How Designers Really Work – The Down and Dirty Logo Design



This Ain’t Art School and You Can Toss Your Graphic Artists Guild Handbook Right Out the Window. This is the Real World.

Sure, it would be nice to have three months and a $75,000 budget to design a logo but the majority of us will never be in that situation. Most of the time the deadlines are tight and the budgets even tighter. Instead of having weeks and a team of experts at your call, you alone will be responsible for asking the right questions to tease the branding strategy from the client’s mind.

Maybe you’ll get lucky and they’ll know their value position and differentiators right off the top of their head. Or maybe they’re intimate with the competitive landscape and can already articulate their brand clearly.

Most likely though, your client will be so overwhelmed with the logistics of starting or maintaining a business that they have very little left over to focus on brand development. This is where the designer comes in. It’s your job to help forge your client’s identity. It’s your job to ask the right questions and familiarize yourself with their category and their competitors. And it’s your job to steer them away from decisions that will hurt their business.

And sometimes you just make it up as you go along.

The Quick and Dirty Logo Design

Sometimes you just got to bang it out. Could be a pro-bono job and the client is just happy to be working with a someone who knows what they’re doing. Or maybe they have a good sob story, they are really nice, and they fully understand that with their budget they are just going to take what you give them. No multiple revisions, no brainstorming, and no market analysis.

The funny thing, a down and dirty logo design can be just as good as one that was slaved over. Just because a committee tortured you for six months doesn’t mean the results will kick butt. Just because you went through endless rounds of comps and revisions doesn’t guarantee that the design chosen is the best one. So much depends on who’s making the decisions. I’ve seen perfectly good designs deconstructed into oblivion. I’ve seen decision makers gravitate to the weakest design out of a lot of obviously superior choices. Sometimes your initial gut reaction, the first vision that pops into your head, really is the best choice. (Or at least close enough that another 12 hours of nitpicking and tweaking won’t make a lick of difference in the marketplace anyway.)

A down and dirty logo project has three conditions:

1. Little or no direction

2. Little or no money

3. Little or no time

This project is one of those.

The Calabria Bros Logo Design Story

This is it, the complete instructions and the actual size of the photos to use as reference for the caricatures. I'm not kidding, this is the full size of the photos.

Pasquale, a design buddy of mine emails me with a request.

I have a favor to ask of you. My best friend just purchased an Italian Deli in the city and he needs a logo. The name of the deli is “Calabria Bros.” and he would like a caricature of himself and his partner pointing sandwiches at each other with “Calabria” on top and “Bros.” on the bottom.

Now Pasquale’s a special buddy. Not only is he investing some serious sweat equity and doing some fine work for my tech start-up, we’ve also been through start-up hell together with another company. Our experience at this start-up was so traumatic, so painful, so mentally draining, that we now have a special bond that only soldiers and hostage survivors share. So my response was an easy decision.

Yeah. Just send me some reference photos.

Are the sandwiches like swords or knives? Why are they pointing them at each other?

I’ll just do it as a favor for you. No charge.

I could probably knock out a finished logo fairly quickly as this type of illustrated logo is my specialty. I would recommend though putting “Calabria Bros” on top of the circle and then a tagline on the bottom. Bros all by itself at bottom will read and look funny.

He gets back to me right away.

Sweet. I will send you some photos by tomorrow. You do what’s best as far as the logo type is concerned. I’m not sure if they have a tag line, but I will find out for you. Not sure why they want sandwiches pointing at each other…but I like the idea of swords, or just sandwiches pointed at each other. I will talk to him tonight and get more details for you.

Thanks for your help.

So he sends me the reference photos and they are tiny. Like the size of an avatar on a blog comment.

Hi Clay,

Here are the photos for reference. My buddy is the one in the family photo. His partner sent me a crappy photo, but hope it helps.

Possible tagline: Italy lives here!

