My first logo......it's a long way to go !

[Skywalker76]

Here it is: My first logo. Damn it nearly took me 2 hours for this piece of work. I use Adobe Photoshop.
Basically I would like you to tell me would I could do or try to make this logo look better.

[FastLane]

I think for a first attempt at creating a logo, you did pretty well. My 1st attempts were quite laughable and it took some time for me to be comfortable with the rather crappy graphics program I have to work with (Microsoft Photodraw) to get to the point where I would even dare post my work.

I can't tell you how to create logos or what you should or shouldnt do. Everyone should have their own unique style. I take the approach of what I think would look cool on a cap or pennant and work from there. But that works for me. All I can tell you is to keep it simple and pick something as your "focus point" of the logo and you are on your way.....

[Skywalker76]

Thanks Fast Lane. Yes it will be a long way until I'll be satisfied with my logo. On the other hand I think it's basically all about if you know what your graphic programm can do.

[Eugene Church]

Skywalker, this shows you have talent...now is the hard part...learn your software...do trial and error...persevere patiently...and ouila...you are creating masterpieces for the likes of me, who is totally unskilled.

Your first is fine...keep at it.

I'll be happy to give you constructive comments about your creations, if you so desire it.

[Skywalker76]

Well Eugene Church that's the reason why I posted this piece of crab from me on this board. To get advise from you and those other "Masters of graphical artwork". If I remember right you made me some logos for my 1897 UBA and they were one of the best I have seen.
I'm working on my Virginia Owl logo a bit more and post it in a couple of hours.

[Eugene Church]

Originally Posted by Skywalker76

If I remember right you made me some logos for my 1897 UBA and they were one of the best I have seen.

Sorry, I can't take credit for creating any logos...that another Church from the talented side of family, I suppose...That is the Church that creates logos...he has some posted on JoeRock's website under the name "Church"...I have a collection there, too...."Eugene Church Collection"...but dbacks really compiled them and uploaded them...however for some reason, I got the credit for them...dbacks, knuckler, markmeister, nmleague and Shub created most of the logos.

As far as advice:

Get good software...ask the designers what they use.

Try to get the designers to critique your designs. Most of them are great to share their knowledge and skill. Just be sure to get permission if you use any of their creations or recreations...I think most people use previously produced images and rarely do them from scratch, but you should not claim anything as your own...just say you put it together.

Always be kind and courteous in dealing with designers and with the logo requestors and overlook it when they do not reciprocate in like manner...95% of the people on this forum are great guys.

It is always good to thank people for their help even if the product is less that you wanted. All of us like to be thanked and complimented, especially if you are sharing your time and talent free of charge. That's the only pay the designers want. Which is fine. It is their time and talent, not ours.

Be willing to make revisions in a request. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and we do not always see things the way others do.

Pay attention to request suggestions...modern...old-fashioned...fonts...colors,etc.
However, do it the way you want to if you prefer.

And let the requestors know that you will do revisions if needed. Tell them it ok to ask for changes and that it will not offend you. Most of them want to please the requestor and go out of there way to do it. But a few only do it one time and do not respond to requests to change or revise.

Don't be afraid to post your creations just because a more talented and creative designer has already done the request. Requestors love to have to choose from a number of choices...the more the merrier (I know that is easy for me to say, since I don't spend hours creating logos for people...but it is a fact). You will also get good constructive suggestions many times by doing this.

Don't spend endless hours creating logos...unless you really enjoy it. You don't want to get burned out.

Don't let the ungracious and discourteous comments get you down. You might occasionally get some. Just consider the source and keep right on creating logos...as long as you enjoy it. I have seen quite a few talented, skilled and nice people withdraw from the OOTPB Forums because of unkind words. Develop a thick skin...but be willing to admit when you make a mistake and apologize for it...we can all improve our behavior.

The following suggestions are what in my humble opinion are good logo creating practices. I am very picky and really want them to be perfect.

