*Transcription Disclaimer: the following transcription was automatically generated, and may have errors, or lack context.*
Nick Longo:
What's up, everybody? How's everybody doing today? Happy Monday. My name is Nick Longo. I'm here for today and tomorrow with our budy Alex Lazaris. Alex, what's going on, dude?
Alex Lazaris:
Hey, man. How you doing?
Nick Longo:
Nick, this is number three. Third time's a charm.
Alex Lazaris:
I'm so excited. It's been so long since we've done a stream together.
Nick Longo:
I know, dude, this is going to be great. When they told me it was you, I was this is this is double fun. Because, man, the copywriting skills, when we pair up, forget about it.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. With a little sprinkling in of Chat helping us with the puns. Chat.
Nick Longo:
Yes.
Alex Lazaris:
We will need you ferociously today for all the things we're just so excited to have you with us.
Nick Longo:
That's excellent, dude. Yeah. So we've got a great graphic design kind of set up for us today if you want, man. Give everybody who hasn't met you yet a little brief intro and what we're going to be doing today and tomorrow.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely. Hello, everyone. My name is Alex Lazaris. I run a small, little independent brand design studio called Lazaris. Our website is we are Lazaris.com if you want to see our work there. But you can also come on over to Behance and check me out. Behance net slash. Alex Lazaris. And you can look at what I'm doing. I uploaded a brand new case study project for you this morning, so make sure you follow so you can see all the weirdness that I'm up to lately.
Nick Longo:
Good timing on that new project, right? Get it in today.
Alex Lazaris:
I got to do it for the people. I haven't been updating my portfolio as much as I need to, so I'm.
Nick Longo:
Very that's a good problem to have, I think. I've been talking to a few other designers in that same boat and it's like that post it that never goes away on your screen. Like, I gotta update my Behance, I gotta update my website.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. It's definitely the case of the cobra's. Children don't have any shoes.
Nick Longo:
Exactly.
Alex Lazaris:
If it keeps update your Behance profiles, keep them live.
Nick Longo:
Exactly. So give us a little overview. What are we going to be doing today and tomorrow? What's the goal?
Alex Lazaris:
So I need to first introduce y'all to who I am.
Nick Longo:
So there you go.
Alex Lazaris:
Many of y'all have seen me on the show, but you don't know what I do outside of living on Adobe. So living outside of Adobe, I have done many, many silly things that my parents still are like, why does he do that? So here's photos of me racing downhill skateboards all over the place. Here's me racing motorcycles, more skateboards. This is a photo for me in a race in Dubai. And here's like me in Croatia. So I do a lot of stupid things. And most recently, I have left retirement and I'm coming back to racing again. So I'm very excited. I am now racing $500 beater cars.
Nick Longo:
Called Limited now, this is something totally new to me. You explained a little bit of it, but what a great idea. What's the basics here?
Alex Lazaris:
So there is an endurance race called the 24 Hours of Le Mons, and that is an endurance race of hypercars. They got full teams, your Porsches, Mercedes, all that stuff. They race in France and it goes all night. It's pretty crazy. Have you seen the Ford versus Ferrari movie? That's such a movie. And also that's what they do. But there's a $500 American alternative called the 24 Hours of Lemons where you buy a car for $500 and you race that car for 24 hours. And so that is what I'm doing now. I have a little team, and it's amazing. And we have two Supras that we're doing. So very excited.
Nick Longo:
Now, can you add to that 500?
Alex Lazaris:
So there is a lot of rules and terms and regulations around that. So safety equipment like the six point harnesses and all that stuff are unlimited budget brakes and tires as well. Got you. But then other parts, you have to kind of sell parts off the car to kind of reinforce or rebuy things. So if your engine is working, you got to figure out how to make it work again. So it's a pretty cool, pretty fun thing. And like all good race teams and racers, you need to have a sweet logo.
Nick Longo:
Yes.
Alex Lazaris:
I've never made one for myself. And so you get to watch me and participate with me as I struggle through the hardest design choices in the world. Is making a logo for yourself.
Nick Longo:
I think everyone can feel that pain, man. It's like you're your worst critic, right? You can make a design for anybody else, but when you're doing it for yourself, what is it? Why is that so hard?
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, it's so tough. And because I might do this. I might do some carding racing, I might do some other things in there. I want it to be flexible enough to encompass me as a person, but then also the industry and the sport that I'm doing. It's going to be fun. We're going to see where we can get perfect cool.
Nick Longo:
So we're going to get right into it. And I love this process, too, of working through it with other designers. I know that's why we all kind of hang out here and check out Behanced. It's the neatest thing to see how you approach a project from the very beginning. What are those ways you find inspiration and all that great stuff. So we're going to dig into that. One of the things I forgot to mention at the beginning, if you've missed any of the last illustrator daily challenges or creative challenges with Julia, you can catch them the first week of Replays, every weekday at 10:30, a.m. Pacific time. So don't forget that as well. We're going to get right back into it. And where are we starting, man? Kick us off.
Alex Lazaris:
So here's kind of I've kind of tried to take a couple liberties. I've already started pulling some typefaces and things like that, but I just really quickly pulled some inspiration together. What I'm looking at right now is like CC motorcycle Motor Coffee Company. They have a really great shop in Portland, Oregon. They sell like, motorcycles. They've got a little cafe. I think they have one in Reno now, too, or something like that. Okay, great little coffee shop, great little helmet wall on the just. It's super cute. It's awesome. But they also do a vintage motorcycle meetup called, I think, the One Motor Show or something like that. It's in Portland as well. Anyways, they have a really cool merch line. I think there's some really interesting things in here that I like. Like the little flags, the type that they've always done is really cool. I like that they have got the logos kind of on the side. These are all fake logos and I.
Nick Longo:
Think they're yeah, I noticed. Great. It looks like you and I did those.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. Yeah, these are great. Go away for Subway. You got the dirt. Video DVD aggressive Mobin Mobile One knockoff the canaan knockoff as well. So there's some fun things happening there. But then I've also started saying, like, I recently got into Formula One, watching through Drive to Survive on Netflix. You guys haven't seen it. It's phenomenal. But Daniel Ricardo is like one of my favorite drivers right now and his merch line is pretty sweet. And so I'm looking at, wow, that's totally different.
Nick Longo:
Yeah, I love that.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, his number is really great. They've done this whole vintage thing. But I think earlier, Nick, we were talking about vintage cars coming back and all that stuff, but it really is kind of coming back in full force. Not just in the purchasing of what people are doing, but also this 917 Porsche martini racing necker chief and things like that. Even just the numbers that they're doing, some of the merchandise that they're bringing back. And martini racing is a team that you're not really seeing around that much anymore. But they have done so many new collaborations and things like that. It's kind of fun. I love the color palette. The blues and the reds are beautiful. So I think doing a little bit of something vintage modern chic could be pretty.
Nick Longo:
Yeah. Do you find in looking in all the inspiration you've looked at and knowing that the space as well as you do, are people pushing the limits in this as far as design goes? Are you seeing people really going off on different tangents and going away from maybe what's expected a lot of times?
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, that's a great question. I think for me, I always like when people kind of buck the status quo a little bit, doing some really interesting so one of the artists that I love is ornamental conifer. Are you familiar with him?
Nick Longo:
No.
Alex Lazaris:
Okay, so ornamental conifer is an artist in La. He works at racing services. Oh, wow. All this incredible hand lettering work. If Instagram was not broken today, I would say check them out. His work is just phenomenal. He does a really great job of just, like, making things feel just kinetic.
Nick Longo:
Everything's coming off the page in a certain way. It's not just common dimensional stuff. There. You're seeing, like, very oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. I'm going to go down the rabbit hole later on on this.
Alex Lazaris:
He's done two seasons of Daniel Ricardo's helmets.
Nick Longo:
Now look at that. That's gorgeous. So there's a perfect example of someone going a little bit know, and it's.
Alex Lazaris:
Still why I want to have one of his helmets done or one of my helmets painted by him because I think they're just so cool and different.
Nick Longo:
Well done. That's so cool, man. I love seeing this stuff because I think any industry you're in or you're designing for, I think that's one of the coolest things we get to do is maybe strive to do something. Can you set the new standard with it by something you do? That's a great goal.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely. So what I'm trying to figure out is I don't want to do what is kind of the tried and true for my own logo. I've never liked kind of repeating what I'm seeing from other people. I think when you see a lot of people with their racing logos, it's like fast and digital and just, like, super aggressive, and I kind of don't want that because that's not really who I am. So I want to do something kind of unique. And so when I see people like this that are challenging the status quo and doing things that are very different, I want to work with those types of people.
Nick Longo:
That's great. Good inspiration. I love when you see someone that has a look, but it changes throughout each one of these tiles. Like, there's a common thread, but it's not the same thing over and over.
Alex Lazaris:
On old Porsches is just amazing as well. So definitely check them out, give them follow and things like that. Their work is perfect if you're in the La area. They also do, like, meetups and things at this racing services shop sometimes.
Nick Longo:
I might be there next time. Killer. Look at that, dude. Wow. Beautiful stuff. And this is the kind of stuff to really aspire to. And I love that idea, too. Doing for your own is so tough. Sometimes the best thing to do is see other examples of what people have done. It almost has that kind of, like, love it or leave it kind of vibe. Like, you almost have to take that risk. Be like, this is representing me and what I want to do.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely. So if anybody ever has a car that you want me to doodle on, I won't give you anywhere near this level, but I'll bring my own paint.
Nick Longo:
All right. There you go. You heard it here first, guys, on the color palettes as well. I mean, so much good stuff to pull from and great stuff to kind of start, so let's take a look and see what's next.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, so that was just kind of some quick inspo that I pulled. I'm kind of going in this completely blind just as much as Chat always has really good ideas. So Chat has you guys can help.
Nick Longo:
Us out for sure.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. And I've started with a healthy shmattering of typefaces.
Nick Longo:
Oh, wow.
Alex Lazaris:
There's so many. But you can kind of see some of them have this little vintagey vibe.
Nick Longo:
Yeah, take that.
Alex Lazaris:
And so we can probably play around with that. I got some black lettery stuff. I've got some more athleticy looking things. So there's a lot of really good things that pull from.
Nick Longo:
I even like that one that has the kind of the unfixed expanding the big L and the big R. Two, three down from there. Yeah, I've been seeing that a lot. And obviously that makes sense for Motion. If you're ever doing anything, a motion version of your logo, there's something already happening there where it feels like the scale is messing around with you.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. This typeface is called Joyride, and capitals are just extended. So, yes, you could drop, like, a.
Nick Longo:
Capital R. There you go. Look at that.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, there's a lot we can play with that as well, so there's a lot of things. So I think we're going to be very busy today.
Nick Longo:
Good. Yeah. I was going to ask you a quick question when you were pulling these fonts. Is it a background kind of that's what I'm looking for. It's just an instant one. Or are you thinking of keywords to look for and be like, I need aggressive, I need fancy, I need modern. Where do they even come from when you're picking them?
Alex Lazaris:
So the way I typically start is I go to MyFonts.com. Anybody's been there before? But if you go to MyFonts.com, they have, like, a hot new font section.
Nick Longo:
Nice. Got to get the hot ones, bud.
