if the if the brand is starting out with a thai face like this but then they changed a couple of them if it's very subtle right? Because a lot of brand marks are developed from existing typefaces but then they're suddenly changed just a little bit fedex is one of those right? So in order to rebuild characters that aren't there like when you're rolling through concepts, you want to see what characters you can use to make another character like if you had to have a peon here let's say you could probably do it pretty quickly based on how these characters four characters look similar, so when you you also wanted to talk to count where I'm what you also want to look at us toe if you are creating new characters where are they in the brand mark? Are they up towards the front or the back and what I always do? First thing I do when I have a request for a brand mark is of course asked the name, but I also want to know how it's built because I want to know how many characters are I'm a big numbers guy, so I always count everything because if I have a brand mark with seven characters, I mean we have a character in the middle and then three on each side, so I want to know that going in. So in order to find an idea conceptually for this for this assignment, everyone try to keep an open mind just let just let things run through your mind as you're looking at the brown marks try to try to not use preconceived ideas like if you're trying to force an idea usually I've learned that if it doesn't happen in three seconds move on right um I was also tied in the beginning if before after one mark I usually triple or quadruple the number that I'm looking for when we're talking about ideas so I'm gonna be working alongside you on this project so I'm going to be looking for at least, uh like a half a dozen ideas because I know I'm going to have good ones and bad ones and then I'll make a cut hey uh small conceptual news for this one so just like the barbie example we're talking about before, I'm only concerned about maybe the last half of the brand mark because I know that the first half of the brand mark has to stand talked okay? Um and of course the best ones always use who here in this exercise that's why, what makes this project fund for my students is that they can really, you know, put their own personality on it so real quick I'll take you through how an example of analyzing a mark like ben and jerry's we're looking at uneven edges I see the characters or not doesn't have um all the roman characteristics in the typeface that we normally would see everything's on an arc here it has some some custom finney als in terminals right like these aren't cornered straight cornered edges on the turn on the syrups okay and we don't know if this was based on an actual tie face and then modified but it looks like there's a lot of custom characters in here so ben and jerry's in order to kept conceptualizing find uh an idea here here's a little example of the train of thought you make me try and use um for me I thought two guys that make ice cream from vermont the obvious right uh started to think about what happens when you eat too much ice cream right who gets sick it's high quality milk comes from dairy cows and putting all that altogether a possibility might be penned in peril ease right so bending hurley's going from actually uh the original here this is what I'd like to do for the assignment today is toe when you're doing brand marks especially if you're doing a refresh like we're kind of doing you always want to compare to the original to see if the characteristics are still there as far as the bend because now the word is that the word markets got longer bryant so it has more of an arc and uh we want to make sure that our our current ing is is appropriate and that thea you know the rhythm is still there between characters so some design tips here so we want to first start looking through the folder not again I'll do that along with you consider different ideas just try to get like, anywhere from three to six if you can and try to keep in mind you wantto uh definitely keep the initial character but maybe even the first three and you want to mentally kind of dismantle everything of how it's going to be built you always want to see how it's going to be built if you're considering an idea okay and what's for dunn conceptualizing we actually pick a direction for you where we'll print out the mark and we'll go into our sketch mode and planning how it's going to be redesigned uh we've got some tracing paper that we can use and we'll we'll be drawing new characters on top too, you know designed each new character that's needed and then we'll import your sketches and get them digitizing will start working on the illustrator on top of that we want tio I want to show you how to get everything on a on a small grid for the baseline uh exciting the capital from the market I'll show you how to do that and organize your file in a way where it's done in layers so you keep everything straight if necessary so everyone have their their assets holding what you want to look for is sure uh mark my word logos and so in order to conceptualize what I'm going to d'oh it's just roll through and look at these to see if anything clicks in my mind you know and jot it down to see what the possibilities are so for instance all I'll just started the top here you know what? I'm going to start the bottom because most people will start at the top so I'm thinking of ideas for these, right? And if I can see some of these like youtube, I can't see a lot of these well, they're they're still coming in there we'll start back up here so activision right? I start to think about what activision does does anybody know what they do any games? Video games, right? Um so what do you do when you're playing video games? You're usually sitting on the couch in your hand control are kind of a thing so in activision, maybe something like that. But then again it starts with a nice sum maybe that might not work right acuras ah higher in car and you start to when you see these war marks you start to, you know words start to enter your mind too, because I immediately when I see accurate think of accurate for some reason ok, maybe that's the the brand direction naming of that vehicle was for precision let's say uh advil, I'm sure there's lots of ideas there all of us have taken had ville uh, so I'm just going through this list to see if anything you know, strikes my mind personally and just thinking we have some time to conceptualize here some of these branching mayor men I know michael. So people out there who are doing this at home and they're following along, they can kind of use any sort of word marks that they are a fan of anything that they've created themselves if they're following along here. Absolutely yeah, absolutely going to exercise this to just it's not really, in the conceptualization of this recon situation, the brand mark it's what we do after that, to the to the use of the characters and practice the fundamentals of typography in in all turning things on it with those