*Transcription Disclaimer: the following transcription was automatically generated, and may have errors, or lack context.*
Alex Lazaris:
Everyone. Welcome back to another incredible Adobe Live stream. I'm super excited to be joined by Anika today. I see so many regular faces in Chat right now. I see. Matt Stoney. Megan sarah Narush. Bruce. Laura. Ryan. Ryan. Ryan. Ryan. Robert Laura. There's a lot of people there. If you guys are tuning in from anywhere that's not on Behance, come on over. You might be watching on YouTube or whatever, come on over to Live to hang out with us real time. We are going to be taking all your questions, answering them all and then real time reading off chat to kind of help work with Anika on this really incredible project she's going to be working on. Anika, tell us a little bit about yourself and what we're going to be working on today.
Anika Aggarwal:
Awesome. Thanks Alex for that amazing introduction. Hi everybody. I see so many friends in the chat. This is amazing. Hi everyone. I hope you're having a great Wednesday. Happy hump day to you all. I am anika I'm a graphic design and artist based out of New Delhi, India. I know you've heard this before because I live stream on Behance. So a big hello to everybody. I hope you're doing well. I am a brand identity designer. I make illustrations and I also like to work with motion. So if you ever see me on here, I'm mainly working with Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Dimension, InDesign, after Effects, and long list of tools. I would like to show you a little bit about of my work on Behance and also a short little show read I made recently. So if you go over to my Behance, it's https://www.behance.net/anikaagg. Pretty, simple, short and sweet. This is my work. On the left hand side you can see information about me, my social media stuff about me and then over here are my projects. So yeah, I'm just going to go grab one of these. You've seen this one on the COVID So yeah, this is one of the tea branding I did and yes, it's called Sha and I really like type design so I just decided to go with something minimal. That was the brand fate over here. And then we have the logo and stuff like that. So like a full on case study. We have other stuff going on over here that you guys can also check. Yeah, and I think you guys should do it. I want to quickly show my show reel really quick and then we can dive straight into what we're working today. So enjoy the next 27 seconds.
Alex Lazaris:
I love the show reel so much because I think you really brought the level up in terms of how do you present your work really quickly and really elegantly. I think throwing motion in there is such a good way of really creating a lot of interest for all your projects and I think it just is such a nice sizzle reel. So pro tip, do what she's doing. It's awesome.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah. And if you want to contact me or get in touch, you can go over to my behance, climb into my inbox, slide into those DMs or email me. That will be the best way to contact me. And I see so many friends in the Chat. Hi, everybody.
Alex Lazaris:
Yes, there's so many incredible people in Chat. Welcome, welcome again. If you are tuning in from somewhere else, make sure you come on over Adobe Live or sorry, Live and you'll hang out with us real time in Chat. So, yeah, love this as a real super awesome. Make sure you go check out her behance, give her a follow a, like all those good things.
Anika Aggarwal:
Perfect.
Alex Lazaris:
So let's get into it.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah. So today, if you've not read the description of your stream, we are going to be working on a vegan restaurant branding and it has been inspired from my daily life. It is a fictional brand, but that's how I like to build my portfolio. And it's always great to work on projects where you work, how I look at it. So pro tip again, is to work on those kind of projects for your portfolio that you want to work on in the future. So only put the things that you want to work on. And food and beverage is something that I want to work with in the future. I am currently working with those kind of clients, so I like to put in more of that stuff and show that, hey, I'm good at this, so you should hire me for this. Right? So today we're going to be working on this vegan kitchen. It's called puro. It's a Mexican Indian fusion kitchen that is inspired by the fact that I haven't been eating any chicken or meat for the past one year. Right. It's so difficult. But I was like, oh, let's make the vegan food not boring. So this is one of the Discovery Decks. This is the Discovery deck for this project. I usually like to work like this, so before I start working on any project, I get like an introductory call with the client and I sit with them, have a FaceTime call. Not FaceTime, but like a face to face call and then ask them like, hey, what do you want? What do you need? What is it exactly is your brand about? What products do you need? And then I go through this process and put this up. And after that, we start working on everything we want for the brand. Right. So as you can see, this is prepared for Puro. It was brand identity. We are keeping it really simple today. We're just going to make the logo design. We're going to do colors and type. And I also want to know one thing from the Chat. Have you ever worked with something food related? Do you have a lot of food related clients. If yes, were there any difficulties you had? Anything like tell me about your experiences. Dazzle me.
Alex Lazaris:
Yes, tell us chat all of those experiences. But also I think we could probably get a poll going to say, is.
Anika Aggarwal:
It memes or memes?
Alex Lazaris:
The memes and memes is a classic one. Probably exhausted that too much over the last few weeks. But yes, classic memes or memes. But no. If we could get Voodoo Valle to make us a poll for have you done restaurant work before? Yes or no? And then the third option would be I would love to, but haven't gotten to do it yet. I think would be super helpful.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah. And if you haven't, and if you choose the third one, I can give you a pro tip of how you can do it. So, yeah, if you put in three, I have an answer for you. Awesome. So let's dive straight into it. This is the goal. Puro is, like I said, a Mexican inspired fusion kitchen. And we're a restaurant. We are innovative and we embrace homegrown produce. It was actually inspired from one of the TV shows that I was watching on, I think Netflix or National Geographic, I don't really remember. There's so much content, but I saw that and it told me that, hey, we produce tons of waste and the food goes to waste just because like, a tomato has a freckle on it, right? So I want to reduce that waste. Everybody wants to use sustainable packaging, which is great, I am behind that, but there's obviously a threshold for that and there is not enough technology that we can use to make that come down. But at the same time that we have this food that is going to waste, we can still bring it down by doing our bit. So Puro's mission is to make vegan food affordable and tasty and break the stereotype that the vegan food is pouring. And we want the visual identity to reflect that. So that's the macro goal of the brand. And then we can dive into the brand traits. So you need to ask oh, I forgot to actually show you guys something. Hold on. So if you guys go into the description, you will be able to see some fun assets that I've gotten for you. It's loading, so pardon me while that happens. It happens. And our lovely Gus has done this for us. He's uploaded these templates for you guys. So I have some print templates for someone who's just beginning, starting out. They don't know that you have to put in margins or all the beginner stuff. And even if you're not a beginner, sometimes you just need something to grab and go and this can be a great thing for that. And then we have the golden circle. And I also have a pressing question for everybody that have you ever used the golden circle in your logo design or any kind of UX design anything.
Alex Lazaris:
I have never, ever used the golden ratio.
Anika Aggarwal:
Wow. Okay, we'll get to that.
Alex Lazaris:
Teach me. Teach me how to use.
Anika Aggarwal:
No judging. No judging. Yeah, we'll get to it. So the scuffy deck is actually based on some of these questions that you guys have in the resources pack. So this is not an exhaustive list of questions, of course, because I couldn't make that up. And it also depends on what kind of clients you're working with. So there can be additional questions based on what industry you're working with. And then these are some useful links. I go to dialine frequently because I like to see what other people are doing in packaging design. It's a great resource. You can go to Fonts Adobe.com, which is my favorite, and then you can go to Color Adobe.com, which is my another favorite. And then this is just another blog post for you to read about golden ratio. So you can do all of that. And without further ado, let's dive back in.
Alex Lazaris:
Hayden says, Alex is a silver ratio. Man. That's true. Gold is too rich for my blood.
Anika Aggarwal:
Hi, Hayden. Hi, Ryan. I see you guys. Yeah. So the brand is honest. We want to keep everything transparent. We don't want to hide any part of the sourcing process from the customer, which is us. Which is you. I'm the brand. So, yeah, we want to tell you that where we got our produce from. We are local. We have our own farm. And we also uplift our community members by getting their vegetables or produce. Right. We will dive into the usage. So when it comes to usage, we're going to be doing restaurant branding, of course. And then there are brand collaterals. So we will dive into business cards. We will dive into employee uniforms. So when I say that, we can get aprons and then coasters or stickers delivery trucks and all the good. Yep.
Alex Lazaris:
Stoney says, thank you, Anika. This will help me with my pre planning. So super helpful. And we do have the poll results. So we have the results. The results break down into four categories. There is 27% split for yes and 27% for no. For have you worked with restaurants? And 47% of all respondents say that they would like to. So that option three. And then the fourth option at a whopping 0% says, I'm not interested. So everybody's interested in restaurant branding.
Anika Aggarwal:
Awesome.
Alex Lazaris:
It's super fun. The perks are incredible. If you make friends with the restaurant tours, sometimes you get hooked up, sometimes you get the free meals. You get to help them with the tasting menus, all that stuff. Cannot recommend all the good things.
Anika Aggarwal:
Okay, so for the yes and no, that's amazing. For the no and who would like to work with restaurant industries? I have this website for you. It's called goodbrief IO. It is not secure, but no viruses. Trust me, you go to Goodbreak IO. You can generate random design briefs for you. And there are tons of design brief generators online, so you should just Google stuff. Having the right keyword is important. So just search design brief restaurant branding and you will get tons of design brief generators. But this is the one that I found that I can share with you guys. So you can go here type of work, and you can select whatever you want. You can go to Brand Identity and select the industry you want. It might not be food, right? You could be a retail store, entertainment, real estate, random. Let's just select food and see what it generates. You can click on generate. And we already have a company job description and a deadline, so you guys can do all of this. And it can be like a kickstarter for you to go on and work on from that. So, yeah, get on it. You have the link.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. And by doing this project like you said, you want to do more restaurant branding work even if you don't have a paying client at home. By you going through this exact same process that Anika is about to show us, you can start attracting restaurant packaging or restaurant work into your pipeline. You can get clients that way. It's a great way. Post it all on Behance. We'd love to see what you're working on. Just can't recommend it enough. You got to show the work that you want to do to get hired for it. It's just absolutely the way things go. So fake work, tech work, all good things?
Anika Aggarwal:
Yes. No says, okay. I typed Duke brief lol. Okay. All right, so into the mood board. I got this off of Behance, and I just searched vegan food, and that's what I got. I grabbed some of these screenshots for you guys. This is the aesthetic that I'm going for. I want it to be colorful, I want it to be playful. And that's what we see here. We see fun patterns. I really like making illustrations which are like, line work to go along with my branding. And that really reflects, like, these are fun. And then I can see this fun bubbly type, which is also super trendy right now. So, yeah, this is the mood board off of Behance. And then I took the courtesy of going out and exploring more and made some more research. And I'm like, okay, this maybe isn't enough, so let's do more. You can never get enough inspiration. And then I got this. This is more of like, Mexican influence, mexican culture, and all of these bright colors and all the lovely things, right? So, yeah, that's the mood boot. We have the target audience, and it's really important to have the target audience and what you want, who are your customers and who you want to focus on. So then you see here that it's late twenty s to mid 30s. It's a very wide range. So you have to keep in mind that it's not just focused on one age criteria or, like, just one segment of the market. You have to actually look at things from a broader perspective. Then we go on to color. We see that I've got some this is just pictures from my mood board that I wanted to put in over here just to showcase that. Hey, I want this to be fun. So these are the fun, bold colors that we will be focusing on. And I would actually want some input from the chat on the colors. So we'll get into that when we get it.
