Locked lesson.
About this lesson
Combining our main logo illustration with our primary text to create a lockup.
Exercise files
Download this lesson’s related exercise files.
Assembling our Logo Elements - Instructions.docx62.6 KB Assembling our Logo Elements - Exercise.ai
13.7 MB Assembling our Logo Elements - Exercise Solution.ai
13.7 MB
Quick reference
Assembling our Logo Elements
Combining our main logo illustration with our primary text to create a lockup.
When to use
After creating all of our separate elements we can start to combine them into one cohesive logo.
Instructions
- Begin by opening the Assembling our Logo - Exercise.ai file
- Select the Bulls text and drag a copy of it onto your first artboard by dragging it while holding the Alt/Option+Shift keys
- You may not be able to see it at the moment because it is currently on the Fonts layer, so we will need to cut it by pressing Command/Ctrl+X
- Add a New Layer above your Third Pass Layer and then press Command/Ctrl+F to Paste in Front
- Make sure that all of the Bulls text is grouped by selecting it and pressing Command/Ctrl+G on the keyboard
- Zoom in and select all of the shapes that make up the nose and mouth of the bull by clicking on them while holding the Shift Key
- Once you have all of the shapes that make up the nose and mouth selected, press Command/Ctrl+X to cut it
- Create another New Layer above the layer containing your duplicate copy of the Bulls text and press Command/Ctrl+F to paste the nose and mouth on top of the Bulls text
- Select the dark orange shadow color and double click on the fill color swatch to bring up the Color Picker dialog box. From here, select the hexidecimal value (#AB3312) which is the six digit combination of numbers and letters at the bottom of the Color Picker window and copy it
- Select the main nose and mouth shape and then press 'X' on the keyboard to toggle your fill and stroke colors. Your stroke color should now be in front and currently is set to none
- Double click on the stroke color and then paste the hex value to add an outline around the main nose and mouth shape before pressing OK to apply the change
- Bring up the Stroke Panel and increase the weight of the stroke to about 5 points
- Use your regular Selection Tool (V) to move the Bulls text up so that the nose and mouth overlap the top of the 'U' and the first 'L'
- There may be an extra solid yellow shape on the lower part of the mouth that we can now delete so that we can see our stroke evenly around the whole nose and mouth area
- Select your Bulls text and Ungroup it by pressing Command/Ctrl+Shift+G on the keyboard or by going to the Object Menu and choosing 'Ungroup'
- Click on the thick, dark orange shape around the Bulls text, which should currently just be filled with dark orange and have no stroke applied
- Click on the fill color and drag it to the empty stroke color so that we now have an outline that is the same color as our fill
- Bring up the Stroke Panel once again and increase the weight of the stroke to about 10 points
- With the shape still selected, go to the Object Menu and choose 'Expand' and then press OK on the dialog box that appears (just make sure that the Fill and Stroke boxes are both checked off)
- Next, bring up the Pathfinder and choose the Merge option to merge the dark orange shape around the Bulls text together into a solid shape
- There may be a thin gap on the inside of the letter 'U' that we will want to cover up. To do this, press 'M' to get your Rectangle Tool and draw a rectangle that covers this gap and fill it with the same dark orange color that we used for the outer shape around our text
- Select the Bulls text and go to the Object Menu before choosing Arrange > Bring to Front
- Select the Bulls text, hold the Shift Key, and select the dark orange rectangle behind the 'U' so they are selected at the same time, and then use the Pathfinder Tool to Merge the shapes together
- Add another New Layer just below your First Pass Layer and then grab your Rectangle Tool (M) and create a large rectangle that fills the entire artboard behind your logo and fill it with the dark orange shadow color
- Double click on the layer and rename it 'BG' for background and then lock it and turn off the visibility of the layer
- Switch to your Selection Tool (V) and click and drag around the entire bull illustration except for the text and then copy it by pressing Command/Ctrl+C
