Related posts:

1. How to draw a perfect cog in under 20 seconds
2. Poor Man’s Copyright (again).

We take a look at the often misunderstood concept of logo footprints and aspect ratios, the advantages of each and why social media almost demands a square logo. Or at least a square version.

It never occurred to me that this was a topic worth discussing, let alone writing an entire blog post about. Until last week that is, when a frantic client called me on my cell. He was trying to upload his new logo, designed last summer, onto his Facebook fan page. “It’s so tiny” he explained, “and half the name isn’t there”. Having designed the logo myself, I knew right away what was going on. The logo was slightly horizontal in aspect ratio, had a mild footprint issue, and when uploaded to the Facebook server, the online image editor was resizing and cropping his image into a square format.

Square is where it’s at on most social networks

Using the logo on other social media platforms would get progressively worse, they being smaller than a Facebook profile ‘badge’. On Twitter, neither the icon, or the logo text, would be legible at all. Especially in a timeline feed. Even though this design, on it’s own, is a fairly simple logo. Trouble is, even if we use the absolute minimum visual ID area, carving out almost 2/3 of the overall footprint, the avatar badge would still be tiny. And would look hideous. In this instance, the fix was easy enough. I could set up a couple of square JPGs, using a bastardized version of the design, and our client would be all set. He could use the squared and simplified version of his logo in most of the social media networks, the edited version having enough of a visual relationship with its horizontal sibling to still make sense. As this particular logo wasn’t originally designed with social media in mind, it wasn’t the world’s best solution. But it would work well enough.

Do we start off square?

Afterwards, I realized that this might not be so uncommon for clients, especially with the do-it-yourself nature of social media profiles. Our client had absolutely no idea why his logo was being truncated, yet I knew right away. Perhaps, and as designers, there’s many things about design we automatically assume everyone else knows. That’s worth a discussion of its own, I guess. It also got me thinking. I think we can all agree that social media is here to stay, and will continue to grow for the foreseeable future. Accordingly, should the use of a logo in social media networks dictate some of the design process itself, especially in the initial steps? Put simply, is social media an argument for square logos? Or at least a logo that we can shave off a square portion from, in order for clients to effectively manage their avatars and profiles on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube? I’m thinking yes. To illustrate the thinking behind this, I grabbed some logos out of our portfolio and tried to make them into social media avatars. So that I wouldn’t be ‘cherry picking’ examples (for best results) I grabbed the first set that came up in our logo design examples slide show. As you’ll see below, I had mixed results.

From left to right, the first two, I was able to use pretty well ‘as is’. Type at the size of social media icons is never going to be terribly legible in the first place, so I just carved out the icon portion of the design. The third, My Car Guy, wasn’t bad, considering its relative complexity and illustrative nature, but that’s probably the result of a Rorschach Test effect (we know what the logo is supposed to look like, having seen the original, and our brain fills in the details). Will first time viewers be able to read the tiny type or recognize the car? Who knows. Funny thing, even though the car logo looks like it has a square aspect ratio, it doesn’t really and any serious social media use of this logo would probably need a rework. Below, I’ve setup a few examples using our own logo (’cause it happens to be square) to further illustrate this notion. Will also serve as a handy-dandy sizing guide when it comes to developing logos and avatars for the most popular social media networks.

Facebook

Facebook is the most ‘generous’ of the major social media platforms, allowing you to upload a relatively large profile image. That image is reduced to typical avatar site along side comments, status updates and feed. The Facebook upload mechanism is a bit wonky, and best leave a few pixels around your icon, especially if it doesn’t bleed on all four sides. Your profile pic sits on white and blue backgrounds so best give it a thin border in which to breathe.

Twitter

Twitter uses a couple of sizes throughout their network. Your profile avatar shows up on a profile page, as well as on a timeline ‘feed’ accompanying your tweets. Twitter allows you to upload square, horizontal and vertical images, of almost any size, but you have to use the online tool to crop them into a square.

You Tube

YouTube follows almost the same format as Twitter, with a few pixels difference between the two. Avatars show up in two places, your profile (channel) pages and on the videos you upload. The size on video pages is a positively miserly 46 pixels square. If YouTube’s your thing, better dial back on the detail significantly.