Alex Lazaris:
Seems like everybody in Chat is right now saying that they love all the color palettes and all the mood boards and stuff. So I think you'll probably get a lot of agreeing with your color palette. Yes. Chat later on. We will love your input into picking colors and things.
Anika Aggarwal:
I see the chat going crazy. The chat is going so fast, I can't keep up. Okay, so this is the typography, and I've lately been inspired a lot by making my own type. I recently made one font on one of my live streams. It was really fun. So I was like, okay, let's maybe we can do, like, a type inspired logo for this. But we'll get into it. And now here comes the demo. So we go into our logo exploration page. I have already set up some of these sketches that I have. This is not done over one day. This is over a span of, let's say, a week. And that's how my process usually works. When I design or sketch a logo, I usually like to do something which is called as brainstorming that I just make, like, a word bubble with these things. I think I have it somewhere on here. I should be able to get it for you guys. Let me see.
Alex Lazaris:
Also love how you organize all your file structures. I know I always gush about this whenever I'm working. Know really talented artists that keep their files organized. But, like, even Claudia organizing her workspaces the other day, and David making sure that all of his files are all labeled. And then your file structure is so clean and tidy, it looks like you probably just duplicate that same format for every project, right? You've got your illustrations, your photos and motion graphics, all those things in separate folders. It's so clever.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah. I actually did this just for Adobe Life. No, I'm kidding.
Alex Lazaris:
Don't tell anybody. This is how you work.
Anika Aggarwal:
Don't tell anybody. It's a secret. Was my mic on? Okay. Yeah. Anyway, so, yeah, this is how I brainstorm. I think about what the brand is in this case. Since I was the client, I was thinking of the brand being pure and undulterated. So I went to look up the translation for water in Spanish. It's called agua. And pardon me if my accent is wrong because it is wrong. I don't know Spanish, but if it's wrong, please forgive me. Yeah, so it's agua, but that also means that it's water. I did not want to make a restaurant or a food brand called Water, and a little translation that would not make sense.
Alex Lazaris:
It's pretty disappointing going for a full meal, and I only get served water.
Anika Aggarwal:
Because you go, there's some water, and then there's this really cool name called Laroka that is off of a brand that's already there. It's called rock. My concept behind that was like, hey, I come here and rock. We come to a standstill because we can't go anywhere else. The food is so amazing. We come to a stop, right? And then there is some other stuff mexican tortilla, ignore. And then I landed up with puro, which means unadulterated, and which led to my sketches. I'm going to delete that, bring you to my initial sketches. One thing to keep in mind is to not show all of your sketches when you're showing it to your client, because they get confused. They may not have the same design sense and may not know what kind of designs are good for them. So it's really important for you to downplay. Let's say you have ten sketches and ten designs. It's really important to downplay only. My process goes to make three sketches, bring them down to three, and then bring them down to one, and then you iterate on it. Let's say two or three iterations, depending on what kind of process you go through. And then these were some initial sketches, but I wasn't happy with these, so I went on to make some more sketches, and this is how it looked like. I took the liberty of mocking it up, and this is how it looks. Wow, I'm talking a lot. We should get on it.
Alex Lazaris:
You're doing great. This is all super helpful. I think everybody in Chat is just trying to understand your process and your flow and how you bring things to light. Like Wade says, okay, so this is a visual representation of how my brain works, but then I forget to write it down. So these things are all super think, you know, letting people know the behind the scenes, the sketches. You've already done such a significant amount of work through your sketches that I think not showing them would be a mistake.
Anika Aggarwal:
So the concept actually originated from those old sketches, and I wanted it to be like produce and also show that we're cooking the produce. So then I made this chef's hat and then turned it to a broccoli, sort of a situation. And I was like, oh, we use broccoli, and we also cook it. So maybe this guy has a pointy nose, like in Ratatouille, maybe, and then make like, a chef broccoli. So that was the first concept. And then there's some type exploration that I want to do some favicon that I can use. Maybe something like this if I have a San Serif type on the logo itself. And then some variations here some fun patterns that we can work with and you guys can tell me all the funny one liners and yeah, these are some variations as well. And yeah, let's just dive straight into it. We have some type explorations here as well that I want to do really quickly.
Alex Lazaris:
I want to highlight the fact that you threw it on a sketch notebook. This was not your actual notebook, right? This is a mockup that you did. So another great thing, chat. Whenever you're looking for mockups or things and you're trying to represent stuff to clients, sometimes it is helpful to just create a little mockup. Grab one from Adobe stock or unsplash or whatever. Somewhere you can grab like a notebook image and then throw your sketches on there if you've already scanned them in. Or take a photo of it yourself if you want. And then you can speak to the work that you've done and show the value some clients really want to see. How many explorations did you do? Did you really exhaust all your options before coming to us and then go through the presenting of your concepts or whatever, but show them a little bit of that background work that you've done?
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah, I also want to highlight on that thing where you can get mockups. You can just get mockups within photoshop. So if you just open your photoshop, you click on Create New right over here. You can go onto your photo and all of these panels and you can see that all of these mockups are free and they come with creative cloud subscriptions. So you have all of these mockups for photo, for print. And this is actually where I got my sketchbook. I just can't seem to find it right now. Maybe it is on the mobile. It's somewhere. It's asking you to do it yourself. So yeah, you go to one of these tabs and you can get all of these mockups. You can see there's pillows, there's posters and stuff like that. But you can also go to Stock, Adobe.com free. And that's where you can get all of your mockups. You just filter it with templates and that's how you get it.
Alex Lazaris:
Cool.
Anika Aggarwal:
And you'd be surprised how many free mockups there are.
Alex Lazaris:
Yes, there's so many. And you can make your own mockups really easily too.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yes.
Alex Lazaris:
So don't be afraid to whip out the camera phone and take a photo. You'll be surprised what you can make.
Anika Aggarwal:
Give me. See, I collect mock ups like Pokemon cards. Okay, so Alex, you mentioned that you did not ever work with golden ratio. And I just want to teach out that I've only worked with it a few times. But the golden ratio is actually found everywhere in the environment. It's around us even when we don't know it's around it what is that term? When it's there and it's everywhere around us? There's a word for it that I.
Alex Lazaris:
Natural I don't know.
Anika Aggarwal:
Universally omnipresent. It's omnipresent. So, yeah, you can see it in a pineapple. You can see it in a UX design. You can see it in a logo design. If you've ever seen the Twitter logo, you know that golden ratio is used as a classic example for golden ratio. And, yeah, this is what it is. It's essentially I will quickly show you how it's done. I press M on the keyboard. Also, for those of you just joining us, you can actually see that I've turned on my key commands. So if you see on the top right over here, if I press any of the keys on the keyboard, you will be able to see all of those shortcuts that I'm using. But in case you miss it, you can always ask. All right, so I have M on the keyboard for rectangle. I'm just going to drag out a rectangle. The other way to do this is to click on the screen and you can just type 100 and also do this. And this just makes it even about thank you, Illustrator. Yes. So you do 100 by 100. You take this. You don't want the circle, so I want this to be a stroke and not a fill. So I go here, do this. I'm quickly going to drag an artboard as well, just for like, ease of visibility.
Alex Lazaris:
You can also do Command shift. H yeah.
Anika Aggarwal:
Oh, I have the artboard connected.
Alex Lazaris:
Yes.
Anika Aggarwal:
There you go. So you have the square right here. I press option shift. I'm sorry, I'm just used to talking shortcuts, so I'm just like getting acquainted with it. So, yeah, I have my Smart Guides turned on. So if you go to view and turn on your Smart Guides or let's command you for shortcuts, I usually do this. If you just hover over your square, you can see all of these shortcuts. The center is automatically located. You press the Option Shift and press L on the keyboard. It automatically drags it to the equal size and matches it. And then you have this perfect, beautiful square and circle. I'm going to copy this really quickly. Grab it here. Maybe let's say grab it here. Golden ratio is essentially the Fibonacci sequence. And if you know the Fibonacci sequence, it goes from 00:11. It essentially means that you are adding the number that you're using and a previous number to it to get the next number. So zero plus zero is zero. Zero plus one is one. One plus one. I'm sorry. So one you get zero and one. And then for one you get one plus zero, which is one. And then for two you get one plus one, which is two, and then three, which is two plus one, and then so on. Right, this is going to make a.
Alex Lazaris:
Lot of designers who hate math very angry.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah. And the easy way to memorize this if you don't want to go into the detail, is to know that it is actually a Greek symbol phi, and it also is 1.6 118. So essentially, the ratio between all of these figures, one to the next, is 1.6 118. So if you're making any design, make sure you have your values to that ratio. As you can see, I have these all right here. Okay. So, yeah, I'm going to copy this right here. I might have my strokes and scale turned on.
Alex Lazaris:
I think I chat. Got it. Math making brain news explode. Numbers. My brains. My head just exploded. Yeah, trust me, that's as complicated as it's going to get today. Chat. Don't worry, we'll be fine.
Anika Aggarwal:
I'm going to hold shift and drag. Also is my scales and no, didn't want to do that. Preferences. I go to General, and then you can just turn this on. I can never know and never tell if this is like on or off. When you don't want your stroke to increase, it's always the other way around. And Illustrator misses with my head. Let's see. I'm going to hold option and track to copy. I'm going to hold shift to scale it. And then you just repeat this process all of these times to get this ratio.
Alex Lazaris:
Okay. So why should designers use.
Anika Aggarwal:
So I always think, and I've always seen all of these designers say, especially on the Adobe Lives that I have seen personally because I see a lot of Adobe Life. I'm an Adobe Life serial watcher.
Alex Lazaris:
We know. And you're always there. I don't know where you sleep.
Anika Aggarwal:
I'm omnipresent as well.
Alex Lazaris:
That's why you like it. Makes sense.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah. And so when you see any design, it is qualified to be a good design when it's visually perfect and not actually perfect. So this actually pays heed to that and says that, hey, even if my design is not perfect, actually it is visually perfect. So if it's optically correct also, did I do something wrong? I probably did. But anyway, yeah, I just made one thing on the wrong side, but it should actually translate to this. I probably did the other way around, but you can obviously invert that. So once you do that, you can grab all of these circles onto this. Essentially, these are all of these circles. Right. I go to grab these guys. I will quickly do that. Shift select, shift, select. And then I'm going to go to option, click and drag all of these on the side. I have all of these selected. I go to my align tab. I have this align center, which is right here, which is vertical line and a horizontal line, which definitely gives me this. And then I can use these. One thing to make sure is to not scale any of these individually. So when you're using these, you. Have to keep scaling this like this and all of them to equal ratios. You should not be doing something like this. Hey, let's say I just wanted this to suit my sketch, so I'll probably increase this, but that's not the way to do it. So I'm going to copy this back to my lower expiration, do a command shift s right here. It just hides your artboards. I'm going to paste it here and probably start with this guy. So, yeah, let's dive into it. And even the ancient use tricks to make yes, it's used in a lot of architecture and all of the good stuff. Okay. So I think I should drag this guy really quickly. These strokes, sometimes I feel like my mouse is too small for my fingers. Like, hey, what am I doing here? But yeah, that's about it. If you guys haven't you probably should use the golden ratio.
