Hand-Drawn Branding: Design Original Logos

Meet Jon Contino, graphic designer, illustrator, creative director of Contino branding studio, and your teacher for this course. Hear about his early discovery of graphic design when playing in a rock band as a teenager, and how it led him to start his own studio years later. He also shares his sources of inspiration and the influences that have shaped his work.

Start your project by first getting your logo ideas on paper to develop a concept. Once you’ve got your initial ideas sketched, Jon shows you how to do market research to explore existing logos and competition. With a better understanding of your logo design, create a mood board with references that inspire you before putting it all together.

Now it’s time to start making a variety of thumbnails of your logo design and choose the ones that best suit your brand identity. From the thumbnails selected, Jon guides you through expanding on your concept to further develop it. Once your logo concept is ready, see how to edit and finalize your design. Trace your final design in ink before digitizing it.

Learn how to enhance your inked logo with Photoshop or Procreate. Jon then teaches you how to vectorize your design in Illustrator, as well as how to fine-tune the spacing within your logo. Finally, bring your logo to life by adding a color combination inspired by your mood board.

Jon takes you through developing a visual identity for your brand based on your logo. He explores sampling your brand with photography and how to visualize it in a real-world context. Next, see how to add elements like icons, patterns or illustration to your logo to extend the visual language of your brand. Wrap up the course by learning how to create a mockup with your logo, as well as how to create a brand guideline system.