Gravatar

If you’re a frequent blog reader, or commenter, you’ll be familiar with Gravatar. If not, Gravatar is the web-based platform that allows you to set up a consistent avatar, linked to your e-mail address, for use on blogs (that happen, as most are, to be running the Gravatar plugin). The sizes of Gravatars are all over the place, dependent on the blog designers layout. Some are quite large. Others, like ours, are very small. They’re all square.

Logo use on blogs and websites

Before everyone starts squeezing their logo pegs into square holes, there are some very important caveats to the ‘square is better’ mentality. Websites and blogs are also part of this newfangled social media too. And when used on websites and blogs, logos are better served if they have an aspect ratio that leans towards horizontal. Not that this is carved in stone, but square logos can can lost in the top left corner of a typical web page header (yeah, I know. Our own web header logo is both square and on the right hand side. We try to swim upstream once in a while). Their vertical cousins can practically disappear. Let’s take a look at some logo design aspect ratios.

Now let’s plunk those logos into some basic website header layouts to see what’s what. Granted, we’ve exaggerated things a little to make a point, but I think you’ll get the idea. And I don’t think there’s a graphic designer alive, at least those with a few years under their belt, who hasn’t run into a variation of this scenario, and then having to explain to a client why their logo is so small. In any case, a horizontal format is definitely nicer for website use than a square one. For all intents and purposes, extremely vertical logos are out.

Quick fix: removable icons and fluid logos

It’s getting a bit complicated, huh? So bottom line, which are better: square or horizontal logos? Alas, both have their applications, and neither performs a coup de grâce on the other. The real answer, at the risk of breaking more logo design commandments, is that anyone that’s serious about social media, and promoting their logo, probably needs a little bit of both. It’s always been advisable, if you’re incorporating any type of pictorial imagery into a logo, that it should be able to used solo, on it’s own and disconnected from the typography (that advice has been part of our main site logo design tips for years now). That’s not always possible (like the My Car Guy logo above, typography can be intertwined with graphics), so designers need to be a little more fluid in adapting logos to different uses. Clients need to be a bit more fluid in allowing designers to do so. I’m of the impression that as social media evolves, and the avenues where logo can show up increases, we need to ditch a little bit of the bunker mentality. The ‘you can’t change that’ mantra. ‘Cause I think we do need to change things once in a while.

At the very least, you’re going to need a square version of any logo.

Related posts:

1. Social media: Tweakouts & Twitter Storms a social justice tool or digital villagers with torches & pitchforks?
2. Social Network Marketing – Burger King Style
3. Designing consistently great logos

Wonky pipes and a stubborn designer

A couple of weeks ago, our kitchen sink started to back up. This was on top of the persistent leak that had started a few years ago under the counter. Not a deluge or anything, but a consistent drip, drip, drip that every couple of weeks, filled up the plastic bowl that the Mrs. had to put under the pipes to catch it. Anyhoo, now the damn pipes were backing up too. When we ran the dishwasher, a sudsy gelatinous goo burbled up through the drain. As it was, and even though we have two sinks, we were already down to one, the result of the aforementioned leak. Now, we were down to none. “Why didn’t you fix the leak?” you might ask. “But I did” would be my answer. On numerous occasions since it first started, I had journeyed to our local Home Depot store, picking up wrenches, plumber’s tape and some really messy glue that insisted on ruining shirts every time I used it. Not being terribly handy, my do-it-yourself solutions hadn’t been terribly effective is all. Embarrassingly, my wife is much more of a handyman than I’ll ever be, and after getting tired of my “yeah, yeah, I’ll get to it in a bit” answers when she pointed out the leak, for the umpteenth time, she’d had a few goes herself. Will similar results. Despite my meager efforts, and her herculean ones, the sink continued to leak. And now, the bloody thing was starting to back up too, the result of some blockage deep in the pipes, and a blockage that was no doubt evolving into a new life form. What’s this got to do with do-it-yourself design, logos or designing? Bear with me for a bit and it should become apparent.

The joy of the do-it-yourself solution?

