designing logo with handwritten look

[jelloshotsrule]

i'm designing a logo for my company and my hope is to get a handwritten look for the company name (the mascot is going to "write it" out ideally). i like the way it looks when i write it out with pen and paper, but when i try to use a wacom tablet, i can't get anything to look good... admittedly, i'm a novice with the tablet, but i don't see it getting to where i want it, even with practice.

my question is, what have people found is the best way to achieve that hand written look.. are there fonts that you'd recommend? or some other way to stylize the text?

any help would be awesome. thanks!

 

[killuminati]

I'm no design expert but you could try hand drawing it, and then scanning it in.

 

[Lau]

Agreed about the hand drawing and scanning in. Do you have Illustrator or a similar program? You could then trace over it with the pen tool and it would be a vector.

 

[jelloshotsrule]

funny enough, i made a film a few years ago where i went for the handwritten thing (i animated the writing and then whiting out...) and for that i scanned and used that. probably the best way to go, again.

thanks team!

 

[killuminati]

Another easy way of doing it rather than drawing over the scanned image is to use flashes convert to bitmap thing. Really really easy and it does a great job. It just converts it into a vector image.

 

[jelloshotsrule]

Another easy way of doing it rather than drawing over the scanned image is to use flashes convert to bitmap thing. Really really easy and it does a great job. It just converts it into a vector image.

first you say bitmap then you say vector. aren't those somewhat opposite? hah. i assume you mean vector though. i will see what i can cook up. thanks again!

 

[beatsme]

first you say bitmap then you say vector. aren't those somewhat opposite? hah. i assume you mean vector though. i will see what i can cook up. thanks again!

after you scan, you could take it into Photoshop, make a path out of the thing, and then "Convert Paths to Illustrator"

that'd give you something to start with, though typically you have to do a lot of clean-up (delete extraneous points, etc.)...might be worth a shot

 

[jelloshotsrule]

cool. i'll see what i can do. the other benefit of having it be a vector in illustrator is that it will make it easier to do a reveal animation (as though it's being written) in after effects.

you cats rock!

 

[zero2dash]

You can also scan it if it's hard copy (or import the raster image), dump it into Illustrator CS2 and use Live Trace.

I <3 Live Trace

 

[chrismccorkle]

Scan and Live Trace! Yes! Converts raster into 2 bit vector (with a threshold)

Very very beautiful thing.