Introduction

Hello everyone! I'm MaKrow, a writer, illustrator and comic book author (Love x Horror Club on Webtoon). Today we're going to work on an area that's going to be essential for our career as artists: the creation of our own brand.

In this tutorial I want to get away from what the signature is specifically, since it's something very personal and there are many ways to get to it (you can base it on other people's signatures that you like, geometric figures, watch YouTube tutorials to make your signature and infinity etc.). Instead, I'm going to go to something a little more technical and that requires more knowledge for its elaboration: our brand, our identity on the networks and in our products.

The Brand gives us identity, it's our face in the world not only of the Internet but also of commerce. We use the signature to give authorial identity to our drawings or stories; but we use the brand to market our drawings and stories, that's the main difference in terms of its use and why it's so important for our brand to be as professional as possible.

And yes, our brand must be clean and professional. An improvised icon is not enough. We must create a clean image that can be adjusted to different sizes and formats. It must also be able to be used as an addition to larger images, as a watermark, as a stamp, etc. Join me in this Clip Studio Paint tutorial and let's leave our mark on the artistic world. Let's get started!

Let's define the topics

Let's start with the fundamentals when creating our brand: the theme.

What exactly do we want to convey? This is the first question we must answer.

Is it for us or a third party? What are we selling and what audience is it aimed at? Are we a single person or a business entity?

I'll give an example to understand what I'm referring to:

 

 

This icon is my own work. The symbol will be used on a radio station in my city. The client intended to convey what the radio station was about and what topics would be covered. It is clear from the design that it was a radio station that would talk about Dungeons & Dragons. The name of the station is “Ahogados en Dados” (Drowned in Dice), so I had to convey the essence, the name, the medium and the topic in a single image.

To do this type of work you must consolidate the idea of the project in a single icon that can then be edited as needed. I recommend that to synthesize the ideas you choose 3 crucial points that must be conveyed in the image. The idea of the product can always be summarized in 3 ideas, mine were:

 

1. Dungeons & Dragons

2. Radio

3. Something related to drowning or the sea

 

From these 3 points, the ideas that can emerge are as broad as the scope of your imagination, but you already have a template to work on. The order of importance is not a coincidence; in this case, the least important thing was related to drowning, since it was limiting depending on the context used. Remember to ask yourself what adds and what subtracts from the design. Sometimes, less is more, especially if we want to opt for minimalism and vectorization.

Here are some examples of sketches that were discarded.

 

 

Logotype, Isotype, Imagotype or Isologo?

Okay, I know these terms are extremely technical, but trust me, knowing the differences will be essential from now on, especially when choosing our fonts.

For the examples I'll take the Clip Studio Paint brand.

Let's start with the Logo. The logo is just text, it uses a font that will represent the entire brand. I'm sure we can think of several examples, such as Coca-Cola or Disney, but here is the logo used by Clip Studio Paint.

The Logotype, on the other hand, is just the icon of the brand. The image or drawing that represents the entity is not accompanied by any text or font. Examples include Apple or Instagram. This is the Logotype of Clip Studio Paint.

The logotype is a balanced (but still separable, either by indentation or other methods) mix of typography and icon. Examples of this are Meta or Amazon. The Clip Studio Paint logotype is the following.

Finally, the isologo is the inseparable mix of typography and icon. Examples include Harley-Davidson and Starbucks. And… That’s right! Clip Studio Paint doesn’t have an isologo, and since I don’t want to add images of other brands, I unfortunately won’t be able to give an example.

Font and Text Tools

Not all icons will need accompanying text, but personal brands like artists usually do to further consolidate their identity.

There are two paths here, the long way or the short way (I recommend the short way). You can create your font from scratch (which would entail an extensive design process) or you can reduce your work by looking for a free-to-use font. For the latter, I recommend using the DaFont website.

 

 

In the video I show you the method I use to include fonts in the text. Remember, it is important to use 100% free and freely usable fonts if you do not plan to pay for them. This is because you are designing a brand that will eventually have commercial use, and not paying for the rights to the font used can bring you legal problems.

Once you find the font, you must install it in the fonts available on your computer.

 

 

In this example I'm preparing a redesign for my own brand, I'll take the opportunity to show you how I do it since I'm modifying the text bubble so that it fits my vision. In my conceptual version, due to the proportion of the image, I adjusted the font direction vertically, in order to give more weight to an empty side of the image.

I recommend designing fonts only for projects like comics, where the font becomes more artistic. The most important thing about the chosen text font is that it is understandable and easy to identify.

Composition

In this section we will talk about composition. The individual elements of our icon (such as color, shape or typography) are part of a whole that we must harmonize as best as possible. Composition techniques will help us with this. Here are some techniques that you can use in Clip Studio Paint to achieve the desired effect in your brands.

Bleeding

Bleeding is the white space that exists between the elements of the logo (or in the entire logo in relation to its background) so that the integrity and understanding of the elements is respected.

In the logo I designed for the radio station, I used the bleed in an artistic way. It was not a complete bleed, but rather it merged with the elements to show more fluidity and integrity.

