18 Days Case Study

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Outcome

Completing this project was not easy, but there were a lot of great moments. Besides seeing my designs go from ideas on paper to a full-on logo, I am in possession of 18 additional pieces to add to my portfolio. I am better at managing a difficult project, more experienced with using Illustrator, and overall I am a better designer. I am also more confident in being able to showcase my work to others. Though it was hard, the results made it worth it. Let’s get into how it all came together!

Just like when you are getting ready for a trip, I needed to prepare to ensure I was ready for this project. To make my life as easy as possible, I explored a bunch of different ideas for different businesses that could use a logo. I used these ideas to assemble a list for me to choose from when the time came to sketch.

The next step in the preparation was to start sketching. I grabbed myself a sketchbook and went to work. I spent an average of two pages per business idea in order to give myself room to explore and refine. I decided to put more focus on refining my sketches in pen on a separate page from the others. This allowed me to have more organization in my sketching, leading me to pick the best design to move into the software.

Doing my sketching like this helped me out a ton because it kept my brain from getting distracted by my ideas. This helped me reach a more refined version so that when I completed each day’s logo, I could simply look ahead through my sketchbook and pick the next day’s work. Once the time came the following day to begin work, all I would do is grab a screenshot of my sketch, move to the software and begin the execution.

MOCKUPS

After I finished with my sketchbook and had a solid set of ideas, I did some additional searching and found some free-to-use mockups in order to help showcase my designs. I was able to find more than enough options to have a different mockup for each of my logos – though I didn’t use all of them. I’ve found that putting my logos into a mockup really helps elevate the look and feel of a design when it’s put into the appropriate context. With my sketching done and the mockups found, I was ready to begin and start with the creation of my 18 logos.

 

FINAL LOGO PREVIEW

Highlights 

Day 1

While I am proud of all of my designs, the following three days best highlight my process. Each of these days had its own challenges, but the end results show how I was able to overcome those struggles and learn from them.

Naxus Watches was my first day – and it was definitely one of my best. I chose to start with this for the main reason that it was one of the more “finalized” sketches that I had, so I hoped that starting with this one would help me test to see if my preparation was enough, and it was!

I was able to take a screenshot, drop it into Illustrator, and then make a rough draft version of my sketch very quickly. The end goal for this logo was to combine the two letters, N and X, together to form the main shape. I met with a mentor who helped me make sure that my angles were unified, the sizing matched, and the letters were more recognizable.

I made some adjustments to improve how it all looked, and in the end, my tweaking strayed from my original design. Though it is different, that’s okay! My final design is better because the shaping of the letters also creates the outline of an hourglass, which matches with the watch theme perfectly.

Now that my first day was complete, there were already lessons that I learned. I was already seeing the power that meeting with mentors and getting feedback can have on elevating my designs, so I intended to continue to do this throughout this project.

I also saw that my final design was different from what I initially thought, but the end result was better. I would have to learn to let go of any sketches if they didn’t work out as well, in order to allow for the best results to come forth. And there were some days where that needed to happen.

Finally, my plan was working. By completing day one, I was pretty much already good to go for the next day. I flipped through my sketchbook, picked another design, did some mental prep, and was ready to start on it the following day.

Day 3

I was super excited about how the idea for my day three came to be, and how everything came together so well due to my preparation. I came up with the idea for a construction/lumber company-based logo while on a road trip. As I kept driving past more and more trees, the idea to have a tree be the compass came to my mind. I had no idea what that would look like though, so I needed to sketch out different variations.

In my exploration, I liked the idea of the solid tree shape being the centerpiece of the compass. However, like with my first day, the final varied from the initial sketch quite a bit. While I had done the needed sketching, I found that I do a lot of my best refining in software. Since I can create endless copies, I can quickly do more exploration to get the best result. I played around with different shapes, different amounts of trees, the location, sizing, and all sorts of other things.

In the end, after some additional feedback from peers who told me to keep it simple, I ended up with my final design. Although this still felt slightly off in my mind. I wasn’t entirely sure how well this would work in the real world, so as a test I dropped it into a mockup of a truck that I had found. This turned out to be the best decision for this day.

By putting it into the mockup, I could see the context for where others would see it as well. The compass shape, the title, and the mockup finally made my brain click that this looked good. I showed my logo/mockup to some others, and they all agreed that this was something that they would expect to see in the real world. It turns out that my logo worked out after all.

I wasn’t quite done though, as I made some small minor adjustments to the sizing of objects to make sure it looked as good as possible on the mockup. This helped me to realize that while my brain may say that something is bad, it may just need the appropriate context to convince myself and others that it works. Mockups are a great way to showcase designs, and I was grateful that I had done the research to find so many different mockup options in my preparation stages.

Day 15

Towards the end, one of the hurdles became the greatest reason I was grateful for having a backup plan. I originally started out the day with the idea for some sort of activewear clothing line. Besides a couple of sketches that I had, I didn’t have much else to go off of. I started with my initial sketch but quickly ran into an issue. During my execution process, I was looking up examples and saw that my idea wasn’t very original. It had been done before. Since I wanted to stay unique, I needed to go change things up. I considered different ways on how I could adjust what I already had, but ultimately I made the decision to scrap that idea.