Alex Lazaris:
Sorry, are you going to use the golden ratio for this logo?
Anika Aggarwal:
I'm doing it for one of the sketches, but I don't know yet if I'm going to use this one. It's just one of the explorations that I'm doing just to see if it fits the criteria. But we will see as we go if this is what I really want to do.
Alex Lazaris:
Awesome.
Anika Aggarwal:
I'm going to get this guy. So I'm just option hold and dragging for all of these. I'm not actually deleting my original because I want the original just for reference purposes, and I do that with all my type and all of the extra stuff. Just because we have command strip test doesn't mean I don't have stuff outside my artboard. Everything essentially is outside the artboard. You have this guy, this guy, and you can see that there's like a chef sort of a hat shape going on. Just to be sure. I'm going to align these, and I will also probably group this just because I want to center it to this guy. So I will center it, and there you go. Perfect. I just added these because I wanted to see where I'm going to put this guy in with respect to the face that I'm going to make. So I'm going to group all of this. I'm going to group all of this really quickly. I'm going to lock it command two, which I never do, but I'm doing it today. I don't know why, but it's Adobe Live, y'all. You can do anything.
Alex Lazaris:
We're doing it live.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yep. Okay. So I'm gonna hide. I always mess this up. Cool. So I can actually not do this and just unlock it and use the shape builder tool. I'm going to do something. I'm going to go to the pen tool and really quickly make, like, straight line. What? Sure. I'm going to hold shift to make this line right here, press V on the keyboard. Options you can drag to get it right here. And if you want to put one thing as reference. You just select those two shapes, click on the first one or the second one if you want as a reference. And then you can just click to align. So yeah, that's how it happens.
Alex Lazaris:
Clever. Says I want a breakfast cereal called Golden Ratios. Wonder how many golden ratios are in a fruit loop. It's so funny. So breakfast cereal with golden ratios is a great opportunity. Maybe somebody will make that for one of their Behance projects. That would be awesome. Mock it up in dimension. Yeah, it would look so pretty.
Anika Aggarwal:
Is this still group? Yes, it is group. You can do command shift, G or right click and ungroup if you want. And then I'm going to grab this shape right here. This is too big for my purposes. I'm probably going to get a smaller shape. Or maybe I can just use a line for it. So I'm going to use a rectangle tool.
Alex Lazaris:
So would you say building it in the golden ratio first is probably the strongest method? Or would you say maybe just get your sketch down and then if you can perfect it, have the same ratio. That's probably ideal.
Anika Aggarwal:
So essentially there's a lot of debate around people using golden ratios and just slapping it on the logo later on. And that's what I don't do. That guilty is charged. And yeah, a lot of people do it. But the idea is to have all of these things as reference. Like to keep in mind when you're sketching because you want to start with that dimension in head and then go forward with it. So yeah, it's always good to have it. But even if you don't, it's just an exploration phase. So you can always go back and change it. So yeah, I'm now going to group all of these. It's just acting weird. I can't see anything which is weird even if it's not unlocked. Okay, anyway, so I'm going to lock this up. I'm going to go to my pen tool. Make it red so I can see. Also increase the stroke size just because I want to see on the black. And then I just hold and drag. That is so weird. Okay, now you can see it.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh yeah.
Anika Aggarwal:
That's because it wasn't root. It always happens. There's some weird thing going on with my Illustrator right now.
Alex Lazaris:
That's totally fine. That happens. It looks like you're like a fanatic for layers and groups in Illustrator. Is that kind of how you typically manage your files?
Anika Aggarwal:
I try to give my clients with files that are named, but when I'm essentially doing explorations, I don't name them. This is just for the sake of understanding for people who are watching. Since I also live stream a lot, I'm like, hey, let's just make it easy for everybody.
Alex Lazaris:
That's smart.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah. I'm wondering if there is an issue with my Illustrator right now. But we will fix it. Even if there is, there seems to be something like it.
Alex Lazaris:
What is it doing for you that you're not?
Anika Aggarwal:
I'm going to close the file and then open it again. It just wasn't showing me the Pen tool things that I was doing.
Alex Lazaris:
I think that might have happened if you hit Caps Lock.
Anika Aggarwal:
No, the Caps Lock is turned off now. It's turned on.
Alex Lazaris:
I always do that when I press. Like Command Shift O or Command Shift H. Sometimes it loses the anchors.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah, it's acting weird. Anyway, so now we have the basic shape right here. You can select all of these, and I have it grouped right now. What is happening? I really can't tell. Hold on, folks. Command Shift G. I'm going to drag it right here to see. Okay, cool. So I have all of these. I essentially go to my shape builder tool over here. Has anyone ever accidentally pressed the Perspective Tool and then regretted it for their whole life?
Alex Lazaris:
It used to be really hard to figure out how to turn it off, but then they added, I think, the X in a corner somewhere.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah. And then there's also escape. Yeah. So you have I think so how.
Alex Lazaris:
Do you really all right, just do Command P, I think. Isn't it command P or Control P? Oh, no, that's print. No.
Anika Aggarwal:
Control. P no. Okay. It's somewhere right here, and I accidentally press it. Oh, there you go. Let me hit escape. There you go. It does. It does.
Alex Lazaris:
It now learned.
Anika Aggarwal:
So any of you who are using the trackpad with the new Illustrator update, this happens, and then your mind is blown because you're like, oh, no. How do I go back? I don't want this to be 85 degrees. So I learned this from Jack Watson, and she's an amazing creative on Behance. And also otherwise. So you can just go to zero degrees, and this brings you back to normal. And otherwise you can just press the Escape button, and then that does it as well.
Alex Lazaris:
The Escape button does that, too. It's so powerful now. Oh, my goodness. I literally did this. I think yesterday I accidentally messed my View rotation. You can also go up to the top bar and go to yeah.
Anika Aggarwal:
And you go to reset view and.
Alex Lazaris:
Reset view and I'll fix it. But I definitely had a panic mode where I was like, oh, no, what did I do?
Anika Aggarwal:
Wow. So you have all of these layers selected. I just selected all of these, and since I already have the shape selected, the Shape Builder Tool is my favorite when you actually want to manipulate this. So it comes in really handy when you're working with something like Golden Ratio, and you can see by default that it is selected to plus. And if you hold the option key and drag, it's going to minus the shape. Right. So in this case, I want to add everything. I just go and drag everything. And now we have a sweet shape, which is not perfect, but still looks like a chef hat. I can clearly see that it's not perfect. So I'm going to quickly drag these out. I'm going to unproup this and bring this out a little. So I'm going to shift drag just a little bit, and I shift drag to the left maybe a little bit more. And I select everything, go to Shape Builder, add everything up, because why not? And then now it kind of looks like an ice cream, but it works anyway. So we bring these guys right here, and then I go to the pen tool. I want to make something that's maybe something so maybe I want to use this line, this group right over here. So I take the smallest little guy over here from the center option, click and drag again. And maybe this is the kind of space that I have between these two, the face and the hat. So I go back to my shape right here, and then I probably grab my ruler. So if you press Command R on the keyboard, that gets you rulers on the top, and you can drag your center to your space as well. So this can be your zero comma zero. And yeah, you can just work right through it. So you can see this is zero and zero. And that can make it easier.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. Chat's saying that they can see ice cream. Fergie says ice cream, chef hat, stumpy cactus. Yeah, all those great little fun little things.
Anika Aggarwal:
Awesome. Yeah. So now I have these rulers that I can drag right here, and I can use these. I'm also going to get this guy right here just to get the sizing of it perfect. I don't know if it will work. We are just exploring it, and it's okay if your work isn't perfect the first day, because that's how the creative process works. And you got to take a step back from it just to see if it really works. You can't continue on without taking a step back. I mean, that's what I do when I get a creative block. I just take a step back, go for a walk, do something else, just draw anything.
Alex Lazaris:
Going for walks is super helpful.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah. I'm going to go here and go to my window. No, go to your view guides, unlock guides, and then I'm just going to drag this up to this guy, and I'm going to go back. Lock guides. Awesome. I'm going to go back to my pen tool right here. Since I have my smart guides turned on, this will be really handy. I'm going to hold shift on the keyboard. I don't have any strokes selected, so you can't see anything right now, but I will fix that in just a second. So you have your shape selected, and I can press X on the keyboard. That gets me from fill to stroke. And then you can just change the color of it and TADA like Val loves it. And then we have this shape right here. Now you can see that it's really like a rectangle, but just with not a top. So another way to do this would be clicking M on the keyboard and just dragging the shape out, which would be much faster. But I didn't think of that because I'm streaming. So anyway, it's fine.
Alex Lazaris:
So all these are different tools to get the same things done. It's brilliant. Jack goes, Wait, anika do you have your guides custom set to red pro level? And yes, you do, right? You changed your color palette. You can do that in your Preferences panel.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah, you can go right here to your Preferences, go to your guides and grids, and then you can change your colors right here. So if I turn on my grids, I was working on a project with like 32 pixels squares or something, like a pixel art. So I have this already selected. But yeah, you can do this. And also for folks who forget to save, you can go to file handling and you can check all of these options and change these according to how forgetful you are. And yeah, it all works. It all works.
Alex Lazaris:
It saves you so much time. It saves you my puns. Puns are starting already. Chat. It's fine.
Anika Aggarwal:
We love the puns. Okay, I'm going to undo all of this. No, why you do this. Okay, cool. Meanwhile, while you're doing this, I just really quickly want people to tell their favorite fonts in the chat if we can get it. Like anything that you really like. Yeah, like the ones that can be cool, fun, what you would see in a restaurant.
Alex Lazaris:
Do you want specifically for this project.
Anika Aggarwal:
Or favorite fonts ever for this project. So let's say I go to Fonts adobe.com. I can go right here. And I would preferably want something that is available on Adobe. Fonts Adobe.com. Yeah, you can go to Fonts Adobe.com. Grab your thing. I honestly really like the Ono type and all of those fonts that they have going on which are getting so popular lately, everybody's using it.
Alex Lazaris:
Cody says Comic Sense, so I think that's your chosen one. No, first font.
Anika Aggarwal:
I'm going to pretend that didn't happen. I'm going to pretend that didn't happen. Okay.
Alex Lazaris:
Jack says filson soft. I'm not familiar with that one. F-I-L-S-O-N. Soft. There it is.
Anika Aggarwal:
Oh, I already have it activated. Fun. Yeah, this is a really nice fun serif. I like it. So, yeah, I was just talking about Onotypeco, which is an amazing summary. If you guys haven't used it, I'm sure you have, but I just wanted to talk about it. It's by James Edmondson, if I'm saying it correctly, and he's an amazing type designer. He has all of these amazing fonts on Adobe fonts that you can see, but you can also go to Onotypeco.com or Onotype Co. I don't know what the website is, but you can go to their foundry on Adobe fonts. Get all of these fonts. This one is Beastly, but there are multiple other fonts. That's right. James Edmondson right here. And all of these fonts are really good. Also, I don't see any fonts in the chat. What are you doing, guys? I want all the fonts.
