Business Card and Logo Process

 So I have finished my logo and business card designs :) Shall I share the process? I THINK SO.

Step 1) Sketching: This is where I started off. I was trying to incorporate different things into my logo design. The tape holding the J and M together were for editing, the three ovals represented that I am the "third" (I like to sign my artwork as JLMIII). The hook on the J was supposed to represent the hook of a story. I decided to go with just the hook because this is obviously too ridiculous haha

Step 2) Trying to learn Illustrator: I grabbed a couple of ad/graph friends and got taught the basics of Adobe Illustrator. I started messing with the J and hook shapes and lineweight. However, these are awful.

Step 3) Actual Hooks: I started getting reference of actual fishing hooks and going from there, mixing and mashing different aspects that I liked and then warping the heck out of them to get the exact shapes that I wanted. This led to these scrappy sketches. I ended up going with the 2nd design - fishing line and all.

Step 4) Getting the Cards in Order: I opened up Illustrator and started going at it. Eventually I came up with this silly dummy that had random words like "Bangarang" where I wanted information to go and was editing as needed. I knew what colors I wanted so I played with them. I also played with the layout of information.

Step 5) Final Designing: After getting magnificent critique from my ad/graph friends, this is what the final design came out looking like, complete with catchphrase. WOO!

Step 6) Conforming: The printing company I'm going to be ordering from has a specific template for their business cards (as do most places). This was me taking my final design and just resizing it to their template. You can see how it slimmed out a little :)

Here you can see the template with the safety and bleed lines.