I looked back through some other sketches I had done for this idea and found one that looked simpler, but way better at the moment. I gave this one a go and the rest is history. This became my final for the day, and I am happy with how it turned out. This wasn’t the only day where I ended up changing some ideas or relying on backups, but this one for sure takes the cake because I was so invested in my initial idea. I was hesitant on trying to change gears so late in the day, but by having this backup idea, I knew I could do it with relative ease. In the end, it all worked out. I used my backup and ended up with a real solid logo that looks really nice on mockups.

Thanks go to my preparation for making this one possible, I am so glad I had a solid backup already in place without me even knowing. One might think that so late into the project I would have things nailed down, but you never know what can happen. That’s why I prepared! I was ready for the unexpected.

Wrapping up

From this project, I learned two very valuable lessons. First, is the importance of thorough sketching. In my preparation, I did much more than I had ever done before, and it made completing this project much simpler. There is still room to improve on doing more effective design exploration and refinement, but I am happy that I had so many ideas.

This leads directly to my second lesson, how critical backup plans are. Giving myself that cushion meant that on the days when my initial designs didn’t feel right or were downright bad, I knew I could still complete that day’s design within the given parameters.

Did these two things make the project super easy? Not at all. This project still pushed, tried, and stressed me out more than I would care to admit. Yet I am now able to say that I have done a hard thing! I completed 18 brand new designs within 18 days – and man it feels good. It’s always the toughest challenges that are the most rewarding, and this project was worth it. Besides the big lessons mentioned, I’m more confident in my abilities as a designer and am ready to take on the next challenge.

So have a mission for me? Send me an email or give me a call, and let’s chat. I’d be happy to work with you.

Jared Rigby

 

Jaredrigbydesign.com

 

Jared.rigby18@gmail.com

 

208-313-3389

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Starting with the sketches I got to work. I originally went through nearly 5 different ideas all surrounding Zelda that I could use on my theme, and after speaking with a friend who also happens to be a huge fan of the series, he helped me land on Items, so I sketched away. The sketches I included are only a small portion of all the different sketches, but due to an accident, some versions were lost before they could be digitized. I tried thinking about the different angles and renditions I could try to showcase each item the best. I’m still learning how to properly sketch though, so these are more drafts than sketches.

After sketching comes the vector graphics. I had many drafts, each one changing and making updates as I went along. On my first draft, I tried adding a shadow, both by using the drop shadow option on illustrator and adding my own. After receiving some feedback it was agreed that the drop shadow is no good. So I removed it.

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The Problem

I wanted to work on a personal project. It had been some time since I had tried to do something on my own, without any deadlines, and just to see how it turned out. I needed to find a project that would be both challenging, but also doable, as a way to practice my skills in adobe illustrator.

The Solution

After many hours of research for an idea, I came up with the idea for doing some sort of digital art/painting. I had never tried doing something like this before and felt it would be a fun challenge. I looked up some examples and tutorials for basic digital painting, then needed them for this. I ultimately decided on some sort of fantasy art, and then spent some time doing some sketching in order to come up with the outline for the project.

The Approach

My sketches focused on either mountains or a space scene. I decided to go with the mountains, and after spending lots of time doing different variants and looking up additional tutorials on how to do good depth perception and shading for distant scenery, I settled on this scene. The character standing in the sunset reminds me of how much I like to look at sunsets myself. It helped me want to do the project justice, while also realizing that I didn’t want it to be super hyperrealistic. I was able to receive some feedback on my project from some friends before finishing the final project.

What I’ve learned

If anything, I have learned that I can in-fact make something entirely from scratch, even without someone telling me to. Being able to practice using Illustrator has helped keep up my skills in the program, and has also help me to learn new ones. I had a ton of fun making this, and am excited for the next bout of inspiration and motivation to hit for my next personal project. What will it be? Only time will tell.

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Every project has a purpose. For some it may be a fun personal challenge, for others, it could be an assignment or a contract. For this project, it was a little bit of both. The assignment was to create a photo-realistic watch, but I took this as a personal challenge to push myself and do something I had never done before. As I went through this process I realized there was so much that I did not know when it comes to Adobe Illustrator. My process goes as follows as I attempted to create a Photo-realistic Fossil watch.

Suffice it to say, it was a rough draft. I had only messed with shapes and a tiny bit of shading, but I wanted somewhere to start before I dived into the highlights and shadows. I showed this draft to some people and got some mixed reviews, most of which were far from complete, but I knew that. It helped me to see where I needed to go next in my progress and gave me some good direction.

For my second draft, I made a lot of progress. I was able to work on the band as well as the watch face, but was still lacking on the mini clocks, the outside glass, and finishing the highlights. I got some feedback on what to do for the shadows on the band, and also on how to do a cool bowtie effect on the mini watches and glass, and then spent many hours tweaking and editing my watch into the final product.

After many hours I finally finished. I was able to take the feedback I was given and make the needed adjustments to finish it off. I was able to figure out how to do the bowtie glass shapes on both the small clocks and the overall outer glass, and was able to bring everything together. I showed my final product to a few people and 60% of the time at first glance were not able to tell that the difference between the reference photo and my vector graphic. There are still some differences as I didn’t want my watch to be exactly the same, but the shadows, highlights, and shading make for one convincing end result. I had a lot of fun with this project and am really excited for the next one. Bring it on.

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