- Create a New Layer on the top of your Layers Palette and then press Command/Ctrl+F to paste a copy of the bull illustration on top of the original
- Open the Pathfinder Tool and choose Merge, and then the Unite option (the first icon in the top row) in order to make the bull illustration a flat, single color shape
- With the solid shape still selected, go to the Object Menu and choose Path > Offset Path
- When the dialog box appears, enter a value of 4 px and hit OK to apply the changes
- Next, drag this new layer (Layer 11) down just below the First Pass Layer, and above the BG Layer that we created before
- You should now see a dark orange outline around the entire bull logo except for the text
- Select the merged bull shape and press Command/Ctrl+C to copy, and then Command/Ctrl+F to Paste in Front
- Select your fill color, and then switch to the Eyedropper Tool (I) and sample the dark orange shadow color
- Press Command/Ctrl+2 to lock this copy of the shape, and then you should be able to select the dark orange copy just behind it
- Use the Eyedropper Tool (I) again to change the color of this dark orange shape to the pale yellow/tan highlight color from the logo
- Click and drag the tan color from the fill to the stroke so that they both match
- Turn the visibility of the BG Layer back on and then increase the stroke weight of the tan bull shape to about 30 pt
- Go to the Object Menu and choose 'Unlock All'
- You should now have a thin red stroke around the bull and then a thicker, tan border all the way around as well
- Next, select the Bulls text with your Selection Tool (V) and make a copy of it, and then press Command/Ctrl+F to Paste in Front
- Go to the Pathfinder Tool and once again choose Merge and then Unite to make it one solid shape
- Press Command/Ctrl+Shift+[ to send it all the way to the back, behind the main group
- Click on the fill color and then use the Eyedropper Tool (I) to sample the same tan highlight color
- Click and drag the fill color to the stroke, and then use the Stroke Panel to change the weight to 30 pt so it matches the border around the main logo shape
- With the tan shape behind the Bulls text selected, go to the Object Menu and choose 'Expand' and then as long as the Fill and Stroke options are checked, press OK to apply the changes
- Repeat this for the tan shape going around the outer bounds of the main logo shape as well
- Return to the Object Menu and choose 'Unlock All' once again to make sure everything is unlocked
- Zoom in and use your Direct Selection Tool (A) to fix any points that are flat - especially around the horns. Here you will need to move, delete, and redraw a few of the points with the Pen Tool (P) in order to make them come to a nice point
- If you happen to notice any other areas throughout the logo that are flat or blunt, use this same technique to modify the edges so that they come to a point
- There will also be a small gap between the letters 'L' and 'S' in the Bulls text where the background is showing through
- We will once again draw a shape on top of it that matches the tan outline color and send it to the back (Command/Ctrl+Shift+[)
- Select the tan border around the text, and the tan rectangle shape covering the gap, and then use your Pathfinder Tool to Merge them together
- Depending on the placement of your text you may also want to connect the tan border to the border around the main logo by tapping or nudging a few of the points on the corners of the letters to help keep things clean
Hints & tips
- Sometimes after merging and expanding shapes that have been offset, you may notice that the edges are flat where they should be coming to a point. When this happens you can use the Direct Selection Tool (A) to move and tweak the points using the handles in order to make them come to a point again. You may need to delete a point or two and then reconnect them with the Pen Tool (P) to close the shape.
- When creating logos like this where certain elements overlap others it becomes very important to be mindful of the order of your layers.
- 00:04 So now that we've got all of our elements created separately,
- 00:07 we can begin putting them together.
- 00:09 So the first thing I wanna do is integrate this BULLS text.
- 00:13 So I'm just gonna select it and make a copy of it by pressing Alt, Option, and
- 00:16 Shift, and dragging it over onto my first artboard.
- 00:20 Now if I bring up my layers palette, you'll see that the reason we
- 00:23 can't see it right now is because it's underneath the bull illustration.