Alex Lazaris:
The hot new font section is really nice. I like it because sometimes there's, like, discounts going on for the new fancy ones, and so I like to kind of keep my eye on what's going on there. And if I find something that I really like, it might be on discount for later on. Yes.
Nick Longo:
All right, that's good.
Alex Lazaris:
You can always obviously use Adobe fonts and all that stuff. That's a great spot, especially to start from Free and Google fonts as well. But I wanted to look for typefaces with some unique characters to it that maybe other people aren't using, just as, like, a starting point for some of my we. Can I'll show you guys how to make your own custom ones as well? But there's some really fun ones. And sometimes this is the trap that I run into when I'm looking for typefaces sometimes is I go, oh, that typeface is really pretty, but it doesn't really necessarily fit what I'm looking for or it doesn't work from a logo perspective. This feels really nice from like, headlines, maybe as a nice display. Typeface good.
Nick Longo:
Yeah. Have you used wordmark it?
Alex Lazaris:
What?
Nick Longo:
Yeah. So this will preview any Word you want in all of your installed fonts that are on your computer, believe it or not. Oh, I think we lost Alex. Give us a second here, guys. If you guys have not checked out Wordmark, it's pretty cool. You go to it. It will look at all of your fonts in your system and basically give you a preview of any typed Word you want. So you can see that's how I find out the fonts that maybe I've forgotten or I didn't have. Didn't remember I had. So great way to check out there as well. Let's double check with Alex. Alex, can you hear us? I guess not. Let me give him a chat and see if we're good to go here, guys. Oh, let's see. I'm just going to give him a quick one. Oh, he must have left. I think he'll be coming back. What should I do here in the meantime? Well, how about you guys? What kind of advice do you guys have when you are building a logo for yourself or something like that? I'd love to hear from you guys because I think that, again, is one of those things, one of the toughest things that we can't find that right way to put something together for ourselves. We could do it for so many other people. So give it a shot and see what kind of stuff do you guys have. That would be a great advice for everybody when you're picking a logo for yourself. I know for me, I tend to show it to a lot of other folks, but I want to have some rationale behind it to make sure that there's something there that you can really, really express. So there's something you're trying to do with that. Yeah. It looks like you guys saw the froze as well. Alex computers crashed. Yeah. I'm assuming that's it. Let's see. I found coming back to it really helped me. Like a traditional painting. Leave it overnight. Yeah, that's a great idea. I think a lot of times sitting on it for just a little bit and making sure that you are hitting all the objectives of what you want it to be would be good. So I agree with you as well. Sitting overnight and kind of looking at something like that is pretty good. Anybody else? Let's see. Yep. That's a great one. Cartier. I love that idea. Ask the people close to you to describe you in three words. That's a great idea. I'm doing that with my students right now. They're doing their own self branded. And what I love about that is they have to kind of agree on those three words that are something that could really, really be describing them. And the best way to do it is you can ask family, you can ask friends, maybe even old colleagues that you worked with. That kind of stuff is fantastic as well. So there's so many different ways to do it. This could be YouTube crashing as well. I hope not. We're not using YouTube for this. We're just through zoom. I'm hoping we'll have Alex back any second now. Maybe he might have had an issue with restarting or something. OOH, good one. Not being too precious with it. That is exactly it. I think at a certain point you have to just come to some final and say, let's go with it, put it out there. Hopefully you've done everything you can to get that logo there better. But any other questions or things like that? When it comes down to doing self logos and self branding, we can chat about that while we're waiting for Alex to come back. Anybody go through that? Just oh, all right. There you go. Perfect stuff there. Hearing about Adobe Stock is a good place to start as well. Where do you guys go for inspiration when it comes to branding and logos and things like that? I've used Logo lounge a lot. I've used dribble a lot. Go to Behance and kind of search for logo designs that are somewhat similar or in a know. That's a great way to do it. Let's see, the video on Behance is on YouTube. Okay, gotcha. Oh, here's a great one. Simplicity is key. Too many designers try to be unique or clever when, generally speaking, the most simple designs are the most effective. Don't try to pack too much into it. I totally agree with you. One of the best lines I remember hearing was logos don't have to say the entire conversation. They just have to maybe start the conversation with your brand or with it. And it looks like we've got Alex back. All right, we're going to stand by really quick, guys. We'll be right back. Are you muted or microphone maybe?
Alex Lazaris:
There you go. Microphone is off. Thank you.
Nick Longo:
Thanks, man.
Alex Lazaris:
My computer just decided that it didn't want to work today.
Nick Longo:
Oh, dude, that was perfect. I couldn't stretch it any longer. All right, guys. Well, we are back. Had a little bit of a technical difficulty there, but we got Alex back and we were talking a little bit about how you make these logos and these brands for yourself. So everybody had a few good things in there as far as don't trying to go too much with it, really trying to be less is more a little. I think we were kind of left off with picking a few fonts in your process. On the next step. Where are we going.
Alex Lazaris:
Where are we going is a great question. Yeah. Oh, no, my images died.
Nick Longo:
What the heck?
Alex Lazaris:
The great crash of 2021. Let me find it real quick. So let me find my files. So where we're going with it is we're going to start making some custom images or sorry, some custom logos. We'll just do that from scratch.
Nick Longo:
Okay, do that.
Alex Lazaris:
And then we can start playing with typefaces to start actually good. You know what, for my day one fans, long timers, I think we're going.
Nick Longo:
To start the Loyalist.
Alex Lazaris:
For the loyalist. If you've been here in Chat, you've known that I love Comic Papyrus.
Nick Longo:
The best of both worlds.
Alex Lazaris:
Yes, the best of both typefaces.
Nick Longo:
There you go.
Alex Lazaris:
I think we need a custom comic Papyrus logo because it's been we're going to start there. Yeah, we're going to start with a custom Papyrus logo. Absolutely. Let me just make sure I got the correct whip file going on.
Nick Longo:
Perfect. Let's see what we got.
Alex Lazaris:
Images are working.
Nick Longo:
Beautiful. Love it.
Alex Lazaris:
All right, Comic Papyrus. So every good racer gets a good number, right?
Nick Longo:
Yes.
Alex Lazaris:
What numbers in Chat would you like?
Nick Longo:
Give us a number. Chat.
Alex Lazaris:
All the numbers twitch. Chat loves account. I'm sure Adobe loves account too.
Nick Longo:
Yes. It'll be that first one we see that comes through. Let's see. OOH, it's about a minute or two away or a few seconds away. I never even saw this font. This does exist. I've never seen it.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, yeah. Template comic.
Nick Longo:
Now we need lobster hobo or something.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, God, what a great idea.
Nick Longo:
Oh, here we go. 394-2786. Give us whatever you want to do there. Man, look at that. That woke them up.
Alex Lazaris:
47.
Nick Longo:
Yeah, I see 86. 47 we got again. How many do you need?
Alex Lazaris:
Whatever. Those are all good starts. Yeah.
Nick Longo:
There you go. Nice.
Alex Lazaris:
Thank you. Chatters.
Nick Longo:
So will you have a number assigned to the brand? Is this kind of the idea?
Alex Lazaris:
Maybe I like the lead one from Tim. So numbers are really tricky, actually, in racing because typically, like, one through ten are typically reserved for people in those places, depending on the sport you're in.
Nick Longo:
Okay.
Alex Lazaris:
For you to get one through three, you typically have to earn that by placing in that position, and then you got to change your number if you elect to.
Nick Longo:
Okay.
Alex Lazaris:
But sometimes you can pick your numbers as long as it's not taken already. Yeah.
Nick Longo:
Omar said omar had a great idea. You could do a seven, and then the seven can invert or rotate to an L. That's big creative director of the day. Thank you, Omar.
Alex Lazaris:
So in the theming of this comic Papyrus, as everybody knows, or maybe you don't know, but it's been a long time running joke that I am going to start my own cult of Papyrus.
Nick Longo:
Perfect.
Alex Lazaris:
So I'm going to just start really quickly by trying to make a little symbol. I don't know what it's going to be yet. All right, what am I going to do? I'll start with, like, a star.
Nick Longo:
Okay.
Alex Lazaris:
And then oh, that's probably okay. Then I can make it a little bit funky or something.
Nick Longo:
Best invention ever on Illustrator right there.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, I love it. The corners. My favorite. Kind of an interesting shape. Do I need some diagonals?
Nick Longo:
Could be.
Alex Lazaris:
Every cult needs diagonals.
Nick Longo:
Of course. It shows motion shows. We're going somewhere, right? Yes.
Alex Lazaris:
So what I'm doing is just duplicating it and then rotating it great. To see if there's anything interesting happening.
Nick Longo:
Nice.
Alex Lazaris:
Probably should just group those and then click to align perfectly centered, and then just scale it down a little.
Nick Longo:
There you go.
Alex Lazaris:
So it's a start. All right. So I think the weight is probably about the same. What I'll do is I'll just duplicate it over.
Nick Longo:
Always love that. Why do you do that?
Alex Lazaris:
Just so I can have free pixels.
Nick Longo:
Exactly.
Alex Lazaris:
Destructive.
Nick Longo:
Exactly. Keep every step, just duplicate and start making the next phase. Because you never know when you got to go back, like, oh, I expanded it and I need it in line form again, right?
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely.
Nick Longo:
Looks like an old school Hub cover. There you go.
Alex Lazaris:
Why is it not expanding?
Nick Longo:
Let's see. Here you go.
Alex Lazaris:
Instead of just duplicated it further away. All right, let's see here. Command. Command, shift. O, commando. No, wrong. Just making up commands now.
Nick Longo:
Yeah, expand. There you go.
Alex Lazaris:
All right, that works perfect. All right, so what I'll do there is just I'll make it all one thing by taking pathfinder and join shapes. Now it's all one beautiful little logo. What I'm going to do is I'm going to do a little bit of a.
Nick Longo:
Roughen, which I was going to say. Yeah. Is there a papyrus roughen option? You would think by now. It's so commonly known. That sketchy chalk vibe. That's so funny.
Alex Lazaris:
1% let's see how much detail I need.
Nick Longo:
Probably this is one of those. I like this tool so much. I've used it a lot with my students in showing when they have something from a sketch, and now they're vectorizing it and it lost that touch of handmade. Just go in and do a quick little rough into something and you'll have what a difference it makes to bring back that feeling if it's missing from a sketch or something. In your case, you're just trying to match papyrus, which is tough.
Alex Lazaris:
Not going as smoothly as I was hoping.
Nick Longo:
And subtly. You could see it too. It's very subtle, even in the font, but it's just enough to see some little cracks and some roughness in there, which is cool. Hey, Amy hood. What's going on?
Alex Lazaris:
What's your favorite hill to hill to bomb down? Ever done Third Street in Laguna? Used to bottom out my car every time. That's so funny. There is a bunch of really good runs out in Malibu like.
Nick Longo:
A bunch.
Alex Lazaris:
Of my buddies skate. I haven't done enough SoCal skating stuff.
Nick Longo:
I've done that area on mountain bikes as well. Pretty. It could be pretty hairy. I love that stuff. It's like stunt road in that area. I don't know if you're familiar with that area. It's pretty cool. Yeah, that's actually pretty going on. Look at that. You should make a whole ding bat section for Papyrus. Come on.
Alex Lazaris:
That's the missing thing.
