Day 30: Designing a Logo

By Tony Soh Posted on August 12th, 2008

Designing a logo is a common task in Adobe Illustrator. In this final project, we will sum up what we have learnt so far in Illustrator to create your own custom logo. I will show you the process in drawing a logo and hopefully you have more confidence after this tutorial.

Drawing the Honey Farm Logo

First scan the sketch of your logo and save it as a jpeg.

Next, we need import it to Illustrator. Go File>Place and select your picture. Make sure Template is checked to place it as a template. When you open your Layers Palette. You will see that it is locked and the colors are faded out. This makes it perfect for tracing.

We will start with the bee’s body. Draw an oval shape. Edit the points using the Direct Selection Tool to form the body of the bee.

Next, draw a cirlce shapes for the head. Edit the points to make it slightly pointed.

To draw the antennae, I use an oval and draw a thick line using Pen Tool connecting to it.

Next, draw 2 ovals and rotate it to form the wings. Select the bigger wing and press Ctrl/Command+C to copy. Press Ctrl/Command+F to paste infront. Now, hold Shift and select the small wing. Open up your Pathfinder (Window>Pathfinder) and hold Alt/Option as you select Subtract from shape area.

The overlapping part of the wing will be subtracted.

We will move on to create the body stripes. Draw 2 rectangles with the height of the stripe thickness.

Select both rectangles and go Effect>Warp>Arc. Set Bend to 23% to bend the rectangle. Go Object>Expand Appearance to expand the effect.

Rotate the stripes and place it over the bee. Copy the the bee’s body by pressing Ctrl/Command+C. Then paste it infront by pressing Ctrl/Command+F. Select the body’s copy and stripes and right click to select Make Clipping Mask. This will hide the extruding areas.

Select the Polygon Tool and hold Shift as your drag a polygon on the canvas. Hold Alt/Option and drag the first polygon to make another copy of it. Do this until you have 3 copies of it.

Select all 3 polygons and swap it to black fill. Then group it by pressing Ctrl/Command+G.

We will now crop away the overlapping areas of the polygons. Select the bee’s body and go Object>Path>Offset Path and set the Offset value to 10pt. Send the new path to the top by pressing Ctrl+Shift+] / Command+Shift+].

Select both the offset path and polygons and open up your Pathfinder (Window>Pathfinder). Hold Alt/Option as you select Subtract from shape area.

Final Touch ups

Finally, we will add in the text for our final logo. Notice I have increased the strokes for the bee’s body to make sure that the line doesn’t fade out when printing. Also zoom out to see whether it still looks clear and sharp when it is small. Print out a copy at different sizes to see how it will look in letterheads and continue tweaking until you are satisfied.

Cleaning up the Logo

Once I am happy with my logo, I will start cleaning up my logo. Save a copy of your logo so that you still have the original copy to work with if you need to make any adjustments. Now select your text and outline it by pressing Ctrl+Shift+O / Command+Shift+O to convert it to paths. This will prevent missing fonts on other computers.

Next, select the bee stripes and go Pathfinder and select Trim to trim away the edges.

Select the paths of your bee that are made contains line strokes and go Object>Expand and click OK. We will need to expand it to maintain the same stroke thickness or else the proportions get distorted when we rescale the logo.

After we expanded the bee, hold Shift and select the bee stripes. Go Pathfinder and hold Alt/Option as your select Add to shape area. This will combine the bee shapes together.

Finally, we will add in the colors for the logo and we are logo is done.

This is the last lesson of my 30days Illustrator CS3 tutorials. For more illustrator training resources, read my list of recommended illustrator books & videos.

Back to Table of Contents

Share and Enjoy:

About The Author: admin

Hi. I'm the founder of Vector Diary. Illustrator is my passion and I have written numerous tutorials on illustrator helping people learn illustrator. My most popular tutorial on learning illustrator in 30 days has been a hit. It makes learning illustrator so easy and has benefited more than 20,000 people worldwide. Also, I've revealed some of my secret techniques in the premium tutorials. So don't forget to check it out!

Read all articles writen by this author

If you have enjoyed reading this post, you may subscribe to our RSS for weekly updates!
Subscribe via RSS »
Subscribe via Email »

About Vectordiary

Vector Diary is a popular blog offering great illustrator tutorials and tips. It was created by Tony Soh, a graphic designer, who has great passion in illustration. Tony has written one of the most popular tutorial for learning illustrator and has helped more than 20,000 people. On top of that, his tutorials and tips has helped designers improve their illustration skills and have received great feedback. So join Vector Diary and start learning today!

Khawla August 12th, 2008

Your tutorials are great. I will experiment and will try to design a logo for me. Thank you very much!

jd August 13th, 2008

I followed your directions for clipping mask, and it’s not working for me. I don’t know what i’m doing wrong. Here’s what i did:

1. made an oval
2. made the stripes
3. selected the oval and stripes
4. right click and select clipping mask

The body and one of the stripes disappears, clipping just one stripe.

Help!

iStockdiary August 13th, 2008

Hi Jd, make sure the oval is at the top of all the stripes. You can also group the stripes before you make clipping mask. It should work now.

albert elga August 14th, 2008

Helo! thanks for the tutorials! 8 rely helps me… i’m just only a biggner in AI. thanks a lot!

Marden August 25th, 2008

Excellent post. Excellent tutorial. Congratulations!!!!!

Leroy Simpson August 31st, 2008

Blood claat good tutorials man. i go make a rasta logo in jamaican colors.