Alex Lazaris:
Alex says Circle Slab is a nice Adobe font that feels welcoming and professional. Mccallough says Barricada is a fun one. Naru says ding bats papyrus rules by Carol. I think Carol and whoever said Comic Sands. I'm trying to see. Let me see, Cody. So if you guys want to sync up about your favorite typefaces, Papyrus and Comic Sands, you guys can meet in the middle and use Comic Papyrus, which is a real font that looks like both of them. Not on Adobe, though. Yeah, it's pretty atrocious.
Anika Aggarwal:
I did not know that.
Alex Lazaris:
Now you're going to want to use it for every project.
Anika Aggarwal:
I don't know if I want to know that, to be honest, but it's okay. So, yeah, I just went ahead and brought in the smallest circle right here and made some guides onto the center of the circle just because I didn't want to bring it right till here because that would be really small and I don't think anybody has such a pointy face. So you also want to make it look realistic a little bit. And I'm going to command C, command effort and hold option shift and drag it to the center to bring in the nose. Maybe we want to keep it this way. And I want to drag this shape right here as well. I'm going to option click and drag just to make a reference. And everything is the center is in the center because I obviously did option shift and drag. So that's like an easy way. You don't have to keep track of anything. And then yeah, right here. So what I'm going to do now now this looks super messy. I don't know how this works, but keep in mind that you want to keep these guides right here because this might be handy when you're doing brand guidelines. And you can use this to show the client that, hey, this is how the logo came to fruition. Okay, awesome. So when I drag these things out of the shape rep from right here on the left, we get these guys and I'm going to go to stroke. I'm going to increase the stroke size to, let's say ten. Let's see what happens. Let's see what happens if we do 20. Okay, not bad. I don't like this shape, so I'm going to fix it really quickly. You can go to stroke right here. You can change the cap of the stroke. You can change the corner of the stroke. So that makes it rounded. And then you also have the align stroke. You can align it to the inside of the stroke or the outside or the middle. So these are three options. It's by default at the middle of where you make your stroke. You can change it according to your needs. And yeah, that's how you do it. So this is how the basic shape looks like.
Alex Lazaris:
Do you typically keep it centered or do you have a preference how you align your strokes?
Anika Aggarwal:
It really depends on what I'm doing. So let's say if I'm making, like, a digital stamp or something like that, I kind of prefer it to be on the inside because that just helps me align everything. Also because I just hate the type on a path tool because I can never know how to use it. So, yeah, it really messes with my head and it just makes me feel better about this. Don't tell anybody.
Alex Lazaris:
No secrets. Safe with us.
Anika Aggarwal:
Wait. Jess says my graphic designer heart just broke. I don't know what happened.
Alex Lazaris:
They're talking about comic papyrus. Chat's going crazy for Comic Papyrus.
Anika Aggarwal:
Wow.
Alex Lazaris:
It's an insatiable need that you have to have once you find out that you can have best of both fonts.
Anika Aggarwal:
I don't know what you did to the chat, but thank you, Alex.
Alex Lazaris:
I think I broke them. I'm sorry. I think I'm going to have to make a behance project now. Just using comic papyrus for everything.
Anika Aggarwal:
Wow.
Alex Lazaris:
You've inspired me, Chat. Thank you.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah, so I just copy pasted this, made this, like, 40. But I also think that I might need to change this. I think it's okay to not use golden ratio for all the things that you're doing. So maybe I want to make this guy larger. Make it maybe go to a bring this in a little bit. Make it like a V sort of a thing that we had in our sketch going on, and just see how things work. We're going to click and tag, bring it to the center. Since I have my smartwatch turned on, it shouldn't be an issue, but we will still fix it.
Alex Lazaris:
Kimmy says my dog said no to Comicopyrus. Well, is your dog a design professional? Because well, no, that might be right.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah. So, yeah, we have one thing right here, and I just want to quickly go into my other options right here. I see that we can make multiple variations for it, but I quickly want to jump into other type explorations as well. So I'm going to go to my text tool, type in puro, click and drag. There you go. That's the basic default font that's selected. We have this guy right here. I'm going to bring this to the side. Oh, I totally forgot about this. These are some of the illustrations that if we get time today, we'll work on it today. But if not, these are done in Adobe Fresco. So I just did, like, a pencil basic default brush to make these. And I thought it would be fun to have a pattern going on with food wrapping for billboards, I don't know, for posters in the background for stuff like that. So you have to think about your strategy from day one because that just helps make your process clearer. And this is all part of the research. And yeah, make sure to do your research. It's really important to look at your competition as well.
Alex Lazaris:
Those are super cute, by the way. Those illustrations are adorable.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yay. I'm glad you like them. Okay, so I'm going to go to these guys right here. Maybe I will select some fonts that I already like. Maybe we have peacely right here. I'm going to replicate a bunch of times. I'm going to hold Command options, click and drag, and then Command D a bunch of times that just duplicates everything. So we have all of these pro tips. Don't forget, guys.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. Command D repeats the same step.
Anika Aggarwal:
Command D for the win and Command S for the win as well. That I just did. I totally forgot about it.
Alex Lazaris:
Gareth says my cat also says no, and her designs are perfect. Thank you, Gareth.
Anika Aggarwal:
Of course, I have Onoblaze face as well. And then I want to get some sans serif points as well. What did we get right?
Alex Lazaris:
Filson soft.
Anika Aggarwal:
Fun. I like the curve on the R. And then maybe some I know there's.
Alex Lazaris:
Always some fans for Cooper Black.
Anika Aggarwal:
Okay, let's get it.
Alex Lazaris:
What else? Let me see.
Anika Aggarwal:
And then let's see. This is another bold one. I don't know if I want to use it because it kind of looks like it's been cut off, and maybe it's like so a great way to see that if your font is working or not is to see if the o's and the curved characters or cliffs are actually greater than the size of the other cliffs. And essentially it just makes it visually better. And the essence of type design essentially says that your curves should be higher than the baseline and the cap line. So this has just been cut off to be the same size. So I don't know if wood would be aesthetically pleasing for me, but it can be for other purposes, for someone else, just not for me. But we just have it here for the exploration. Then we have sofa, chrome. This is a very futuristic font we have here. And then we have some Japanese fonts because I worked with some Japanese branding. And then we have the fonts Adobe.com. So we go to Browse fonts right over here. I'm going to quickly type in Pulo just to see what we have. I'm going to go and if you guys haven't seen I'm sure a bunch of you haven't seen this, but there's a language support right here on the top left. You can go to Languages Writing System and select any of the languages that you're working in. So let's say you have Russian, and then it will show you all of the Russian languages that are available, and you have all of those language support and glyphs for whatever specific language you've selected on the filter. I'm just going to select English for now, and I'm going to go rounded. Maybe I want to do something like Funky. No, I don't want to do funky. Let's just go rounded and see what happens. Oh, I like this. It's really fun.
Alex Lazaris:
You also suggested Brandon Grotesque is their favorite black bold font.
Anika Aggarwal:
Oh, okay. Yeah, I like that in Grotesque. Okay, so I'm going to activate this really quickly. Again, if you have a CC subscription, it just automatically activates on your Creative Cloud desktop app. And yeah, we have some fun. This is interesting. I really like particularly these fonts which have, like, the R not on the is it called the center line? No, I'm getting it wrong. The x height. Yes, the X height is not exactly in the center of the type. So let's say I write this guy right here. It is not exactly dividing it on the center. This one is, but the one that I was talking about wasn't. It's not centered. Okay. I think it's this one. Yeah, that's just giving it, like, a visually appealing look rather than it just dividing it blatantly in the center. So, yeah, that's a fun one. I'm going to activate these as well. Oh, it's already activated. I already like all the good fonts. What are your favorite fonts, Alex? Any favorites? Do you have any fun?
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, it really depends on the project that I'm working on. I don't really have a favorite typeface that I just default to, but I think when I'm thinking of fun little projects, I really like TT trailers. I use that as the basis for my sorbo tequila bottles, and then I customize them all. Yeah, so that's really fun one because somebody's already kind of for me, building a typeface from scratch is really difficult, but if I have the bones of some nice typefaces, I can customize it and make it my own. But getting me started to make one from scratch is just such an endeavor, and I overthink everything. I wonder where the X heights and everything needs to be at.
Anika Aggarwal:
Making a font is a cumbersome process. I always feel like it's also intimidating. Sometimes I'm like, oh, no, what am I going to do? Okay, so if you have a variable font or if you have multiple Glyphs for the same character that you have in a font face, you can just go to type. You can go to clips right here, and you can see all the clips present, whatever typeface you have activated. And you can see all of these beautiful characters right here. I have this right here, which is a variation of the R that's present for this one. I think I got it off Creative Market it is not on fonts Adobe.com, but if you subscribe to Creative Market, you get free fonts every Monday. So, yeah, that's that's what you get. Also, Val says, you are on fire, girl. I hope that's for thanks, Val.
Alex Lazaris:
She's talking to you. She just gave you the hugest compliment. She says, I really have to say this. I have seen Etika here on Adobe Life for so long. She comes, she learns, she's humble, kind, honest student. But today she is a master. I can't believe the knowledge here. She does not stop one pro tip after another. You are on fire, girl. You are shining.
Anika Aggarwal:
She says, wait, is that a Star Wars reference? Because I am not a Star Wars fan, so I just totally disappointed you and reigned all over it.
Alex Lazaris:
No, she likes the dark side too much. She wouldn't say anything positive about the light. So that's not a Star Wars reference.
Anika Aggarwal:
Okay, awesome. So, yeah, I'm just working with this font of Theater Market. I'm going to outline it to Command shift O and Command Shift G to ungroup it really quickly, and then I'm going to play with it. So maybe I'll do something like grab these on the bottom.
Alex Lazaris:
Hayden says, Alex could have just admitted that his go to is Comic Papyrus. There. I was like, yes, actually, you're right. It is comic papyrus.
Anika Aggarwal:
It might be.
Alex Lazaris:
Hayden's actually, my manager on the side, so he's go for the I did not know that.
Anika Aggarwal:
Hayden, you never told me.
Alex Lazaris:
Now, Hayden is he's trying to get the cut of the Comic Papyrus money now?
Anika Aggarwal:
Okay, awesome. So we have some of these things right here. Hold on. I have something going on over here, so just give me a quick second. Okay.
Alex Lazaris:
You're good?
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah. So I'm going to grab this default selection right here as well and maybe something like this. I'm going to grab these guys, the R and the O on the bottom. I really like this tag look. So maybe we do something like this. I'm going to turn this to a stroke, maybe like a five point stroke. So we do that. This is all for you. Okay, thanks.
Alex Lazaris:
Val not making a Star Wars reference. It was a weird, weird this is.
Anika Aggarwal:
A weird world now. Okay. So I'm just increasing these stroke size to 20 just to match with it, and I see that it doesn't. So I'm going to pump it up to 40 and see what happens.
Alex Lazaris:
Amazing.
Anika Aggarwal:
I'm going to center it. So I'm going to hold this guy. I just have this tendency to call everything this guy when I don't know what it's called, I'm like, hey, just click and hold this guy.
Alex Lazaris:
I do the same thing. I think it's because I think of my designs as my friends because I spend so much time with them. I got a backstory with them and everything. Like, I make up a whole yeah, they're my friends, my. Little pixel friends, hopefully. That doesn't sound very sad.
