Final Logo Design

For my logo, I decided I wanted to incorporate elements of music to fit with the theme of my blog. My design shows a fist clenching onto a microphone with musical notes floating and flowing above it. The word “LMC” is placed in the fist and the whole design has a gradient blue color scheme as well. I was initially inspired to do this design from one of our tutorials where we had to make a fist. That tutorial really helped me in creating this design. The overall design is meant to display an artist performing on stage and the music that they’re producing flowing out of them. Once I sketched out my design on paper, I copied it almost exactly onto Illustrator, but changed a few things. In my sketch I had “Live Music Central” fully displayed. On my final draft I decided to condense it to just “LMC”. I debated changing the location of “LMC” from my rough draft to my final, however, I ended up sticking to the same location. I made the mic look better as well compared to my initial sketch.

I used the line tool a lot to create the outline of my hand/fist. I also mixed in the arc tool. For the fingers I created rectangles and then went to effects to round the edges to make them look more like fingers. I used rectangles for the microphone handle as well and a circle for the actual mic part. I put a gradient fill in the mic to give it a silver/black look to let it stand out. In my rough draft, the mic had only the gradient effect on it. For my final, I decided I wanted to put smaller circles scattered around the mic to make it look more realistic like an actual mic. I think that helped it stand out more. I made sure to hold down alt when changing the lengths of my fingers to keep the change consistent on both ends. To get the wavy lines for the musical notes, I created a line and then transformed them slightly to have them squiggle. For the actual notes I used the circle tool then filled them in with black and put a line on them. I used the rotate tool heavily in my logo to align different aspects of my design. Finally, I made the background a gradient light blue color. Since my fist had no color fill in it, they turned light blue as well. I was considering changing the color from the background, but I liked how it looked so I kept it the same. The most challenging part of this process has to be the making of the hand not including the fingers. It was tough lining up all the edges and turns correctly and make it look smooth.

Looking at my peers comments and critiques on my rough draft really helped me in making this final design. My rough draft had a white background and the only colors it consisted of were black and white. My classmates had stated that music festivals are always filled with bright colors and I could represent that more with a bright, colorful background/color scheme. I played around with multiple colors and I ended up liking the light blue gradient. I believe this helps the whole design stand out more. Somebody also commented on the mic and how I could make it look better. I added small black filled circles to the mic to represent more of a realistic mic. Once I created one circle, I used the copy paste tool to create several more. I’m happy with how it turned out. Overall, I’m glad we had the peer comments because it helped my logo look better and more exciting.