characters, so can it doesn't have to be a mind blowing idea or anything like that just said something that makes sense to you. I know that a lot of people online that we have tuning in, we have a lot of photographers out there. Is this a situation where you can just go and maybe take a photo of something that you see that you want to work on and kind of just that? As a word mark something that you maybe see out in your typical day to day life and that's a great exercise to I used to do that this younger designer of just two practice updating word marks because you know there's a lot of them that you need help out there and it's just a good exercise for designer to keep his skills sharp that way you know, I tend to usually have lots of ideas on these things I'm curious to know our students here do you guys have sort of a database of ideas and word marks or things that logo's that you like that you keep track of? Have you been doing any of that? No no you know actually I don't do that at all but it's something maybe now that you are going to think about more yeah you're gonna be tainted now you're going to see brands ago thought that right everybody does have the folder going to the right yeah, some of these dot they don't come quickly to me as I'm going through just as an example you a lot in this folder here for these examples you know what's funny chris is that this is nothing yeah this's like justice is a tiny although yeah, exactly um it's amazing how many wonderful brand marks were out there you know, uh I put it sometimes just some come to mind come to my mind and I have to go see if I put it in here um also some I wanted tio alert you guys to some of these everybody has different abilities in here as far as how they have worked with type but also with the software. Okay, so um there's we try toe pick a wide range for some of you that are really experienced in the software and doing brand marks so some of these in here our, um like for instance we find it here we didn't put too many in here no, I didn't put it in there let's see like um juicy couture jose cuervo right these air block letter and you know, to do these um you know, a little bit warm out type if you take calligraphy or we're not before but some of these might be a little bit more challenging for you and uh, depending on who they are, this could be challenging to jimmy choo, so it just depends for you. You also want to try to just keep your own ability. You know, in check here if you don't want it to be too challenging uh for the us like, don't don't bite off more than you two is what I'm trying to say I have one here just clarify for the people out there who are following along at home these actual word mark files these don't come with our spp these air just sort of an example that michael is going through. But the good thing about this is that you confined files like this wherever you are. If you take, as we said, photos of logos and word marks that you see on a daily basis, you don't need these specific files and that brief that does come free with r s v p that gives you sort of the outline of how to do this exercise, then you can do it with files that you have on hand or files that you take your own photos of, you don't necessarily need these specific files, so don't get caught up on actually going through these particular ones. It can work with any files to already have on hand. Also for your concepts, guys, I'm not really drawing any letter forms or recreating the logo. I'm just writing down words for now, okay, I've always loved this brand mark plus I on the tool. So, uh tartar with the japanese knew it's interesting that you bring up the differences with a japanese name because, you know, we do have an international, a global audience online who come from all different countries, and you do see differences from country to country, right? You d'oh, and he offered this exercise again I would just keep it simple toe what you khun actually produce you know, um again some of these brands a lot some people may not be familiar with we try to cover a lot yeah, they have a lot of variety and yeah, we tried tio give a lot of different kinds of brands here in different industries you know, michael, we had a question that just came in from your kyle ghani have somebody vote on this but if you are trying to get some examples to work with, you know of any resource is or websites where people could could get some of these word marks that are already, you know, able to download so they can work with them a lot of my students if direct me towards brands of the world dot com brands of the world that you and I have to warn you the most of them are like a lot of these lovers to their their the um they're not the most up to date versions. So these might be the older versions that like now you'll see uh a refreshed browned but these these most of these are the older versions some of them are up to date, but I just have to warn you of that and a lot of a lot of these I did pick the older versions for the reason of this exercise of working with time so it is important that these b and e p s format yes for the process that we're doing, I would say so because you could probably do this in photo shop, but this is more of a job, this bill for illustrator adobe illustrator and those websites like brands in the world dot com you can download them and yes, format you should be able to download. I think they have different versions to their mostly ups. Yeah, excellent. Now you're going through this folder, cary is just to hear a little bit about your thought process like, what are you looking for? As you go through each of these as you're trying to find one that you may want to work with our they're sort of things that run through your head as you go through each one of these logo to these personally, I personally have a netflix account, right? But I'm one of those guys that doesn't watch a lot of tv. I haven't had cable tv in years, but for netflix, I'm kind of a binge watcher. So, uh, I have, you know, there's an idea it was used before that scene I thought of it again of, uh, maybe a possible solution here is next fix instead of netflix, I was on a binge watcher in here, um I have idea of, you know, the news to me is kind of more emotionally these days and and, uh, news is kind of skeptical leased it do we really know if it's news or not? You know, kind of a thing? So if I choose the second e in week two in a that's, another idea? Yeah, you're looking for a word to work with now, if you're just changing one letter events enough like a force to be a whole new word just along changes and that's enough and the way I've taught this is just changing one character is enough for you to deal with this faras a redesigned because there's so many characteristics in this brand mark as it is it's kind of unseen, just the closest of the characters themselves. Sure, the patient between the carriage is what you're gonna have to deal with when you tear it apart, put it back together again so that in and of itself it is a challenge. U s o on bats what you do with ideas