Nick Longo:
Oh, my Lord. Might as well have fun with it. By the way, how funny is that? I don't know her name. The girl on TikTok doing the did all the rebrands. How many of us just went, why didn't we think of that? Oh, my God. She is insanely. Incredible. She's so good.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, she's amazing.
Nick Longo:
That's awesome. This is great. So look at this. We're already just a few minutes in, and I feel like a logo option one is already the winner.
Alex Lazaris:
I mean, everybody needs a little cult.
Nick Longo:
Exactly. And have one option always done in this font. That's not a bad idea.
Alex Lazaris:
You never know when tell your client picks the cult of Papyrus logo.
Nick Longo:
Exactly. You're in trouble. Maybe you haven't educated the client just enough. Oh, there you go. That's cool.
Alex Lazaris:
Is that, like, nice? Maybe it's a thing. Yeah, we got some symbols going on here. See what else we can get.
Nick Longo:
Yeah, it also kind of has the DB vibe too, like, you know what I mean? We're kind of neat. That's kind of cool.
Alex Lazaris:
What other numbers do we get? We got one, three, seven leap feet going.
Nick Longo:
Is there any limit to the racing numbers? Is it only two?
Alex Lazaris:
Three characters is probably the number.
Nick Longo:
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I'm typically familiar with the one or two, but that's kind of cool. So I know you're not doing any sketching or anything, but typically in this situation how much time are you spending kind of doing a little prelim? Do you do a few?
Alex Lazaris:
It depends. Right now, for certain instances, I'm not going to get too crazy with sketching and things like that. I feel like I spend a lot more time sketching for monograms than I do.
Nick Longo:
Oh, good things.
Alex Lazaris:
It gets a little hairy.
Nick Longo:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
But I like to just see where things go, and I like to really start messing with some of the geometry things that you can get from just starting to work on stuff. My mind just doesn't work that well in the sketching phase to be like, oh, I can get the geometry of this character to complement these next four. I kind of just need to start playing with it digitally to get there.
Nick Longo:
Yeah. It's also a faster pace too, so it's almost like whatever your mind's thinking, the program can match it and do all those funky little pathfinder shape builder stuff so quickly.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely.
Nick Longo:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
I feel like with Leet you can make, like, a whole face.
Nick Longo:
Oh, yeah. There's something there.
Alex Lazaris:
I don't know if that looks like eyes. Or not.
Nick Longo:
Oh, there you go. There you go.
Alex Lazaris:
Boom.
Nick Longo:
Kind of works.
Alex Lazaris:
Faced. Look at that. We've already got like 17 logos. We can perfect.
Nick Longo:
You have set a new Behance record. Dude.
Alex Lazaris:
If I ever can afford a house one day, I would love to have leaked as the house address. That'd be amazing.
Nick Longo:
Oh, that'd be kind of neat.
Alex Lazaris:
It's just beautiful.
Nick Longo:
That looks killer.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. Amy says, drawing geometric logos and lettering so hard. Yeah, totally agree.
Nick Longo:
OOH, vintage esquire logo vibes, I feel like.
Alex Lazaris:
Amy, have you seen this yet? This Porsche Martini racing neckerchief. I feel like this it's right up their thousand percent. The type in it's beautiful. Just some really funky, fun vibes in it.
Nick Longo:
I like that. There's just contrast too, happening. Yeah, that one's killer.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, it's great. It's all great stuff. Yeah. Just really cool.
Nick Longo:
Yes. We're doing 90s emoticons.
Alex Lazaris:
Pretty soon we'll start our own MySpace again. All right.
Nick Longo:
It could happen.
Alex Lazaris:
We got like 86, maybe 86 plays well.
Nick Longo:
Yeah, not a bad idea. Just wanted to remind you guys, if you are watching over on the YouTube side, come over here on Behance. You never know, another platform might die today. Stick with Behance. That's where you can get all of the great chat and everything. So much better experience. Come back over here and take a look. If you are on YouTube, that's kind of neat. Have you seen that? I think it was like the Disneyland Paris has the 30 year anniversary logo, and it kind of looks like the silhouette that highlights of Mickey's ears.
Alex Lazaris:
That is amazing.
Nick Longo:
Love that stuff. Really cool.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. Amy says, dang, that Naker chief is so rad. Yeah, it's amazing. Pretty soon I can see some coming from the hudspawn.
Nick Longo:
Very nice. Or you just might be making them once your team logo is all done and you're selling merch.
Alex Lazaris:
If you guys need anything from the comic Papyrus cult in your storefront, let me know. I'm here.
Nick Longo:
Ready to go. Has font will design.
Alex Lazaris:
Exactly.
Nick Longo:
Yes.
Alex Lazaris:
Perfect.
Nick Longo:
So I think this is series one.
Alex Lazaris:
I think we've exhausted enough of that.
Nick Longo:
There you go. Cool. Yeah. It does kind of look like a cherry. That's kind of neat. I like sometimes, by chance, what can happen with just giving yourself maybe 15 minutes or a little more of this exploratory time that you're not trying to shoot for a sketch? Right. You're just putting the first few things out there. If anything, it's just getting you a little bit ready for whatever you're doing next.
Alex Lazaris:
I'm really into this face now because I feel like it's just a mood.
Nick Longo:
It is.
Alex Lazaris:
He's not thrilled that he was made with comic Papyrus, but he's here for it.
Nick Longo:
I'm okay with it. Yep.
Alex Lazaris:
Voodoo Bell says I need nothing from Comic Papyrus.
Nick Longo:
Yeah, I know, but you're wrong. You do? Yep. I know. We were just saying that Amy like, gotta get hobo in the mix somewhere with some other clash with some other. I think hobo lobster is my pick.
Alex Lazaris:
Hobo lobster would be amazing. Yes.
Nick Longo:
So it'd be like a thick and thin version of the lobster script, you know what I mean? And then a lot of that, like, contouring. I always look at Hobo and every letter looks like a know, kind of has that shape. So coming soon from the Font foundry of Nick and know.
Alex Lazaris:
The big issue that I'm having with Comic Papyrus right now is the fact that we don't have it as a variable typeface. And everybody knows variable typefaces are the future.
Nick Longo:
Yes.
Alex Lazaris:
And this needs to be extra bold, and I'm just really not getting that from this. So I think we need to add some weights to it.
Nick Longo:
There we go.
Alex Lazaris:
We'll be able to take over the universe.
Nick Longo:
The universe. You're right. It's going to need a little bit.
Alex Lazaris:
So that's enough for Comic Papyrus for right meow.
Nick Longo:
There we go.
Alex Lazaris:
We'll pick it up again. I wanted to show you guys kind of how to just quickly build from just, like, geometric shapes. I know that.
Nick Longo:
Yeah. Let's see it. Man.
Alex Lazaris:
A lot of racing logos are just geometric craziness anyways, so might as well make some. So you can start with just, like, a rectangle, and then you can just start shifting it if you want, however far and angular you want it to be. Yeah, but I've already got one that's kind of, like, in the shape that I want, and I've started kind of, like, to build some ligaments around it.
Nick Longo:
Great.
Alex Lazaris:
So I've got this kind of like it can be as long as short as it needs to be to kind of complement.
Nick Longo:
Great.
Alex Lazaris:
But it feels kind of nice as just an L already. And so maybe it's like maybe it goes super close, maybe it's super far. What do you think? Doesn't closer or shorter?
Nick Longo:
I would give it the same width as maybe the bottom piece. What are you trying to do? Yeah. Are you trying to do the next letter, or are you trying to do okay, I thought maybe you're doing, like, a double stripe of the L. So there you go. Perfect. So now you're just getting in the A.
Alex Lazaris:
Yes, now I can get the A in. I'll just bring this up, and then I'll go to the crossbar. And what I can do is I can just align it to the top.
Nick Longo:
Yes. It's almost like you've got pre made, like, puzzle pieces, and you could just continue to maneuver and build off the same architecture.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, exactly. That's the whole intent behind it, is just keep it kind of I can make up my own letters now.
Nick Longo:
Exactly.
Alex Lazaris:
I think this might get a little bit too wide, heavy. We'll see how it goes.
Nick Longo:
Yeah. Maybe you use, like what did you use for the gap in the A? Was that the same width as the stroke? You know, the vertical gap.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, the vertical gap. I could definitely increase it to be the same width.
Nick Longo:
There you go.
Alex Lazaris:
Something like that. Now I just to be press command y, and you can see the outlines, which is super helpful for these.
Nick Longo:
Always the best. I think I've put on command y a few times and someone was watching it just going like, what is that? I did not know. Wireframe. Yeah, exactly.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. It's always fun whenever you think you've broken Illustrator, but you just unlocked a new secret.
Nick Longo:
Exactly. You're like, Is this a memory thing? Is it going to crash? Go to wireframe. Oh, yeah. This is looking cool, dude. There you go.
Alex Lazaris:
Just pull this guy down.
Nick Longo:
There you go. All the same pieces, making the same kind of deal. Now, would you tilt that more because it's the Z? It's a great question because technically it doesn't follow the if this wasn't italic right. It would have its own thing there. But that's where it's like, this is just the taste thing. Does it work, or do you need to mess around with it somewhat different.
Alex Lazaris:
Hold on 1 second. I saw what Amy suggested in Chat.
Nick Longo:
I'm like, oh, yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Do it.
Nick Longo:
BMW.
Alex Lazaris:
The BMW thing. Yeah. You get the little bit of a momentum going. I don't know what the order of the colors are, but there you like, Yep. I'll just throw in a little just.
Nick Longo:
A tiny hairline there. There you very yeah, it's feeling very racing inspired right now.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. Cool. KNN's logo is great as well. There's so many fun here. Yeah, the Z. I know what you're saying. With the Z.
Nick Longo:
Maybe you keep your tails the same, but you just take the vertical and give that a slant more and see? Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Where you're almost just trying to line up from.
Nick Longo:
Exactly. I think that might be because it has the excuse. It should be more slanted than the so just as a reminder, guys, alex is building a cool little racing inspired logo. Tell them again what it's for, your newfound discovery.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. So I've come out of early retirement as a professional racer, and now I'm going back to being an amateur. But with a logo, obviously.
Nick Longo:
Good.
Alex Lazaris:
Yes. I think it's too slanted now, but essentially for myself for all the next years of racing that I'll be doing. And might as well do it on.
Nick Longo:
Adobe Live, where I think you're right, it could fall short. A little bit of that exact parallel. There you go. That looks good. Nice.
Alex Lazaris:
The base of it needs to probably just stay what? It was fine. All right.
Nick Longo:
There you go.
Alex Lazaris:
Everything's fat right now, so I might want to just, like let me see what I can do. The Z is always going to be a tough one, but let's see. I'll just duplicate this across.
Nick Longo:
There you go.
Alex Lazaris:
See, this is one of the tough parts of designing for yourself, is kind of just start over criticizing everything just because you're like, oh, this is why is my last name like this?
Nick Longo:
I know. I always admire the people that have those perfect either initials or the last name itself doesn't have some weird structure to it in any font. You're like, no one ever feels they got the good deal on that one.
Alex Lazaris:
Exactly. How could my parents done this?
Nick Longo:
Exactly. Didn't they know what career I was going to go into?
Alex Lazaris:
Didn't they know I needed specifically one character less?
Nick Longo:
Exactly. Yeah, that's kind of neat. That's a good idea.