 

 

The bleed doesn't necessarily need to be white, it's the delimiting space between elements, but you can use the values and colors that best help blend the entire image.

 

There's a quick way to introduce an bleed using the layer border effect in Clip Studio Paint. Here's how to apply it:

Alignment

Alignment, in short, has a lot to do with symmetry. This is important to consider whether we are creating a typeface or an icon. The balance of a brand can cause rejection if the elements are not aligned correctly.

In my brand design I cannot use symmetrical elements, so I balance the weight of the image a bit by using the text to counterbalance the crow and finally I use the weight of the red background rectangle to make it more harmonious.

Even so, there is an excess of weight in the crow's beak that takes away harmony, although I like how it turned out.

Size

I recommend making the initial design of the icons large, covering enough pixels so that they can later be adapted to different sizes. However, we should not be satisfied with the icon being pleasing to the eye in its largest version and that's it. It should be easily identifiable, both the complete icon and all its component elements, both up close and from a distance. For example, if the logotype or imago has small elements in its icon that are difficult to differentiate in a small image, there is a risk that part of the message you wanted to convey will be lost.

I will take advantage of my own mistakes to show you an example of when an icon loses its legibility due to a bad choice of size.

Color/B&N

I'm not going to dive into all the color theory because that would require not only a separate tutorial, but an entire book. Instead, I'll focus on what color theory is as it applies to creating iconography.

I recommend not using more than 3 colors in your branding. This is one field where one color is totally acceptable, but more than 3 will overwhelm the image and make it heavy and annoying to look at. It's also preferable to use complementary colors.

It is also advisable to use the Black and White spectrum by removing all saturation from the image to see the weight of the image and to ensure that the image does not have too marked extremes in its value. The keyboard shortcut to modify saturation, hue and luminosity is Control+U.

Vectorization

The main function of vectorization in the creation of our brand is the adjustment of sizes and measurements. Your icon will probably be used in flyers, merchandise or presentations and, in each of them, its size will be adjusted again and again. The problem with non-vectorized icons is that they lose quality when they are enlarged, shrunk or their format is changed, and we will solve this with vectorization.

 

Before going into Clip Studio Paint's vectorization methods, I want to make some warnings. First, if you plan to vectorize, try to always use the same brush thickness (when vectorizing, Clip Studio offers a tolerance margin, but it is preferable that it is not too wide or you will lose quality). It is also advisable not to use many varieties of colors (although this is good for us, since we should not use many creating our brand).

 

Having said that, I will now comment on Clip Studio's vectorization methods.

 

First, we can work from the beginning with vectors by converting our Raster Layer into a Vector Layer.

We can leave our vector layer as a color layer, but we can also turn it into a gray layer if we want to work in black and white.

Here I recommend adjusting the Vector Settings.

This is why I recommended that you always work with the same width of the brush. As you can see, the vector has a correction margin, but the larger it is, the worse the quality will be, as I mentioned.

I recommend leaving a weak smoothing so that the surface of the lines is a little more pleasing to the eye.

This method allows us not only to work with vectors from the start, but also to vectorize all our work once it is finished. However, if the thickness of the brush and the maximum number of colors in the layer are not respected, it will give us an error and will not vectorize the work.

Still, if we still keep the design elements on separate layers, we can vectorize them layer by layer. I don't recommend doing this as the vectorized elements will lose harmony with each other in most cases. But yes, the simpler the element on a layer, the easier it is to vectorize it at the end of the process.

Finally, I show you another method that Clip Studio Paint offers us to vectorize our work. Once we have finished our work, we can export our layer and, if it has been vectorized as a layer previously, it will be adjusted to preserve the highest possible quality. The result is of very good quality.

We will export our layer as a .PNG file. Once we have chosen the folder, it will give us the PNG export parameters, where we can make the corresponding adjustments.

The interesting thing about this point is that the same program allows us to choose to keep the colors or export it in grayscale. I recommend saving both.

Using our Brand

We finally have our brand! Now, how can we use it in our work?

There are many methods and it depends entirely on what kind of product you plan to market. As I am an illustrator, I will give some examples of how I have used it in my work.

Once we have imported our brand PNG file, we can use the Scale/Rotate tool to place it where we like. We can also flip it in any direction.

We can use it as a watermark by adjusting the opacity of the layer.

And, for black and white work (e.g. manga), our grayscale branding comes into play!

Farewell

I hope this tutorial has helped you create your own brand icons, whether for artists or for other purposes. This tutorial is not intended to replace a career in illustration or industrial design for obvious reasons, but I hope it has made the work easier for those freelancers who are looking to forge their identity or do small jobs without having to dedicate many years of study to a career.

The truth is that our artist icon, like our own art, depends above all on our creativity, and this tutorial only aims to provide some tools in Clip Studio Paint to give life to your iconography just as we give it to our art. You will always bring the spirit and identity, as to your own art.

Thank you for choosing this tutorial.

I am MaKrow, if you liked my work please consider following me on my social networks. I send you my greetings and success in your paths as artists!