The first decision I make is to abandon the sandwiches as sword idea. It just won’t work. I would make the characters too small, add too much detail, and take the emphasis off the two most important branding points; this is a deli owned by the Calabria Brothers and they make sandwiches. Sandwich sword fighting would just confuse people.

I open them up in Photoshop and blow them up as big as possible and then print them. Unfortunately it doesn’t help. They just look soft. So I try to commit them to memory, go to my drafting board, and draw as quickly possible. I still need to get up several times to look at the monitor but it goes pretty fast. After I pencil it, I start to ink. I haven’t inked in a while so my Kuretake brush pen starts clogging. I try rocking it. I try running it under hot water. Nothing is helping. The ink line is so scratchy I need to beef it up with a Sharpie. Sharpies are not good for inking. They are unresponsive and the line quality sucks. Very frustrating.

Scanned artwork for logo. I generally draw head separate from the bodies. That way I can play around with head positions easily.

Scanned artwork for logo. I generally draw heads separate from the bodies. That way I can play around with head positions easily.

When doing human characters that I know will be scanned and manipulated on the computer I concentrate on getting the parts right. If a hand looks a little stiff, I’ll just draw another one right next to it. If I overshoot a line, I’ll just touch it up later. The heads I always draw separate. This keeps my options open. I can easily tilt the head or size it up or down until it’s perfect.

After the inking, I scan, and then open the file in Photoshop. I bump up the contrast to drop out any stray pencil lines and do a bit of touch-up. Then I open it up in Illustrator to convert my raster ink scans into beautiful clean vectors line. I use the Live Trace/Covert to Live Paint feature which, for a traditional illustrator who still prefers to ink the old-fashioned way, but absolutely loves to work with the my drawings in digital form, is one of the most amazing things ever invented.

Illustrator CS drawing coloring techniques

Select the color shape inside the image's lines, and then slice with knife tool. Select the bottom shape and make it darker for a shadow. Then draw a little oval and give it a lighter color for a highlight. I use technique all the time. I open up a scanned ink drawing, then go to Object/Live Trace/Make and Convert to Live Paint. Then using the paint bucket I drop in solid midtone colors. After the drawing is all colored in, I go to Object/Live Paint/Expand. This expands the live paint object into easily sliceable shapes. Then I start cutting and dropping in color for my shadow and highlights. I finish off with some hand draw highlights.

After I convert the ink scan into clean vector shapes I start to drop in color. Sometimes I draw little shapes for highlights and shadows. Sometimes I just use the knife tool to cut up a block and drop in fresh color to create the same effect.

Once the characters are sufficiently awesome it’s time for the typography and layout. It’s an Italian deli so the choices are obvious – warm colors that stimulate the appetite and some red, green and white to invoke the Italian flag. For fonts I go with a classic look. I want to convey the idea of tradition and authenticity. Not that many type faces look good on a circular path so it’s pretty easy to narrow it down. I go with Rockwell Extra Bold for the name and Copperplate Gothic for the tag line. As a general rule your tag lines should be done in a different, yet complimentary font than the name. Otherwise it blurs the distinction between the two and lessons the brand impact of the business name. This is the same reason you should avoid using the same font that is used in the logotype for advertising copy. Keep the logotype on the logo.

I create the text along some circle paths and stylize it with a series of fills with offset paths (or some layered strokes) and then some nice gradients. Then I tighten my kerning (the space between the letters) so it looks good. You should always adjust your kerning, especially fonts on a curved path. They are not going to look right otherwise.

I save it and email it to my buddy. My files are always ready to send because I prefer to work directly in Illustrator editable PDF format. Makes sending proofs really easy and then I always have editable masters floating around somewhere. Of course, I convert text to outlines and expand all unusual shape effects (like warp) before sending it to the printer. I attach a little note to the email.

I must say, this logo does kick ass. The sandwich as swords just wasn’t working. This logo looks like a place you’d really want to eat.

Example of Logo Design Using Illustration

And the finished logo. Nice, huh?

