Stretch Your Mind -- Stretch Your Logo
by Jacci Howard Bear
You don't have to settle for a plain or boring logotype. Even if you can't yet afford the services of graphic designer to create a professional logo design, you can stretch the boundaries of your current logo with a few simple manipulations. Most of these exercises require no extensive graphics training. As long as you can read the help files of your drawing program and find the stretch, resize, or node editing functions you can accomplish some simple but impressive logo makeovers.
This is not a tutorial on logo design. These are simply techniques you can use to modify plain text. Try these same exercises with headlines for ads or newsletters.
Type your business name (or any phrase) in your preferred typeface in your favorite drawing program. The examples here are done in CorelDRAW 7 but the techniques will work in most vector drawing programs (and some paint programs too). I used a simple serif font for one logo and a sans serif font for the other. By themselves, most of these changes are not particularly dazzling. Experiment. Combine techniques. See the final versions at the end of this article to see how I used multiple techniques or combined stretching with some other design elements.
Figure 1 Jilda's Bakery in serif face. Figure 2 ByteRyte in sans serif face.
Make it horizontally shorter. Resize your image horizontally only either by selecting it and pulling one of its "handles" or by entering a percentage such as 75% or 50% for horizontal resize or stretch. The letters get thinner but stay the same height.
Figure 3 Jilda's Bakery reduced horizontally about 55%. Figure 4 ByteRyte reduced horizontally about 75%.
Make it horizontally longer. Resize your image horizontally only making the letters fatter but no taller.
Figure 5 Jilda's Bakery enlarged horizontally about 120%. Figure 6 ByteRyte enlarged horizontally.
Make it vertically shorter. Resize your image vertically only making the letters shorter.
Figure 7 Jilda's Bakery reduced vertically. Figure 8 ByteRyte reduced vertically.
Change its shape. If your graphics program has an envelope feature you can shape the text to a variety of shapes such as triangles, stars, or lopsided boxes. To simulate the effects available with envelopes (or just to make your own distinctive look), create each letter of your business name as a separate graphic and stretch each one individually making some short and fat, others tall and thin, or whatever combination suits you.
Figure 9 Jilda's Bakery given a triangular shape. Figure 10 ByteRyte given a lopsided shape that appears to curve and recede into the distance.
Edit pieces of letters. In some programs you can edit the individual nodes (points) in a letterform. Using this technique you can alter portions of an individual letter -- such as making the tail of a y longer.
Figure 11 By selecting and stretching only the bottom nodes of Jilda's Bakery the letters take on a whole new shape (note: I accidently missed the nodes on the "e" but I used that accident in the final version (figure 13).
Combine techniques. Once you get a basic shape you like you can finish up your design by adding color, additional text, clipart, or more stretching.
Figure 12 ByteRyte is finished off by adding some descriptive text to the shape from Figure 10 then node-editing a tiny portion of the letter B to resemble a toothbrush or something vaguely "computer-like" (to fit our Computer Denistry business -- whatever that is).
Figure 13 Color and a piece of clipart added to the distorted Jilda's Bakery from Figure 11 finish off this design.
Don't settle for plain or boring. Use the ideas here and your own imagination to add some new twists to plain text. Different typefaces and different combinations of techniques can give dramatically different results. Go stretch!
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Copyright 1995, 1996, 1997 JBdesigns and The INK Spot. Contact Jacci Howard Bear at designwrit@aol.com for permission to reprint (electronically or in print).