Alex Lazaris:
So I think what I'm liking, this is kind of reminding me of the Icon Motorsports logo and what works about their logo is like, the cadence of the letters are a lot tighter together.
Nick Longo:
Yes.
Alex Lazaris:
And I think especially for having such a long name, what I should do is probably just tidy up the spacing between things just slightly, just get everything a little bit closer. And then that would, I think, solve some of the pain points we're having.
Nick Longo:
Yeah. Do you try to give yourself a maximum width that each letter should fall into? So, like, the L and the A are obviously not the same. Let's call it width.
Alex Lazaris:
Correct.
Nick Longo:
Right. I guess there's play in there. I think, again, your eye can tell you more than anything when you're looking at stuff like this. How it's going to look?
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, that's a great question. So what I would do is the rules that I'm going to set for this grid are continuing to I'm just going to stack it double and each letter will have to fit with there you go. This system.
Nick Longo:
So that's your parameter now.
Alex Lazaris:
Correct. This is my new there you go. That I'm building.
Nick Longo:
Perfect.
Alex Lazaris:
And everything will have to just fit with I guess we'll say this is the letter spacing.
Nick Longo:
Good. So then would you just duplicate that over and over again?
Alex Lazaris:
Yes, that's what I'm going to do.
Nick Longo:
There you go. Perfect.
Alex Lazaris:
Cool. And that's not perfect, but it'll get us there.
Nick Longo:
So there you go.
Alex Lazaris:
This is supposedly the A. Yeah. What am I going to do? I'm going to grab this. Maybe just shove it straight through the middle.
Nick Longo:
There you go. It's kind of neat, too. You could have, like, in a way, because now you have a letter here that has to be a little thinner than what you originally planned. Maybe it even can be like each letter kind of falls behind the next one, too. You could almost do a bit of a shuttered version of a logo if it worked, but I see what you're doing now. You got this kind of working perfect. There you go, man.
Alex Lazaris:
I need you to just design with me all the time.
Nick Longo:
I'm saying that now because if I art direct you the right way, you're going to create the longo logo.
Alex Lazaris:
Yes. Perfect. Alex, start with.
Nick Longo:
It doesn't look like an A. I'm going to get you to do it as an O.
Alex Lazaris:
Let's see here. So if I do that, then the Z could potentially be I wonder if that would mess up with the cadence. But if I start with, like this, where it goes over it yeah. Is that giving it extra wide in between the Z?
Nick Longo:
So the idea that you're saying that's going to connect to the A or not?
Alex Lazaris:
No, not necessarily. We're just shaving off.
Nick Longo:
Oh, good. There you go. Perfect. Yes.
Alex Lazaris:
Both sides.
Nick Longo:
I think that makes sense. Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
And then that's going to be I.
Nick Longo:
Don'T know, maybe that's the most abbreviated Z ever. We're giving you just this little clue that it's not an I or an.
Alex Lazaris:
L. Sometimes these ideas, they don't work.
Nick Longo:
I know, but again, when you see someone take that risk again and you see a Z that you've never seen before right. Like, you go, Why didn't I do that? Just like the TikTok girl.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, true. I loved her Detroit lines.
Nick Longo:
Oh, God. So funny.
Alex Lazaris:
I think her Z in the game.
Nick Longo:
Yeah. Now, well, what if the diagonal is I see what you're trying to do. You're trying to keep the same width, and you've done that. But I was going to say is if you make the yeah, I was going to say that and then make you want to keep the angle the same. You don't want to do the exaggerated angle.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I'm not sure. Oh, maybe I just need one. Oh, that's maybe the move. All right, let's do this real quick.
Nick Longo:
Let's see.
Alex Lazaris:
Chat. There's a reason why they call it dolby live. It's because we're doing it live.
Nick Longo:
Yep. You're seeing every step of the way.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely. So what I'm trying to do here is maybe center it and then skew it. Not necessarily skew it. Let me just get my outlines correct here.
Nick Longo:
There you go.
Alex Lazaris:
Why is it always that? All right, so that will give me the center line, and then what I'll do is I'll take that out and then I'll center this to that.
Nick Longo:
Great.
Alex Lazaris:
Can I press the wrong button?
Nick Longo:
All right. Something's happening.
Alex Lazaris:
I see what you're saying. Then it looks like an I. Yeah.
Nick Longo:
Trying to would you look at, like, if I'm in this zone, typically what I would do is look at just some other examples and just be like, how did somebody else figure out a funky italic Z to me because it looks like it's working. I'm almost thinking it feels like what's that? Italian Lavaza? I don't think they have a Z in there.
Alex Lazaris:
Googling how to draw these now, there you go.
Nick Longo:
That's forbidden. See, I think that just gives the it's got to have some slightly more angled parallel just to work.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. All right. We'll skip the z. We'll just keep moving.
Nick Longo:
That's the ticket. Because your next one is super easy.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. Duplication. Boom.
Nick Longo:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
All right. And then I got R it's always amazing once you start doing these things and you're spelling your own name and you forget how to spell it because you're just like onto the next letter.
Nick Longo:
Well, you're looking at it so differently than any other time. You're looking at your last name. So it's like, yeah, you're right. Wait. What comes after n? So you're going to go to me that feels like the right, yeah, I think a little bit down. What do you think? Yeah, it starts to look a little like digital, which is kind of neat. There's something kind of cool there, so no curves. Maybe that's like rule number one right now. You might try something later, but trying to keep it all completely straight lines.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely. I'm wondering everything, do I want to do the top and bottom bars on the eye or do I just, OOH, it's breaking my rule.
Nick Longo:
I think they might look too to make the Z more real or stand out, I think you just should do a straight stripe for the eye because if you add the tails, won't it look too much like the Z?
Alex Lazaris:
A little bit double wide or single wide?
Nick Longo:
I think it's got to go single. That's where you break it a little bit.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, buddy. All right. Single wide trailers.
Nick Longo:
Let's go a little bit. Yeah. Now we got our favorite letter of all time to make, because I think this is going to be a nice easy one. Might not be well, it's perfect, but it doesn't have the skinniness anywhere that the other letters do. You know what I mean? Your brakes are skinny. But do you see how every other font has, with the exception of the eye, actually has a black version that's quite thin and slim? It feels heavy on there.
Alex Lazaris:
It does feel very heavy. Yeah, that's true. So why couldn't I do Z like this?
Nick Longo:
Oh, again, then it gets to me that just feels like a different font.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, it does, right?
Nick Longo:
You know, that's totally different. You got much more of a vibe happening already. And I guess maybe the S would be better in yeah, maybe you're sorry about that.
Alex Lazaris:
Moving day.
Nick Longo:
Yeah, something's happening outside. What do you guys think? How about you guys? You need a break on the R two? I think you stole it and you didn't option click it. Yeah, there you go. Maybe should that be the same? There you go. Yeah. There you go for the R. And then there you go. So what do you guys think for the S? I'm thinking, yeah, feel the Heaviness there. It's happening. What's interesting is you get a break on the L, you get a break between the A and the Z and you get there's a lot of breaks. There you go. So maybe even blowing these up a little bit more close to each other. So there's an even weight throughout there. Maybe the S? Like the z? Oh, just opposite. That might be interesting. So you rotate the z to make the s. Okay. Maybe move the larger white chunk out of the s all the way to the back edges to create the thin part on the left and right edges. Okay. There you go. Have you saved this yet? We don't need saves.
Alex Lazaris:
We'll save right now. Thank you, Chat.
Nick Longo:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
All right, let me just transform it. Oh, yeah.
Nick Longo:
So what a vertical flip?
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, yeah.
Nick Longo:
Vertical the s. Yep. Now a rotate, I guess, or there you go. You're still a z. Mirror it.
Alex Lazaris:
Do this.
Nick Longo:
But that's a good point. Now does your yeah, you kept with the same parallel. So I guess that would be what the S would look like. But touching is going to make we're going to start seeing a U there.
Alex Lazaris:
All right, well, anyways, this is how you do this logo. If you were better at logos.
Nick Longo:
I like what Miles said. That's a dangerous game, right? There no saving.
Alex Lazaris:
I like how I was like all cocky and everything. Not saving, but I've already had one crash this stream.
Nick Longo:
Exactly. Hey, I think it's at least a cool vibe. You know what else too? Sometimes I've seen these logos. Almost each letter steps either down or up in some way. And I wonder, if each letter got shifted up a little bit, could that help define them more? Because I think there's something very kind of cool happening in there for it to kind of find some solution.
Alex Lazaris:
I agree. I think there is something interesting happening I'm trying to figure out. Like, I think right now we're at the early stages with it where the cadence of the letter forms are also off. So, yeah, you're running into this like it's got momentum, but you keep kind of stumbling over yourself as you're trying to get exactly. Get up to speed, and that's a little tough.
Nick Longo:
You want things there, I know. Yes.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. Let's see what you're talking about. With if I was to make a geometric over here sure.
Nick Longo:
And different colors in them can help separate the letter type.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. This is kind of what you're talking about, right? Where you can kind of snag them crossbars happening.
Nick Longo:
Kind of the way you had it was cool. Even just that. Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
This was one of my favorite things I used to do as a kid was do my name like that. Just like the crossbars, essentially.
Nick Longo:
Oh, nice. Yep. Did you ever go buy laz for short?
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, yeah.
Nick Longo:
Oh, you did? Okay.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, yeah. All the nice nice.
Nick Longo:
And that works, dude. Well, now your new personal branding is done.
Alex Lazaris:
Like this.
Nick Longo:
You're going he's going back to his roots, guys. Alex's, first graphic design ever.
Alex Lazaris:
I still never made it where like, literally loved it. I don't know why.
Nick Longo:
Oh, I know that's how you knew if you were going to be a graphic designer. Like the high school years if all you drew were your initials and band logos, you were in. Yeah, dude. I mean, there's something kind of neat. Or even if it just I know what you're doing by connecting them, but even if it's just each one was just two or three notches higher or lower and just again, more movement. But it's proving to be doing something like this, right? Yeah. Or even skewing the whole yeah, like that. Yeah, exactly.
Alex Lazaris:
And then probably this one would just a little yeah.
Nick Longo:
There's so many different ways you can kind of mess with that and play around with it. That's kind of cool. Yeah. So now what do we do? We're ready for option two, I think.
Alex Lazaris:
Ready for.
Nick Longo:
Let'S get going. All right. These are great. You can pull from these.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I think there's some fun things. What I really like about this is the numbers that are kind of just organically happening. We got, like, 25, 20,000.
Nick Longo:
Yeah, 200,005 my racing number.
Alex Lazaris:
Let's hope 20,000 other faster people than me.
Nick Longo:
We're artists. We were told there'd be no math here. Yeah. Everybody, I've had some nightmares on that first logo, too. Val, that's crazy. I know. We did a few episodes ago on Office Hours, both Andrew and I showed our first logos that we ever did for our thriving design businesses right out of school. Some great oh, boy, did I have to dig down the archives for that. But yeah. Oh, yeah, dude, that's kind of cool.
Alex Lazaris:
I don't even know my last name anymore.
Nick Longo:
You just need that tail on the top of the z, and there you go.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, yeah, that's right. Okay. That's what I was missing.
Nick Longo:
But again, just kind of messing it around a little bit. Almost not having any rhyme or reason to where they're located. You got some a little bit higher than they should be. Some a little lower. There's something it almost now becomes one logo unit, which I kind of see.