It’s not that I don’t understand the basics of plumbing. I do. Water goes in, travels down some PVC tubes and ends up somewhere out ‘there’. The pipes need to be watertight, or they’ll leak. And if something blocks the pipes, the water can’t travel out ‘there’ and will back up to whence it came, in this case, our aluminum sink. I even had a moderate understanding of the tools involved. A pipe wrench, plumber’s tape, plunger, PVC glue and this spinny, snakey thing I had picked up at Home Depot for sixty bucks. Trouble is, I couldn’t make them do what they’re, well, supposed to do. And despite being a professional services provider for almost thirty years as a graphic designer, I didn’t want to hire a professional service provider when it came to fixing my wonky plumbing. You know, a plumber. My reasoning was typical. They’re too expensive. Too much of a hassle. Don’t know who to ask. “I’m quite capable of fixing this myself, thank you very much“, even though after numerous attempts, spending a few hundred dollars of do-it-yourself tools and wrecking my knees on the tiled floor of our kitchen every time I tried, the pipe continued to taunt me by dribbling water down its side. I also never seemed to have the time to attempt to fix the problem, as I was always busy doing other things. Things that I am good at.

The “that’s good enough” attitude

Granted, I had toned the dribbles down a bit, and the amount of errant water had been lessened a little after each subsequent attempt. Overall, I had taken a “that’s good enough” attitude towards the entire thing while Sue, my wife, wasn’t so thrilled with my do-it-yourself plumbing efforts though thankfully, she didn’t grumble too much (not wanting to crush my he-man super-plumber vibe I suppose). But now that our one functioning sink had now begun to back up, it was time to roll up the sleeves because our entire kitchen had been rendered unusable. Here’s the funny thing – while I hadn’t managed to fix the original leak, I didn’t “need” the professional services of a plumber for this task either. It was simply a matter of running some snakey thing down the drain, spinning the handle a few times and all would be well. As a professional services provider, you’d think I’d know better, but I didn’t. And as with most things that ‘should be’, this one wasn’t either. After getting the snake stuck, not before dragging up bits and pieces of the most horrible pipe blocking matter you can imagine, the backed up water began to rise up the sides of our sink, treacherously close to the lip. “Can we just get someone in?” Sue finally suggested,  a little perplexed at my refusal to bring in a professional. Finally giving in, I told her “oh, all right“, accepting the notion that this problem was far beyond whatever do-it-yourself plumbing skills I had managed to absorb over the years. Turns out this absorption hadn’t actually amounted to much in the way of plumbing ‘skills’ at all.

Bringing in a professional

I found a plumber in about ten seconds flat on Google. They served our area, and offered a same-day service call. I gave them a shout on the phone, explaining our situation and a plumber’s van was at my doorstep four or five hours later. The plumber, we’ll call him Roger, took a look under the sink and assessed our problem instantly. The leaking sink was faulty, always had been (that got me off the hook a little). The blockage in the pipes was hardcore, having nestled itself into a ‘U’ bend somewhere under the floor boards. Roger laughed at my sixty dollar snakey-thing, comparing it to the one he brought in that was almost 5 times larger in diameter, and hooked up to a motor that looked like it could power a small city. The cost to fix everything? Just under $300. Yikes. Despite the nagging “you can do this yourself and save the $300” voice in my head, I agreed. I had spent almost as much as that on my do-it-yourself supplies, hours upon hours of my time, and I hadn’t really gotten anywhere. If Roger could fix all my problems for three hundred bones, it would be money well spent. And besides, if I didn’t get this sink fixed el pronto, there was a real risk that I’d be walking the streets that night as Sue’s patience finally evaporated.

Hiring a pro vs. doing it yourself

When I gave him the green light, Roger went to work and after about two hours of banging and bashing about, he had fixed the original leak, cleared the blockage and given the remaining pipes a once over. Any stuff that was starting to clog the drains wouldn’t grow into a new water-jamming lump. And while we often joke about plumber’s ass cracks and what have you, Roger was professional, pleasant and remarkably well-dressed for a person who’s often dealing with other people’s sewage. Sue was delighted, “my hero” (thankfully me, not Roger) and finally, after a few years of relentless dripping, we had two sinks, clean pipes and the infernal leak had ceased. And despite having to pony up on the better part of $300 bucks, my only real regret was “why didn’t I call these guys two years ago?” And as Roger drove away, I realized that there was quite a lot we can learn from my experience. So, as promised earlier, and four paragraphs later (told you it was “too long to read“) here’s what plumbing and plumbers can teach us about do-it-yourself design, designing logos and designers. The analogy goes something like this: Roger is the designer, I am the client, my kitchen is my company, and the pipes are my marketing. All set? Let’s go.

