Areas to focus on when designing signatures
1. Choice of render or stock
2. Flow
3. Blending
4. Lighting
5. Colour choice (complimentary or contrast)
6. Depth of field
7. Effects
Choice of render or stock
Choosing the render or stock is the most difficult part of the design.
You need to choose a render that has action but doesn’t take up all the room and has flow and good colour.
The render is usually the focal, which, is the part of the signature that the eye is drawn towards.
Flow
Flow is the movement of your eye from the focal to other parts of the signature.
This can be achieved by using filters such as the liquefy tool, lighting, C4Ds and other effects.
Blending
Is important as the focal needs to be part of the background and not sat on top of it.
This can be achieved by the following methods.
a. feathering the edges of the render
b. Smudging and soft edge erasing.
c. Clipping masks
d. Colour (photo filters etc)
e. filters such as ripple, liquefy, spatter
Lighting
All things cast shadows and have light patches where the light hits them so you can see which way the light is shining.
Light can be added to the signature by using a soft white brush or the Photoshop lighting effects (spotlight, omni etc)
Lighting effects should be carried out before adding effects or colour filters.
Colour Choice
A signature tends to look better if the background and focal compliment each other. You could start off by choosing colours from your render or match/contrast from a colour wheel.
Depth of Field
Depth of field is trying to make a 2D signature look 3D and can be done by the following methods.
a. Brighten and sharpen the focal whilst blurring the background.
b. Using a black and transparent gradient or burning round the edges to make the background look further away.
that is, the focal should be sharp and the background soft.
Effects
A signature without effects can look plain and boring and a signature with too many effects can look overfull and too busy.
Effects are as follows
a. smudging
b. C4Ds
c. Clipping masks
d. Filters
e. Lighting
f. brushes
signature tutorials
signature tutorials on Google
comments and additions are welcome
