This is the 4th Logo Design Sketch post in The Sketchbook Secrets Series, my attempt to catalogue a number of my past logo sketches, this one is for Keyboard Kahuna.
→ Previously on: The Sketchbook Secrets Series
KeyboardKahuna is one of my older logo design projects, and one of the first I designed as a newly founded self-employed logo designer.
I’ve always liked this logo for KeyboardKahuna, just really sits right with me.
I still love that little Kahuna character!
Not all logo projects involved sketching, and when they do involve sketching, then they don’t always require countless pages.
In some instances I’ve only used one sheet of sketch paper to find the final logo design idea.
This was the case with KeyboardKahuna; one sheet of squared paper to be precise.
It certainly wasn’t planned to be just one sheet; that’s just how it happened.
I didn’t chose to use the squared paper by choice, but it turned out to be somewhat fortunate, as it helped lead me to the finished design.
When I started the brainstorming phase, I sort of had a good idea of what type of logo I wanted to explore; the name pretty much ties you into a pretty specific and narrow theme anyway.
I wanted to try and incorporate the 2 initials K’s, and also create some kind of Kahuna ‘character’, so melding these 2 ideas fortuitously lead to the Kahuna character used in the logo.
You can see on the sketch sheet a pretty quick journey from rough idea, to nearly final idea.
Once I sketched the last sketch, I then took that idea into Illustrator to further explore the shape, size etc:
The Logo Grid
Although the actual logo design looks relatively simple, I did still pay attention to spacing, alignment, and other aspects.
Pretty much every part of the logo is somehow related, or a fraction of something greater.
Possibly slightly OCD, but it’s also gratifying when you yourself know that there’s no loose ends; everything just fits.
Well, I say fits because this horizontal lock-up, did end up being a bit too long, so I also created a few alternative lockup’s.
About – The Sketchbook Secrets Series
I wanted to call this new collection of blog posts something relevant, at least to me.
For many years I have mostly kept my logo sketches close to me, and only shared the odd page of sketches when necessary, say for a Logo Case Study etc.
I have countless loose sheets of sketches, various sizes and forms of notebooks and sketchbooks, each containing many alternative logo ideas, concepts and lots of rubbish.
It’s only recently that I decided I would ‘share’ the stories of some of my logo design projects.
I say ‘some’ as not all logo projects involved sketching; some went straight into Illustrator, and ‘some’ because I’ve just mislaid various older notebooks and such, and such.
I feel that I’m sharing many unseen secrets, and there is also a sense of vulnerability with exposing ones logo design process, so I feel ‘The Sketchbook Secrets Series’ is quite apt.
They are past secrets; now some are being exposed.
→ Previous Sketch Posts: Squirrel Logo, PedalWorks Bike Shop Logo, and SuperblyCo Logo.