Logo Illustrator Help

[SamJ]

Hey,

I'm a first year graphic design student and have been designing this logo as part of a portfolio website which I will aim to get done come summer break. Each of the four parts of the logo are my initials SJ. But also together as a flower or leaf as a common design symbol. I was a bit judgemental on using such a widely used picture subject to represent design, but I think it might work by adopting my name as part of the image in this way. I'm not too fussed about it being read as letters on its own, (although it would be cool) but it does need to be identified when I add my name alongside etc. in the menu.

I've been designing this on and off in my own time and while my skills are average in photoshop, im still learning the basics of illustrator. I was wondering how I could get the calligraphy brush I used on the pen tool to behave the same way on all four petals or initials? As you can see the first and biggest initial set widens the brush at the tip or where the petal folds, which is how it should look. Yet if I copy and rotate the same set, it alters the width adjustment of the brush. I want the varied width only to hint at three-dimensional qualities, much in the same way I've tried to make the petal look further away by decreasing both the size and stroke width. I know its picky but it looks kinda off, and designing for myself is always much harder.

Any general comments or criticism are welcome!

Cheers,

SamJ

 

[heehee]

Does your design have to be based on a flower or leaf? In your logo, all I see is some curved lines and an empty hole in the middle, it doesn't really stand out and can't really tell it's made up of the initials "SJ". Also, when you are making a logo, make sure people can see and recognize it when it's small (ie; 75 px x 75 px or smaller). That's about the size of the MacRumors logo on the top left of this page.

 

[iMeowbot]

You could use Object->Expand Appearance to turn the (brushed) stroke into an outline. If you click on an expanded shape, you'll see that your original stroke is still hiding inside, so you still have a way to change your mind later on. If you want all the strokes to match in thickness, you could duplicate and enlarge the petal shape, expand, and finally rotate. To make the stroke proportional to the petal size, expand first and then do your scaling.

You also have the option of making custom brushes, one for each angle.

 

[SamJ]

cheers for the heads up. yea i've been looking at this for a while so i've seen it for what i want to see. It can be seen at small sizes, i've tried that already. I kinda liked the idea at first but thought i was taking a chance joining the letters from the bottom of the S. I need to take a step back.

Cheers