Ok kids, time for another tweak. The e was corrected as well as the kerning, but for this post we’ll focus on the s. Notice that the s is about half the width of the d which makes the s feel too dense in compared to the pacing of the rest of the letters. To correct this, don’t use horizontal character stretching. Stretching the glyph to be wider produces too much weight in the horizontal widths/bowls of the s.

You can see the full update here.

Since Illustrator CS3 was launched I noticed a dramatic file size increase, even in small logo documents. I found a work-around to make logo files be under 100k instead of around a minimum of 900k.

Open, not place, a jpg in Illustrator. Once it’s opened, delete the jpg from the work area. Then paste in whatever vector you want. Then save the document with an appropriate name. Ta dah! Smaller file size. From what I can tell, the file size is so much smaller because opening a jpg doesn’t load all the bloated swatches, symbols, brushes, etc into the base document.

Instead of clubbing people over the head with an ubiquitous illustration of the actual tines of a gear, these letter forms reference the workings of a motor with pulleys, belts and gears.

When creating strong logo systems, it’s important simplify instead of cramming or illustrating a concept into a logo. Example: Nike does not have shoes or sporting equipment in their logo. They do, however, communicate speed and motion.

Novelty gift lotion items. Concept of lotion from the creative mind of William Bunn. Design concept, art direction and logo design by Seth Taylor

Repression: long descending cloud represents repressing feeling way down deep
Denial: white cloud dissipating any belief
Anger: churning engulfing grasping cloud