- 00:27 So I'm actually going to cut it from this layer by pressing Cmd+X,
- 00:31 create a new layer above third pass, and then press Cmd+F to paste it in front.
- 00:37 Okay, now from here I wanna make sure that I can integrate this properly.
- 00:41 So, I wanna select all three of these shapes together and press Cmd+G to group
- 00:45 them, and for a second let me just see how we can work this into the design.
- 00:50 Now, I'm actually thinking that this could look cool if the mouth, or the nose,
- 00:54 kind of overlaps it a little bit.
- 00:56 So what I wanna do is make sure that I select all of these shapes that are part
- 01:01 of the nose and mouth so that we can have it come in front of our bull's text.
- 01:06 All right, so I need to select all these shapes here.
- 01:10 Try to get them all at once.
- 01:12 Zoom in just to make sure that I have them all.
- 01:14 All right, and then I'm going to press Cmd+X to cut them.
- 01:18 And it looks like I've got everything I want.
- 01:21 So now I created another new layer above layer eight containing our bold text, and
- 01:25 press Cmd+F to paste it in the front.
- 01:28 Now select the main nose and mouth shape and press X to get the stroke color.
- 01:35 And what I want to do is actually use the shadow color here as a stroke.
- 01:39 So I'm going to click on it with my Direct Selection tool and double-click it so
- 01:43 that I can bring up the value.
- 01:45 Now in here, you'll see the hexadecimal value, AB3312.
- 01:49 So I'm gonna press Cmd+C to copy that, and then hit OK.
- 01:52 And now, select the main nose and mouth shape once again.
- 01:57 Press X to get your stroke, and double-click on it, and
- 02:00 paste that color value in here.
- 02:03 Now bring up your Stroke Panel, over on the right side, and
- 02:07 increase the stroke to somewhere around maybe 10 is a little too much, but
- 02:11 let's see how this looks once we bring our text back up.
- 02:17 Okay, I'm thinking if we move it down a little bit, play with the positioning,
- 02:21 this could look kinda cool.
- 02:24 All right, we don't wanna cover too much of it.
- 02:25 But let's play around with the stroke a little bit more.
- 02:28 All right,
- 02:29 I'm thinking maybe if we do something around 5 that that could look pretty good.
- 02:33 And we actually wanna do the same thing with this shape, because if you remember,
- 02:36 we actually have two different shapes here.
- 02:38 But I don't know if we actually need this shape any more.
- 02:40 So let's just go ahead and cut it.
- 02:43 Now for the BULLS text, I'm going to ungroup it at this point,
- 02:46 because I want to make this a thicker outline.
- 02:49 This dark red color, I wanna make it even thicker.
- 02:52 So I'm gonna select my fill color and click and drag it onto the stroke here,
- 02:57 and then come back over the Stroke Panel, and let's increase that to about maybe
- 03:01 somewhere around there, somewhere around 10 I think looks pretty good.
- 03:06 Okay, then I'll come up to Object, click Expand, and then hit OK.
- 03:12 And now I'll bring up my Pathfinder and just merge all that together.
- 03:18 Now there's one little space in here,
- 03:20 and actually wanna cover up with my solid color since we're now integrating this.
- 03:25 And because of where it's placed, it just looks a little bit weird.
- 03:27 So I'm going to create a rectangle on top, select my BULLS text, and
- 03:32 bring it all the way to the front by going up to Object, Arrange, Bring to Front.
- 03:37 Now I can select my BULLS text and the rectangle behind it, and once again,
- 03:42 we're just going to use our Pathfinder to merge that together.
- 03:46 Okay, so now we've started to integrate our BULLS text
- 03:50 with our actual illustration here.
- 03:53 So the next thing that I'm thinking about doing is maybe adding
- 03:56 a stroke around the whole shape to kind of tie it together and
- 04:00 put it into another kind of container here.
- 04:03 The first thing I'm gonna do from here is open up my Payers palette,
- 04:08 come just behind my first pass layer, and add another new layer, layer 10.