It’s not about the stupid. It’s about the level of experience

Whenever a designer suggests that a business owner, potential client, or design buyer shouldn’t try to create their own graphic design material, particularly their own logo, or that they should hire a professional, they run the risk of coming across as, or being labeled as, a snooty designer. Worse, it might even appear that they’re calling the client stupid. They’re guilty of neither. See, I’m not a stupid guy (though some might disagree) and I’m capable of all sorts of things on varying degrees of hobbyist levels. I’m a relative expert in several things, mostly related to graphic design. When it comes to plumbing (and several other household and mechanical chores that we’ll leave for another day) I am a complete,and utter bonehead. I can have the same tools as a plumber, just as a design buyer can have the same tools as a designer. But as I discovered, some of my tools aren’t up to professional snuff, analogous to clients having some rudimentary design software that’s not quite up to the snuff of real design gear. And even if my plumbing tools are the same, in my hands they’re not capable of producing the potential magic as they are in the hands of someone that actually knows what they’re doing. See, I now realize that a professional plumber has better tools, more experience, and more ‘tricks of the trade’ that I could ever imagine. He’s better at plumbing than I am, not because he’s smarter, but because he’s better at plumbing. This, by the way, does not make him a snobby plumber. It makes him a professional plumber. Alas, only in the graphic design industry does one risk being labeled as an elitist snooty twerp by pointing out our skill sets, our experience and our talents.

But I know how to plumb!

“Aha!” you might tell me, “I know how to fix plumbing, so your analogy is stupid!” Granted, my analogy may be stupid, but the fact that you know everything about plumbing helps make my point, not destroy it. See, if a potential design client is good at designing stuff, logos let’s say, then by all means they should design it themselves. Do it yourself logos can be pretty cool. If you know what you’re doing. But don’t think that a little knowledge, or access to design software, is going to make anyone a designer. Or someone that can produce professional level design work. See, I thought I had all the tools to be a plumber. Turns out I didn’t, but even the ones that I did possess, didn’t do plumbing stuff very well when I tried to use them. Because I know very little about pipes and I’m not much of a plumber. Just as most business owners aren’t designers either. That doesn’t mean that I’m a talentless dope. It just means that my skill set lies outside the realm of plumbing, as most business owners expertise lies outside the realm of graphic design. This isn’t snobbery or elitism. Just one of those “truthisms” that just are. And just like my “that’s good enough” attitude to my pedestrian plumbing repair efforts, someone designing their own stuff because it’s cheaper, or less hassle than dealing with a professional, runs the risk of having a “that’s good enough” logo. And just like my dripping pipes, it sometimes isn’t good enough at all. Took me almost two years to learn that lesson. Hopefully, this ramble with save somebody some time. Bottom line, if you’re good at something, do it. If you’re not good at something, let a professional take care of it.

Voodoo economics. Do-it-yourself saves money?

Naturally, using a professional designer (or a plumber) is going to set you back a few shekels. That’s the professional bit. But does doing it yourself really save money? Sometimes, sure. But let’s take my little analogy. Since the dripping had first started, I had spent hours and hours of my life trying to fix it. I had bought all sorts of tools and plumbing supplies (some multiple times as the original versions disappeared into the recesses of my garage). I had also put up with the relentless dripping, my wife’s grumbles and hadn’t used one of our sinks in almost two years. All to save what, $300? That makes me a gold medal winner in the “penny wise, pound foolish” Olympics. In fact, it was extraordinarily stupid for someone who doesn’t like to think of themselves as extraordinarily stupid. Similarly, while hiring a professional designer does cost, and a logo can run you anything from several hundred dollars to a couple of grand, isn’t it worth doling out a few bucks to insure that your company has an effective brand from the hop? I’m not suggesting that a small business has to break the bank either. They don’t, relatively speaking, especially when viewed through the value vs. cost prism. I’m not even suggesting that our shop is the only game in town. We aren’t. In the graphic design community, there’s lots of Rogers, all more than capable of hooking you up.

