Click on any phrase to play the video from that point.
[Adobe: Your Voice]
[Be seen]
[Be Heard]
[Stand out]
Hello, my name is Adam Shaening-Pokrasso.
I'm a creative professional working in San Francisco.
I'm here to talk about building your personal brand
and your portfolio.
A portfolio is an important component
of marketing yourself to potential employers,
clients, or schools.
No matter what field you're in:
law, science or math,
or even art and design,
embracing the sense of design and personal brand
is really important when it comes to marketing yourself
and getting out there.
We're going to start by talking about the core component
of your portfolio, which is the logo.
Here we have 2 logos.
One for Marco Bruce,
and the other for Kelly Brant.
Kelly Brant is a biology student
who researches about killer whales.
She's entering her final year of school,
and she's thinking about continuing her schooling
or finding a potential employer.
Marco Bruce is a design school student,
focusing on photography.
His interests are in nature and wildlife.
He's also in his final year of school
and looking for a potential employer.
So here we have the finished logo for Marco Bruce and Kelly Brant
in Adobe Illustrator.
Adobe Illustrator is a great tool for creating logos,
but it begins with brainstorming.
Brainstorming is all about just dumping your ideas onto a piece of paper,
onto a whiteboard, or even using touch apps,
like Adobe Ideas.
We've got a couple of sketches here
from Marco Bruce.
He was thinking a little bit about photography
and incorporating his name into his logo
so using the letter B.
With Kelly Brant, she was thinking more about using symbols from science,
like the double helix or the infinity symbol.
She eventually took a photograph of this piece of paper.
It's an infinity ribbon.
We'll go ahead and use this infinity ribbon photo
as inspiration for the first exercise.
These assets are available for download
if you'd like to follow along,
but I encourage you to use your own visual representation
for your own logo.
Let's get started.
You can start by double-clicking the Kelly Brant logo
Start.AI.
It will open in Adobe Illustrator.
Here we have the sketch which will inspire the first part,
redrawing this thing using the Pen tool.
First begin by creating a new layer
over here on the Layers menu.
At the bottom of this menu,
you have the Create New Layer button.
Select it using your mouse.
That will create a new empty layer.
Then, move over the left-hand side of your screen
and find the Pen tool.
Select the Pen tool with your mouse.
Then, use the Pen tool
to create your first anchor point.
You will begin by creating a little trace line,
clicking once to create a straight line,
and then clicking and dragging to create curved lines.
I'm going to go ahead and
cruise through this a little bit by creating a couple of different curved paths.
Once I have a few anchor points,
the shape will begin to take form.
You have to come all the way back to the original anchor point
to close the shape
and there we have our first vector path.
You can select any of these individual anchor points
to modify them or move them
using the direct selection tool.
Notice how I might want to remove this one
or reshape this one to make it a little bit more curved.
The completed traced image is found on Layer 4.
Notice that I'll turn off Layer 2 and Layer 5,
the new layer that I created,
and then turn on Layer 4.
Here's an example of the finished sketch with some simple modifications,
like rotation and resizing.
The next thing you'll want to do is get the Text tool to add a new layer of text.
Again, you'll want to create a new layer by using the New Layer button
at the bottom of the Layer panel.
Select New Layer.
Then, use your Text tool to type on Kelly Brant's name.
All right, so there we have Kelly Brant.
On another line, I'll type Biology Student.
At this point, the text is really small,
so we're gonna want to resize this.
You can do this by selecting the whole layer
or by selecting the individual lines of text,
and then go to the top toolbar,
where you're gonna find the 12-point type.
Let's make that a lot bigger, say 48 point.
That's getting closer.
So we've created a new text layer.
There's all kinds of ways you can modify this text layer:
Recentering it, resizing it.
You can also change the font.
I'll go over here to the Font menu
and select the pull down.
Notice that there are loads of fonts in there.
I'm gonna select Palatino Linotype.
The logo's beginning to take form, and I think it looks pretty good.
The important things to consider here
are making a unique and memorable logo
but keeping it simple.
Now I'm gonna go ahead and change the color of the type layer
as well as the shape layer.
First, I'll select Layer 6,
the Type layer.
Selecting a layer can be done by clicking the Target button
on the right-hand side of the Layer panel.
You can also select individual lines or individual letters of text
by using your Type tool.
With the Kelly Brant line of text selected,
move your mouse to the top tool panel
on the right-hand side, the color panel.
Then, select a color such as
I'm thinking a purplish red,
maybe like a maroon color.
I can also also select the next 2 lines of text
and change the color for those, as well,
maybe say, a blue of sorts.
Colors are really an important thing to consider
in building your logo and thinking about your brand.
With these 2 colors selected,
they kind of complement each other,
but you may want to refine it a little bit, as well.
Now that I have the text recolored,
I'm gonna recolor the shape.
Here under Layer 4,
you can expand Layer 4 and locate the group.
Inside of the group, you have individual paths,
which can be selected individually
or you can select the whole group as one.
I'm gonna select one individual path
and then go to the Color panel on the right-hand side.
So then I a light blue.
Once I change the color for one path,
I'm gonna move my mouse to the Window menu
on the top toolbar
and select the Color Guide panel.
The Color Guide is a great tool to allow you to sample 1 color
and find other complementary colors.
Once I've colored the first path,
I'll go to the Color Guide to create complementary colors for the other paths.
Then, I'm gonna return to the Layer menu
and see what the finished piece looks like.
Here I have the finished logo that I created earlier.
There's a lot of things you can do to modify this
and make it simple but memorable.
I've also gone ahead and created a 4-panel version of this logo
which allows us to display it on different backgrounds
or using different color specifications.
In the next video,
you'll learn all about creating a business card,
another extension of building your personal brand
and portfolio.
Thanks for watching.
[Adobe: Your Voice. Be Seen, Be Heard, Stand Out.]
