Letter A logo Design Tutorial in Adobe Illustrator

Hi, I am excited to present a new and fresh logo design tutorial in Adobe Illustrator. This time we are creating a letter A logo with vibrant colors and youthful mood.

This is an almost exact replica (designers like the word “inspiration”) of the brilliant letter mark of an amazing artist Kakha Kakhadzen.

So, prepare to launch your copy of Adobe Illustrator and let’s get started.

Step 1. Document Set up

Hit Ctrl/Cmd+N to bring up a New Document panel. Select the Web-Large option to start a 1920x1080px canvas.

To streamline the workflow, let’s set up a simple grid. Visit Edit/Preferences/Guide & Grid to open the Preferences panel. Set a Gridline every 20px with number of subdivisions equals 1 as shown in the image below.

Hit Ctrl/Cmd+" to make the grid visible and Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+" to stick artworks to the grid. now we are ready for the next step.

Step 2. Create Circles

Grab an Ellipse Tool ( L) and create a circle with the diameter of 320px.

Create two duplicates and allocate them as seen in the picture below. Pull them 280px below and set 440px distance between.

Step 3. Download the Script

Using script isn’t uncommon in Logo design. I’ve even created a Udemy course with a whole chapter about scripts. For this design we need a free Common Tangents script created by Hiroyuki Sato.

Download Common Tangents Script for Adobe Illustrator.

Unzip it and place the Common Tangents.js file to this location:

Windiws(C)/Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Illustrator CC 2019/Presets/ en_US/Script

Do not forget to save your progress and relaunch Adobe Illustrator.

This script creates all possible tangent lines between two objects. To run the script select the objects and visit File/Scripts/Common Tangents.

For this project we will run it twice:

• For top and bottom-left circles

• For top and bottom right circles

Delete diagonal connections. We are ready to give a final shape to our design.

Step 4. Little Detail we can’t omit

In this tut we are a building a capital A mark. The space between apex and baseline is a triangle in shape.

By placing another circle we can smooth the angle on top. The size of it is the same 320px as for other circles, but it can be a circle of any size.

Step 5. Creating final 2d shape

Grab a Shape Builder Tool ( Shift+M), use Ctr/Cmd+A to select everything on the canvas and stroll a cursor to select the final design.

Clean the shape from the remaining shapes to prepare it for 3d transformations.

Step 6. Create 3d shape

Head over to Effect/3D/Extrude and Bevel.. to bring up 3d effect panel.

Set the angles as seen in the picture and the Extrude Depth to 500px.

From the Surface dropdown select No Shading option.

Click ok to finish the effect. Head over to the Object/Expand Appearance...

Notice that I have my own shortcut to ease my life and speed up the process. If you wish to learn more about best practices in Adobe Illustrator, enroll in my course.

Step 7. Assemble the Sides

Ungroup ( Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+G) the shape twice and start selecting the sides as shown on the picture below.

Hold the Shift key to select several objects and visit Pathfinder panel to run the Unite command.

Use the same approach for the bottom parts.

After combining everything you should have a shape comprised from four parts.

Step 8. Give some Colors

The colors make this artwork so attractive. Let’s add some gradients to the four shapes we have.

1. #24CFD4 on the left
2. #6AE4F9 on the right

Below are the colors of the second gradient:

1. #383E7D on the left
2. #474EBD on the right

Please, notice where is the midpoint (diamond shape on top of the slider) is positioned.

The third gradient has these colors on its stops:

1. #A6100F on the left
2. #F37C6B on the right

Step 9. Add some Shadows

The shadow is done by projecting one side on the other and cutting the overlapping part with the Pathfinder Intersect command.

Create a duplicate and shift it to the right. Hold Alt/Option to drag a copy. Please note, I am using the Outline Mode for all of my images here, so you can see only contours of the shapes.

Create a duplicate of the left side. Select both duplicates and run the Intersect command on the Pathfinder Panel.

Set a gray color to the shape and select the Multiple from the Blend Options.

Use the same approach for other part until you get the result you pleased with.

Go ahead and create you color pallete, your letters and alphabet, be creative and design your way. I just hope you learned something new from this article. Feel free to share this tutorial with your friends and jot me a message if you have any questions

Originally published at https://vitorials.net.