What designers can learn from Roger

As this was my first dealing with a professional plumber, I have to admit to harboring a preconceived notion of what plumbers were, how they acted and even how they looked. I was wrong. Roger was professional, polite and listened patiently as I blathered on about my drainage grief, using terms and phrases that probably didn’t have anything to do with plumbing. He showed up on time, itemized the invoice nicely and didn’t leave a mess after he left. We can all learn from Roger. Graphic designers complain about being labeled as ‘flaky’ or ‘unreliable’. I get it. Pisses me off too, but perhaps we shoulder some of the blame, just as a few plumbers shoulder the blame for their ‘hairy ass crack’ image. As designers, we’ve probably let our customer service slip a little once in a while. You know, being late on a project deadline and letting the phone go to voice mail when the client called, wondering what’s up. I know I have. If you’re guilty too, we  should probably work on changing that. If we want to be treated like professionals, then we certainly need to act like professionals. All the time. Cause that’s good for business. If ever my pipes start to leak again, I know who to call. Roger. And if designers act like professionals, our clients will know who to call when they run into their particular design hurdles. In this ever increasingly crowded marketplace we all inhabit, we need to understand that competition isn’t just about doing things cheaper than the next guy. It’s about doing it better. And being nicer when we do it.

The crowdsourcing & logo design contest footnote

As this is supposed to be a logo design blog, we run a logo design studio and crowdsourcing is supposed to be the issue de jour in the industry (though some might argue it isn’t), I’d be remiss in my duties if I didn’t at least try to crowbar it into our little analogy. So let’s. Say I wanted to get my pipes fixed, but didn’t want to hire a snooty professional plumber. They’re too expensive. I want more choices. To democratize plumbing. Whatever raison d’être people use to explain why they host logo contests. In this “fix my bloody pipes” instance, I could always pin a notice to my front door. Something along the lines of “Help us fix our plumbing. We’ll pay $100 to the plumber who gets it right. Come on in!“. Seems rather obvious, break and enter risks notwithstanding, that this would be a very risky proposition. Firstly, it’s safe to assume that our sign would attract all sorts of people who despite being very eager for the $100 prize, wouldn’t know very much about plumbing. Probably even less than I do. Most professional plumbers that did see our sign, but knowing that the gig is worth $300, would probably ignore our pitch completely (no doubt grimacing at the potential calamity that I was begging for). And while it’s true that our sign might, repeat might, attract a plumber with professional level skills, the chances that he (or she) would take us up on our offer, before someone mucked up everything, are long at best. And besides, rather than anonymous would-be plumbers from God knows where, I kinda like the idea of having an expert who knows me and my house personally, on speed dial.

Someone who’s quite intimate with my pipes.

Related posts:

1. Hmm. “Design – too important for designers”?
2. Children designers on design contest & crowdsourcing sites?
3. Why designers can be their own worst enemy

Any logo designer worth their salt knows that vector formats are the only way to go when it comes to logo design. The vector-capability boundaries between Illustrator and Photoshop have blurred a little over the years (yes, you can create vector based in images, but it’s still a little hinky). Years ago, when it came to quick and dirty (often very dirty) vector conversion, we used a handy little utility called Streamline at the shop. Put out by Adobe, most of Streamline’s vector conversion properties were bundled into Illustrator CS and renamed Live Trace.

Auto-tracing. A little hit & miss.

Never been much of a fan of ‘auto-trace’ solutions for anything – they tend to create ‘choppy’ graphics, are a little control point happy, and leave a lot to be desired when it comes to overlaying one vector object over another. Most auto-conversion programs tend to leave little ‘gaps’ between the objects (attempting to butt shapes together like a jig-saw puzzle, rather than overlaying one on top of another as a series of layers). At the end of the day, I’ve always felt that manual hand-tracing is always the way to go (see our logo repair section for more), especially when you want smooth curves and what have you. Auto-tracing an image, then hand-editing it to acceptable standards often takes MORE time that hand-tracing from scratch.

Converting photographs to vector formats.