Anika Aggarwal:
No, it doesn't. Okay, maybe kind of little trivia, but not sad. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding, Chad. Yeah. Okay. That was not supposed to happen. I'm going to ungroup this guy and I'm going to command wait, do we have two of these? We have two of these. I accidentally pasted the whole thing, so I pressed Command C and Command F instead of actually just the rectangle. So I'm going to press Command C. Command F again, we have two of these. You can see right here. Again, it copies the group. I don't want that. Why are you doing this to me? So I am going to ungroup, and now I'm going to Command C. Command F automatically drags it, and then I'm just going to drag this shape just to make a random shape right here. I see that this is very restrictive, so I might need to increase the size of these rectangles, which is what I'm doing right now. Maybe make it something like this. I'm going to delete this guy. Okay. I'm not completely happy with this, but.
Alex Lazaris:
It has a very Art Deco feel. Do you feel like that's in alignment with your brief?
Anika Aggarwal:
I think it needs to be more fun. So maybe if we add some color, it would be good, but we will see. Let's see what happens if we do this.
Alex Lazaris:
Laura was asking what was the typeface with the fun R?
Anika Aggarwal:
It's called I don't know how to pronounce it, but I'll show you. It is spelled like bageo, and I got it off creative market.
Alex Lazaris:
B-A-G-E-O baggio. We're just going to make it I'm sorry, if Claudia was here, it'd probably be like Baggio.
Anika Aggarwal:
Baggio.
Alex Lazaris:
Get the Italian flavor in there.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah, this is the type. And we have some fun variations here as OOH, that is cool.
Alex Lazaris:
Such a fun g. Yeah.
Anika Aggarwal:
I would have never thought to make this like, a little Easter egg s in it, but yeah, this is the typeface. You can get it off creative market. I'm sure if you subscribe, you can get it for free. So yeah, that is a fun one. Okay, so I'm just introducing some colors just to see what happens. And you can just select the shape and bring it forward or backward, depending on where it is in the stack of layers. And you can bring it up like this. You can send it all the way to the back if you hold shift command and the square bracket open, you can bring it all the way to the up if it's square bracket closed. And yes, that's how you do it. That's how the magic happens. Okay, cool. And then we have this right here. Maybe I convert this to okay, so I'm going to make a variation of this also. Time check. Okay, awesome. We put on time. Yeah, I feel like also, if anyone has any issues with my rate of speech because I tend to speak really fast. So if you have any issues at any point of time, just let me know.
Alex Lazaris:
No, you're super easy to keep up with. I love it. And all your tips are I think the hardest part people might have is how many tips you're throwing out constantly you're on fire, which is awesome. And that's the great thing about these videos, is later on, after we're done being live, they'll be up on the Internet and you can rewatch them, which is super exciting.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah, fun. Maybe I can do like a 30 degrees on this. So this looks like my idea for this would be like, hey, we think about a produce, which is depicted by the color, but we also think about the boundaries and what we want to do to the planet. So we want to fill the space with the produce that is overflowing, and we want to make it sustainable and we want to bring it in. It's slightly complicated, but that was my approach for this concept. And also it's a really fun square shape, and introducing basic shapes in your work is super handy. So I'm going to scale this down really quickly because my artboard is running out of shape. Shape, space. I meant face. Okay, cool. I think I had my scale strokes turned off. So I'm going to go to Illustrator, preferences, render, go to this guy, bring it down, hold shift, bring it down. And now it does not scale. It to be really big. And now it's all perfect. I'm going to command s really quickly and see what we have over here. So this is a fun one I've seen. I'm going to go back to my mode board really quickly just because I think I kind of lost my direction in between. So if that happens, you can quickly go back to your mood board. You can go over here and see what styles you were inspired by when you're making a mood board. And that can really bring you back and ground you. So, yeah, I really like this particular style, so I think I want to do that. And it also reflects the Mexican culture a lot because they have these things called Aztec print and Aztec patterns, which is essentially northern Mexican patterns. And that's essentially traditionally where they belong. I want to introduce this. This will be like a highlight to it that, hey, this is how did I close my file? No. Okay. Yeah, I didn't. I just thought I closed my file for a second. I almost got a mini heart attack.
Alex Lazaris:
Which is a good thing that you save every two minutes automatically because of your preferences for savings.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah. Thank you, Illustrator. Thank you, Adobe. Yeah, so I want to do that. So maybe let's say I want to take a fun, bold font for this. I don't see any right now, so I'm just going to go to I think I want to go to Ruby font instead of rounded, I want to select some serif and also go over here and change the weight of it. So maybe like a fun guy right here, you can select all of these as well. So as you can see, these H are depending on the excite. It is either on the X side, it is either lower than the X side or greater than the X side. So you can customize these and filter it by this. You can select a standard recaps only and all of these multiple amazing variations.
Alex Lazaris:
Val is screaming at you to save your work. She's like, OMG folks, we need to remind. We get to remind to save her work.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah, I think I was in Chat yesterday and I was getting anxious because someone did not save their work. And I'm like, oh, no, I see the asterisk right here. Can you please save can you do quickly a command s for me? Not for you, just for funny. Yay. Thanks Val.
Alex Lazaris:
Val, when are we going to get the save bot in Chat? Remind us every two minutes.
Anika Aggarwal:
We need a save point. Yeah, I like these, but I also want to see something fun. Maybe I'm going to just modify futura. I don't know.
Alex Lazaris:
I mean, futura is classic.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah, but I like this one. R oh, my God.
Alex Lazaris:
That is a fun. R yeah.
Anika Aggarwal:
I'm going to activate everything. I have everything activated. One day Adobe Fonts is going to give up on me and it'll be like, oh no, you've reached your limit of 100,000 fonts. Now you can't activate any more fonts. So bye bye.
Alex Lazaris:
I can't wait for that to just be constantly no longer needing to download fonts because they're already all on your computer. Just preemptively give me everything I need for the project and calling it right now. That's the next Adobe Sensei feature. Just predicting the typeface I need. Just kidding.
Anika Aggarwal:
You heard it here, folks. You heard it here.
Alex Lazaris:
That was an actual legal disclaimer. Just don't sue me, Adobe, please.
Anika Aggarwal:
So you can go right here and you can also see find more and this will activate instantly fonts from the cloud. This is also another way to do it, but it might take some time because I'm also streaming at the same time. So I just prefer to do it on the browser, which is easier to access and yeah, I'm going to activate this guy. I think I did.
Alex Lazaris:
Okay, cool. I really like the previews on the actual website itself where you can type out your syndromes and things. I mean, you can still see those previews in the typeface selector up on the top of the toolbar, but it's so much easier to kind of see them bigger and larger on the actual desktop experience.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah, even I prefer the website version because you can see all the variants and not just the simple. Not just one font, but the whole typeface. So that's a big plus for me. Okay, so I'm going to grab this guy. Maybe I make guides right over here just because I want to manipulate this.
Alex Lazaris:
Destiny says, I love that the puro with the curly r and the little cloud as the o. And I agree that little cloud o is amazing.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah. Fun. Okay, we can maybe do that as well. Where is the cloud o? Where are you? There you go.
Alex Lazaris:
So cute.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah. I'm not sure if it's in line with it being, like, a restaurant. Maybe if it was, like, a tomato. I don't know. I'm just saying, I feel like it.
Alex Lazaris:
Could work really well for especially since this is a Mexican restaurant, there's so much color that you can bring into it that I think the cloud is really fun. Maybe there's something you can do with some of the other ligatures, maybe in the r to make it the cloud circle a little bit more.
Anika Aggarwal:
But yeah, we can experiment.
Alex Lazaris:
For some reason. The first thing I thought of when I saw that was like I was like, oh, I think Anagrama or Studio Yi, one of these actual Mexican design firms that are incredible. I was like, I could see them doing something like so it's all up to whatever you want to do. I mean, you're the boss, but I'm open to suggestions. Bruce asked, what is the second font from the top?
Anika Aggarwal:
Let me zoom out. Is this the one that you're talking about? It's Ono. BlazeFace again by the ono type.
Alex Lazaris:
Nice.
Anika Aggarwal:
Oh, no. BlazeFace. Also, did you know Ono typeco has, like, a fun story about it being called oh, no?
Alex Lazaris:
Did you guys oh, I didn't know that.
Anika Aggarwal:
You didn't? Oh, no. Yeah. So the ono typeco is called the Onotypeco because every typeface, when you're designing a typeface, the first glyph that you create is essentially capital O, capital H, and lowercase N, lowercase O. So James was actually when they were trying to find they were trying to name their brand, they decided that, hey, let's just make something with this. And they ended up with oh, no, which is essentially like an anagram. Is that the word? But yeah, they decided to make, like, an anagram of those things, and they were like, yeah, this looks good. Maybe we can use this for a company name. And it works. A lot of people don't know that it's oh, no for a reason, but yeah, it's oh, no for this reason.
Alex Lazaris:
That's awesome. Thank you for that because yeah, I've been to their website so many times. Their typefaces are awesome, amazing, and very funky and fresh. So highly recommend checking them out. Yeah, they have some really cool, variable typefaces, which are kind of my favorites. That's awesome. I didn't think that throwing the squares on there would work, but it actually works really nicely.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah, I thought this would be too fat for the exploration. I thought this could be like, work with a lighter weight. Oh, no. Type co. Yeah, but maybe it does work with a black version. Maybe it works better with a bold. I didn't want to do that. So maybe we can do this on the side as well. Get these guys shift, shift, shift, shift, shift. And then I'm going to get this guy option click and drag, make my life easy. It's probably not aligning because this is a different weight, but we can fix that. That's not an issue. Also, I want to say hi to everybody. I didn't say hi. So if I didn't call you out specifically, don't feel bad. I see you in the chat.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, and if we don't see you in chat, it's because you're not watching on Adobe Live itself on Behance. So come on over Adobe Live and hang out with us real time so we can say hello to you, can read your comments and you can join us for the memes versus memes debate.
Anika Aggarwal:
I never actually did that.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, no.
Anika Aggarwal:
Straw pole, please. Well, I never thought I would be on the other side, to be honest, because I always clicked on Dan Alex.
Alex Lazaris:
Now we find out who actually clicks that button.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah, I was on memes.
Alex Lazaris:
Or memes.
Anika Aggarwal:
Memes. That's a meme. Wrong. I've always been on Val. I'm not going to cross over. Don't worry.
Alex Lazaris:
Well, join the dark side, as I would propose.
Anika Aggarwal:
No, thank you. Okay, so I'm going to select all of these. Select this as reference, go to align, go to horizontal line and Val's. Like, I thought we were friends.
Alex Lazaris:
Destiny agrees. It's menez and may May. So May is actually a good compromise. I like it. Anyways, we'll get back to this.
Anika Aggarwal:
No worries. Yeah. I'm probably going to do something like this. Maybe I shift this. Maybe I make this kind of spiky to me now, but what if we do something like this? Oh, no, I meant to do something else.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, interesting.
