Hello everyone, this is Chris from Spoon Graphics Welcome back to another video tutorial
Today we're going to play around in Illustrator to produce a retro style circular emblem, which are really popular as trendy logos or as little call to action style badges like a "satisfaction guarantee" or "seal of approval" The design I'll be using in this tutorial is for the totally fictional Powerhouse Gym, although I wouldn't be surprised if there was a gym chain somewhere in the world with this name It makes use of many of the traits of a retro style logo, such as the alternating black & white rings and the little details like the all important stars One of the most popular examples of this style is the Converse All Stars logo, but you can find lots of inspiration for your design on the web Begin by creating a new document in Illustrator
Because we're dealing in vectors the size doesn't matter too much I like to go to View > Hide Artboard to give myself a nice large area to play with Select the Ellipse tool and set the fill colour to black with no stroke Hold Shift and draw the main circle of your logo or badge Press CMD+C to Copy, then CMD+F to Paste in Front
Scale this shape down a small amount towards the centre by holding Alt and Shift, then clear out the black fill and give it a white stroke Increase this stroke to around 5pt to produce a little ring Press CMD+F again to paste in another circle Scale this shape down further towards the centre, Remembering to keep those Shift and ALT keys held down, then give it a white fill Paste in another circle, this time keep the black fill and scale it down to produce a thick white ring in the middle of the emblem
Paste in yet another circle, then switch the black fill for a stroke Increase the stroke weight to 2pt, then carefully scale this shape to fit just inside the white ring to form a little stripe Copy and Paste this thin black ring and re-position it towards the inside of the white ring If you find that this new circle gets thinner when you scale it, you might need to change your Illustrator settings Go to Illustrator > Preferences > General and make sure Scale Strokes and Effects is turned off
Press CMD+F to Paste in another copy of the thin black ring Scale this one so it fits perfectly in the centre of the white ring Bring up the Stroke panel and check the Dashed Line option Enter zero for the dash setting, then 17pt for the gap Select the Round Cap option, then increase the stroke weight to around 4pt to produce a series of equally spaced dots
One optional step here is to add some detail to the outline of the badge Select the main black circle then go to Effect > Distort & Transform > Zig Zag Select the Smooth points option, then adjust the settings to around 1px size and 20 ridges per segment, although these figures may vary depending on the scale of your document Next, we'll create a little dumbbell icon for the centre of our Gym logo Using some empty space on the artboard, draw a thin shape with the Rounded Rectangle tool
Before releasing the mouse, use the keyboard cursor keys to adjust the radius of the corners Give this shape a black fill with no stroke Draw two more rounded rectangles that are slightly larger in size to represent heavier weight plates Then use a normal rectangle to represent the handle Select the existing dumbbell shapes and copy & paste them to make a duplicate
Rotate them by 180 degrees and position them on the opposite side Open up the Align panel, then select all the shapes that make up the dumbbell Firstly align them using the Vertical Align Center button, then click the Horizontal Distribute Space button to create even gaps between all the shapes Group all the dumbbell shapes together, give them a white fill then scale them to fit into the centre of the logo Hold Shift and click on one of the logo circles to add it to the selection, then give it another click to make it the key object
Use the Align panel to make sure the dumbbell sits perfectly central in the logo Make a new duplicate of one of the existing circles and scale it to fit within the main black ring Clear out the fill and stroke, then select the Type on a Path tool from under the Type Tool's menu Click on this new circle to activate the Type on a Path tool and enter the main wording for your logo or emblem, which in my example is Powerhouse Gym Align the text centrally, then use the Direct Selection tool to alter the start and end markers in order to position the wording evenly in the layout
Alter the tracking of the wording by selecting 100 from the dropdown menu in the Character window, then increase the font size of the text so it fits within the logo Make any final adjustments to the scale of the circle in order to align it within the emblem layout Copy and paste this type on a path circle and change its wording to a tagline, such as Reach Your Potential Bring down the font size, then use the Direct Selection tool to grab and move the centre handle so the text flows along the bottom of the circle Currently the text sits on the inside of the circle
Go to Type > Type on a Path > Type on a Path Options, then change the Align to Path option to Ascender Make any necessary scale adjustments to line the text up with the emblem layout Use the Star tool to draw a tiny star to fill in the gap, then hold ALT and Shift while dragging out a duplicate of this shape for the opposite side Group these two shapes together, then add one of the circles to the selection Give the circle an extra click to make it the key object, then align the stars centrally using the Align panel
The main logo layout is now complete, but any retro style design always needs a little distressing with some textures Download and open one of my vector dust and scratches textures in Illustrator Copy one of the textures to the clipboard, then switch back to the emblem document Select all the objects that make up the emblem, then press CMD+G to Group them together Under the Transparency panel click the Make Mask button, then select the right hand thumbnail which activates mask mode
Paste in the vector texture, scale it to size and make sure it has a black fill Check that the Clip and Invert Mask settings aren't checked, then click on the artwork thumbnail to exit out of mask mode This masking technique is a great way to add aged and weathered effects to your vector art without permanently altering the basic design So there we have our finished retro style vector badge I hope you found this tutorial useful and find some great uses for these kinds of badges or emblems for your future designs
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