Alex Lazaris:
This definitely feels Lavaza. Is that what you were?
Nick Longo:
Yes. See, they're my new client, and I need a concept. Let's go.
Alex Lazaris:
I'll get the Nick Longo brand done and Lavaza work for you.
Nick Longo:
There you go.
Alex Lazaris:
That's so funny. That actually does have a nice cadence to it.
Nick Longo:
It does, man. Yeah. I kind of like what's that show? Loki had a really cool thing where the intro to the show showed, like, five or six versions of what the main title design. It was almost like they showed all the comps prior to the original, and it's in the animation at the beginning of the show, and then it ends on the one that is there. But what's neat is they used completely different typefaces for each letter, but there was this kind of cadence that's happening through what I'm seeing with yours that I'm matching there. And now I'm looking at it even on our small screen, and even scale wise, it's really working good.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. It is starting to really flow. I need to just get this guy kind of probably up a little bit more because I don't want the baseline grid to be yes to you all. So let me just throw down some rulers or guides real quick.
Nick Longo:
I like that a lot. And I like that the A's are on slightly different levels. They're not the same. That looks good.
Alex Lazaris:
Do you like that?
Nick Longo:
I do.
Alex Lazaris:
Okay, if as long as you like it, then I'll take it because you'll.
Nick Longo:
Be giving me this AI art later when I make my new longo logo.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. Did you know what amazing greatness that Behance is you can now include all your working files. So I could actually just upload this to a Behance project now and everybody could make a new logo for me and fix it for me.
Nick Longo:
That's a great idea. I forgot that that's something you could do.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I just noticed it when I was making my new case study.
Nick Longo:
So when you were uploading, was it.
Alex Lazaris:
In the project creation? It's one of the buttons you can.
Nick Longo:
Add it's like, does it say, like, working file or something like that?
Alex Lazaris:
Source file upload.
Nick Longo:
Source file. OOH. That's really cool. That's great. Alex, what are the things you keep in mind when approaching this kind of work? Are there key points you need to check a box as far as you go with this thing?
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's your question with the question.
Nick Longo:
I know. Coming in hot.
Alex Lazaris:
Those are great questions, as always.
Nick Longo:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
For this kind of work, I think when you're designing for yourself, you're your own worst critic, and nothing is ever good enough. And I listened to an architect explain it best, so I'm going to steal this guy's good work. He said essentially, when you design for yourself, you're left exposed because you cannot hide behind a client's brief or any requests made of you, so you are left wholly owning the responsibility. And that's why it feels heavy when you do it yourself.
Nick Longo:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
So I think for me, when I'm doing this work, I am trying to be as gentle as possible with myself around my name. What do I represent? What do I do? All these things and just kind of keeping it loose and exploratory and not taking anything too sacred, because at the end of the day, if I don't like the logo, I can change it or whatever. So this kind of stuff, I'm just trying to keep it loose. But if I was designing for a client, I kind of build a sandbox of sorts, rules in place that are done by the strategy or the brief or whatever, and that helps guide and shape the work, and that is a much more defined thing. Whereas this, maybe it's a Formula One logo, maybe it's an offroading logo one week exactly. Maybe it's a comic papyrus inspired Memphis.
Nick Longo:
You just never know.
Alex Lazaris:
You never know.
Nick Longo:
Yeah, and creating for yourself, too. It's almost what I've loved seeing is when you do create a little bit of a brief the same way you would with a client, it fixes that issue. And I think that quote you said was perfect it's because in most cases, you maybe didn't build the brief for yourself logo or your self branding. And now you're right. It's like you're putting it out there just to be judged, but you have some meaning behind it, same way you do with anything else. Kind of like now you can't stand behind it. Now the harder part is finding the logo. That's going to work even more.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely.
Nick Longo:
What are you looking at next?
Alex Lazaris:
Do we want to do a little bit more, like geometric? Do we want to just flip the script? Do you want to go like vintage funky? Do you want to just do like normal athletic?
Nick Longo:
I'd say flip it and go with one that's a little on the vintage, kind of like old style. Okay, that might be a nice change of pace and get you ready for whatever the next one is going to be, too. Right?
Alex Lazaris:
Okay. So I've got a couple little beauties that I've acquired.
Nick Longo:
Those are great.
Alex Lazaris:
Any favorites?
Nick Longo:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, man, there's so many already.
Nick Longo:
I know.
Alex Lazaris:
How I didn't even categorize them.
Nick Longo:
Yeah, they're all over the place.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. All over the place.
Nick Longo:
I like that these are all like they look like they came from maybe the same designer, but then there's a different vibe on each one that definitely and then that last one's really kind of killer, too.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. I've got some of these from youworkfrom.com.
Nick Longo:
That's my favorite. Web foundry or collection, I guess. Right.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah.
Nick Longo:
I love that they have everybody, and.
Alex Lazaris:
It'S pretty relatively cheap, comparatively. So it's good. Starting point. This one just came out, like, two days ago, I think. Up the top.
Nick Longo:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Vintage funky. Sounds meta. New category. I'm going to just start calling these things. All right. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to duplicate the vintage funk. I think I got most everything.
Nick Longo:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Good enough. What I'm going to do, just to see what options we're getting is just quickly throw them all in all caps and see what happens.
Nick Longo:
Great. I like that second one where it's almost disappearing, the thinnest part of it. There's something really cool with that one. The third one with those A's, maybe. You don't do every A that way, but maybe one or two. No, you have two. You have three.
Alex Lazaris:
But I mean, we could just also kill racing. Like racing, it's a take it or leave it. It's an added thing. If we want it, we also don't have to do it.
Nick Longo:
Or it could be a much more simple kind of secondary font.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely.
Nick Longo:
There you go.
Alex Lazaris:
Man, it's so hard. I wish some of these had like a Bold or something. That was a little bit, yeah.
Nick Longo:
Oh, that's cool. That has a condensed version in a way. That's nice. I can almost see god, I like the upper and lower of that bottom one on the left. That's kind of fun. That's a just crazy font. I love that one. Dude, what is that one called? It's called clayoza. Claycoza clacoza something.
Alex Lazaris:
Clay.
Nick Longo:
They Claycozoa.
Alex Lazaris:
Claycozoa. There you go.
Nick Longo:
Claycozoa. What a name.
Alex Lazaris:
My fonts you can also get on. You work for them. And I just think, literally, it's just scroll.
Nick Longo:
Yeah, scroll to the preview. That was to the left there. I love that smaller A with the big L. I think it's doing that for you. It's got, like, a Glyph. Cool. That's neat.
Alex Lazaris:
So I think we'll start with that and start seeing what we can kind of get going. But I love these illustrations that they've paired in here. Some really fun stuff. So definitely check it out.
Nick Longo:
I love those old badges. You almost have to see a font like that now before even making the yeah, that's the one I want. I need to see it in action. And I love that they show those great previews. That's really cool.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah.
Nick Longo:
Nice.
Alex Lazaris:
So we can either oh, my goodness. Why am I blinking? Ligatures type glyphs. Is that how you do ligatures?
Nick Longo:
Yeah. Or if you highlight one letter, you should get a choice. There it is. There you go.
Alex Lazaris:
That's an interesting A.
Nick Longo:
I think that one works better. And then messing around with it in that negative space that you get with the L and the yeah. Or the L and the Z. That's kind of cool. Oh, thanks for posting those, Val.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. Thank you, Val.
Nick Longo:
Let's just start to what I like about this. This, to me, is feeling like the inspiration art you showed of that one artist that was really kind of doing something different in the same world.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, that was absolutely the intention. Like I said, I would love for him to paint my helmet. Bring it on.
Nick Longo:
There you go.
Alex Lazaris:
See if there's a ligature for a.
Nick Longo:
Different Glyph for the L. I thought there was. Is it a capital I think it is. Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
That's a capital L. Caps.
Nick Longo:
There you go. I think it was can't remember if that it was the same L that they just messed around with. So highlight the L and you don't get any options, do you? Oh, there it is. No.
Alex Lazaris:
Weird.
Nick Longo:
That's strange.
Alex Lazaris:
I see in the Glyphs panel here.
Nick Longo:
Let's see. Looking. Do you see anything in there?
Alex Lazaris:
I do not.
Nick Longo:
Oh, you have they have custom ones at the bottom. See it the las. Is that.
Alex Lazaris:
La?
Nick Longo:
There you go.
Alex Lazaris:
That's fancy.
Nick Longo:
Look at that. Oh, dude. God dang it. Longo will work so good in this, too. I'll do a tiny little o. You're like, oh, they don't have that one. I'm so sorry. Thank you, sir.
Alex Lazaris:
See what we can make here. Is there an lo?
Nick Longo:
There's got to be.
Alex Lazaris:
There is an Lo.
Nick Longo:
Oh, do logo. We're done. Who else needs 150 thousand dollars? Yeah, exactly. Okay. Pentagram. Do they have A-V-O for voodoo? Val?
Alex Lazaris:
No, but we can make that.
Nick Longo:
That's really interesting. I love a font that if I was going to design one and yet I have not to do one because I'm nowhere near qualified to design a font. I feel like. But that's so neat to see such a different take this one. Just having that squiggle going through it and it's so consistent and well done. Look at that z. Like that z is fantastic.
Alex Lazaris:
All right, I've got to get stopping. All caps please, all of you. All right. So I think let's see what I can do. You might a good spot for that and then the A. Maybe this A gets a different a. Oh, nice. I wish there was an easier way to just break apart the letters.
Nick Longo:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
And still have them editable.
Nick Longo:
I know. You can mess with them. You can actually tilt them and everything and still keep it live. I forget is it a double click? When you double click you should get someone know that trick. You can keep it totally oh, keep that. Highlight the A and then go to the rotate tool. Is that what it was? Go to the rotate tool.
Alex Lazaris:
I only do the command for rotate. What's the rotate tool?
Nick Longo:
At it's in the toolbox. In your toolbox on the left. The circle with the arrow on it. One more down. Right there.
Alex Lazaris:
Okay. All right.
Nick Longo:
Does someone know the trick?
Alex Lazaris:
I just want this as a gift.
Nick Longo:
I know. There you go. Now you got it in motion. It's totally moving. There's a way to actually keep it alive text. But you go into it. Is it the direct select? I can't remember. It keeps it live. But you can rotate it, you can manipulate it, you can raise it. But it's still keeping it in live text which is kind of cool.
Alex Lazaris:
Interesting. All right.
Nick Longo:
But anyways just going to kill it.
Alex Lazaris:
And then.
Nick Longo:
There you go. Look at the way that's moving. I love it.
Alex Lazaris:
I love when you can get kind of funky with I was just going to say.
Nick Longo:
Yeah, that's going to be cool. Nice. OOH, it's within the type tool. Thanks. That's what it was. Okay. Is it the touch type tool? The one at the bottom there. So highlight something with that. Oh, go back to the I'm sorry. Go back to the type tool. Go to that bottom one. Touch type. Yeah. Now click on one. There you go. Now there it is. Thank you for that. You can rotate it. Everything.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh my gosh.
Nick Longo:
See, hang out at a corner and it will rotate. You can size it totally different.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh my goodness.
Nick Longo:
That great. We like to move it. Move it.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh my gosh. This is amazing. Thank you.
