Here it is!

 

 

 

 

 

 

My first draft was almost exactly what I wanted, but it needed a few tweaks.

The first piece of the logo that I created was the film strips.  It is composed of many rectangles that I aligned with the help of the ruler tool.  I duplicated the first film strip by using “Option + Drag,” and then it was time to create the letters.

The letters are “TKR,” and they stand for “Tyler Kee Reviews.”  That is the theme of my blog, so I found the acronym fitting.  Making the letters was very difficult for me because I didn’t want to simply use Illustrator’s text tool and pick a font.  I wanted to make my own letters with the shape tools, so that is what I did.  The “T” was the easiest.  I just made two connecting rectangles to form a “T.”  The “K” was more difficult.  First, I made a vertical rectangle for the leftmost side of the “K.”  Then, I used the line tool with black fill and stroke to draw two lines for each leg, and closed the two lines at the tip with a rectangle.  Lastly, I filled the the legs in with the brush tool.  The “R” was the most challenging of all.  Of course, I started with the vertical rectangle on the leftmost side of the “R,” and proceeded to the hard part (for me).  I had to use the pen tool to create the arc of the “R,” and this took several attempts.  It took a lot of painting to satisfy spots that needed to be smoothed out or filled.  Then, just like the legs of the “K,” I used the line and rectangle tool to make the leg of the “R.”  The midsection where the leg sprouts off of required a lot of work to create that shape, but it worked out in the end.

One of my group members suggested that I filled the unused space in the “R” with a fast forward symbol, and I loved that idea!  I simply created two triangles and positioned them together inside of the “R,”  and I think that it adds some detail that the logo was missing.

Originally, the logo itself was too small in relation to the background, so I transferred it to a 500×500 pixel artboard and placed a blue circle behind it.  I like the look of a circular logo instead of a rectangle one, so I stuck with it.

I am very happy with this logo.  It is quite simple, but a logo for a movie review blog doesn’t need to be very complicated.  It should look professional and memorable, and I think that I achieved that look.