- 04:12 All right, I'm going to press M on the keyboard,
- 04:15 and I'm just gonna create a rectangle in the background, and
- 04:18 this is going to be the same color as our shadow color.
- 04:22 So we can just double click on this layer, call it BG for background, and
- 04:26 then lock it.
- 04:27 Now in the very beginning, we use the outline of our shape to create kind of
- 04:32 a trace, or an outline, around the whole shape.
- 04:35 And if I bring that up, you can still see it here.
- 04:38 But unfortunately, it looks like it's a little bit off from our other shapes.
- 04:43 No big deal, we can actually correct this and redo it.
- 04:47 So, the way that I want to do that is by making sure that everything is unlocked,
- 04:51 which it is, and I'm going to press V to get my Selection tool,
- 04:54 and then click around the entire bull illustration here.
- 04:59 From here, I'm going to press Cmd+C, and create another new layer, and then Cmd+F,
- 05:05 and bring up your Pathfinder, and now we can merge this entire shape together.
- 05:10 Now you'll see that once I've merged it, it looks like everything is still
- 05:13 different color, so let's go ahead and now choose unite.
- 05:16 Okay so now we have a solid shape around the entire object.
- 05:20 So what we wanna do is come back and we're going to offset this once again.
- 05:25 So come up to Path, Offset Path, and let's choose a value of around,
- 05:31 maybe, 4 pixels to start, and hit OK.
- 05:34 And then we actually want to place this behind our bull now.
- 05:39 So bring up your layer menu once again.
- 05:42 Now drag this down just above BG layer that is currently turned off.
- 05:47 Now you'll see that there's an outline around the entire shape, which is good.
- 05:51 Press Cmd+C to make a copy of it.
- 05:54 Cmd+F to paste it in front, and click on your fill color.
- 05:58 And now we actually want to grab one of our other, lighter colors here.
- 06:03 So I'm going to use the Eyedropper tool and sample this highlight color.
- 06:06 Okay, so that we can create this next highlight going all the way around where,
- 06:10 maybe you know what, let's actually make it white.
- 06:13 All right, so for right now we can't see it, but
- 06:16 there will now be a white line all the way around.
- 06:19 So from here I'm going to lock it by pressing Cmd+2.
- 06:23 Now, if I move my cursor in the same place I'll have the original copy behind it.
- 06:27 What we can do here is click on our fill color, now sample the highlight color,
- 06:33 and click and drag it to the strokes so you have the same fill and stroke.
- 06:37 Now turn the BG layer back on and come up to your Stroke Panel and
- 06:42 now increase the stroke to somewhere around 20 or so.
- 06:47 All right and let's see if maybe we can make it a little bit heavier,
- 06:51 maybe somewhere in between 25 could look pretty nice.
- 06:57 Okay, so now we've got this white stroke all the way around our shape, and
- 07:01 then we've got our highlight color here as well.
- 07:03 And you know, looking again at this, I'm not sure if we need the white shape.
- 07:07 So I'm just going to unlock for a second, and
- 07:11 let's maybe try and make this red once again.
- 07:14 All right, I think that actually looks a little bit better.
- 07:18 So you now get this red outline, and then the highlight color all the way around.
- 07:22 But we actually need to do the same thing to our BULLS texts now.
- 07:25 So we're going to copy that, bring up our Layers Pallet,
- 07:30 press Cmd+F to paste it in front.
- 07:33 And remember we now have to merge it all together and
- 07:35 then click Unite to make it one shape.
- 07:38 We actually need to move it behind our BULLS text.
- 07:40 So we're going to press Cmd+Shift in the left bracket to send it all the way to
- 07:45 the back.
- 07:46 And from here what we want to do is click on our fill color and sample
- 07:51 that same highlight color that we're using around the main shape of our bull, okay?
- 07:57 And once again, click and drag the fill to the stroke color.
