For a Class Project I was required to reproduce a sports logo on illustrator. I chose a lacrosse team, the Calgary Roughnecks. I decided to do this logo because there where some elements on it that I wasn’t sure how to recreate efficiently. These where the lines on some of the blue parts of the mountain and the gradients on the letters and helmet.
First I traced the black background. I noticed that the net was not just made of white highlights, it had some transparent parts to it. Thats why I used a colored rectangle to show the contrast. So to make this look like a fluid set of strings I actually traced the strings not the holes. Then I created the holes using the shape builder tool to cut them out of the black background as you can see in the images below.
After that I went on and made some of the other shapes. Because the letters are in front of most of the elements, some of the shapes that are next to them had to be built in a way that made the border look like a smooth curved line. To make this happen I overlapped those shapes with an outline of the letters and cut them using the pathfinder tool. I repeated this for other parts of the logo such as the thumb. You can see what I mean in an image below.
Another problem I found was making the gradients of the letters. I wanted it to be a clean curved line so I made a big shape that covered the bottom part of the letters. Then I just had to figure out how to cut that shape so I would only be left with the parts needed. For this I made a copy of the outlines of the letters and set a thick stroke. Next I turned those strokes into shapes and used the inner part of what came out to cut the gradient shape using the pathfinder panel.
For the lines of the blue background I decided use the Blend Tool. I just positioned the top and the bottom lines and used the blend tool to fill in the rest of them. then I made copies of the blue parts that have those lines in them and made clipping masks with them to hide the segments of the line pattern I didn’t want showing up.
Here is the final logo, any feedback would be appreciated!
PorelBarranco 