If you want to check that out so to get us started here in Illustrator. As you can see, I have this example: logo that I’ll be using for demonstrative purposes. The first thing we want to do is just make sure we’re working in the CMYK color space, so we’ll get a file document color mode and make sure we have CMYK selected, and the reason for that is because RGB is a color format. That’s meant for digital displays, like computer screens and phones and laptops and so on and so forth, and it uses a color range that is generated using light, whereas CMYK uses ink to generate those color ranges, making it more suitable for print, and the thing with logos Is logos are used in a variety of different ways: they’re not just going to be used on a website header or on a mobile application.
They’re also going to be printed on business cards, brochures so on and so forth. So you want to make sure you provide your logo to your client in a way. That’s it can be printed as well, so make sure you use CMYK color format for this. The second thing we want to do is just make sure we have our text converted to outlines. As you can see here, for this logo, I used a stock fonts called lato, I’m just going to select over the text here and go to type create outlines.
If it’s already grayed out, that means you’re good to go. You already created outlines from it, and the reason for that is because we don’t want to send editable files to our clients with the font file embedded, because if they don’t have that font installed on their system, they’re not going to be able to edit their logo. It’s not going to be displayed the same way. It is on your computer, so make sure you convert all of your text outlines first, and what we have to do now is create the different variations for this logo, we’ll be generating files for it.
Let me come over here to show you what I mean. I have three different variations for this logo. I have the full logo with both the the icon and the name, and I have just the icon by itself and then I have just the name by itself and we’re going to be generating files for each of these. And if you notice here, I have different color variations these as well. I have the full logo, as it would work on a white background, because it has the dark text.
I have the full logo, as it would work on a dark background, because it has the light text and then I have monotone variations where it’s all white one and all white and one and all black and I’ve done the same for each of these two formats. Each of these three formats over here, so what I want to do next, is I’m going to grab a folder, I’m going to I’m going to create a new folder here, as you can see, artboard a I.
This is the file I’m working on right. Now, I’m going to create a new folder and I’m going to name this logo file. This is going to be the folder that we end up sending to our client and I’m going to open that folder and within this folder, I’m going to create some new folders, I’m going to create a different folder for each of those three formats, so I’ll create A new folder titled, full lockup, that’s for the entire logo, design with the logo and the text I’ll create another folder for the icon, the iconic mark and then I’ll create another folder for the word mark, which is just the name word mark, and then I want To create one more folder for the master file, so I’m going to go to file new master file and I’ll be addressing.
How will I’ll be addressing that in just a minute? So let me move this off of my screen, so I can get back to work here. What we want to do now is just go through each of your individual logo files and make sure you group them all together by pressing ctrl G on the keyboard. You want to make sure they’re all grouped together. I already have it set on my screen, but if you haven’t done the same just make sure to go through and group those all together for this icon, it’s just one single object, so it doesn’t need to be grouped, that’s already good to go and what I Want to do now is let me first get rid of this original logo over here, I’m going to take these logos and I want to size them at an appropriate size.
So if I take these and bring these over here, you’ll see in the width column, I already have the size set at 484 pixels, that’s kind of small. I normally like to generate logos at 1920, pixels 1920 pixels in the largest dimension, but I’ve noticed recently that it causes a lot of problems with um. You know file size, so lately I’ve been using 1280. So I’m going to make the width of this 1280 pixels and I’m basing this on, which dimension is the largest the format of this logo design? The width is greater than the height, so I make the larger of those two dimensions.
1280. If you have a logo where the the height is larger than the width make your night 1280, so I have that set as it is. I want to do the same thing for my icons over here. I’r going to set the width to 1280. There we go and I’ll do the same thing with my word marks over here: I’ll set the width of these to 1280, and that is in Texas, oops. Now. What I want to do is I want to create individual artboards for each of these files.
So I’m going to click on the artboards tool over here and i’m just going to click on this first logo and it’s going to create an artboard over it. I’r going to do the same thing down here and just going to create individual artboards over each of these formats like that, and then I want to come over here and delete this original artboard by clicking on that X. And what I want to do now is just click on go back through each of these artboards and name them according to their variations.
So for this first artboard over here, I’m going to change the name to lock up color same thing over here: lock up, inverted color over here, lock up white and then the same thing down here. Lock up the black and I’m going to go through and do the same thing for these other variations over here. Okay, so, as you can see, I’ve gone through and I’ve named all of my files according to what they are icon: icon, color, icon, white icon.