But what if you want a quick-and-dirty solution and want to quickly crank out a vector version for a comp, or you’re after a posterization effect where choppiness and rough edges are the desired result? I’ve been tinkering around with an online vector tracing site, Vector Magic (screen grab above), that allows you to upload jpgs, pngs, bitmaps and just about any other image file and quickly convert it to various vector formats. At first I was a little skeptical, but the results are as good as ANY desktop application, and in some cases even better. My first test involved a photograph of some toothy-grinned kid (relax, it’s me) that I was playing around with for a personal Twitter avatar. Not a terribly big image size (it was carved out of a photo booth picture of me and my father, when was I was a buck-toothed kid in Ireland). I let Vector Magic do it’s thing and ended up with the result below:

Aieee, that’s big! Anyhoo, not bad. Not bad at all. Decent detail and shape integrity (the subject matter notwithstanding). Vector Magic also overlays shapes on top of each other, so there’s little concern about editing or printing problems. Matter of fact, if I were looking for a posterized version of my mug, and needed in in vector format, this puppy is pretty well ready to go. Now, I’m not saying that these kind of images are suitable for use in logos. Far from it. Despite Adobe’s claim that their ‘Live Trace’ is “perfect” to creating logo artwork, these kind of illustrations ALWAYS have a brutal construction-paper cut-out vibe to them and don’t have enough fidelity to cut it as a logo. As a logo add-on, they can certainly work (think Shepard Fairey‘s ‘Hope‘ illustration for Barack Obama as an example).

Converting raster logo images to vector graphics?

It always amazes me when business owners ‘lose’ their logo assets and end up with only one file format remaining – some low-resolution RGB jpg that they expect to turn into a pristine print-ready image for use on their business card or letterhead. Ain’t going to happen. A lot of the time, we need to repair their logo, hand-tracing the image in illustrator, adding new font artwork and converting the logo into CMYK or spot-color artwork. Figured I’d give Vector Magic a shot at converting a jpg version of one of our portfolio logos – a highly illustrative design created for radio personality Steve Dahl.

Amazingly, Vector Magic did a really decent job on the illustration portion. The detail held up pretty decently and the program seemed to be able to ‘guess’ what went where without too much trouble (below), especially impressive since, at 300PX x 269PX at 72 dpi, the image was fairly small to begin with.

Don’t get me wrong – the artwork isn’t up to snuff for full color print or anything, but still a decent try if you’re looking to re-size an image (bitmap/raster images tend to turn fuzzy if enlarged, while vector images can be sized up with little issue).

Font conversion. Always an issue.

Like most auto-conversion programs, Vector Magic tends to have an issue with fonts. The human eye is much more forgiving when it comes to abstract shapes that it is when it comes to typography. The brain tends to fill in missing detail so that even a wonky image ‘looks’ like what it’s supposed to (think of the old “is it a vase or two people talking” optical illusion). Font recognition doesn’t work that way – your brain needs to read the words – so any broken or hinky lettering is going to look, well, bad. Let’s take a look how Vector Magic handles the letterforms in our test logo

Not terribly well. To be fair, this was a problem with Streamline and is a problem with Live Trace addition to Illustrator. Actually, Vector Magic seems to handle font recognition better than most. Doesn’t matter though – a quickly converted image that features lettering is still going to require a large amount of hand editing.

Practical applications for the designer.

So, is auto-conversion of logos worth while? Maybe. If it’s for a quick and dirty turnaround, yes. If you’re using the logo for a final file, hand tracing is still the way to go. The amount of time you’ll spend tweaking points and bézier curves would be better spent starting from scratch. However, if you’re after a quick posterization effect (like my toothy visage above) or some illustration backgrounds torn from your fave photo, auto-conversion seems like the way to go.

Automatic raster/bitmap conversion. Some basic tips.

Couple of things I found when playing around. The bigger the image, the better. The program has more pixels to ‘guess’ what the shape’s supposed to be. High contrast photographs work a lot better than lower ones. I also found that by ‘sharpening’ the images in Fireworks (you can do the same thing in Photoshop) the results improved dramatically.

Converting your images.

If you’re a designer who happens to be running Illustrator, Live Trace is worth a shot. If not, Vector Magic is certainly worth checking out. They’ll let you download one or two images for free (that’s how I managed to work with my toothy image from above), there’s a subscription model and a downloadable desktop application if you’re so inclined.

