News

December 14, 2012

With over 45,000 views on YouTube and Vimeo, we decided to offer our Typography Tutorial as a [FREE] Bundle collection. Included with the download are the full-size video, PDF tutorial, and ALL WORK-IN-PROGRESS FILES (!) (vector, bitmap, Illustrator, and jpeg formats). You can now follow along with the tutorial and dissect how this logo was created. For example, you can open the Illustrator logos, manipulate them, and see how the linework is layered and colored. This is a FREE bundle, so be sure to share this link with your friends. Read more>>

December 08, 2012

0 Comments

texture › TheVectorLab › tutorial › typography › video ›

Typography Tutorial

New Typography Tutorial coming soon. Here's a work-in-progress preview:

October 23, 2012

0 Comments

download › free › halloween ›

Halloween (FREE)

A new free download: Halloween. Get it here...

October 12, 2012

0 Comments

background › download › free › pattern ›

At Last... A New Free Download!

We had so many people requesting this background pattern that was used in our Waves 001 Collection that we decided to offer it for free! We have more great patterns here.

JPEG format - 2000 x 2000 pixels - High resolution available for instant download here...

October 07, 2012

0 Comments

adobe › border › brush › frame › illustrator › tutorial › video ›

Tutorial: Using the Brush Palette in Adobe Illustrator

Here's a quick video tutorial on how to use border elements from TheVectorLab along with the brush palette in Adobe Illustrator.

Links to the Borders Collections mentioned in this video:
Borders Bundle
Borders #01
Borders #02
Borders #03

October 03, 2012

0 Comments

font › lettering › logo › logotype › tutorial › typography › video ›

Font and Typography Resources

Tutorial: How to Create Custom Typography from TheVectorLab on Vimeo.

The above video is one of our most popular tutorial videos which shows how I made this logotype for TheVectorLab:

Typography and graphic design go hand in hand. I love both. One of my specialties is creating custom logotypes. Below are a few examples of work I did for some surf apparel companies.

To see more you can check out my Behance Portfolio.

From time to time I receive emails and questions about typography and fonts. Below is a response to some recent email questions about fonts and custom typography:

Traditional System Fonts:

I've never created a 'system font' that can be loaded for use as a normal font. Always wanted to... just haven't had the time yet. Here's what a friend of mine said when I asked him about font-making software:

"Classic tool is FontLab, but I would suggest Glyphs for newbies and on mac...its a nice interface, and seems more designer than fontlab..fontlab is dry and really crap interface, but it works! "

Here are the links:

FontLab

Glyphs

How to Locate Unknown Fonts:

Also if you are looking to find out the name of a specific font and you have a clean JPEG of it, you can try: http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

Which might be able to figure out what font you are looking at.

Free Fonts:

I think the best resource for free fonts is http://www.dafont.com/

With free fonts, there are a few gems but you usually get what you pay for. So be prepared to do a little tweaking of the letter shapes and spacing if you are using them to make logotypes. Why would you want to leave them as-is anyway? Convert your type to outlines in Adobe Illustrator and start messing with the paths to make your own UNIQUE and CUSTOM design.

Making Fonts vs. Custom Logotypes:

The type I make is usually for logos and t-shirts, etc. So it's just custom lettering... which may not fit well with letter spacing if you were to try and make a system font out of if. And to get good at that is basically just practice + noticing how shapes of lettering work together. I have a Pinterest page with some good typography reference that I found on the web. You can check that out here: http://pinterest.com/thevectorlab/typography/

I am planning some new typography tutorial videos soon, so you can find out when those come out by subscribing to TheVectorLab newsletter:

http://thevectorlab.com/pages/newsletter

-or subscribing to my YouTube or Vimeo channels:

http://www.youtube.com/thevectorlab

https://vimeo.com/user5659115

Hope that helps!

~Ray Dombroski