Design Challenge 17 - Review

Key Takeaways

hello everyone it's Gary Simon of designc course.com and this is the review of design Challenge number 17 design a custom letter D in calligraphy all right so it is the new year January 1st 2015 and last year I set out a goal to record a video every day of 2014 didn't quite stick to that I think I got up to June 17th but anyhow I think I did about around 210 videos so that's pretty good we still planning on basically uh just recording a video or two every week and some other new things are in the pipeline as well all right so I just real quickly uh again design letter D in calligraphy must be uppercased uh know the letters you guys pretty much followed this uh although a couple of you didn't do the whole white space thing but no big deal it's a quick examples and let's get started all right so Dylan 12 I would say for the purposes of this challenge uh you know this is a very simplistic version of you know what we're asking for so there's nothing wrong with that per se I but there's not really too much here for me to critique and just saying that you know it's very simplistic and it's not entirely bad but it's so simplistic that there's not much I could say so I thanks for that and here we have another one uh this one is very interesting I like the ex execution completely but when you think of calligraphy and handwritten calligraphy this kind of veers away from that kind of organic style uh everything's a little bit more rigid uh but nonetheless I really like the execution of it and coming down here um let's see so this one uh first handdrawn and then converted here uh overall I like this it has a lot of potential I would say that uh the things that stuck out at me at first are you know this little one one pixel um white space or border or stroke between this portion and this little ribbon uh that kind of looks bad at this resolution at least uh because uh you can see some pixelation in there so I would add a little bit more space or or whiteness so it doesn't look like that uh over here it's not so bad uh but over here you can definitely notice that um but other than that I I think this is uh something that's definitely something that you can work with uh it's always a good idea too to to do everything in Black and White and not try to do uh different variations uh simply because as a font uh you can't do that obviously so uh other than that thanks for the submission uh here's another one uh so the issue with this that I saw immediately was uh it could be it could look like kind of like a b simply because this tail com up here the proportion are is so off so I would really address that because this does look like a big b in a sense or a lowercase b and I I would just bring this down a lot more try to you know work the same concept but try to keep the proportions a little bit better so thanks for the entry Galaxy x85 I would say get rid of the gradient right away and also you have some color in here and the gradients as well that's just uh you know extra stuff that just you just don't need when we're trying to focus purely on the letter form uh with that said though looking at the letter form itself I would say this kind of tell it doesn't seem to be very very organic in terms of this bezier curve uh kind of just is a little bit rigid and I know that's hard to to achieve sometimes uh but it's something you have to work on um and up here this back portion of the d uh the little lines going across you know everything else feels kind of organic but then you have these rigid lines going straight through and it kind of just adds uh for inconsistency in the design but thanks for the entry now uh over here looking at this this one's not too bad I would say I there's some I would like to probably or possibly thicken it up a tad bit uh like over here and here because if that scaled down you'd you would almost lose that detail um and I also say the other thing would be you know with this line flowing this way uh it seems like it flows it goes up a little bit too high I think to create consistency we would take this this line and kind of just start it right around here so it flows a little bit better I mean you don't have this big gap up here but again I overall execution I like it and good job uh over here this are several issues you know again we're we're talking I'm talking about things like adding the inner Shadow and the drop shadow you know try to avoid doing that uh in almost every case um especially when it comes to logo design or you know type like this uh challenge here uh with that said in just looking at the letter form itself uh I'm not sure what the the intent of these bars are are like what exactly they mean to me I kind of get this idea of like a a cityscape so it kind of just doesn't flow right or it doesn't feel right to me uh for this letter form but thanks for the submission anyhow um and then over here M we have uh this is one of the reasons I wanted people to you use a fire 500 by 500 document and also scale the the the letter down a lot more than the 500 by 500 otherwise we can barely see it uh with that said though I can do this let me see here just so I could see a little bit better with that said you know it's kind of like the first entry you know there's not too much for me to to Really critique about it because it's so simple you know it works uh and and yeah and that's that so again thanks for the submission this one I