Anika Aggarwal:
So I'm going to align this too, if you can't see it. Okay. So I might need to convert it to outlines before I do that. I'm going to control command shift o command y. I go into outline mode. This makes it easier for me to see what I'm doing. So I'm going to align this center to this guy really quickly. Get these over here as well. Get this aligned, delete this, go back, press command y again, and then I'm going to option click and drag. Get this here and just going to flip it so we have it perfect. Oh, I really like this direction.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, it's going really well. I like it. And Jess goes, alex, we haven't crossed paths before. I'm sure you're a lovely human, but venz and comic papyrus.
Anika Aggarwal:
Hey, Jess. So glad to see you all in.
Alex Lazaris:
It's okay.
Anika Aggarwal:
I love it.
Alex Lazaris:
You don't have to make the poll again, because I know you're tired of being on the wrong side of history. I'm going to start my own cult, and it's going to be the cult of the Menz, and it'll be fine.
Anika Aggarwal:
We already know it. We don't need the poll. But thank you. We love you. Okay.
Alex Lazaris:
This is looking awesome.
Anika Aggarwal:
I think so. They're too close right now, but we will fix that. We'll fix the spacing. We are going to get to that.
Alex Lazaris:
Well, the middle section, are they just a pixel off from the R? The ink well of the R, like the middle crossbar, does that touch the you see what I'm saying? On the right side of the R where the curve comes down to the leg?
Anika Aggarwal:
This one? Yeah, I think it is, because for it to be visually this is also, I think, one of the things yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
It'S a little off.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah, it is a little off. This is just like it's below the excite. So I think that's what it is. And essentially I think ideally, R's are essentially to be on the excite and P, since there is no curve or, like, rounded what is it called again? I don't know the technical terms of it because I can never remember.
Alex Lazaris:
There's so many there's so many words.
Anika Aggarwal:
For it, like the bell. Yeah. I don't know what this thing is called, but you get it. The Rd, the thing essentially what I'm talking about is this guy. If I delete this and this becomes a P, but for it to be visually perfect for type design, you need to know that you need to fill this space right here. So it should ideally be this rounded portion should ideally be greater than the R round. So yeah, that's how it works. I think that's what it is. And maybe it's, like, very stylized and yeah, I guess that explains it. Okay, awesome. I think I like this guy. I'm going to get this over here, make another iteration because I want to change the spacing of it, even even though it was outlined over there. I could have changed it, but I didn't want to mess with the default spacing. I'm also going to hit save because I hadn't in a while. I don't want to lose my work. So PSA, folks, save your work.
Alex Lazaris:
And as Joplin would say, pixels are free, so just keep pushing them.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
If you're really enjoying something but you don't want to be destructive with it, or it might feel a little bit too sketchy or risky to mess with something, duplicate it, move it over and use that as a starting point.
Anika Aggarwal:
I love that. If it looks sketchy, duplicate it. I want to use it. Okay. So, yeah, I have this over here. I'm going to quickly so since I have my smart guides turned on just to better for your eyes, I'm going to get this rectangle right in just because I'm going to space it equally, and I clearly see that this is not equal spacing. And you want to be able to do that? I do this. I grab this. Maybe I want it to be greater, but we'll adjust it when we see it visually, and we are going to this. Wait, is it still a group? It is a group. I'm going to go to guides. I'm going to lock my guides just so I don't move my guides along with my shapes. I'm going to make it probably bigger because we want to scale it down and we want to still make sure that the type is legible. So in order to do that, you need to have the spacing just right so that when you actually scale it down, scale the logo down, you want the type to still be visible. So, yeah, we want to do that. And just for this, I want to see option click and drag right here. Before I do that, I actually want to get these guys on the site. Okay, cool. When I get this right here. Also, folks, if you have any questions for me, just pop them in the chat. I will be happy to answer. I love all the questions.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I've got a question for you. When you're tracking out the letters or trying to figure out each letter is kerning and things, what do you use as a guide? Do you use visuals? Do you try to use math? Because right now it seems like you're doing it mostly based off of the equal spacing, which is yeah, I do both.
Anika Aggarwal:
Right now, I'm just using a random width shape that I created that I can see visually can look good. Essentially what I did for these squares over here was get the width of this P right here and then divided it by two and then used it just so because it was looking visually correct. If it was half, imagine if I did this and put this right here. It just looked very blocky, and I didn't want to do that just because it blocky. Yeah. So I think I probably should take this square right here and use this as my guide. That would be a good option. So you can do that. But since it's your type and it's like what you're doing, you can do anything with it. Just have fun with it. And as long as it looks visually and design wise correct, it's all good. So, yeah, I think this is almost half of this, so we might need to increase the space, which is good. Thanks for bringing that up. That was good. Great.
Alex Lazaris:
Thank you.
Anika Aggarwal:
Point.
Alex Lazaris:
I'm trying because I don't know all these rules and you're an expert.
Anika Aggarwal:
Alex doesn't know. Sure. I believe you. I believe you.
Alex Lazaris:
I'm learning today.
Anika Aggarwal:
Absolutely. But I'm literally so happy I'm here. I want to thank everybody on the Adobe Live team. You guys are amazing. You guys do amazing work and thank you for having me. I know I didn't say it at the start, but it was because I wanted everybody to get here and see me. Thank. Like, if I tell you everything in the start, who is going to stay to hear the thank you, everybody stayed.
Alex Lazaris:
The whole time, which is amazing. Thank you, chat. Thank you, everybody, for hanging out. Randall says, can we believe Anika is literally streaming from tomorrow? Time zones are so wild.
Anika Aggarwal:
I am from the future.
Alex Lazaris:
It's crazy. It's 01:19 a.m. Right now. Oh, my goodness.
Anika Aggarwal:
149. Oh, no. We're running out of time.
Alex Lazaris:
Okay, we're at 119. 119. Our time zone is different. It's okay. We still have about 40 minutes left.
Anika Aggarwal:
Okay. Yeah. I want to wrap this up. Okay. Didn't want to do that, but I think this looks all right. I'm going to get a copy of this out over here. Didn't want to do that. I'm going to get this guy right here, copy it. I'm going to delete these just because I want to see how it looks from a distance. I am going to select all of these shapes, go to pathfinder and bam, there you go. One single color. Wait, no. What did I do? This guy voodoo.
Alex Lazaris:
Val says 35 minutes. Okay. See my math? I spent all that, my brain effort on math earlier when we were doing the golden sheet. The golden ratio.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah. I get it. Okay. So this is what it looks like. I'm going to edit this over here as well. I think it's not in the straight line, so I'm going to select this as reference horizontal line. Oh, it's a line. It doesn't look right because it is outside the post. I'm going to do it by I so that it matches. It still doesn't match. Interesting. I'm at the impossible. Interesting. What do I want to do with this? Okay, I'm going to hold off for this for now, just until we figure it out. It's a little weird for me.
Alex Lazaris:
I think it's okay if it is.
Anika Aggarwal:
Well, I did pathfinder it and it didn't look right. So if I pathfinder at all, it looks like it's out and I didn't oh, yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
But I meant if that bottom section is aligned to the circle itself. Yeah. I don't think you're going to notice the top part being more yeah, I don't think you're going to notice it.
Anika Aggarwal:
Let us see. So on this side, it's aligned on the top part and on the outer side, it's aligned on the bottom part.
Alex Lazaris:
Cool.
Anika Aggarwal:
I'm in the outline mode, so super easy now. I don't think it works, but we will see. Okay.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. I don't think visually you're going to see it as much.
Anika Aggarwal:
Okay.
Alex Lazaris:
But the inside left one feels off for some reason.
Anika Aggarwal:
So what if these guys didn't exist and there is just this guy? Okay. Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
You can also do other fun things with that inside circle. Too. You can change the shape of that negative space if you wanted to.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah, you can mess around with all of these things as well. Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Or you could have them protruding to the negative space instead of doing the oh my gosh, words are so hard sometimes, trying to explain what I'm thinking. So instead of making adding to the shape of more red, if you just subtract the inside triangles from it, I think it would also work subtract. So instead of adding the triangles to it, by subtracting it, I think you get to reinforce that shape language a little bit.
Anika Aggarwal:
Okay, so I go to my shape builder. I'm going to subtract it. No subtract it. Okay, I see it. So I'm going to go and align this. So I think it needs to rotate a little bit just so it aligns with the circle. But I'm just experimenting over here. And also, if you guys did not know and O is not actually a circle shape, it's essentially a manipulated shape. And in this one, in this answer, if you actually see that these are all equal on all sides, but just to make it visually correct, it's essentially somewhat like this, so that you can differentiate between an o and a zero.
Alex Lazaris:
It'S going to melt a lot of people's minds who have never paid attention to O's so much before.
Anika Aggarwal:
Also, since we are talking about that, I want to also talk about use. I've been learning about type design a lot. I want to talk about you. Yeah. So these are some fun use right here. You see again in this on Serif, you see that all of these curves are the same weight. But if you go to some Serif fonts, let's say you go to minion variable grotesque, that was it. You clearly see how this depiction, this side, the left hand side of the U is a bigger, greater weight than the right. And that's how type design works. So these are just fun things I was reading about. And then we have some of these and this is like a common thing, but you get the idea. You get the idea. As Paul Chani says it, you get the idea, folks. Okay, cool. So I am going to align this really quickly. Also, if you don't get to see the whole logo process today, I'm going to work on it really quickly. I think we are working more on seeing what the process is like rather than getting things done, which was the idea. And that's what we focus on here during live streaming. So, yeah, even if we don't get the logo done, I will work on it on the side off stream, get it done. You have the ideas right here. I will show you again when we come back tomorrow. That, hey, this is what we were doing yesterday and this is what we.
Alex Lazaris:
Came back taco caught my subtle soldier boy reference. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it's the Superman reference where he goes, you oh, my God.
Anika Aggarwal:
I missed that.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, classic. Whatever you said you're teaching us about you. That's all I could think about.
Anika Aggarwal:
My bad. Okay, I totally missed that because oh, yeah, I see it now. Flashbacks. Thanks, Paco. I totally missed it. Yeah. So I am just rotating these guys. Maybe I go to select, I go object. I go to transform. I go to rotate. Maybe I rotate it by, like, ten degrees and see what happens. No, I didn't want to do that. Go to object, transform, rotate. It's all about experimentation, folks. So I did five degrees on it. I think it kind of works. Maybe I move it on the side and it'll align with it. But yeah, kind of. I think it's going to work. So I go to transform, you go to rotate, and you click on OK, and it sets it to the last one. So, yeah, I didn't want to do that. I want to rotate it to the opposite direction. So instead, I'm going to do minus five right here, and that gives me that. I'm going to shift this guy right here, and I'm going to do the same thing to this guy. I wish there was a shortcut for this, but I think there is. Transform each. That was it. I already have the shortcut. Mind is blown. But we have this right here. I guess this aligns better. And now we're going to implement Alex's suggestion about having the negative space instead of adding to the shape. So I'm going to create a copy of this right here, just so if we think that it's not perfect, just have a copy of it on the side. I think I have a lot of copies. Wow. Copies everywhere. Oh, no.
Alex Lazaris:
And then the rotation of the artboards is going to get really annoying very fast.
Anika Aggarwal:
I think there should be, like, an option where you can select it, like, hey, I don't want to rotate my artboard. I like working on the desktop because I don't want to rotate it.
