Pantone colour of the Year 2022

 PANTONE® USA | Pantone Color of the Year 2022 / Palette Exploration

Four palates including the 2022 colour of the year "Very Peri" which is a pastel-purple:

For example ...

From maps

Google Fonts info

 Now at:   https://design.google/library/google-fonts/

Some interesting colour schemes for 2021

 From https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/set-sail-champagne-color-trend

Calm contemplation:

Muted looks:

Spring:

Summer:

Accessing alternative character sets

Alternates are accessible by turning on 'Stylistic Alternates' in a software with OpenType capabilities - such as Photoshop or Illustrator)

A process for logo design

1   Sketch some ideas by hand

It's faster, and makes you more creative.   Try all sorts of things, even mad idea that don't work..  Basically brainstorming.  You might come up with one really strong idea - or lots of weaker ones, which lead you to generate stronger ones.   At this stage, don't worry about how you will technically achieve the look - just play with ideas.

2   Choose a sketch to work with

Choose the one that you think will most likely meet your client's needs.
Keep the rest of the ideas around, in case the first choice doesn't work, but focus on one at a time.

(If the option you choose really isn't working at a later stage, return to this stage and start again.)

3   Create a working space for the square format logo

In a design tool, create a square shape - make it large enough to work on detail, but not full screen (eg 15 x 15 cm).

4  Lay the foundation

 Insert a basic shape (square, circle, triangle etc) to form the back of the logo - whatever is suggested by the sketch.
This might be reduced to white or transparent later, but it gives the artwork a starting point.

5   Build up the rest of the idea by adding / combining other shapes.  

At this stage, just use black and white - so you can focus on the underlying shapes without being distracted by colour issues. 

6   Make it into one shape

Once your artwork has the right combination of shapes to build the overall look, combine them (group, pathfinder, etc - it depends on teh tool). 

Also turn the black to 70% to give an idea of how it will look in a gentler format.

Note:   keep a copy of the file from just before you do this, in case you need to go back to it in step 9.

7   Add text

For some designs, text-items may have been part of the shape.   But for many they are added later, to turn your generic icon into a specific one.

8   Apply font(s) for the text

Usually you'd only use one font in a logo, unless there the sketch calls for two very different looks put together.

8   Final adjustments to the shape

Consider how the logo looks at a very large and very small size (zoom in and out, look at your screen from the other side of the room).
Print it out and consider the paper in different lights / distances..
Look at its weight and balance:   is it lop-sided, do some parts look unnecessarily bigger or smaller.
Is the font legible?    An artistic font that works for initials or a very short word won't work well for a longer one.

Make any final changes to the shapes and text, based on what you see.

9   Add colour

Choose the colour palate that is to be used for this project.  Apply colours and effects eg shadows, gradients, to elements in the logo.
Repeat the checks from step 8, this time focusing on the effect of the colour.   Tweak as necessary.

10   Final review

You may have done client reviews at various previous steps.   But it is most important to review it again, now that all the components are in place.  Review the design with the client or with trusted advisers if you're creating for yourself.

10    Create alternative sizes

For a logo, your or your client may need:

• A black and white only version
• A negative version
• A page-header formatted version   (this may have additional content - or just be a rectangle with the square icon design within it).    You may need several of these, one for letterhead (8 inches wide), one for Facebook, one for Twitter, etc.
• A favicon version    (This is the very small website-tab icon, 32x32 pixels.)    It may be a simplified version of your icon, if there's too much detail for it to draw well.

It's far easier to make all these now, while the design is fresh in your mind, than to have to go back and do it later when they're needed.

11  Create output files

For each alternative size, you probably need to create both:

• A vector format file (eg eps, pdf, svg)
• A graphic format file (eg png or jpg)

What are Layers

The standard explanation of layers in image-editing is “think of layers as like a pile of acetates” or “layers are like transparencies laid on top of each other”.

The problem with this description is that anyone under 30 (I guess) is unlikely to have encountered the type of overhead projector (OHP) which uses transparencies.  In fact, the last time someone asked me if I knew where to find an OHP for an elderly presenter whose material was all on transparencies, my honest answer was “Try the museum”.

Understanding the overhead-projectors / transparency / acetate answer

An overhead project was a light box with a lens mounted above it which rotated light from the light-box by 90 or so degrees (using mirrors), to allow it to be projected onto a wall or screen

A transparency was an A4-size sheet of rigid plastic, made out of a chemical called acetate, and able to cope with the high temperatures generated by the bulbs in early overhead projectors.
So it was possible to use the projector to show text or an image from a transparency onto a wall or screen. They were fantastic pieces of technology in their day: they freed teachers from writing the same stuff on blackboards over and over again, they gave business people and trainers far more options for explaining things to groups of people, and they freed church-goers from being stuck to the same old hymns from their hymn book. But they were expensive: acetate transparencies cost a lot, as did the special pens that were needed to write on them. Eventually there were transparencies which could be put through laser printers, but the printed text tended to chip off them over time. as laptops got cheaper and data-projectors became more widely available.

A better explanation of layers

Yes, you can even get them in
pretty coloured edgings like this

Think of layers as similar to plastic page-protectors – the high-quality ones that you can see through properly, not the cheaper ones that look a little fuzzy.

And think of a file in your image-editing program as being like a ring-binder folder.

Now imagine putting a pile of page-protectors in a folder, putting some parts of an image into each of them

If you look into the pile from the above, then the picture that you see is the sum of all the picture-parts in the individual page-protectors:

• If there is a part of the page which isn’t covered up by the contents of any page-protector, then that part will look empty, AKA transparent.
• If one page protector has something which covers the whole page, then you won’t be able to see anything from page-protectors which are underneath that one. So most likely you want to put that “background” page-protector at the very bottom of the pile.

And that is how layers work in pretty much all image-editing programs (Photoshop, GIMP, Paint.net, etc)

Of course you can do more with layers in a computer programme than you can with page-protectors: you can be certain that items which you put into a layer will stay exactly where you put around and not wiggle out of place if someone moved the folder. But you can also you can make them semi-opaque, re-arrange the order of the layers using drag-and-drop, apply a colour filter to an entire layer, etc.

But the general idea is the same.


Next: Working with layers in Photoshop