Related posts:

1. Logo format conversion guide
2. 10 logo design ‘Don’ts’
3. How to draw a perfect cog in under 20 seconds

As we were messing about with a recent logo rework for The Logo Factory, I decided to add some cog elements into the mix. So, how does one get vector artwork of a perfect cog or gear? I’ve never been a fan of clip art (even for simple graphics) so stock art was out. As I wanted to draw a perfectly flat and symmetrical cog, without too many teeth, tracing photography was out too. Needed to create my own from scratch. How? Here’s a very simple technique that you can use to draw a perfect vector cog, using Illustrator, in under 20 seconds.

First, you need to draw out a circle. Hold the ‘shift’ key so that it’s perfectly round. Then, we need to set up the size and shape of teeth. I wanted rounded teeth, so I used an oval shape.

Align the center of the tooth shape with the outside edge of your main circle. Then we need to center the tooth shape vertically, and drag out a cloned copy down to the bottom, once again centering the oval over the outside circumference. Like so.

Once you have your two teeth shape ovals centered vertically, group them as a single object (Apple + G).

Now, we’re going to decide how many teeth your cog has. That’s decided by the number of degrees you’re going to rotate the teeth around our main circle (this is also dictated by the width of the oval you’re going to use for carving out the teeth). For this, you’re going to use the rotate function in our toolbar. Rotating the cogs 90 degrees will give you 4 teeth. 45 degrees 8 teeth. 22.5 degrees will give us 16 teeth. And so on.

For this exercise (and the logo that this artwork was used for) we’re going to need 16 teeth. Simple rotate a clone of our original artwork 22.5 degrees using the rotate and copy function.

Repeat the function (using Apple + D) 7 times, rotating copies of our teeth object right round the circle.

Once all your teeth shapes in place, simply group them up, and using the Pathfinder ‘trim’ function, carve the shapes out of your main circle.

Once the Pathfinder has cut out the teeth shapes, ungroup the objects again (Patherfinder will group them), deselect the main circle and delete our teeth shapes.

And there you have it. A decent looking gear that’s control point light, symmetrical and ready to use in any artwork. Total elapsed time – about 17 seconds.

As mentioned earlier, the same basic idea can be used to develop other types of cogs and gears with various ‘teeth’ shapes. Here’s a more traditionally shaped gear. When using teeth shapes of this nature, there’s additional step to keep in mind. No big deal really – you just have to flip the tooth shape vertically when you drag it out to the bottom of the circle (see below).

Related posts:

1. The proper way to outline fonts
2. Bitmap to Vector conversion. Online Vector Tracing
3. 10 logo design ‘Don’ts’

As the client had only viewed pixel based artworkand didn’t have their own copy of vector based software, to them the logo looks all fine and dandy. Above is what they see when they take delivery of the files from their handy dandly online logo design firm (I’ve close-cropped the design to save anyone the embarassment). Ah, but when we’re importing the artwork into Flash (or anything else for that matter) we’re going to use the vector version. And here’s what that looks like when we toggle off preview mode in Illustrator. Yikes. All these intersecting lines, maniacal miter corners and overlaps just to create an outline around a font?

Makes me wonder if these cats even prep files before shipping digital to unsuspecting clients. This artwork will cause nothing but problems when it comes to any type of digital output, and I can only imagine what would happen if this file ever found them itself becoming acquainted with a vinyl plotter knife blade.

For what it’s worth, here’s what the file should look like once all the vectors have been cleaned up. This file is smaller in size, easier to edit and an be imported into any digital program without fear. The pathfinder operation in Illustrator is fantastic and all for outlines, but ya gotta clean up the auto-acked vectors once it’s finished doing its thing.

While we’re at it – don’t designers close vector shapes any more? I know someone who calls themselves a design firm that doesn’t. The artwork we’re talking about was fairly complicated to begin with (complete with blends and gradient fills) and these incomplete vector objects (circled) serve only to make matters worse. Much worse. Took me a couple of hours to re-do the artwork before I was able to import it into Flash for composition. I pity clients who take delivery of these file formats, without any idea of the headaches – and expense – they’re going to run into down the road when it comes to using their spiffy new logo. Sorry for the Thursday afternoon rant, but butchered art files and logo formats are a pet peeve.

Related posts:

1. The proper way to outline fonts
2. Logo format conversion guide
3. So you want to be a logo designer?