Developing logo ideas

After the crit, it was clear that I needed to introduce a logo to my website, therefore I needed to research into logos, and what sort of style would suit my website. The overall purpose of my website is to showcase, and inform the user about the unique niche of bespoke bottle labels. Some are slightly more commercial, whereas others are more custom made maybe for a specific beverage, or brand. 

This website for craft brews is simple, but it suggests the old fashioned and bespoke theme I am aiming for:

I looked at these logo designs in particular as I am interested in keeping my logo compact therefore a circular shape may be suitable. For my logo I want to create a hand rendered feel therefore it will be suitable to draw my own type, and draw my own logo then edit using illustrator. These designs suggest a more old fashioned approach, which will be suited to my website as I am going for the custom/tailor made approach. This style of design is more suited to my website rather than something more modern such as:

I found that these particular logos are far too modern for the type of style I am aiming for. The designs themselves are nice, and represent each of their brands well, however I would prefer to choose a slightly more old fashioned route, I can picture my logo including a silhouette either male or female, dressed smartly. Even though some of the designers work showcased on my website and some of the gallery images may be quite modern themselves the label designs are still custom made, therefor my logo needs to be more suited to a custom made theme, which supports my idea to use a more hand rendered approach. 

To start my logo, I began by sketching out some block lettering, then I came across a font similar to my desired effect called 'sketch block.' For my type I copied the letters, but made each letterform slightly lighter, and also made each letterform look more hand rendered. I scanned this in so I could digitally manipulate. 

This is the original scan in of my hand drawn letters, they have come out quite nicely, however I feel that they need to be more refined digitally so that they are more prominent especially if this was to go for print:

This is the same lettering however the colours have been altered slightly, I will definitely need to consider colours but I think that the individual letterforms need to have an increase in weight, or I could live trace them on illustrator to turn the title in to a vectorised image:

This is what I have done here, taken the scanned in image and live traced the letters on illustrator. Out of the three this is the most successful, as the letterforms are a lot bolder and will have the ability to stand out from the logo itself, but colour definitely needs to be applied even if it is only a subtle colour change, but this will be done once placed with the logo so I can pick certain colours from that logo:

My research consists of old fashioned logo designs with traditional male figures, this has informed my decision to create a similar logo to the ones I have researched, but with a more hand rendered style. I started by roughly sketching off the top of my head, then started to refine the drawing:

Initial sketch:

Developing the sketch: I am happy with this rough outline, it just needs refining slightly. For the colour I want to use watercolour as I can do the colours as strong or as subtle as I like, I will most probably keep the colours quite neutral with some darker tones of greys and dark purples:

This is my refined version, using watercolour and then fine liner to accentuate certain areas, I have also done a slight wash of colour in the background, which can be included in the final logo. I want to create this but use a circular shape, keeping the colour wash background. 

Here I have created an ellipse tool using a colour from my own design and lowered the opacity. I have centralised the figure so there is room for my type to fit within this ellipse. The colours have also been edited slightly to give the logo more definition. Keeping the watercolour background was a good choice, because if I had opted to remove the background wash and just uses block colour for the ellipse then it would of appeared too harsh against the soft strokes within my illustration, I intended for the fine liner to be the most defining part of the logo, therefore keeping the background softer allows the the illustration to be more prominent. 

For the name, I need to decide how to alter my letterforms. This shows how the letterform will look against the background if I was to leave them as they are after live tracing on illustrator. For my logo, I feel that they need to have a more hand rendered feel to them, otherwise the letters will almost clash when placed alongside the design. I want to add a subtle hint of colour within the letterforms, but so that you are still able to see the sketchy qualities within each letter. 

Before adding colour to 'bespoke bottles':

Brush tool used to apply an existing colour chosen from the design:

Final Logo

This is the final logo that I will use, including the newly coloured type. I am pleased with the overall design as I feel that I have definitely achieved what I set out to do in creating a hand rendered style. I have added a thicker stroke than the design shown above, allowing me to advertise the websites name at the very bottom in a smaller point size using a different font. Now that I have my logo finished it is crucial that I revisit my web pages to not only finish them, but I must tie them in more so they work along side each other, this will mean altering the colour pallet and also choices of fonts.