Influencer Nicole C. wanted to update her logo. Based on her initial rough sketch, I created a new look with her name hand lettered. The result is just as unique as she is!
01.
PLAN & SKETCH
While most of my clients don’t make a sketch first, it’s totally fine when they do! Typically, I provide rough sketches at the start of a logo project, but Nicole provided a rough sketch with her idea for a logo. She knew she wanted a circle-based design with all caps across the top and her name hand-lettered across the center.
02.
DIGITAL FOUNDATION
To create a perfectly symmetrical circle and arrow design for the foundation of the logo, I took Nicole’s sketch into Adobe Illustrator. Using a commercial font and the pen tool, I recreated the top text and arrows. This provided an accurately drawn base before adding the hand lettering and making the rest of the elements in Procreate.
refine letter style
create styled lines
plan letter shapes
use final brush
03.
LAY OUT LETTERING & REFINE
Sometimes, I nail the exact style and feel for hand lettering projects on the first try. Often, though, I like to put down a general layout for the letters and spacing. This generally includes the style — whether there is any bounce, the thickness of the lines, the height and width of the letters, etc. — and may or may not involve my final brush choice.
Using traditional media, I would take a piece of graphic layout paper (a thin vellum-like sheet that is perfect for tracing and refining), a pen or pencil, and make changes on one sheet after another. Using my iPad Pro, Apple Pencil 2, and Procreate, I simply lower the opacity of the original layer and create on a new one! I’ll make a few attempts at refining the lettering until I feel it is perfect.
I also like to keep each letter on its own layer in most cases. This allows me to make changes to a single letter as needed.
For this project, once I had the hand-lettered name complete, I drew over the lines I created in Adobe Illustrator. From there, the last step is to vectorize the entire image in Adobe Illustrator. This provides a scalable graphic ready to use at any size!
04.
FINAL RESULT
“Amanda helped me with my logo design for my website. I provided her with a rough sketch and she turned my vision into a beautiful, polished reality. She’s super easy to work with and so talented!”