Pen tool
The pen tool when first using can seem very complicated. Once mastering the pen tool, you can almost take on anything the adobe illustrator has to offer. As we all know logos can be full of different elements varying from different symbols and shapes. The pen tool can be great for creating shapes. Also, the pen tool can be great when tracing hand-drawn pictures from a piece of paper. Many designers like to draw ideas onto a piece of paper which then gets transferred into illustrator and traced using the pen tool. It’s very effective when drawing straight curved and pointed lines. The Nike logo is the perfect example of a pen tool being used.
The pathfinder tools
One of my favourite tools, the pathfinder can take logo designs to a new level. The pathfinder tool relies on two shapes intersecting each other at different points. Pathfinders have many different options including Add, subtract, intersect and exclude. The add merges the two intersecting together whereas the subtract will remove the shape that is placed above the other shape. The intersect one allows all parts of the shapes that don’t lie upon each other to be deleted from the overall shape. Exclude is essentially the opposite to intersect. The Starbucks logo probably makes use of the pathfinder tool.
Brush types
When drawing lines using the pen tool you can have the ability to change the brush strokes. These brush strokes can come in different shapes for different uses. A great example of a logo using a brush stroke is amazon. The amazon arrow is most definitely used by brush strokes as the line goes from thin to thick back to thin again. Brush strokes can be a great way to add a bit of character to a logo design.
Gradient tool
Obviously when creating a logo colours a very much important and adding gradients can be a great way to create an eye-catching logo. It can be a great way to add effects to a logo. A great example of a logo using a gradient is the new Instagram logo. Gradients have to be used in the right way though as some gradients can make a logo look old fashioned. When implemented correctly a gradient can look very nice and modern on a logo.
Type and character tool
The type tool is obviously very important when creating text for your logo. It can also be used to type along a path in order to curve text around a logo if necessary. Some logos nowadays consist of only text and so these two tools come handy when creating them. The character tool allows you to manipulate certain parts of the text such as the spacing between the letters.
Layers panel
This doesn’t directly affect your artwork or benefit the end result in any way. However, it becomes highly beneficial when organising different parts of your logo and in the long run causes less confusion especially if it has more layers than most. You could probably get away with it on more simple logos.