Black same thing over here for the word marks you get the idea. What we want to do now is, let me go back to the Select tool to get out of the artboard mode, and I want to save this as the master file. So I’m going to go to file save as I’m going to click on logo files and I’m going to click on master file, and I’m just going to name this master file. This is the master file that your client or another designer they want to work with.
In the future maybe can edit if they want to work with these files later on, and I’m also going to generate individual logo files for each of these as well so I’ll go ahead and leave the defaults here. Click! Ok and now we have a master illustrator file that we can work with. You’ll also want to save an EPS copy of the master file as well, so we’ll go to file save as and I’ll save this as master file PS and there we go.
You leave the defaults as they are and then you’re good to go now. What we have to do is we have to export each of these files individually. So to do that, I’m going to go to file export and I’m going to click on export for screens. What I want to do now is select only the files that I want to export based on its file type. So we have the full lock up the icon, and the word mark in this for this first batch, I’m just going to export the lock up.
So let me clear the selection down here, I’m going to select just the full lock up logo files and if you notice here, it’s going to export each file with a name based on the name of its artboard, which is pretty convenient. So what I want to do now is choose the folder, where I’d like to export these. These are going to be the full lockups, I’m going to export it to the lock up folder and for the format’s.
I want to use PNG with no suffix and scanned at 1x scale. The PNG is going to be a format or it has a transparent background. I want to add another format, PDF and then another format. Svg SVG is a an editable vector copy. So your client or someone else can edit these logo files individually later on with any vector software they so desire with. The AI file is just it’s just specific to Adobe Illustrator, because it’s a proprietary format, so I always to send SVG and PDF copies as well, because those are editable vector copies that can be edited with any vector software.
So once we have that set I’ll, go ahead and click on export artboard, and let me open up my file over here just to make sure everything came out. Alright, if I click on full lock up you’ll see we have all of the different file formats here. The full lock up and all of its color variations and all of the formats, let me go to view large icons there we go looking pretty good. Let me set that back to list now.
I want to do the same thing with the icon, so we’ll go to file export export as oops, no, not export as file export export for screens. Let me clear the selection, I’m going to choose just the icons here and again, I’m going to choose the folder location for this one, we’re not putting this in the lock up. Folder we’re putting this in the iconic mark. Folder select, folder click export artboard. There we go and let me just double check that to make sure that came out alright, perfect and I’ll do the same thing.
Finally, with the word mark here, I’ll go to file export export as no not export as file export export for screens. I’r used to doing this with the keyboard shortcut, which is control alt II. I never. I never use this navigation menu over here. That’s why I keep messing that up. Let me click on clear selection. Let me choose the word mark files and once again, we’re going to change the folder location to the word mark and then go ahead and click export artboard.
So if we go over here to our files now just to double check the word mark there, it is, we now have our logo files. What I also like to include is a copy of a logo format guide that I created. Let me open it up here to show you what I mean. This is a PDF document that I created. I sent a copy of this to every single one of my logo, clients because they don’t really understand. Most of them don’t understand what these file formats are and how they work.
So I like to just put a brief little explanation of each of the format’s there and I put a little card with my contact information in case. They need help at any point down the road or maybe they want to get back in touch with me to hire me again or refer me to one of their friends. They can hire me and you get the idea, so I like to include a copy of that with every with every client project. So to do that, let me grab the car I have over here.
My other screen logo format, guide PDF. I would recommend creating one yourself, it’s very, very useful. Otherwise, you’ll have clients emailing you asking you like, which file to use what you know you get the idea. Let me come back up here. Let me grab my folder once again and what I’m going to do now is I’m going to go back up out of here we’re going to have this logo files dot folder. This is the folder we’re going to send to our client, but we need to turn that into a zip folder first.
So for that I like to use 7-zip, it’s a handy little application that allows you to create zip folders, I’m going to click and drag into 7-zip, make sure we choose archive format as dot. Zip click, OK and it should create a zipped folder right in place and there you go now. You have a zip folder that you can send to your client with all of the completed logo files in, and I think that should do it for this tutorial.
That is how you can go about creating logo files for your clients using Adobe Illustrator. If you have any questions, let me know, and as always thanks for reading
Jimmy's Internet Marketing Business Blog 