Zoomrix September 2nd, 2008

Epic awesome dude! Thank you so much for slaving over this monster for 30 days. Greatly appreciate this because it really did get me on a great start with Illustrator.

Thanks again,

Zoomrix.

cem September 26th, 2008

Really great tutorial. Thank you very much

Kade Lyons September 28th, 2008

Wow, I needed a nice way to get used to illustrator to help out with work stuff. This tutorial was intensely awesome for an AI newb.

Jelmer October 5th, 2008

Great tutorials, I’ve just learned illustrator in 1 day with them , thanks a lot!

Mike October 11th, 2008

thanks for creating the 30 Day Tutorials! they are the best guide for beginners on the net! appreciate all your hard work and effort in putting this guide together!

Dido October 22nd, 2008

This is the powerfully tutorial on the world for beginner and i strongly thank you for providing us the present tutorial.

Brandon October 23rd, 2008

Thank you so much for this whole collection of tutorials. I feel that I’ve just gotten a fairly good grasp of this program in just 2 days. If only there were tutorials like this for all other design programs.

hendra October 27th, 2008

I want to ask can we directly make it to illustrator without sketch it at on paper..

Steven October 31st, 2008

So this is a really nice read, but.. Considering the company is called Honey Farm, I worry about how most people would read this logo. My bet is atleast 75% would think the company was called Farm Honey. It looks really nice though

Stobs December 4th, 2008

thanks for great series of tutorials.
My perspective on the bee logo -> http://img147.imageshack.us/my.php?image=killahbeezud7.jpg

aVen December 10th, 2008

Awesome tutorials good job man.

One question from a beginner : Do I have to unlock my template before tracing it ? Can’t draw the oval shape or something else ?

Vectordiary December 10th, 2008

Hi aVen, Do not unlock the template when tracing, as this prevents from selecting the template. You can draw other shapes if you want. No problem with that.

Tom December 17th, 2008

Finishedd took 2 days! i now feel confident with illustrator.. thank you

khanysha December 18th, 2008

Thank you for this great tutorial! Until now I’ve worked only with Photoshop. Now I’ll be able to create wonderful graphics in Illustrator. Thank you very much!

seth capitulo January 7th, 2009

you’re very very generous publishing an illustrator course… thanks…

evelet January 10th, 2009

i can’t get rid of the overlapping without subtracting one of the shapes (for the wings). help!

i’m getting tripped up on while trying to delete the intersecting line between the wings. help!

Vectordiary January 10th, 2009

Hi evelet, you will need to subtract one of the shapes to get rid of the overlapping. So you will need to duplicate one of the wing.

inga January 13th, 2009

Thank you

racs January 24th, 2009

This 30-days tutorial really helped me. Thank you!

Evan February 19th, 2009

Thanks so much! Whole series was fantastic.

gigsy February 23rd, 2009

outstanding 30day course!!!!! thank u very much!!!!!
u are amazing! thank you once again for sharing!!!

ekki March 21st, 2009

thanks so much i need this way for my beginning.love this post.

Oli March 26th, 2009

… That’s actually a pretty bad logo. The fonts are ones recognized pretty much as a do-not-use (yes this happens) and the drawing is sub par. It’s pretty clear this artist dosn’t know much about typography since it’s given such a smal- scratch that, NO mention (other than “then I added text”) Type is NOT a “Final Touch Up.” This logo could easily be good in CONCEPT but the execution was poor.

…not to mention it says “farm honey” instead of “honey farm”

This logo gets an F.

Malou Garganta March 28th, 2009

Thank you so much!… this tutorial will help me as for knowing the basics. a million thanks

Destery Hildenbrand March 31st, 2009

Thanks for the time and effort put in. This was a great walk through of the program.

Juan Ignacios Anapios April 13th, 2009

Thanks very very much!. This is a fantastic tutorial. Thanks for taking your time to do it. I first thought that Illustrator was such a great monster (and it is, after all), but then i learn that it wasn’t impossible anyway.
Congratulations!

Bronwyn Vourtis April 28th, 2009

Thank you so much for these tutorials. I’d been trying to get my head around the illustrator basics for ages, this was definitely a huge help!

juan salvatierra May 1st, 2009

Thankyou very much! now i learn ilustrator i love it great tutorial n_n

Weasel97 May 19th, 2009

Sorry about justin molina’s comment he mental sadly

John Smith June 6th, 2009

Yes, Great tutorial. I can now put that I completed this tutorial on my resume and begin confidently applying for jobs as a senior graphics artist. Thank you!

aaron clark June 11th, 2009

Awsome set of tutorials. been wanting to get to grips with Ai for some time. really appreciate all of your help will definatly link to them on my blog!!

Metuzalem June 18th, 2009

thank you for this tutorial! with great idea and simple instructions this logo looks great

tasarhane July 30th, 2009

pretty nice tutorial.. totally like it.
thanks.

Elizabeth K. Barone July 30th, 2009

Beautiful end result and very simple process. I also like that it works for print, too. I’ve been dying to start using Illustrator more, so I’m definitely going to go back through the rest. Thanks a bunch for this!

rabiya ganatra October 12th, 2009

thankyou

anna December 25th, 2009

It’s a tutorial… doesn’t need the nasty comments from people like “John Smith”. It won’t teach someone typography or the importance of kerning, or how to DESIGN, but it teaches the production process and that’s the part a lot of people get tripped up on.

Thanks for the tutorial, you had some nice tips.

Logo Design Monster March 2nd, 2010

I really like the final logo works well. Thank you for sharing was interesting to see the many stages of the logos development.

Vectordiary

Top Illustrator Tutorial & Tips