- 08:00 Bring up your stroke panel, and let's try it at a stroke of around 20.
- 08:05 Or what we use before, about 25?
- 08:08 And if you're having trouble selecting it, remember to just lock this in front and
- 08:11 then click, and you'll be able to select the shape behind it.
- 08:15 All right, so let's try 25.
- 08:17 And now we've got of stroke of going all the way around.
- 08:22 Alright, so we're looking pretty good, and we're kind of combining some of
- 08:24 the techniques that we've covered from earlier on in the lessons.
- 08:30 I want to make sure that I can grab this tan outline all the way in the back and
- 08:34 just increase that to 30 so it matches the outline stroke around our text.
- 08:40 Now what we can do, because we currently have it set to a stroke,
- 08:44 is come up to Object and expand it.
- 08:46 And now, as long as we have Fill and Stroke checked off we can hit OK, and
- 08:50 that's going to convert our stroke into a solid fill.
- 08:54 Now let's go ahead and do the same thing back here.
- 08:58 Hit OK to expand it.
- 09:00 And one more time for the red outline going around our whole shape,
- 09:04 which I think we locked.
- 09:08 All right, let's select it, and I think we're actually good there.
- 09:11 We may not need that one.
- 09:13 But let's zoom in real quick and just fix some of these edges.
- 09:16 Now since we converted this into a shape here,
- 09:19 we want this to come to a nice point up top.
- 09:22 So I am just going to modify a few of these points.
- 09:25 Grab my Pen tool and just reconnect those two shapes on the top to create that horn.
- 09:31 Okay, and if you need to,
- 09:32 you can manipulate the handles a little bit just to get a nice, round curve.
- 09:37 Let's go ahead and do the same thing with this red shape.
- 09:41 All right, again, just use the handles to bring that to a nice point.
- 09:47 Make sure there's no gaps in here.
- 09:51 Okay, and we're looking pretty good.
- 09:57 All right, so if you notice any other areas, like here that should be coming to
- 10:01 a point, but they're actually kind of flat or blunt.
- 10:05 Then you just want to go in there and
- 10:06 do the same thing that we've been doing to kind of create a nice, sharp edge.
- 10:12 And you can remove points as needed,
- 10:14 and then just remember to reconnect them to close that path.
- 10:21 Okay, but we're actually, we're doing pretty good here.
- 10:24 I'm just going to continue this process for
- 10:26 a few more moments, until we get this to a pretty good place.
- 10:33 All right, so just, oops.
- 10:35 I'm just gonna make sure that I grab the handles here to manipulate the shapes and
- 10:39 close any of these subtle gaps.
- 10:50 All right, looking pretty good there.
- 10:53 A little bit more.
- 10:55 Now let's check this side as well.
- 11:04 Okay, and then we can actually clean up this shape on the bottom.
- 11:08 Maybe we can actually extend this point down a little bit,
- 11:12 get rid of this point here.
- 11:14 And then we can reconnect it,
- 11:16 get rid of this point on the other side, and reconnect it.
- 11:20 You're not going to see what's behind it anymore, so it's okay.
- 11:25 If we kind of fake that, all right, and
- 11:27 just bring it down to a nice point below our text.
- 11:30 Now, one last thing I wanna do here is just notice this gap in between the S.
- 11:34 We're going to do the same thing that we did earlier on, and
- 11:38 just drag a rectangle on top of it, send it to the back, and now we'll select that
- 11:44 along with our merged shape, and use our Path Finder to merge it together.
- 11:50 Okay, but so far we're looking pretty good.
- 11:53 And I think this point here we can probably just bring over slightly
- 11:58 to close that gap.
- 12:01 Then we can zoom back out and take a look at our work so far, all right?
- 12:05 So so far so good guys.
- 12:06 From here the last thing we wanna do is incorporate our RAGIN text.
- 12:10 So in the next part, we're going to focus on incorporating that into our logo.
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