Artwork by Andrew Harner
For California-based creative Andrew Harner, a curiosity for design and illustration took root at a young age. “As a kid, I always grew up interested in art and logos, and especially sports team logos,” he says, of the rich visual culture of sports fandom. “I was drawn to the use of colors and lettering, and then got really into skateboarding in my teens. That’s what took over — an obsession for all things skateboarding and graphics drove me to pursue graphic design.”
Over the years, Andrew has produced brand identities for a range of companies, from wine labels to cannabis start-ups, and was most recently an art director at Patagonia. As a hobbyist pursuing music and mountain biking in his free time, he also enjoys the creative freedom of designing a personal brand. Here, he shares a set of logo templates for Adobe Illustrator in his personal aesthetic — which he describes as maximalist and experimental — along with a few pro tips on how to customize them.
Grab Andrew’s logo templates and follow along for his tips on how to customize them for your brand.
STEP 1/7
Initial impressions.
The length of your name may lend itself to different text configurations. Try out different alignments to see what works best, and then fill the negative space with secondary copy to complement it.
Andrew’s first and last names have the same number of letters, so he opted to stagger them — but he needed to finesse them to make it work. In title case designs (in which the first letter of each word is capitalized) letters can sometimes overlap. To correct this, use the Text tool to select the letter you want to adjust, open the Properties panel (Window > Properties), click the three dots to access all your options, and adjust the Baseline shift to move the letter (in this case, “H”) up or down.
STEP 2/7
Avoid crashes.
Some letters, like d, g, land p, have ascenders and descenders — portions that go above the x-height or below the baseline on which letters rest — and can overlap, which effects legibility. Andrew has a clever fix for these instances: place a small object (in this case, a small circle) on a layer behind the overlapping letter in the same color as the background, effectively clipping the overlap. Adjust the size and shape of the object, depending on the design.
STEP 3/7
Create a custom fit.
Not all logos are created equal. Depending on the number of characters in your name and how it fills the allotted space, you may want to instead adjust the shape to fit your text. We’ve included three sizes of this logo — small, medium, and large — to accommodate different name lengths. To customize the size further, you can also use the Selection tool to adjust the size and width of the shapes. Refine it even more with the Direct Selection tool, which you can use to edit individual anchor points.
STEP 4/7
Give your characters some space.
Tracking lets you decrease or increase the spacing between a range of letters. In this logo, Andrew uses Hobeaux as the main display font, and used tracking to fit the letters in the space. To adjust the tracking of your text, highlight it, then go to the Character section of the Properties panel or use the Character panel (Type > Character) to adjust the values. The larger the value, the more space between each letter.
STEP 5/7
Break the box.
“You usually want your design contained within a space, even if it’s just implied,” says Andrew. “But having just a part of it popping out of that space can make the design more interesting.” In this example, parts of the A and H break the line within the square outlined border. Try adding your own initials and adjusting the line break by choosing the Direct Selection tool, clicking on the anchor point at the end of a line, and adjusting the length.
STEP 6/7
Change your style.
“Thinking about scale is important. You want to make sure that your copy is going to be legible, and that can dictate your font choices, too,” says Andrew. He designed these circular logos with printed stickers as well as social media favicons and avatars in mind. For smaller screens and applications, for example, you may want to scale back on secondary copy.
To adjust the centermost letter in this logo, you may want to flush it to fill the circle for visual impact, or allow for a bit of space to let the details shine. Use the Direct Selection tool to adjust as needed.
STEP 7/7
Color it in.
You can easily experiment with new colorways using the Recolor Artwork tool (Edit > Edit Colors > Recolor Artwork). Use the Selection tool to select a logo, then open the Recolor Artwork tool and drag the handles on the color wheel out and around to quickly change the colorways. Click on Advanced Options and experiment with the Randomly Change Color Order and Randomly Changes Saturation and Brightness tools, located beneath the Current Colors menu, to explore even more options.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Andrew Harner is an artist/designer, musician and outdoor enthusiast. The Southern California native spent his early career designing for brands in the action sports industry, leading to a long stint as an art director at Patagonia. He’s currently an Art Director for Aquent x Adobe Studio. For more from Andrew, visit his website and follow him @andrewharner.