this one's a little bit hard to tell like if I didn't know this as a d it would be hard for me to tell that this is a d this could be an o or this could be not even a letter form maybe like a nut or something uh so it would help maybe to see it alongside other letters but again that wasn't the requirement uh so I would try to maybe work this in so that it's a little bit more rigid this Edge uh otherwise it kind of looks like an O uh other than that I would probably like to see the stroke thickened up a little bit in certain areas but thanks for the submission and then over here I this I kind of like a fer style I could see uh for the D in terms of the letter form but I would say all of these little circles are kind of throwing things off and then you also have kind of an issue of like the consistency between you know the white space between the D and this line you it gets real close here you have edges just barely touching which isn't a good thing and then over here it's a little bit wider so you know these are all tiny little details that really kind of make a difference uh in the big picture so I would probably get rid of the these little uh circles and work on simplifying and trying to create consistency between the spacing between the various lines and the edges that you have going here uh so yeah thanks for the entry and then first we have this D here again the uh it's a little bit hard to see when we have the the gradients going on here and kind of clashes it's a little bit dark kind of like the background but just focusing on this one I would say I it's a little bit it doesn't flow right to me just because we have this Edge right here and it seems real rigid but then the rest of the the type is fluid uh up until this point and and other points so I would just try to work on creating consistency um so yeah thanks for that entry this one I really wanted to see this like in a vector format because I could tell a lot of work went into it and my child downstairs is like making weird animal noises hopefully that that's not coming over the microphone but yeah you can tell a lot of very intricate work went into this I but yeah I wish I could have seen it an effective format other other than that I really like it uh very unique uh but yeah thanks for this submission over here I this one I it almost seems kind of Unfinished you know just because we have like this little stroke here and all these little line uh texture effects it seems like uh in the back of the D kind of comes in my opinion up a little bit too close to to this portion um but yeah it almost feels UN in incomplete essentially like I can't even talk uh but thanks for the submission uh designer over here now again we want to scale this down so we have white space between you know the documented Edge but I'll just try to zoom out here so this seems a little bit amateur you know like you said this is my first post and I know my D is not looking good but okay so one of the reasons is is because you you're trying to create something that looks organic and flows well but this curve you can tell is uh it doesn't flow well at certain points for example we come around here uh and you come down here and then it stops and then it kind of comes up over here and then it hits an edge and then it comes up over here and it kind of hits an Edge right here and another big issue is you know you used a single path it looks like on this and a single stroke and a a stroke width which is you know uniform so doesn't matter what type of letter form you're you're ever trying to design but when you you have the the same exact stroke width on it it's going to make it's it's going to be very hard to make it look good so I would just look at you know some examples of established calligraphy FS just to get an idea of kind of what I'm talking about there all right uh so let me get back up to 100% here this one's really cool uh the D in and of itself if if you were just to take out all the detail inside of it it was it's a pretty good form to begin with and then all the uh detail inside of it I like as well so I really can't say anything too negative about this so thanks for the submission and then we have another one here I I would say yeah in terms of trying to structure the D and make it readable having this back edge here so close to this this curve makes it a tad bit hard to read um I would maybe want to try to bring this up here just a tad bit more you still have this nice flowing Arc but uh it almost looks a little bit hard to read and I can also see that it's a tze so you know with with with you know a full font it would probably look pretty good I just think that's a minor little uh Comet that I made there and then the final one is right here I and I think this is actually pretty good and has a lot of potential I think the stroke is just a little bit too thin in some areas and also almost overall I I like that you thickened it right here in this portion but over here everything's kind of really um lacking in terms of stroke width so I think if we just took everything and increased the stroke width uh using a variable width profile perhaps in um illustrator this would actually be um a lot better than it is but the basic form and shape that you have I really like it so it's a good entry all right so that is it so look out for more videos here in 2015 I make sure you subscribe here at YouTube and check out designc course.com all right goodbye [Music]