Nick Longo:
Not great. Keeps it nice and live. So you got it's. So great. Love that.
Alex Lazaris:
Legends.
Nick Longo:
Just in case you still got to edit your last name.
Alex Lazaris:
That's amazing.
Nick Longo:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
See what R's I can get only one.
Nick Longo:
Oh, but I love that. Yeah, like, dropping the Z helps. The A and R look good there. Like, there was something cool there. That looks good.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. I like the negative kind of river happening in this space is really you're, right?
Nick Longo:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Let's see here.
Nick Longo:
Oh, wow. That surprised a lot of people. Yeah, I remember seeing that someone did that on Live a while back, and I was like, Damn, that's amazing. All these little things we could do. This is great.
Alex Lazaris:
I'm actually probably just going to outline these real quick just to move them.
Nick Longo:
Okay.
Alex Lazaris:
Just to kind of find space a little bit.
Nick Longo:
Nice. So if you guys are joining us, just recently, we're here with Alex Lazaris. I'm Nick Longo, and Alex is creating a racing inspired logo for his racing company. We're trying some really funky things. He's got some really good inspiration. Now we're just in a zone of like, let's just find out what's new and hot in some great fonts and experimenting like crazy, right?
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. Yeah. Trying to see what feels cool, what's exciting. Racing is exciting, so might as well make a logo that's also exciting.
Nick Longo:
Exactly. And this is great, too, because you have natural ins and outs of that font to fit as, like, a puzzle piece almost.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. Yeah. One issue I'm struggling with is, like.
Nick Longo:
The AR, the R, but I can.
Alex Lazaris:
Kind of with it enough because these things are kind of like wood blocking. I can just adjust them.
Nick Longo:
Yeah, look at that.
Alex Lazaris:
Or the other a more.
Nick Longo:
Let's see that one or what?
Alex Lazaris:
So let me just do the other one side real quick.
Nick Longo:
Yeah. Oh, I see the one you're using with yeah, it might, because they're both lowercase. Yeah, I kind of like that one.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah.
Nick Longo:
You have three different a's.
Alex Lazaris:
I do.
Nick Longo:
Well, there's a cap A that you're using with the law and then the other one, I think there's two other versions of it of the lowercase.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. Let me see if I can just change the la part. I'm wondering if it's weird that you have a caps and then a non caps.
Nick Longo:
Oh, can you with the touch type tool?
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, you've already messed it up. This is why you don't do destructive editing.
Nick Longo:
Yeah. Glad to see that was a cool one. It's at the very bottom of the tool. When you click on the T in the toolbox and click and get the options, it's the last one. It looks like a T with a box on it, and that's exactly what it does. Allows you to keep it live and manipulate each individual letter, tilt it, stretch it, change the sizing, all that kind of stuff. There you go. Yeah. I mean, the grooviness here is looking really kind of fun.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. What's fun about it also is that because the characters are so funky, you can kind of just mess with kind of how they're laid in there.
Nick Longo:
Yes. A little Tweak on the tilt, a little bit here and there.
Alex Lazaris:
Little tweaky tilt.
Nick Longo:
Yeah. There's a new tool for Illustrator where's that dang tweaky tilt tool.
Alex Lazaris:
I kind of like keeping the both of the A's the same because they're so close to each other.
Nick Longo:
It should be because otherwise, if it was hand lettering, I'd say the A can be slightly different because of just the way the authentic vibe of someone's actual signature. Yeah, that looks good, man.
Alex Lazaris:
Looks fine. Maybe the eyes a little.
Nick Longo:
And then raise the S or, like yeah, that's a good idea.
Alex Lazaris:
Try to make it long. Oh, what do you think?
Nick Longo:
As long as it's not bigger than the L. I think, like, the L is your there you go. There you go. That sizes up nicely.
Alex Lazaris:
Looks great. There is a puppet warp tool in here now.
Nick Longo:
Yes. Have you guys used that?
Alex Lazaris:
Even more funky.
Nick Longo:
Yeah. So let's do a little puppet warp. So it's got to be an outline, I believe, first, right?
Alex Lazaris:
Correct.
Nick Longo:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
So I'm just keeping everything still as live as possible, but now I duplicated it, and so now I'm just going to Puppet Warp it just a tiny bit. What I want to do with the.
Nick Longo:
Puppet Warp for it you want to bend something?
Alex Lazaris:
I want to just bend it. Bend it like beckham.
Nick Longo:
Yes. There you go.
Alex Lazaris:
The great thing about the Puppet Warp Tool is it'll kind of read what you've already put in on the screen correct. So you can kind of control where the joints are. So if you think about it as a paper doll or something like that, where the hinges are on it is where the puppet pieces go. So, for example, this is reading the middle part, which is a little tough.
Nick Longo:
So you add joints where you want to be, like you said, kind of like that puppet thing, right, where there's, like, anchor, and it could actually turn and tilt from that area.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, exactly.
Nick Longo:
And the great thing is it keeps the integrity of particularly this font right. And all of its kind of characteristics. It keeps the continuity in there really nice.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, it does. It keeps a lot of those little details and nuances.
Nick Longo:
I think the eye you can even do a little bit of a Puppet Warp, too, as well.
Alex Lazaris:
Extra funk. I like that.
Nick Longo:
You're like, oh, that's going to happen.
Alex Lazaris:
Maybe I just need a little tiny just off. So I want to get the eye may outline that as well now.
Nick Longo:
Yeah. It's a weird one.
Alex Lazaris:
Voodoo says, I've never seen someone use a Puppet Warp for type, and now it's all I can think about. It's amazing, especially for things like this. You really want, just lock it in.
Nick Longo:
Because it literally is sometimes your mind is saying, if only I could take this thing and do that to it. Now it gives you that option. When it first came out, I think people used it on illustrations and stuff. If you have, like, a person waving like an illustration, you can literally mess with that character and put it in any position you want, just like it was a model.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. What I love about this is it's very much like you're playing with clay. The fact that I could just quickly pull up that ligament and now it still kept a lot of the details.
Nick Longo:
Oh, yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
It's pretty amazing. Back then, it used to be a lot more work.
Nick Longo:
There it goes. Oh, neat.
Alex Lazaris:
I'm trying to think, do I want.
Nick Longo:
Maybe a little bend in it? I would almost, like, take that center anchor and move it up into the left a little. Yeah, maybe that one. Yeah. Because you look at the space that you got between where the S goes into the A and then yeah. Oh, there you go. Totally uneven. I love that.
Alex Lazaris:
I'm trying to think, man, I wish that I could just, like, balloon this section up a little bit easier.
Nick Longo:
Could you do that with the what's the other new tool? It's to the left of Puppet Warp there. That one there? Yeah. The width tool. Yeah, sure.
Alex Lazaris:
If it's going to work on if.
Nick Longo:
You click in the middle and then try to expand. Will it do it there? Let's see. I know it will do it when it's aligned, but I don't know if it does it here. Click in the body of it in the meat. Does that do anything?
Alex Lazaris:
It's giving me the.
Nick Longo:
Now stretch it has oh, that's you're in a different tool now. Right.
Alex Lazaris:
That one giving me a no go.
Nick Longo:
Yeah, you could do, like, offset path and make it a little bit bigger.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, yeah, good point.
Nick Longo:
Yeah, just a little offset path can give you, like, a bold in a font if you don't have it.
Alex Lazaris:
Perfect.
Nick Longo:
Just like there you go. Done. That's exactly what you were going for, Liquefy. Yeah, that would be a neat one. Cool. So I see one other area. I'm trying to wonder what to do with that space below the A, in between the A and the L. This one? Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Well, it sounds like another great candidate.
Nick Longo:
For the Puppet Warp tool. Yes.
Alex Lazaris:
All right, so if I put a thing there and a thing here and.
Nick Longo:
Here and take that one down, maybe.
Alex Lazaris:
I leave this there. I'm trying to just predict where it might exactly.
Nick Longo:
And maybe you do the same with the L and let the L fill in. There it is.
Alex Lazaris:
Me after Thanksgiving dinner.
Nick Longo:
Exactly.
Alex Lazaris:
What were you saying?
Nick Longo:
I was going to say do this and maybe the L gets a little bit helps fill the space up. Too. Like, if you've warped the L a little bit, could work a little because that L could be a little more of a stronger L. Just for the beginning of the know, not wrong.
Alex Lazaris:
Let's see.
Nick Longo:
Yeah, that looks cool. All hand done by Alex.
Alex Lazaris:
Heavy guidance from my life coach, Nick Longo.
Nick Longo:
He's like, this is my first know exploration here. There you go. Look at that. That's helping a little bit. Very cool. I love how it doesn't distort anything. It kind of keeps the continuity of that letter right on track.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely.
Nick Longo:
Nice, dude.
Alex Lazaris:
Just like that, you've got pretty much your own custom.
Nick Longo:
Come a long way, man. Maybe tilt the a little bit to the right. There you go. There you go. That's looking good, man. R looks funky.
Alex Lazaris:
Don't even move this guy to just be like, ever.
Nick Longo:
So now you're just showing off. I get you.
Alex Lazaris:
There we go. Everything has got a little bit of spacing. Does the r.
Nick Longo:
I think that midsection of the R has more twist in it than any other part of the font. That looks heavy.
Alex Lazaris:
Can you warp that or fatten it up a little bit?
Nick Longo:
Could be.
Alex Lazaris:
Okay.
Nick Longo:
Yeah. There you go.
Alex Lazaris:
Maybe it's something that's, like, simple as simple is there, like, 40 anchor points in here.
Nick Longo:
Exactly. That's probably one thing about the Puppet Warp. Thing is you don't realize you could have started with something really simple, and then guess what? That R has 800 points in it. Yeah. Looks good.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, dude.
Nick Longo:
Yes, we are. We are. Puppet Warping live. Type. Hey, that's the way.
Alex Lazaris:
What up, Hawkerattle? How you doing, budy?
Nick Longo:
Yeah, that looks a little sharp still.
Alex Lazaris:
That guy so sharp. Why are you so sharp?
Nick Longo:
Why are you so sharp? Could puppet warp fix that? I think it caused it.
Alex Lazaris:
Definitely caused it.
Nick Longo:
Nice. Look at that. Now, that's quite a cool little feature of just dragging the anchor points alone in the Puppet Warp mode. It almost does kind of reshape and liquefy in a way. That's kind of cool.
Alex Lazaris:
I'll probably spend 4 hours just smoothing up that.
Nick Longo:
Of course, we've got about 25 more minutes. Yeah, man, we're looking good. That looks great.
Alex Lazaris:
More minutes. Holy moly. All right, do we want to add racing to this or just keep it as?
Nick Longo:
Oh, I think you have to, because I think that's, like, where would it go? How would you apply it?
Alex Lazaris:
It's a great question.
Nick Longo:
And do you use the same font? Do you change up the font? It's pretty busy. I think it fits the puzzle. It's got all the right it's readable it's compact. I think it fits a good space. Looks really neat, man.
Alex Lazaris:
Couldn't have done it without you. All right, type touch type tool. Do it. Let's make coolness. All right. Do we have other glyphs?
Nick Longo:
Oh, good question. Is there an R with a little maybe you'd have the same maybe with that same tail from the L. Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
I'm not seeing anything yet. Is there a way to look at the Glyphs? Bigger?
Nick Longo:
I know. Oh, what about that? Small mountain. Big mountain. There we go.
