Day 30: Designing a Logo

By Tony Soh

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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.

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About The Author: Tony Soh

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 learn illustrator 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 more by Tony Soh

• Illustrator Tutorial: Wood Grain
• Olympic Logo Tutorial #4: Mexico-68
• Illustrator Tutorial: 3D Gear
• Olympic Logo Tutorial #3: Torino 2006
• Olympic Logo Tutorial #5: Los Angeles – 1984

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+Add Comment67 Comments

1. 
   Khawla August 12th

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

2. 
   jd August 13th

   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!

3. 
   iStockdiary August 13th

   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.

4. 
   albert elga August 14th

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

5. 
   Marden August 25th

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

6. 
   Leroy Simpson August 31st

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

7. 
   Zoomrix September 2nd

   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.

8. 
   cem September 26th

   Really great tutorial. Thank you very much

9. 
   Kade Lyons September 28th

   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.

10. 
    Jelmer October 5th

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

11. 
    Mike October 11th

    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!

12. 
    Dido October 22nd

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

13. 
    Brandon October 23rd

    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.

14. 
    hendra October 27th

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

15. 
    Steven October 31st

    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

16. 
    Stobs December 4th

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

17. 
    aVen December 10th

    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 ?

18. 
    Vectordiary December 10th

    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.

19. 
    Tom December 17th

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

20. 
    khanysha December 18th

    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!

21. 
    seth capitulo January 7th

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

22. 
    evelet January 10th

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

23. 
    evelet January 10th

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

24. 
    Vectordiary January 10th

    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.

25. 
    inga January 13th

    Thank you

26. 
    racs January 24th

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

27. 
    Evan February 19th

    Thanks so much! Whole series was fantastic.

28. 
    gigsy February 23rd

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

29. 
    ekki March 21st

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

30. 
    Oli March 26th

    … 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.

31. 
    Oli March 26th

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

    This logo gets an F.

32. 
    Malou Garganta March 28th

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

33. 
    Destery Hildenbrand March 31st

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

34. 
    Juan Ignacios Anapios April 13th

    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!

35. 
    Bronwyn Vourtis April 28th

    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!

36. 
    juan salvatierra May 1st

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

37. 
    Weasel97 May 19th

    Sorry about justin molina’s comment he mental sadly

38. 
    John Smith June 6th

    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!

39. 
    aaron clark June 11th

    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!!

40. 
    Metuzalem June 18th

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

41. 
    tasarhane July 30th

    pretty nice tutorial.. totally like it.
    thanks.

42. 
    Elizabeth K. Barone July 30th

    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!

43. 
    rabiya ganatra October 12th

    thankyou

44. 
    anna December 25th

    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.

45. 
    Logo Design Monster March 2nd

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

46. 
    criar logo tipos August 2nd

    Great!

47. 
    Logo Design September 20th

    Great step by step logo design tutorial, thank you.

48. 
    Logo Templates October 4th

    Nice tutorial. Appreciate you including the sketch as well.

49. 
    Creative Logo Designers January 8th

    We are LogoProDesign as a Custom Logo Designer, We checked your artwork collections. Those are amazed us. Thanks for that type of good work collections. We regularly checked your website for good artwork example.
    Thanks
    David Thomas

50. 
    Next Webpage January 12th

    This tutorial is perfect for clients with a more creative background. I send it to a scrapbooker and she is loving Illustrator

51. 
    Nina January 22nd

    Great tutorial for begginers.
    What type of font did you use? I like it!

52. 
    Dan Huffman January 29th

    k, so after I create my offset path of bees body, I can’t get it to go to front/top. I know this because 1) I can’t see it, even though I make outline in black and 2) when I subtract the shape area, the honeycombs are outlined and not subtracted. I’ve tried now for an hour- I’m getting tired of it now. Does anyone know how to help or what I am doing wrong? Thanks!

53. 
    Creative Logo Designers February 17th

    We are LogoProDesign as a Creative Logo Designer, We checked your artwork collections. Those are amazed us. Thanks for that type of good work collections. We regularly checked your website for good artwork example.
    Thanks
    David Thomas

54. 
    john February 17th

    i have learn it in 4 hours….amazing na

55. 
    Tien Hai March 25th

    Thank for your guides.
    I finished above logo for 30′.

56. 
    tEDS April 7th

    Did anybody have to group the hexagons to get the subtract effect…

57. 
    Bill July 10th

    Interesting tutorial. I was searching on the web for some illustrative mascot designs depicting a bee and stumbled upon your site. As far as my designing skills go, even though I tried following the steps in this tutorial, my final character design came out odd somehow. My bee looks more like a strawberry. I decided to seek a professional designing site instead at http://www.mascotdesigncorner.com and the end product came out better than expected. They managed to realize what I want in the character design. For the price I paid it was a steal as well. I guess I am not the suited for designing but thanks for the tutorial anyway. On the bright side, at least I had fun doing it.

58. 
    Nikki July 16th

    The design you posted here is wonderful for starter people, but it would be better if you post some coreldraw tricks as well.

    Good Job

59. 
    Richard August 15th

    Thanks for this series – it helped me out heaps while beginning to learn illustrator. Cheers.

60. 
    Joanne Taylor October 8th

    Well worth the dollars for me – i now open up Illustrator with a feeling of confidence rather than fear! Thank you very much.

61. 
    Mahjong connect December 2nd

    Thanks for the motivation it really works thanks.

62. 
    Animal Logos and Designs January 30th

    Now i can make my logo easily with illustrator and get more professional.

63. 
    Marivic So March 3rd

    finally done. thanks Vectordiary

64. 
    Adi March 28th

    SO BAD.. worst tutorial ever…dude come on.. I can do much better you weirdo

65. 
    cong ty thiet ke logo April 15th

    Thanks for sharing..so useful!

66. 
    Thiet ke logo April 20th

    I checked your artwork collections. Those are amazed me. Thanks for that type of good

    work collections. I regularly checked your website for good artwork example.
    good blog, i will be back soon
    Thanks
    Binky.

67. 
    Bilal May 7th

    Best tutorials…… Thanks……………:-)