For my logo draft, I created a logo for my intramural sports team. For inspiration, I searched for other intramural team logos on google and I also looked at designs people made for video games. NBA 2k and MLB The Show allow you to make custom logos to use in their games, and I saw some cool designs on those games that inspired the logo that I came up with. I knew that I wanted to name the team the pylons just because I think the name would be funny, so I had to find a picture of a pylon that I liked. Finding the picture was pretty tough, especially one that could be licensed for free, but eventually I was able to find one and I put it in photoshop and made a cutout of it using the magnetic lasso tool. I used the eraser tool to clean up the bottom of the pylon and make it look a little nicer. After that I saved it as a .tiff. From there I put the cutout into illustrator and I put the text around the pylon. I made the font for the bottom text around 200 points and the top text around 180 points. I made the text fill something close to anthracite and the border crimson. I figured since it is a logo for an intramural sports team, Cougar colors would look good as part of the logo. I made the border for the text 4 points to bring out the crimson a little bit more. I also warped the text so that it would wrap around the cutout of the pylon. I also made sure to choose a font that I liked , something that would stand out. I also made the font demi-bold italic, and I liked the way that it made the font look, so I kept it. For my final draft, I beveled the text just slightly to give the text and the logo a little bit more depth. I spent a considerable amount of time just playing with the angles to make sure I found the right look for the text. I also made sure to center the pylon in the middle of my logo, and I rotated it a little so it stood straight up. That was the number one thing I got for my peer feedback so I made sure to fix that for my final product. 

Here is the logo I created in the first tutorial.

This is the pencil I made in the second tutorial.

The banner I made in the third tutorial.

The lettering I made in the fourth tutorial.

The logo I made for the final tutorial. Go Cougs.

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde.

This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.