Alex Lazaris:
Look at that.
Nick Longo:
Learning today we have showed you just about every incredible new tool, at least new to us.
Alex Lazaris:
Learning together. All right, so we got some accent marks on the R's. I'm not seeing tons and tons of options, so I think we might be for now.
Nick Longo:
I think it looked good, if anything. Maybe even, like, set racing up the way you want. And then sometimes what I'll try to do is take that version of the L and try to do a little Frankenstein version of it.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, yeah.
Nick Longo:
There we go. Look at this, guys.
Alex Lazaris:
I don't need to change textiles.
Nick Longo:
I actually even prefer this more than if this was created in outlines. Like, just knowing that you still got this unit together and you're messing around with it this freely is really cool.
Alex Lazaris:
It's crazy. I didn't know this was a thing. This has changed my life. I'm a better person now.
Nick Longo:
He's like, I will never create outlines ever again.
Alex Lazaris:
I do love my outlines, though. It's going to be a hard to break.
Nick Longo:
Oh, 100%. Particularly if you're sending it out a lot of times, too, for print or anything else. Just making sure if it's got offsets and all that other stuff, or if you created more of a badge with it. It's got to be created outlines.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely.
Nick Longo:
Oh, that's kind of cool, dude.
Alex Lazaris:
Maybe we'll just take the touch type tool again. Shift t. Then I will pull this up over the okay. The G is running away. G scared.
Nick Longo:
It's like I don't even know what to do.
Alex Lazaris:
It kind of reads like raining for some reason.
Nick Longo:
Raining. Yeah, it does. See, I do see rain there.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. So maybe I need to also, because Lazaris is so long, maybe I need to just keep some of this. Like, maybe this A stays goes all. Oh, it's, like, messing with my soul now. All right, see here. Do I go separate it. What do you think, Chat? Do we stack racing? I think we kind of have to.
Nick Longo:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Well, the question is, I almost think, like, see, like this.
Nick Longo:
Yeah, I still see that rain first.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. Maybe it needs to be, like.
Nick Longo:
Born to fit right there. That looks cool. This is the perfect font to be using for this tool because of the way it actually has those ins and outs, and the way it fits is pretty good.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, it's great.
Nick Longo:
It's funny, too. When you first were designing it, the first thing I saw because of that dropped R in Lazaris. I was almost thinking, like, a curved racing underneath it, almost smiling. It would be kind of funny to just have a racing logo. Oh, there you go. It's got some vibes going. Yeah. Stack it like Legos. That's exactly what we're doing.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, actually, maybe racing just never will ever get its own space, and it just needs to kind of always like Lazaris.
Nick Longo:
Yeah. Maybe connect the eye the eyes in both words to make one long road. I love that intersecting both words. Very cool.
Alex Lazaris:
The one thing I'm struggling with is getting this into click again. For some reason, the G keeps getting clicked.
Nick Longo:
Oh, let's see. You're trying to do the N. Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
I was just trying there you go. All right. Okay.
Nick Longo:
That's kind of neat, if you think about it. You almost got the shape of a flag, like a flag going right now. You see what I mean? Because at first I was like, oh, I don't know if the G is going to work like that low, but it kind of feels like the flag with a pole for racing. That was kind of cool. Yeah. Using a different font for racing and keep it one line for impact, that could be kind of neat. So I think it's neat having different versions, at least to see, like, if racing does need to be that prominent in the logo, you've got an option. And then if you want to show it with racing being a little less and like an add on, you could do that as well.
Alex Lazaris:
No, it's great. It's a great point. I think there's just so much to play with with this stuff, and that's why I'm excited about this direction a lot, where I could see this being great on long sleeves or banners or the necker chief up here. That kind of solid. There's so much potential to unpack with this from a merchandising collateral perspective that I think it's just super fun.
Nick Longo:
Oh, imagine. I think you can almost make a seamless pattern out of it in a way where it repeats and it even nestles when you duplicate it.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. Yeah, I agree. Trying to think, how do I get this? I like this, like, negative staggered.
Nick Longo:
Yeah, there you go. I would just maybe take the G down a bit in size so it's not touching the S and it's not touching the N. There you go, man.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I was actually just about let me just get this in.
Nick Longo:
There you go.
Alex Lazaris:
Man, this would have sped up my I did the sorbo tequila bottles on Adobe Live, like, what, two years ago, before this tool existed.
Nick Longo:
You would have been done in 40 minutes.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, my gosh. If anybody's in Chat watching those videos again yeah, just fast forward and use this. Just fast forward.
Nick Longo:
Imagine we knew we had the type touch.
Alex Lazaris:
Exactly what I'm going to do.
Nick Longo:
Here you go.
Alex Lazaris:
Let me just puppet warp, I guess. Can I just convert this one? I wonder if I can puppet it. Oh, I can. Whoa. You can puppet, but it's going to take, so I don't want to do that.
Nick Longo:
Did you have it selected now and then you did Puppet Warp. It does everything.
Alex Lazaris:
Let's see here. No, I think I just double clicked into it, so maybe I can yeah.
Nick Longo:
Yes.
Alex Lazaris:
Okay, cool.
Nick Longo:
And it's still live.
Alex Lazaris:
It's still live.
Nick Longo:
Okay.
Alex Lazaris:
So is it going to be live now?
Nick Longo:
I don't know. It has to let's see. We'll find out. Oh, my God. Look at this. You can make this is great. Could literally custom move it to fit the space that you're trying to go for. That looks awesome.
Alex Lazaris:
I'm kind of ruining it, I think.
Nick Longo:
Getting a little thick on. I would move that bottom one up a little bit. I think you had it. That was looking good.
Alex Lazaris:
You say you liked it, like, here.
Nick Longo:
Well, yeah. Finding that right. It feels like it's hugging the bottom of the end a little bit. Like, there you go. Maybe it's like we're family.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah.
Nick Longo:
There we go. So I'm wondering, I guess, is it live still or not? Do we know?
Alex Lazaris:
I'm terrified to find out.
Nick Longo:
Let's see unclick and see what happens. Oh, it looks like it's passed now.
Alex Lazaris:
It's passed. All of them are passed.
Nick Longo:
Oh, maybe, I guess Puppet Warping one turns them all into create outlines.
Alex Lazaris:
Okay, well, now we know.
Nick Longo:
No, it's not.
Alex Lazaris:
No, I just control z. Oh, okay.
Nick Longo:
Got you. Yes. Ask a question, please.
Alex Lazaris:
All the questions.
Nick Longo:
Throw us a question. All the questions now. That's what we're here for. I should have asked that earlier, but ask away, please. There you go. Yeah, I like the offset of it. Looks really good. Oh, dude, when you make stickers, please send some my way with absolutely.
Alex Lazaris:
That'd be sick.
Nick Longo:
Cardia. Came back after tournaments is like, the logo looks so good. So creepy.
Alex Lazaris:
Amazing.
Nick Longo:
So we've discovered this. I love this idea of just seeing what that Puppet Warp and type can do, particularly for such an already messed up font. Like, it's already got Puppet Warp happening in a way. Right. Very cool. Now he's just getting crazy.
Alex Lazaris:
Just trying to get wild with it.
Nick Longo:
Yes.
Alex Lazaris:
I think just it's going to just mess with everything. Now, the outlines.
Nick Longo:
Yeah. What would you say you're hoping this logo does for you? Like, if someone sees it on one of the cars for the first time, how would you want someone to describe what's the anticipation?
Alex Lazaris:
That's a great question. I think for me, it's just a matter of making people stop and think for a little bit or be like, oh, that's interesting, and then kind of taking a step in, oh, what does that say? And then figuring it out.
Nick Longo:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Not super easy to digest and understand off the bat, but I think it's cool. There's a bunch of in racing suits for car racing and stuff. There's a bunch of different spots we can press the logo, one of which is, like, on the collar. I think that could be just like this horizontal Lazaris up top.
Nick Longo:
Oh, yeah. I think you like you want them to obviously look at it and be like, that's memorable. If they see it again, they know they've seen it before. Sometimes. That's one of my favorite things to think about when you are creating anything of this sort. Absolutely.
Alex Lazaris:
Agreed.
Nick Longo:
Let's see. Question is my client wanted more motion on her letter. I did motion lines, but how can I put more movement on a letter?
Alex Lazaris:
Well, I guess hard one to answer without knowing.
Nick Longo:
Yeah, so many different ways. I mean, you could blur, you could do the motion lines like you did. You can add a little vibration to it or something. It depends on what motion really you're trying to say. Right. Because you could make it look spin a little bit by radial. You could do a little radial spin if you want. Give us a little more idea of what motion you are going for with that. Maybe we can help. Yeah, even putting it in racing italics will help, obviously. I think angling them just having it look like it's going a little more upwards in direction is a great way to do it. Also, too, if it's a logo, then you don't want too many effects on it. I think you want to do to me if someone said I want a melting kind of oozing font. Right? This one's doing it and it does that without any crazy detail. It's still nice and razor sharp and can work for a logo.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. I'm not sure how I feel about having the G. It has this weird diagonal now because the R is so maybe I'll just have to tie you up that later.
Nick Longo:
Yeah. There you go, man. Look at the kind of transition, how it started. And now it feels really together. Like there's something great about the pairings, the way it nestles together really nicely. It's really cool, dude.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. It's coming a long way. So this is what you can do. Whenever you get like a typeface that you really like or you think might have some legs, you can start just placing around with it, start messing with it, see what you can do with it. You don't have to just use typefaces like default.
Nick Longo:
I think you've proven something cool there as well. Like when I first looked at the font and you just see it lined up perfectly spaced and everything, I almost feel like it's a little hard to read. It feels repetitive because the letters do look so much alike. But when you've kind of went in there and changed it up to what you've done, I almost feel like that font is more readable now because of the way it's kind of that care there. There you go. Now that's the best. Love to take credit for that.
Alex Lazaris:
You ever do longo? No wrongo? I don't know.
Nick Longo:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
I don't know. We're just going to make up tagline.
Nick Longo:
There's my new tagline. It will be coming to my. Website later today. I love that.
Alex Lazaris:
I wonder, do we need to do a little bit of a little roughen, a little something? Will that get us what we need?
Nick Longo:
You want to roughen that or what are you thinking of doing?
Alex Lazaris:
I was trying to see if we can build a sticker or a frame for it that kind of matches the.
Nick Longo:
You could do Zigzag and you can do or curved smooth. There you go.
Alex Lazaris:
And then size it down just a little bit. Maybe it's not giving me enough variety.
Nick Longo:
Yeah, try Zigzag and do smooth. That might be let's see zigzag. It's under the same thing. Zigzag.
Alex Lazaris:
All right.
Nick Longo:
And then do round smooth. And then you can go into the width tool and make it thinner. There it is. There it is. Now we know how they built this font. There we go. Oh, yeah, look at this. Yeah, you can make some thinner, some thicker. This is great. Whoa. Too thin. It literally will do whatever you want.
Alex Lazaris:
That's bonkers.
Nick Longo:
Yeah. Wow. I like how you're filling in a little bit of the negative spaces there.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, that was 1000% intentional.