Pasquale gets back to me the next day. When there’s a delay in the response to a proof it can go either way. Sometimes they just need time to figure out what needs to be changed. Sometimes they just need time to catch their breath and tell you how friggin’ awesome it is. In this case it was a a bit of the former and a lot of the latter.

This is a really KICK ASS LOGO!  Thanks for doing me this favor.  I really appreciate it.  I already forwarded it to Mike and he absolutely loves it as well.

One change he has, and I can make it if you send me the original (I’m assuming that you have this in Illustrator), is that they will not have any veggies with their sandwiches so he wants the lettuce removed.  But like I said, I can make that update if you send me over the illustrator file.

Thanks again…you always do great work, always.  YOU’RE FUCKIN’ AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now that’s the kind of response I expect to hear. I don’t send out junk. Just tell me I’m fucking awesome and we’re all good. But a deli that doesn’t put veggies on their sandwiches? That’s a novel idea. Of course, that fact would have been a good thing to put in the specs. So I tell him there’s no need to send a master. The one he has is an editable master as I work in Illustrator editable PDF format. After a day or two I follow-up to see how the “no veggies” conversion went.

Where you able to replace the lettuce OK?

He gets right back to me.

Hey Clay,

Kind of.  Kept it there and changed the color making it pastrami or ham.  Looks ok.  I’ll send it over to you later today.

And that, my friend, is the essence of the down and dirty logo design. Don’t sweat the small stuff, tell me I’m awesome, and just change the green color on the lettuce to a “meat” color and we’re all good.

Visit Calabria Bros Deli

www.calabriabrosdeli.com

2249 17th Street @ Utah

San Francisco, CA 94103

Phone: 415-863-1213 – Fax Orders: 415-863-1217

File Under: How to Design a Good Professional Logo Quickly – Fast Logo Design Tips – Illustrated Logo Design – Logo Design Tutorial

8 comments


  • Great Illustration you’ve done there!

    Sometimes I tend to do the illustration part completely in Illustrator, but they always come out better, if drawn first on a piece of paper.

    Good Job.

    February 23, 2010
    • Clay (The Beats Digging Ditches Dude)

      Yeah, I agree. I love the look of real ink lines, but I also love how Illustrator converts my ink lines to vector. It creates a unique hybrid look that can’t be achieved by only using one method exclusively.

      February 23, 2010
  • Danielle

    My husband is one of the fine gents in this logo, and co-owner of Calabria Bros., set to open March 15th. I must say that Clay’s design turned out better than I had ever expected/imagined. Yes he did capture the identity and vision of what the deli is and will be. Clay F’ing rocks!!!

    February 26, 2010
    • Clay (The Beats Digging Ditches Dude)

      Thanks! I’m super proud of that logo. Make sure you send me swag for my portfolio and take a lot of photos. I bet the sign will look amazing. I’m still surprised about the no veggies. Do you mean none, zero(peppers, asparagus, etc)…or just no lettuce? Oh, Send me the delis info(address, phone, website,,etc) and I’ll add it to the article. Thanks.

      February 26, 2010
  • Nicole

    Hi Clay !! This article is great! I must say that when Pasquale first showed me the logo, I almost fell off my chair. You are FUCKING AWESOME!

    LOL. (ps) I liked the soldier bit…I know what story your talking about..Don’t let him call my house..He’s gonna wish he didn’t!! Hee Hee

    Take Care

    February 28, 2010
  • This is a very “insightful” article Clay, and I appreciate you sharing it.

    May 29, 2011
  • Harriet

    Hi Clay, I enjoyed this so much. Your description of down and dirty logo design with a few emails and a couple of photos is so right on and funny! I have done it both ways too, and the logos with corporate marketing teams and five figure budgets aren’t necessarily better, that is so true. Logo turned out great, good call on the battling sandwiches. I do not find battling sandwiches to be appetizing.

    September 20, 2012
  • Great Illustration you’ve done there!

    Sometimes I tend to do the illustration part completely in Illustrator, but they always come out better, if drawn first on a piece of paper.

    Good Job

    April 21, 2016

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