like some of these will be more challenging for you, where you're changing half of the whole half of the word and then you're gonna have ideas like that we're just change one character, so you may not even use it the ideas there and again, if you're having a challenge with ideas don't sweat it too much because we can we can all share ideas and you know, use those ideas some of these are pretty difficult even for me being on the spot here yeah for me personally I've never found good ideas when uh I'm looking for him yeah, you know, like now it's like I can't even idea I need an idea, but, um most of my ideas come when I'm driving or it's in the back throws of my mind rather than the forefront of my mind I don't know if anybody has that experience but so this's quite difficult for me let's get an idea he's right here you when you're driving or in the shower do they don't come to you when you're under bright light? I want tio figures right? Mine doesn't want to do what we're supposed to d'oh oh, I know I had another one in here let's see? So I see that you guys were going through your computer's here are students here they're scrolling through these files as well and taking notes now I'm just curious what exactly are you guys doing as your process as you go through this anyone want to share what they're thinking? Yeah let's go ahead good really through the files we have here and seeing what brands I'm familiar with are most familiar with and uh kind of like thinking hey how can I make this clever or funny or what word kind of sounds like this where what can a change what letters can they change? Yeah right excellent so you're looking at that and you're kind of jotting down yeah jotting down samples words that come to my mind just trying to uh bolt through them get him down well happen to guys at the end of this kind of segment we will talk together on you know all our ideas would do another round table you know, just like a for me a typical design class of when your concept ing through everything on the table right? And at that point a lot of my students will go they'll get six more ideas and we do that because they trigger all these other things so yeah, I mean, I guess I'm curious to hear a little bit more on that. Do you feel that it does help a lot when you have the group mentality where you can kind of throw ideas out work off of each other is that absolutely is your future we're working on it? Thank you and faster yeah, absolutely absolute it's always better with well it's the more minds to better kind of idea right more minds are better than one so I'm curious like real quick how many I do see oh um just like take a number maybe seven or eight um me like five goodun travel like twenty days I've got around let's see ten here. I think I also have toe think when I get ideas like this, I have to think is it appropriate? Let's get that one, right? Oh, and some of these guys I want to bring up two there's. Another thing like sara lee here. You know, it's got ah, like a custom leg here on the elk, right. Um that's a key component of the brand mark. So you have to take that into consideration? Um, if I made that l a t and try to stress the tea all across the top it's probably going to be too much of a departure, you know, in the look of the brand. So you want to consider that too? You wantto really what you want to do is to recreate this in a way we're when uh and you guys have seen these marks before, where you have to take a double take you know where it's a way that's, not the video that's what you were after here is to get to be very subtle. I see you concentrating very, very hard on that one. Yeah, I have a good one there, yeah. Does it ever get overwhelming to have so many of them here? I mean, what is your twice yeah I mean, do you ever set sort of a cap for your folder like this where you only wants a one hundred examples has ever get to be overwhelming to have so many disc rolled through like this or is it always just better to have more that kind of strike an idea in your head? Well, if this were a real you know, real project in the office the more the better because in the process you want to have if you're starting out from scratch and it's not a reef fresh it's going to be a lengthier process with the clients so you want tio have more ideas the better and keep, you know, cutting things down until your whatever is closest to the brief in the direction of that point hopefully nails it and that's that's really what I would do when it's an exercise like this yeah would probably cut it at a dozen is enough, you know, kind of thing um depending on you know, I mean I could have ten year and one is really only good so um that depends I suppose. You know, I think now is a good time to remind people out there who as they're going through this as they're finding the word marks that really resonate with them they always have the option to upload to our student gallery section so that's a way for us to actually see the work that you guys are doing at home, so if you're falling along with these exercises and you have an example that you would love to share, you know, with us with your fellow people in the chat room, you're on the course page. You will see a button there over on the right to submit your work, and if you do that, you can look and see all the work they've been submitted for this course. You can get to know each other a little bit see examples of each other's work, leave, comments on them and all of the work that you upload actually ties back your creative live profile so you can create sort of your own little gallery there, your own little portfolio, and add some of the word marks that we're learning here through this course. So it's a great way to another way to be interactive with us throughout this and get some more feedback. As we said, it always works best to work with other people, get some opinions so you can upload your work and then ask the chat room and check it out to get some feedback on that and get some comments on the work that you've done. All right, we have we have some people now who who are asking about the s files. I just want to remind everybody out there that the ps files do not come with r s v p you will see some downloadable. Pdf ce there that come free when you are a svp for this. But you don't need these specific gps files, these air just some that michael has on hand. This whole scenario will work with some files that you have on hand pictures that you've taken other brands that you really enjoy. So don't get caught up on these specific files. These do not come with r s v p, but you don't need them. You can do this with other files that you already have, so don't get too much. I caught up on that and just, you know, go with what you have and learn the actual concept here and apply it to whatever resources you have on hand. Yeah, I knew any mark would would work. Well, uh, if you have something in mind, dps files them. Since these air vector ized, uh, brand marks were going to make it easier. Tio altar when we get to that part in the digital part of recreating these