Routes of Hope

Last week, I finished a logotype for ‘Routes of Hope’, an upcoming fund-raising event for a non profit organization.

The client was looking for some custom typography for the event name that would compliment the classic approach of their logo. The design needed to be inviting and compassionate, while remaining easily legible. Another requirement was that a small tag line could fit in somewhere near the bottom of the composition.

I started off with some very rough, quick sketches to get a feel of how the letters and words could fit together. I always repeat these sketches over and over as it allows the flow and dynamics to develop naturally. At this stage, I used a Pentel brush pen as it gives me a good sense of where the stroke contrast naturally appears.

I often have a good idea of the general style I’m going for – in this case, something calligraphic/script inspired, quite elegant but with a friendly feel. I also focus on the specific goals of the client and ways in which to bring in some of the key characteristics into the letterforms. With this project, I was going for an uplifting, positive feel so I played with softly rounded curves and a subtle upwards slant/direction.

Once I reached a point where I was happy with the overall idea, I moved onto pencil, loosely working from rough traces of the brush versions. I often prefer to do the final sketches in pencil as it allows me to be more precise (and erase!). Again, I usually do multiple pencil sketches, looking into details like crossbars, swashes and the ends of strokes.

With a relatively neat final pencil sketch, I brought the scan into Illustrator. I always vector manually as I find there’s more control and I can make decisions along the way. I have the habit of vectoring with a bright red stroke as that’s the probably the worst it will ever look – the idea being that when it looks acceptable in the default bright red swatch, then it’s a pretty good guarantee that it’ll work in a nice black fill.

Once the main shapes are done, there’s always a lot of cleaning up required: slants of individual letters that need altering, inconsistent letter widths, irregular curves, kerning, layout adjustments.. (Below: the final on top of the original sketch). In this case, I also changed the ‘p’ as the idea I’d had in the original sketch looked out of place with the rest of the letters.

When it’s almost done, I always check a reverse background as that highlights any spacing issues. Before finalizing everything, I try to come back to it the next day with fresh eyes to make sure I haven’t missed anything.

With this particular project, the client will be working with the colours, so here’s my interpretation in the meantime:

August 9, 2011 | Written by: Claire | Tags: lettering, logo, script