Nick Longo:
You're good. And like Jason just said, it's starting to look like a racetrack a little bit. Right, that's great. But here's a great point and this is why I love these tools. You could spend five more minutes with us, have probably the most, like custom border you've ever seen. And it fits with everything so much better than finding it somewhere else or using a preexisting one. I think when you see that a tool can give you this creativity and originality that quickly, that's the way to do it. They're going to look at me like, I've never seen a border like that. That to me, sometimes is more important than fitting in so much.
Alex Lazaris:
There's probably a reason why you haven't seen a border like this.
Nick Longo:
I think you were onto something because it almost feels flintstonesy, too. You know how everything was like a big rock tablet but really extruded. Had that same vibe a little bit.
Alex Lazaris:
You're right. Like you said, you spent five minutes on this and you got something really close to the final and you can proof of concept really quick. For me, just the biggest takeaway from today is just how empowering these tools.
Nick Longo:
I would almost think even just process. Yeah, take the whole thing and do an offset pass and make a custom sticker border that mimics the entire border.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, you're right.
Nick Longo:
That'd look kind of cool.
Alex Lazaris:
I remember from our last project together how much you love the Offset path tool.
Nick Longo:
I think it's like my nickname at school. They're like, if he shows us Offset Path one more time and I love me some envelope distort.
Alex Lazaris:
That's right. That's amazing.
Nick Longo:
Could be my alias name. I love it.
Alex Lazaris:
Why is outline?
Nick Longo:
Because it's still live.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I'm killing.
Nick Longo:
There you go.
Alex Lazaris:
Those are still live up there. So we're good there.
Nick Longo:
And let's colorize it before the day.
Alex Lazaris:
Absolutely. Love to see ten minutes left anyway.
Nick Longo:
Yeah. Do you have some colors in mind, or should we ask Chat for some?
Alex Lazaris:
Give us some inspo. Give us some color. I'll take it.
Nick Longo:
So give us some color inspo. Something we can maybe even look up and bring something over and eyedrop right from a really cool image or picture. Give us a theme. Give us something to look up. I could see this going very neon green with black. I can see so many different cool vibes with this one coming up. It's very cool. Yeah. Throw some color inspiration our way and we'll give it a shot. I mean, we were already talking about how Frankenstein it was with the type. I could almost see this looking very classic monsters.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely.
Nick Longo:
Very cool. All right, so we got I love Andrews red and blue, please. Hot pink, super green, burnt orange, white, red and blue. A fall theme vaseline colors. Like the Valvoline. That's the one I was thinking of. Yeah, those are the classic ones, I think, for sure. Any of that cool retro racing stuff would be great.
Alex Lazaris:
Did you just list all the colors in the universe?
Nick Longo:
Pretty much, yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Okay, good.
Nick Longo:
Amy was saying retro warm orange, red, burgundy, golden, raw golden. Rod telling you, if you could just name colors better, people will like them better.
Alex Lazaris:
That's kind of funky and fun. Let's see here.
Nick Longo:
That's pretty cool.
Alex Lazaris:
Stickers, man. I want stickers now. Thank you, Chat.
Nick Longo:
See?
Alex Lazaris:
All right, we said red and blue.
Nick Longo:
Let's just stick with yeah, we got red and blue. Boom. So we're at about a little less than ten minutes, folks. We're about nine minutes left. Now's your chance to art direct. Give us some cool colorways. Oh, yeah. That looks pretty sick. Cobalt blue.
Alex Lazaris:
A Chevy Cobalt blue.
Nick Longo:
Yes. Let's keep it in the car, family man. I'd like an Lumina red, please. Very cool.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
Nick Longo:
Yeah. Now's your chance, guys. So we've put together quite a cool little collection of maybe beginning points for his racing logo. Some really cool colorways as well. The idea here is we're thinking for tomorrow to have maybe one or two more and then maybe building a kind of, like what's the goal? We thinking of maybe building, like, a nice little system.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, we might do a little system. We might throw this on some merch, maybe things that you might see around the track. Whatever Chat wants.
Nick Longo:
Really? Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Start showing you how I'd present this to a client or something like that as well.
Nick Longo:
Yeah. Have you played around with recolor artwork and color edit?
Alex Lazaris:
Gosh. Good point. We should just do that.
Nick Longo:
Isn't that great?
Alex Lazaris:
Why do I always blink on object?
Nick Longo:
I think it's edit and color. Edit. Edit colors. There it is. And then recolor artwork. It's in there somewhere.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, I saw it, and then I clicked away.
Nick Longo:
There we are.
Alex Lazaris:
Perfect.
Nick Longo:
Beautiful.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah.
Nick Longo:
Just turn these things around, get a bunch of different colors. So cool.
Alex Lazaris:
Pretty amazing.
Nick Longo:
I find this gives me colors I wouldn't have chosen myself.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely.
Nick Longo:
Color picker now. I think that works where if you have an image so you can highlight the image and see what's going on there.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, somebody said something about just changing Saturation randomly. Somebody said something about, what, Halloween orange or fall orange or something.
Nick Longo:
Oh, we had some fall colors. Yeah, that's an easy I mean, just by changing the hues a little bit here, you can kind of get them a little more dusty, right?
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's, like, stuck. How do I break that little lock?
Nick Longo:
There you go.
Alex Lazaris:
Who would have thought?
Nick Longo:
Now, I don't think you can add from here. You got to have more colors in what you're selecting, right?
Alex Lazaris:
I think so.
Nick Longo:
Yeah. I don't think you can change that up unless you actually bring in another one. Yeah, someone said the black and white looks pretty damn good already.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, perfect.
Nick Longo:
Black and white. Yeah. And if you hit the advanced options, you get a little bit thanks, Kobe. You get a little bit more control there. You can assign, you can edit. You can go to color books as well and actually get PMS equivalents here, which is really I use that all the time when it's just you need the next you don't have the PMS $4,000 book next to you.
Alex Lazaris:
Some fun ones. Let's see here.
Nick Longo:
Yeah, of course.
Alex Lazaris:
I go back to default. Let's go back to it. Edit, recolor.
Nick Longo:
Merry Christmas.
Alex Lazaris:
Bring Saturation up.
Nick Longo:
And even just using Adobe Color every once in a while to just search for what you're looking for. If you're looking for fall colors, pop on there, and it saves it right to your swatch. So when you come back into Illustrator, it's right there, ready to use. I like seeing those what someone else has maybe curated and found four nice colors that kind of go together with some harmony.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely.
Nick Longo:
That looks cool.
Alex Lazaris:
Just trying to get chat. What they need, what they want.
Nick Longo:
Some global gradients. I can see that happening.
Alex Lazaris:
Oh, my goodness.
Nick Longo:
I'm just trying to come up with other tools so you're like, he doesn't always go to the offset path. He's got a few tools up his sleeve that long ago.
Alex Lazaris:
It's so funny how there's so many ways to get this work done, and we fall quickly into our own safety nets of tools. But that's fine. Everybody has different ways of doing things.
Nick Longo:
Yeah. I remember someone asked the other day, what percentage of Illustrator do you think you know? And even as much as I use it, I'd say it's probably 30%.
Alex Lazaris:
Still.
Nick Longo:
There's still so much you can explore on these things. It's crazy. That's a cool color palette. I love that.
Alex Lazaris:
That's fun.
Nick Longo:
That looks really nice chat.
Alex Lazaris:
Rule of thumb. Please take off skill bars from your resumes.
Nick Longo:
Oh, we've got yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Nick and I have been doing this for, like, 14 years.
Nick Longo:
We've talked about this a lot. Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
It's so hard to gauge what percentage of Adobe products, you know, and I am learning things constantly, as you just saw.
Nick Longo:
Yeah. Make it three D. You could do a quick 3D render. Yeah, that's always fun. As we got a few minutes left.
Alex Lazaris:
Why always forget it's.
Nick Longo:
Window 3D or effect 3D?
Alex Lazaris:
Effect three D, I think.
Nick Longo:
There it is. There you go. It's going to do something crazy. We might lose you again. Alex, say goodbye.
Alex Lazaris:
This is great chat. Great seeing you again. This is always fun. Whenever you can do the Isometric top, it's a great way to start building out Isometric drawings as well.
Nick Longo:
Yeah, I love diving into this. You might find, like, that's something you would never want to do. And yet it kind of looks cool, right? Like, if you extrude this, you could see and you can mess around with these. You can always expand this and play around with a little bit more. Look how cool that would look. Oh, my gosh.
Alex Lazaris:
I wonder, do I just group it together and then it'll find I would.
Nick Longo:
Outline it first or create outlines.
Alex Lazaris:
Okay. Object. Expand appearance. It's probably not going to work.
Nick Longo:
Object before we I know we've got about four minutes left, guys, but we will be back tomorrow as well at 12:00 P.m. Pacific time to two with Alex. Once again, don't forget to stay tuned for the XD Daily Creative Challenge with Elise Tod immediately following this stream. Adobe Live will be back tomorrow at 08:30, a.m Pacific time with Paul Tranny. So that's what's lined up after this and for tomorrow. And like I said, we'll be back here taking this to a whole other level, a whole new dimension with Alex. Tomorrow should be good.
Alex Lazaris:
Love that.
Nick Longo:
Yeah.
Alex Lazaris:
Just take your time.
Nick Longo:
There we go. And don't forget, too, you could take this now and bring it into dimension and do the same kind of stuff as well. You can extrude and extract and add shadows and layers and all that cool stuff with it as well. There's no excuse for not taking some of the art and doing it in all these different ways when you're showing it off to the client.
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely. People are so excited when they can start really understanding how totally and all that stuff.
Nick Longo:
Yeah, for sure.
Alex Lazaris:
To just see five points of depth. Let's see if it because I want it to maybe feel like a sticker at this point.
Nick Longo:
Yeah, I wonder, too. If you do them separately, the type from the background, you'll get different treatment in. You could extrude one of them thicker and one of them thinner. Right. With the same access, with the same kind of three components there for your angle, that might be pretty cool. So like I said, guys, we will be back tomorrow same time, 12:00 p.m.. Pacific time. I think it's going to be fun, man. We're going to see where this is going to go. Taking it to the next step, maybe putting on a few little applications that might be kind of fun. I'm sure you got a jacket or two ready in the mockup world for this one.
Alex Lazaris:
If not, then I will put on my outfit and take some good take some selfies for you all tomorrow.
Nick Longo:
Yeah. Good to see all of you guys in Chat as well. Some familiar names, some new names. Hope you guys like this. This is such a fun process because it's like getting to see where we come on, leave off, start off on the next day. Maybe a lot of times you see it with a refreshed kind of eye and we might go like, whoa, let's change this up, or let's just take it and run with it, right?
Alex Lazaris:
Yeah, absolutely. I love it. Yeah, today's been super fun. I hope everybody learned tons as well because I absolutely have learned so much.
Nick Longo:
Isn't that great? Yeah, man. So this is good. So again, guys, we will be back. Alex, where can they find you? Really quick, give us one more plug on the website.
Alex Lazaris:
Behance. Net. Alex Lazaris. Just go there. Or you can go to my website. www.wearelazaris.com. That's L-A-Z-A-R-I-S.
Nick Longo:
Perfect, man. All right, well, we will be back again tomorrow. Can't wait to see where this comes out. Thanks so much for joining us, everybody, today. We will see you tomorrow. And we're going to be doing Lazaris racing all over again and bringing it to a whole new level. All right, guys, have a good one. We'll see you tomorrow.
