For this final Illustrator Draft, through sketches, drafts, and final revisions, my ultimate goal with this assignment was to design a simple, minimal logo for my personal brand, Dakota Lynne. The logo is meant to fully embody and represent all aspects of my business, including fashion blogging and photography. Through my work, I aim to incorporate minimalism, vintage and modern styles, natural colors and elements, and simplicity in the work that I produce, and this logo, I believe, represents these values well. In using hand-drawn elements, serif and sans-serif fonts, and minimalist shapes, my final logo incorporates many stylistic components that synchronize to fully embody my personal brand.
Influences and inspiration that attributed to the overall design of my logo were drawn from various places, including Pinterest and Instagram mainly. While my logo was not inspired by one particular work, many elements of the overall design were inspired by others’ work. My creative process often involves collecting images and designs from these online sources, and through the combination of varying elements I’m able to gather singular pieces I like about each one, and create a 100% unique design that is most representative of the project I’m working on.
Considering this, for this particular project I pinned images involving minimal logos with natural, hand-drawn elements incorporated. To create my logo, I firstly hand-drew a couple of plant styles that I liked most on paper, as shown in my Illustrator Draft post, and imported them into Illustrator with Adobe Capture. This allowed my design to be directly converted into a vector shape, which I then altered and shaped with the eraser, direct selection, and paintbrush tools to create the final design. Next, in arranging the textual elements, I chose the two fonts that I use on my personal website to create both of the pieces. I wanted “DL” to be the primary visual element in the logo, however, I also wanted to spell out the abbreviation as well (“Dakota Lynne”), as most that view it will not know the meaning upon first glance. The two fonts I used are LTC Bodoni and Brandon Grotesque, serif and sans-serif fonts respectively. I replicated the same hierarchy I use on my website for these elements, the smaller “Dakota Lynne” type employing the latter and the main element the former. Through arranging these as so, I was able to create balance through the focus of my logo (“DL”), the typed out initials (“Dakota Lynne”), and incorporation of the prominent stylistic element of my work altogether (the plants). All of these elements were designed around a simple circle, which presents a design that flows well and is pleasing to the eye – warping my plant piece and using the “Type Along a Path” tool allowed for the execution of this.
After collecting feedback from peers and re-assessing my design, I chose to both refine the shape of the leaves and alter some colors in the design to finalize the product. I noticed that some of the leaves on my plant had rounded edges, while others did not, and to maintain uniformity in the project I took the eraser and paintbrush tools and created more paths along the shape to refine the edges more and make a collectively cohesive design. Also, two peers suggested I add color into the logo, which is something I considered when first drafting it, but did not execute right away. However, after filling the leaves in with an olive hue that is part of my autumn brand color palette, I noticed how much more elevated the design looked. To further this, I changed the “lynne” part of my name in the circle logo to the olive color as well, to differentiate the elements of my name. While these colors do stand out and improve the final product, I do want to note that the logo still does represent my brand well in black and white – something that I wanted to retain for variation across web platforms. Through making these subtle alterations, I am very satisfied with the final product and am thankful for the insightful peer feedback that helped to elevate the design as a whole!
Overall, I encountered no major technical issues, as Illustrator is one of my preferred platforms in the Adobe Suite and the tutorial assignments provided a plethora of new skills as well. However, as noted in my draft post, the one thing that consumed the most time during the design is the stroke size of my leaf drawing. It took a little experimentation to come up with a stroke size and style that I liked most, and a little more to effectively refine the design in the revision process. Because the element was imported from Adobe Capture, the import size did not reflect the final design style that I wanted, and through trying different brushes and stroke sizes (and adding paint brush and eraser elements during revision), I was able to come up with the final piece, one that I’m pleased with.
To conclude, I’m very satisfied with the construction, color palette, and design of my logo for my personal brand, Dakota Lynne. Through incorporating elements of text hierarchy, balance of elements, color differentiation, and hand-drawn designs, I am confident that it accurately represents my personal brand well and will serve as a useful asset to my collection of assets for future projects. Pulling inspiration from Pinterest and Instagram, I was able to collect pieces that ultimately inspired the final product – something that is entirely my own, and through effective peer feedback was able to further alter the design to best reflect my ultimate vision. This personal logo assignment was such an insightful piece to work on and I look forward to continuing my work in this field long after this class!
Dakota Lynne 