Alex Lazaris:
Exactly.
Anika Aggarwal:
If I wanted to, I would have used the iPad. True. Okay. Fun. There are some things that I see that are not perfect, but maybe we can use the direct selection points. So I'm going to add these guys right here. Fun. I like it. I think it's a little too much.
Alex Lazaris:
I agree. I think you're right.
Anika Aggarwal:
Maybe if we don't add these oh, no, we do. Maybe if we get these out and do this to everything, this could be another okay.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah.
Anika Aggarwal:
Okay.
Alex Lazaris:
Maybe it needs it on the top too. I don't know. I think I'm just messing with your flow now.
Anika Aggarwal:
No, it's all good. Maybe it can be, like a different where is my pen tool? What are you doing?
Alex Lazaris:
Laura asks, is the rotation of the artboard a recent update? I think so.
Anika Aggarwal:
It has been, like, three weeks, and it rolled out for Mac first and then for Windows. So if you haven't updated your app, go to Creative Cloud desktop app, update your apps.
Alex Lazaris:
It will sneakily update it for you, and then you'll have it. And then you'll have to remember the escape button to get out of it, which will be fine. At least you can escape out of it. That's nice.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah. Except you can't do it. Maybe this can be like, a new feature. Maybe you can. So there's this fun website called UserVoice Illustrator.com where you can actually put in suggestions what you want in the apps. So if you want anything on the iPad app for the desktop app, you guys can go and check it out. It is super fun, and you can get people to upvote. You can put it in forums and discords, maybe like an Illustrator Discord for it and yeah, fun things.
Alex Lazaris:
That's awesome.
Anika Aggarwal:
Okay, so I am just going to experiment with seeing how this works. If I minus this out what? Minus this out of this shape as well, what happens? Oh, interesting. So what if we do a plus? We do a plus on this, negative on this and a plus on this.
Alex Lazaris:
A little plus minus plus. All right. Okay. All right. We'll make that an official playbook for designers. The plus minus plus treatment.
Anika Aggarwal:
No, please don't. And then I'm going to subtract. It's not perfect. Hold on, hold on. That's me on the keyboard. I'm going to get this guy here. Are there two of these? Did I already.
Alex Lazaris:
Got a drop shadow?
Anika Aggarwal:
No, it messed up.
Alex Lazaris:
Not what I want.
Anika Aggarwal:
It's like no, you're messing with me too much. Give up on me. I'm not going to be okay. I'm going to control Z really quickly, command V, and then I go back to this shape. Okay, perfect. I'm going to go back, select all of these guys. I think these might not be aligned, so I'm going to select just these three. Select this top align. I should have done that to all of those, but I'm just trying to get this done really quickly. It's not easy to make a type face so quickly, so even if it's rough, I'm just getting it out there. I might refine it later on, and that's completely fine.
Alex Lazaris:
I think it's a little I think that is absolutely correct. And people need to remember that when you're doing this at home, it will take time sometimes to get it all balanced and perfect. It just takes pushing things around and changing it and exploring it and stuff. So have patience, be forgiving with yourself, and let the process just happen.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah, I mean, it's not going to be perfect on the first day at all. It's never going to be perfect. I think that it's good. It is. You like it?
Alex Lazaris:
I think so, yeah.
Anika Aggarwal:
Okay, awesome. How are you feeling about it? I like it because it's out. So you know why logos are important? Logos are important because it gives a mark to your brand and what you really are. And the most easy way to make a good logo is to look at a lot of logos and think of the ones that you can sketch in like 10 seconds. If you can sketch it out, that means that there's a good logo. Right? So whenever you're designing, the first step is to make like, ten different sketches and make it in ten minutes if you like those, great for this. I like this because in my mood board, I had these very typical shapes which are always protruded on the ends, and it's like a typical Mexican thing. And because Alex gave us an amazing suggestion, we have landed up with this and we have this negative space. So it's something different and something that you would not expect from a Mexican themed restaurant. It is what you expect and not what you expect at the same time. So that's super fun. I really like it. So we're going to keep this as an option, for sure. I also want to do something with these guys. I see we don't have a lot of time, so I'm going to quickly work through this.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, we have about 25 minutes, so I think we have a decent amount of time, depending on what you're wanting to get done.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah, I wanted to actually get some colors and type done as well, but it's all good. We have this shape right here. I'm going to go to Image Trace really quickly. I might make it with the Pen tool, but just because of a lack of time, I'm doing it right now. So you have all of these settings. I'm going to drag this panel right here because it's easier for you guys to see. So you can see that I have the image selected on the shape. And Adobe Sensei just does the work for you. So you go to Image Trace. You go to all of these options that you have over here. You can convert it to all of these for this. Since this is just a black and white illustration, I want to convert it all to Vector. I hit on black and white logo and it is doing all the work for me. You can click on the advanced options and hold on. If I drag it outside, you can see that it also added the white. And since I have things selected, it is not letting me do that. Right now. We go to here on the advanced options. You have all of these variations. You can increase the threshold. You can decrease the threshold. Oh, no. Yeah. And then you can click on Ignore White, and that can actually create no white backgrounds for you. And it's doing all the work. Then you click on Expand and there you go. These are all vectors. Now so you click on that. You drag this panel back into wherever it was. Is it doing it? Okay, cool.
Alex Lazaris:
I've never gotten that crazy detailed into it. I didn't even know that that was a thing. Yeah, I didn't know that was a thing. I always thought I only had those presets, and I just click it, and then it does its magic, and either it works or it doesn't work. But now I have more control.
Anika Aggarwal:
Wow. Crazy amazing. I taught Alice. Alex. Wow. I said your name wrong. No way.
Alex Lazaris:
That's fine. I've been called much worse.
Anika Aggarwal:
Really?
Alex Lazaris:
Jimbo is typically my default name.
Anika Aggarwal:
So we have all of these vectors and it's grouped by default. I'm going to ungroup these, and these can become like a really fun pattern. I'm kind of straying away from it because I want to get in all the pro tips that I want to show you guys. So I have all of these shapes, and maybe I want to open a new file. So I'm going to go to home. I'm going to create new I just want to show you how to quickly create patterns really quickly. It's going to take 5 seconds. So I'm going to go to create a new file. I just did. Like a web lodge. It's a 1920 by 1080 file. Close this. Close this. I'm going to save my logo exploration just in case I forgot to do it. I didn't, but I am paranoid sometimes. So yeah, we get this guy right here. These are super big. No, where my eyes go. Okay. So I'm going to drag these. Hold shift and drag. I get these right here. So if you guys have been using Illustrator for a while, you know that there's a pattern tool right here. But now there are repeat grids. So you can quickly make a repeat grid out of these. I see that they are not perfect. I might have needed to increase the threshold on these or maybe use the pen tool or the direct selection to make it perfect. But at the same time, there can be multiple directions. I want to go with these. So maybe I can grab this guy right here, group it, get it here. Oh, you know what? I have an idea. Hold on.
Alex Lazaris:
So Jane says you can also save your trace settings if you even tweak them for specific sketches that you import and turn them into.
Anika Aggarwal:
Mind. Yeah, I haven't dabbled in actions ever, though that would really simplify my process a lot. And there are actions to make isometric drawings in Illustrator as well. And that's really fun. I want to explore that and that's on my to do list for a while. So yes. Thank you for that. Thank you for reminding me.
Alex Lazaris:
Jane says, I learned that in class and even got it to work. That's awesome. That's super helpful. I'll have to look into that because that sounds like a time saver.
Anika Aggarwal:
Okay, so I'm going to ungroup this. I have this idea about making it a logo, so I'm going to go it's all. Okay. So I'm going to press C on the keyboard and use the cut knife for this. And there's my anchor point.
Alex Lazaris:
Laura says, I'm finally back. This is pure awesomeness.
Anika Aggarwal:
Oh, no. We landed on this. Thanks, Laura. And thank you. Welcome back. If you guys are just joining me, I want to quickly go back, give you guys a recap, because I know I haven't done that in a while. So these are the sketches we started with. These are some of the explorations that we're doing. We did not get to do all of them, but it's okay. It's okay. I'm telling myself that it is okay.
Alex Lazaris:
You've done such a great job of teaching us the tools. Along the way.
Anika Aggarwal:
We use the Golden Circle. Initially, we talked a lot about golden Circle, so if you're not here for that part, you can go back and watch the replay, which will be up right after we go offline. But this is what we landed up with. This is one of the options. I don't think I like this very much. I'm not inclined to this, so I did not waste a lot of time on this on stream. Then we did this. This is a pure San Serif font that we had, and we did a few explorations of this. I think I like this better. We might need to use color on this, and maybe we can use the cloudy o as well on this one. So that could be fun. Maybe we can use the same concept of stacking on this guy as well to make it fun. But I kind of like this. Now that I look at it. I'm going to zoom out, super zoom out of this and see how it looks. And then we did some explorations over here as well. So we modified an existing typespace for it. I think it was bajio, if that's how you say it. And we have some variable fonts going on right here. So we did one of those. We outlined it. We got the size of the square, the size of the glyph. We divided it by two, got our inspiration from the mood board, and then we did multiple variations. Oh, no. And I got multiple variations, and we ended up with this. I really like it. I also like this tabbed one. So maybe you'll do that. Okay. I think I want to do this, but this is not letting me do that. Wow. I think I want to do this, but this is not letting me do that. What a perfect sentence. No. So I want to go here. Maybe I want to use the pen tool. Oh, no. What are you doing to me?
Alex Lazaris:
So what are you trying to do that it's not letting you do?
Anika Aggarwal:
I'm trying to make a taco shape and put like, puro inside it. It might not work. It might work. We don't know. We don't know yet. I'm going to grab this guy right here. We're going to increase the stroke size and Command J, which will join all of these strokes that we have. And then I'm going to go to Curvature Tool and fix this. Maybe it's not perfect on the first row because pen tool can be difficult at first, but it takes some getting used to. Just, like, practice pen tool. There are various websites on the interwebs that you can go and practice your pen tool at. So yeah, go ahead, practice the pen tool. It's the most useful tool I ever used, to be honest.
Alex Lazaris:
Yes. And it's only getting better and better because that tool used to not be there, and it used to be very painful to work with. Now it is so simple.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah, it's super intuitive now. I love it. So, yeah, I think this is good. I'm going to bump it up to, like, 40 points just to see. I'm going to save maybe I want to get this one.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, that could be fun. I feel like that with all the curvature and the r could you could kind of have the taco be pulled into that.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah, let's see. I'm going to grab it right here. This guy. Also, I want to know from the Chat, is there a favorite shortcut that you guys have? Do you have a favorite shortcut in Illustrator? What's your favorite shortcut in Illustrator?
Alex Lazaris:
Mine would have to be paste in front of so command F. Command F?
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah. I really love that.
Alex Lazaris:
That one's the best. Command B as well. You got to have both sides. Yin and yang. You got to have the paste behind. Paste in front, yeah.
Anika Aggarwal:
I also like this because everything is outside.
Alex Lazaris:
Yes, that's my go to.
Anika Aggarwal:
I don't understand how people also, this guy looks so trippy. Like, the eyes moved on the seven. Like, oh, no, I had too much food.
