Design Research Portfolio-Logo

The second task that we had to do was to research and create a logo that would be within a film and create a sequel.  My first step was to research logos to get an idea of how they are made, what they look like and the techniques used. I may want to use techniques within the researched logos to then be imbedded within my final ideas.

Transformers logo from the film "Transformers 2" is a logo that has been made with a lot of textures and layers to create the final out come. I really like the usage of the textures to create a metal feel within the logo. It gives the logo more character which i would like to incorporate within my logo final idea. How ever i feel that the logo is dull and could do with brighter colours but in some sense i guess darker colours go with the theme of the film.

The Aliens logo is created with the usage of a neon technique. The way that the logo has been created is by using an outer glow and less transparency. This gives a futuristic feel towards the logo which i believe the creators intended to do. The usage of symbolism is an amazing technique which i would like to encorparate within my final idea. The negative point i have to make about this concept is that the logo is way to simple and i feel the it could do with a lot more origanality and thinking outside of the box. I believe the developers of "Alien stick to a specific theme within all their concepts. An idea i feel that i could also use to have a constant running theme that relates and interlinks with one and other.

   The Avengers logo from the film "The Avengers". This Logo concept is an amazing idea which always excites me when i see the logo. I like the technique of having a outer glow around the text creating a form of light making the text readable. The usage of having big bold fonts makes the logo eye catching and attractive towrads the audience. I believe a lens flare has been used within the image (the light) to create a futuristic feel towards the logo. Another use of symbolism. I would like to encorparate this concept within my final logo idea because of the futuristic feel. Negative point i have to make is that maybe the image could do with more light only to make it more readable.

Development Process:

I created a mind map of ideas of what logo i can create. I decided to create a logo for the film Transformers. I want to recreate the logo giving my own feel and concept. The next step was to come up with the concept ideas. I created rough sketches to portray my ideas and what i was thinking.

Drawing Concepts:

Idea 1)
First concept idea is of the face of the Transformer and having the title at the bottom of the image. This is the original idea that was used within the Transformers movie. I like this idea due to having an image as well as the text. The concept of having the best of both.






Idea 2)
The second idea is of the Transformers title. This concept was to show the title rather than an image. I believe this idea is not as interesting and is boring. There is only so much you can do with text.






Idea 3)
The third idea i created was an idea of having the letter T over the Transformers face. Even though this is an original idea i still felt that this was not a good idea mainly down to the fact that the T may block some of face which doesn't make the image as effective.                          

Working on Illustrator 

Creating the logo i used Adobe Illustrator, the reason for this is that Illustrator creates vector images which means that the images are not pixelated. This gave me an advantage of making the image as detailed as possible. If i created the Logo via Photoshop, the logo would become pixelated due to the compression of a JPEG.

Creating the Logo

Step 1) I created a new canvas, A4 size.

Step 2) I then made a new layer. With this layer i used the pen tool to create the Transformers face.

Step 3) Drawing each individual shape for the face, once i was able to draw each shape, i then merged all shapes together (grouped all images).

Step 4) Once all images were grouped to create one image i then inserted a gradient over the vector. 

With the gradient i was able to create a metal texture over the face. quite similar towards the original  idea that i wanted to do. 

Step 5)  I then added on a new layer a textual font with the words "TRANSFORMERS".

Step 6) With the text layer i made the outline of the text a gradient, similar to the vector image created earlier. After that i then changed the inner layer of the text to a transparent view to create the outline of the title. 

Step 7) On a new layer i then created a black box, with this black box i used it as the background layer. With the black box layer i then sent it to the back to give me my final outcome.

As you can see the difference between the original  concept and my idea, you can see how it is different. When making the face i though i would add my own ideas to it to make it more different. For example the curves around the face are more straight creating a neater feel to it. On the other hand i wish i could add textures into Illustrator to then create a metal texture. how ever i was able to use a gradient to manipulate this technique. Overall i am pleased with the final outcome but believe i could have improved more on the text, creating more of a 3D element. I felt that working in Illustrator i was limited from the tools and what i could have done within Photoshop. This was an amazing project and belive my Illustrator skills have grown from working on this assignment.