Filed under: Design Resources | Tags: angle, bezier, curve, drawing, Illustrator, pen tool, practice, tutorial, vector
I recently gave a co-worker a relatively brief tutorial on the pen tool in Illustrator. I was trying to convey to her that the pen tool is very difficult to learn when you are first starting out and ultimately the only way to improve is to practice (constantly). A week later I’m pretty sure she hasn’t practiced any further at all, so I created a practice file and thought it might be useful to others. The file contains over 20 geometric abstract shapes with all kinds of different curves, angles and corners. Additionally, I drew them all out on graph paper so hopefully that gives some further tips as to placement of points, geometries, etc. I also figured I might as well make it available to anyone else who wants to pass along or complete. It might be interesting to get some pen tool pros and do this as race of some fashion, but for now download here.
Filed under: Key Commands | Tags: Illustrator, InDesign, Key Commands, logo, move, parody, u-haul
Move
Today I knocked off the U-Haul logo for the key command “Move” (default in both InDesign and Illustrator). I had a lot of fun with this one as it’s predominantly a word mark. As the base for the font I used Boris Black Bloxx, which approximates the dimensions (stem and cross bar widths, x-height, cap height, etc.) of the font used in the U-Haul logo. I then set about removing all the rounded corners and evening out/reducing the kerning and modifying the “H” to match the logotype. I used Pantone 7413 C for the “U-Haul Orange.”
While poking around to try and find the exact font and Pantone used, I stumbled upon this section of the U-Haul website. It’s a nice resource of regionally themed illustrations and they make each truck graphic wrap available as a downloadable wallpaper as well as providing some “fun facts” about each state or territory featured. I’m pretty partial to Newfoundland and North Carolina personally.
While on the subject of resources, Brands of the World is a great jumping of point for a project like this. They have a massive, searchable database of logos (generally available in black on white in .eps format) as well as fonts and some other resources.