Make sure you don't have any black transparency problems. I have seen many fine creations that were unusuable by "Old Picky Me" in the game because they became spotty...the logo seems to be missing colors...especially on the mid-sized game screens like the Team Setup screen and on the game scoreboard screen. I don't know the techical term for this, but it has something to do with the color settings. I always tell the designer about the spots or splotches, but do it in a nice way...most of the time in a private message.

Make your lettering large enough to be seen on the midsized game screens. Some of the best logos I have seen are just big single or double letters...like the Yankees "NY" logo, Giants "NY", Cardinals "StL", Atlanta "A", Dodgers "LA", San Diego "SD", Red Sox "B" and Chicago "SOX" . They show up well even on the small lineup comparison screen in the game.

Use good color combinations that show up well in the game. Make sure the colors have good contrast. Black lettering on a dark blue or purple background could be made better...black on light blue, light gray or light purple (lavender) shows up much better. If you do use a dark color on another dark color, use a contrasting trim such as white to make it more visible.

Learn how to curve lettering. It really adds to a logo.

Use 3 colors in a logo...even good contrasting colors like red and blue...or red and black...look better if you put them on white background and use white trim on the lettering.

I have seen many fine logos made less than perfect because the image and lettering got lost in the background because of poor color choice which did not have good contrasting colors.

Use fonts that don't get so fancy you can't read it...Olde English and Gothic letters are many times this way.

Don't get too fancy and clutter your design. "Keep it simple stupid" works well in almost everything we do.

Hope this helps.

Incidentally, I enjoy your contributions on the forums.

[LivnLegend]

Sky, nice effort.
I'd drop the odd fuzziness surounding the font, add some color to the owl, and come up with a design that does not show the owl and state being on a slant.
My early logos were horrific and even now I'll work on one for an hour and then scrap the whole thing because I become disatisfied with my earlier vision.

I never use photographs in my logos either. I see others doing so and to each their own but photos in logos don't work in my opinion.

I have had Photoshop for a couple years. I learned everything I know by trial and error. I still learn new things all the time.

Good luck and have fun!

[Skywalker76]

Ok since you asked for it. Here is #2, took me some time but at least I think it's getting better.
The problem is I know it's not done yet- there is still something missing, but I don't know what .

[dbacks]

Here are the two (or three) things I noticed.

First, your font selection and placement. I'd recommend for right now stick to centering your text as much as possible. Once you do more logos, you can play with different positionings of the team name/city name, etc. Second, I'm not especially thirlled with the font itself. At least, for the Owls. I'd recommend either sticking to the same font as Virginia, finding something a tad more legible, or even just adding some space between the characters. To do this, go to Window -> Character, and where it says AV with a <-> underneath it, play with that number a little. Just make sure you haven't rasterized the text though.

And the other thing I noticed was that the baseball was cut off, yet you put the graphic in the center of the image. If there is ever any part of a graphic that is incomplete like that, instead of centering the graphic, I'd recommend putting it on the side where it's cut off. For example, the baseball is cut off on the bottom, so I'd recommend sliding the Owl and the baseball down to the bottom so that you don't actually see the cut off. Then I'd play with the text positioning. You'd probably want to have Owls positioned in the middle of the logo, just underneath the 'Virginia.'

Edit- after looking a little more closely at your logo again, I just realized that my suggestions may not have helped it any.

The graphic is so small that if you were to slide that to the bottom, that there would be a pretty large gap between the top of the owl and the bottom of the text.

Not sure, you'll just have to play with the positioning of everything.

[Skywalker76]

Thanks for your input dbacks. The baseball is actually not cut off but it's the state of Virginia with a baseball pattern.

Well I guess I should keep it more easy like you said.

Thanks

Skywalker76


Edit: Where can I download additional fonts or shapes for free ? My Adobe PS only has about 20 different fonts.

