Revue Custom Logotype Process by Paul von Excite

Our good buddy Paul von Excite is a designer that specializes in Logos, Lettering, Typography and more. He recently published a beautiful process about his redesign of the logo he did for RevueCheck it out!

In Paul's Words

In this article I am going take you through my usual process of creating a custom logotype for a client.

1. Introduction 2. Get to know the Brand 3. Research and Inspiration 4. Sketching 5. Concept Development 6. Digitalizing and Revisions 7. Alternate versions 8. The Final Result

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1. Introduction

Revue is the easiest tool to create a weekly email newsletter. You focus on curation, we'll make sure it looks good.Revue is a new tool that creates newsletters within a few clicks. The tool can be used to gather existing content, order it, add some personal words and send out the resulting ready designed newsletter to subscribers. Revue can be used by everyone; from families, starters and start-ups to companies who already have a subscriber database. A Revue account includes a predesigned landing page with signup form that can be shared to reach out and boost the number of subscribers. Existing subscribers can be imported from several sources including MailChimp.

2. Get to know the Brand

On before hand I always ask a few question to the client in terms of; what they do, their goals, target-audience, keywords, direction of style for the logo specifically and a few reference images. All these questions come in handy when starting your inspiration journey.Their goal is to build a brand with Revue in the future and are searching for a simple and clean custom type, friendly and approachable for consumers as well as the business market. Yet simple it need to have it's own identity and stand out from other competitors. For alternate standalone use on smaller sizes they also needed a distinctive "R" icon.Keywords: Personal, Elegant, Clean, Modern, Simple, Professional, Strong, Warm, Classic, Friendly.Next to the description and keywords the client also wanted to explore certain other styles based on reference of my previous work, like; Brthrs, Stencil, Painterly, Craft. Not all of these examples have the right specification in relation to the description and keywords but it is good to explore other possibilities.

3. Research and Inspiration

All received information is a good starting point for beginning the research, which I'd like to start creating a small mood board of logo styles I personally find a good fit and inspirational letterforms I may end up using.

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4. Sketching

Partly thanks to doing research I have a strong idea for direction in mind which I'm going to visually develop in the sketch phase. This phase primary focuses on; sizes, letterforms and connection options. Usually with the letter connection part I run into problems, in this particular case I see the "v-u" connection could be a problem and read as a "r". Other than that, I didn't see any big problems on before hand.

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At this point the client will get involved. It would be a waste of time to fully develop a logo without consulting the clients preference. At first the client liked the right middle option most but after a quick digital transfer and mock up on the website we both agreed the middle left one was the best option and suited the description best. As I already mentioned above, the "v-u" is a problem, the legibility was way better disconnecting the "v-u".

5. Concept Development

It is time to transfer the raw sketch work into an usable detailed sketch for digitalizing. Vectorizing the raw sketch work is also an option but I like to do as less digital work as possible.

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6. Digitalizing and Revisions

I am here working with 0 and 90 degree bezier handles method, there is a excellent tutorial about that method over at AGCS by Dave Coleman.

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As I mentioned earlier, the detailed sketch iteration had room for improvement. In above shown picture, the layered vector WIP is shown on top of the scanned detailed sketch. The revisions I made are foremost; width/size adjustments, kerning and consistent tails/connections/slants.A quick tip: I always found it very helpful to send a concept to another "lettering" designer to gain other insights and feedback.

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7. Alternate version

Now the full logotype has been created, we still need an alternate initial "R" icon for smaller sizes usage. Goal was to maintain the character of the "R".I Sketched out two ideas, one based on the existing "R" which was good but not that ideal for usage without the circle. The second one has a cut off leg, we both agreed this was the best option as it was usable with and without a circle and maintained the character of the "R".

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8. The Final result

From the first mail contact till the final result it took me around 40 hours to complete. The new logo for Revue is now ready for actual use and I'm very happy about the final result. I hope this insight in my process has been helpful. I'm open for feedback to improve future articles of this kind. Thanks for reading!

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