Alex Lazaris:
Well, the great thing about that is now that you accidentally did that happy.
Anika Aggarwal:
Accident, I think I like it such.
Alex Lazaris:
A happy accident that you can animate it there. If you want, you could have his face, like, moving around.
Anika Aggarwal:
Oh, my God. Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Some good little animations you can do.
Anika Aggarwal:
I love that. Okay, I think I want to replicate this. Maybe take the direct selection. Maybe I want to not replicate this. Go to Pen Tool. I'm going to go here.
Alex Lazaris:
Viola says command f or command z. Yep. That's a good one, too. Undo tool. Anything you can do, undo. Perfect.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, it's so cute.
Anika Aggarwal:
Think I want to keep this. Maybe it's not what I want. So I'm going to go to Curvature. Maybe I want to change it a little bit. I want to manipulate the shape, and curvature is, like, the best tool for that. It does add a lot of endpoints. So what you can do is select P hold. You just select on that and that will just delete that. If you hold shift, it will not change the shape of your stroke. And that can be fun. I want to make this a little bit roughened up. So I'm going to go here. I can select these two strokes right here. I can go to this width profiles and I can change all of these profiles. So let's say I select this and this looks kind of funky. I don't want to do that. Also, I see a lot of favorite shortcuts.
Alex Lazaris:
There's so many. I was just thinking how great it would be if we had a game show that was like, name the command. You get a bunch of shortcuts and you have to just name them off really quickly, like Jeopardy style.
Anika Aggarwal:
Hey, what do you think command two is? How do you unlock what does command seven does? What does command eight do?
Alex Lazaris:
Laura says shift control e. And I was like, what is that? I wouldn't be losing this.
Anika Aggarwal:
Shift control e. Control e. Did I do command e? Okay, you did command e. Control e. It does nothing for me.
Alex Lazaris:
Maybe it needs to be I don't know.
Anika Aggarwal:
I don't know. Maybe it's different for Mac. Maybe it's option shift.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, it might be option commandee.
Anika Aggarwal:
Option command. Oh, interesting.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, export screens.
Anika Aggarwal:
Wow, I did not know that. And then you can export assets as well. Thanks, Laura. That's amazing.
Alex Lazaris:
That would be great. And yes, Tim, my game show, we say a game show would be so good. Do like the whole, like do 80s game show theme with it. Get a spinning wheel of some sort.
Anika Aggarwal:
Yeah, val does like this. Val started a new Adobe Die game show that's also super fun. She does have a spin wheel, so maybe she could do something like that. Val, input for you recommendation?
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, memes not allowed. Only memes, for sure.
Anika Aggarwal:
Well, now I'm with Alex because I've been talking to Alex for a while now, so now I'm on Alex's team.
Alex Lazaris:
There you. Well, you're val will be converted to the memes life one.
Anika Aggarwal:
Oh, yeah. I was doing patterns, but I just realized that I could actually do something like that. I just got struck with lightning and I thought that maybe I could use a taco for a logo design, so I came back to this file instead of doing patterns, but yeah, good point. Let's go back. Since I have a rough shape right here, I'm going to save that. I didn't want to miss the idea, so I went back to my Luba design file, but thank you for bringing it up. This is not my sarcastic voice, it's just how I talk. Sorry. So I'm going to hold and drag this guy right here. I'm just placing these people right here. This is I think it's called some food.
Alex Lazaris:
Have you named your characters yet? That you did.
Anika Aggarwal:
I haven't. You know what?
Alex Lazaris:
All right, Chat, name the turtle burger thing.
Anika Aggarwal:
Absolutely. It's called taquito.
Alex Lazaris:
Taquito.
Anika Aggarwal:
Taquito.
Alex Lazaris:
All right, give us another one that that Chat can name for us then.
Anika Aggarwal:
I don't know. This Taco or this tofu all of these guys. All of these guys. And maybe the avocado. Where's the avocado? I mean, there you go. There you are, little guy. Okay, I'm going to option pull and drag all of these on my artboard. And I have this right here. I have placed it right here. These are all my copies. I had made vectors from the sketch that I had. I have these fairly spaced out right now. I think I want to decrease the size. Oh, no. And I group this and I decrease the sizing of this. And I keep time in mind that's just for me, not for you. And then I go here, I go here. I get all of these and I have this. So a simple way to do this with repeat grids, go to object, go to repeat. And you have all of these different kind of repeats. You can go to radial grid mirror, and then you have all of these options as well. I'm going to do a grid for this one just because I want to make a pattern. And you already have a pattern. I mean, you just did one click, 1 second and bam, there you go. So you have this pattern, but it looks like a pattern. A great thing about patterns is that you want to make it not look like a pattern while it is still a pattern. So you go to object, repeat options, you go here. You have all of these amazing options. You have radial grid mirror, you have grid type as well. So you have this grid, you have multiple grids, brick by row and brick by column. You have flip rows and columns and you have flipped columns horizontally and vertically as well. I typically do this, this, and this. It doesn't always work and it doesn't work here. So we're going to not do it, but let's see. Okay, so this looks kind of fun. This has some guys flipped, this has a lot of spacing, but we can fix that. So I selected both of these options and you can select those so it can flip both horizontally and vertically. You can select one of those or you can select either of those or all of those. Right, so I think I want to select this. I want to select flip horizontal no, I want to select flip column no. Okay, interesting. Maybe I placed them wrong, but it's all good. Okay, let's go with this.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I think that's great.
Anika Aggarwal:
We have this guy and you have all of these controls over here on the four sides. So the one with the arrows right over here, you can use this to increase the spacing horizontally. If you see it on the vertical end. You can increase this to hold on. You can use this to increase the spacing vertically. And then you have this guy. This is just to increase the size or the clipping mask of the pattern right here. So however big your space would be, you can do that. I have Command shift s right here. So you can see and yeah, we have a pattern. Maybe it looks like this. I see some variations with this that I might want to use later on. But that's how simple it is to make a pattern. Maybe I want to make a pattern with just these two guys, right? So I'm going to grab these guys. I'm going to get it on the side. I'm going to get it here. I'm going to grab these. Maybe I want to get no, I lost my eyes. Okay, I get these two guys. Does it even have I lost one eye?
Alex Lazaris:
But it's okay. It's a cutie. And Randall wanted one of the characters named after him. So Randall gets the avocado. I'm just going to say it because the Avocado looks really happy. Randall, congratulations on becoming the Avocado.
Anika Aggarwal:
Okay, awesome. So what I did was just because I missed the eye somewhere, I lost his eye somewhere. I just went into isolation mode. I double clicked. I still am on the isolation. Since this is a group, I double clicked on this guy. I'm in the isolation mode now, so I can move it anywhere. I go back. And this is still a group, right? But I didn't want to do that. I want to replicate it. I wanted to replicate this. So I double click this and just command C, command V. Place it anywhere you want. And now you have a second eye. So this guy doesn't need another eye. This guy doesn't need an eye patch. So, yeah, we have these two. I'm just going to show you another option to make a pattern. This is go to pattern. Go to. Make a new pattern has been added. You can go to these options. Now. It has opened a different isolation mode for you to like patterns. Like patterns, make patterns. And then you can change the same options here, brick by row, brick, column, hex by column, hex by row. So these are some versions and variations of how you can make patterns. In Illustrator, everybody has a different creative process, so you can do whatever you want. And now you can see that it has been added on my swatch right here. So I go to make a rectangle. I press on the M tool. I click here, bam, pattern.
Alex Lazaris:
And then whenever you do this is my favorite go to.
Anika Aggarwal:
And then you can just scale it anywhere.
Alex Lazaris:
You can scale the pattern, but you can also, whenever you go to do command, t or transform tool on it. Did I do that right? No, that's the type tool. What am I thinking?
Anika Aggarwal:
Oh, you can edit it. I know you can edit it. You can edit it.
Alex Lazaris:
It's in the transform section, I think. And you can make sure that you scale up the artwork within the bounding box or the bounding boxes change. So it's in one of the transform settings, I believe.
Anika Aggarwal:
Oh, interesting. So I know you can do that with the repeat trade. So what you can do is since I have this repeated and I haven't expanded it yet, I can just double click into this and this gives me isolation mode right here. I can grab this guy and everything scales up and down with it. And I think that's what you're referring to. I haven't ever done that with the pattern tool. But if you guys want to explore that, you can select the shape that you have selected. You can go to Objects, you can go to Pattern, you can go to edit Pattern and you have the pattern again. So you can move this guy around anywhere you want. You can scale it up and down anywhere and then you can click Save as a copy. Done. It'll give you on the same section and yeah, that's how you create patterns. So I think we're coming to a close with the time and I just want to quickly give a recap of what we did. I know we did not end up with the options and what you want to do with the logo in terms of color and stuff, but I will have stuff ready for tomorrow so we can mock things up.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I think tomorrow we can get Chat to help us with the colors and some of the type stuff that you're looking at and then we can start mocking it up and doing really?
Anika Aggarwal:
Absolutely. Yeah. I think I will have some color palettes and then we can do like a poll running, get Val to run a poll for us and then we can choose options one, two and three. I can make some logo design options as well so that we have less time. I know it's like time bound, so sometimes we get far away from what we are doing, but I think we grabbed a lot of tips. So not a problem. I'm telling myself that, no, it's been super helpful.
Alex Lazaris:
I've learned tons. I know chat has. I've really enjoyed this whole process so far. So, yeah, I'm super excited to see kind of what you're channeling for tomorrow when we get awesome.
Anika Aggarwal:
So a quick recap for anybody who's just joined us and for what to look forward to tomorrow. We talked about our exploration deck, which is just the discovery of the brand. We talked about the coal, what the brand is. We are making a brand identity design for a Mexican restaurant, which is also inspired by making vegan food not boring. And yeah, that's our mission. We have our brand traits, we talked about those. We talked about where we're going to use the logo. We talked about where we grab our inspiration from. So these are the mood posts that we had. We talked about a little bit about our target audience. We talked about the color typography, and then we moved on to our logo expiration. I also spoke a little bit about my process. So these are the sketches. I did not get to a lot of these. I will work on these later on. So these are also inspired with the Mexican type that we see. I think I want to work on this. I really like this one because it goes with the Aztec pattern. I really like this. You can use a sheer tool to make this very simple. I really like this as well because this is original and that makes it like an ownable font and only the brand will actually use it and not anyone else. So that's also super fun. I like this R as well. I will do all of this, all of the gruel work, and I will be the junior designer for you. And you guys get to pick. So yeah, we'll get into that. Get into all of that tomorrow.
Alex Lazaris:
We're actually at time, so I think for tomorrow, like you said, what are we going to be doing tomorrow? Color mockups. What else are you thinking about?
Anika Aggarwal:
So I'm going to have color palettes mockups. I'm going to work on aprons, employee uniforms, maybe like delivery trap branding and stuff like that. And loads of good stuff. And you might even get some more freebies if I have time. So stay tuned for that.
Alex Lazaris:
I'm super excited. Thank you everybody for hanging out in Chat today. I can't wait to see you guys tomorrow. Come back. We have a really action packed tomorrow. So see you then. Bye everyone. Bye.