[Eugene Church]

Hey, you got responses and help from 2 of our masters.

I agree with dbacks. Center your city name and nickname. "Owls" is not a very readable font.."Virginia" font is much easier to read. Personally, the idea to make the baseball shaped like the state is a good idea, but it just doesn't work for me, either. I didn't know it was in the shape of Virginia...but that's my ignorance of geography probably.

Agree with LivnLegend about the fuzziness around the font.

Colors are fine...Orange and Gray give good contrast.

Maybe you don't have the skill yet, but maybe consider an outline of the state and inside of it, try to insert the baseball (I would use a whole ball and not just a portion of it) with the Owl perched on the state or the baseball.

Your second version is better than the first.

[FastLane]

go here... http://www.1001freefonts.com

Its where I've gotten a lot of the ones I used.

My suggestions for your logo echos a lot of what Dback has mentioned. Eugene had a lot of solid suggestions, as well.

I could also add that you can always try using a few of your favorite logos that you have seen made as a working template to go off of. Deconstruct them and see what made them work. Then apply your own vision to those templates to make yours. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery....

Keep up the good work, you'll get there.

[benchwarmer]

For someone's 1st ever try, i think it's safe to say we are going to have another nasty logo maker to join the other insanely talented designers on this board!

[Skywalker76]

Thanks guys really appreciate your comments. I'll take a break now and work on the logo tomorrow. I'll let you see what it looks like then.
Thanks for the link Fast Lane.

[Skywalker76]

Couldn't keep my fingers from creating logos. Here is another simple one- what do you think ?

Does anybody have a page where I can dl some shapes for the Photoshop ?

[Le Grande Orange]

Hmmm, what advice to offer...

First, understand that I'm an oddball around here, in that I think just about everyone else doing logos uses Photoshop or similiar digital image editing sofware to do them. Myself, I use a vector drawing program - CorelDRAW in my case - though on the high-end side there's also Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia FreeHand. I'm sure there must be some more value-priced drawing software available also.

Personally, while Photoshop is an amazing piece of software, for logo work I think a drawing program is a better choice. The biggest problem I see with Photoshop-created logos are the text elements - they are often placed in ways that, to me at least, don't look like real-world logos. You often have to know some advanced Photoshop tricks to do the kind of text placement that are common in logos; in drawing programs, this kind of manipulation is directly available and usually easily accessible. Wrapping text around a circle, for example, can be quite a chore in Photoshop; in Corel, it's a snap, and editable as well.

On the other hand, Photoshop does have some great stuff in it. Layer styles are superb, allowing quick and easy implementation of effects like texturing, bevel and embossing effects, colour overlays, and so forth. Really great stuff for punching up the look of type, and of the logo as a whole.

The best combination might be to use both. Use a drawing program to set up the basic layout and look of your logo, then bring it into Photoshop to finish it off and add any desired special effects to it. I personally keep saying I'm going to do more with my logos in Photoshop, but I end up still doing the great majority of the work in CorelDRAW. That said, I still think using both kinds of applications has its benefits.

One of the first things I would recommend is to look at real-world logos, to see how they're laid out and the styles used. After collecting a ton of logos from a couple of sites, I printed out some 30 pages of various team logos to serve as guides and inspiration. There are around 6-8 on each page, so each one is of a good size, and all are grouped more or less into styles - circular, text-only, etc. I find having this kind of real-world reference invaluable.

If you want to learn how to get more out of whatever application you're using, I suggest going down to the bookstore and browsing through the computer section. There are a ton of user guide-type books available these days, and many are quite good. Find the one that has plenty of step-by-step examples of how to do the kind of effects you're interested in and buy it. I myself have two books on Photoshop which I think are great, with lots of valuable advanced tips and tricks. The books can get expensive, but you have to weigh that against how much you think you'll use the books and how much the information inside is useful to you. A good book can be worth the expense.

And that's about all I can think of at the moment...