Edit a logo
Revise artwork efficiently in Adobe Illustrator using professional methods and time-saving tips.
Published
Typekit is now Adobe Fonts.
1 Get set to edit
Picture this scenario — you’re handed a logo design created by someone else and asked to modify it. Brian Wood, Illustrator expert and instructor, shares his approach. Download the sample files and open Logo-art-START.ai, and then get ready to follow along.
In this tutorial series, you'll learn how to edit a logo in Adobe Illustrator CC, using a series of useful features, as well as some time saving tips, like creating artwork, editing artwork, like the logo you see here, actually poses its own challenges.
Maybe the text in the artwork was converted to shapes, so you can't easily edit it.
Or you need to make color changes to a lot of different objects at once.
Or maybe you want to create color versions of the artwork like the logo.
If you follow along with each video in the series, you'll explore some widely used methods and also some hidden gems for editing artwork you've created or even artwork you've inherited from someone else.
So, to get started, open the practice file you downloaded from the tutorial page, and with the document open, so you can see everything, choose "View", "Fit Artboard in Window".
And so, all the panels and the tools you need will be available, let's reset the workspace by choosing "Window", "Workspace", and if you see something else besides "Essentials" chosen, go ahead and choose that and then choose "Reset Essentials".
With the workspace looking the way we need it to, and all of the artworks showing, you are ready to begin editing the logo.
2 Edit the text
Find the exact font used in the original design from the vast library of high-quality typefaces from Adobe Typekit, or locate a similar font from Typekit or your computer.
The first thing you'll do to the logo is edit the text.
Now the text in this logo is actually being converted to outlines or paths using the Type, Create Outlines command.
So, you can't edit the text object as text.
With the Selection tool selected, click the Imagine text shapes and you'll see that it's actually a group of shapes.
So that you can edit this text, you will use a feature on the Typekit website to try and match the font.
That way you can sync the font to your machine and type the new text in the same font that was used here, at least a good approximation.
First, you need to save the text shapes as an image, so you can take it to the Typekit website.
So, before you start, choose View and make sure there's a checkmark next to Smartguides.
Those will make it so that you can be more precise when you draw and edit content as we go through these tutorials.
To select everything, choose Select, All.
Then to export the artwork, choose File, Export Selection...
In the dialog box that opens, you can choose PNG from the format menu over here and also choose 2x from the menu here to make it twice as big or twice the size.
That way, it will be easier for the Typekit website to figure out what font it is.
You can choose your desktop if you want to put it there.
Then click Export Asset to create a PNG.
Now, the image it creates will most likely be added to a folder Illustrator CC created, called 2x.
Now to open the Typekit website, back in Illustrator CC, choose Type, Add Fonts From Typekit...
Once the site opens in your default browser, you might see an area for visual search, if you don't, you can click this camera icon.
Navigate to the file you saved and click Open.
It's going to start thinking about it.
And on the next page, make sure all of the text is selected by dragging the handles if you need to here.
We need to make sure that this box is surrounding all the text.
Click Next step.
Make sure IMAGINE is what you see here in the text field because that's what it thinks it is.
If it's not, go and fix it, and then click Next step.
You should see a listing of fonts here that it's kind of guessing at to figure out what it is.
The font that was used was called Brothers OT Bold and if you scroll down, you'll probably see it right here.
Click Sync to sync it to your machine.
If you don't see Brothers OT Bold here, you can actually search for the font and sync it using the search field up here.
Back in Illustrator CC, you can close this Asset Export panel group if you want to.
Select the Type tool and click below the logo to add some placeholder text.
To change the formatting, in the Properties panel on the right, change the font size to make it larger and then the Color Fill if you want.
Now I'll choose a darker grey, so it kind of matches the logo, and then type IMAGO in capital letters.
Press Escape to select the Selection tool and the type object.
Click on the Font Family menu over here and you can just choose the Brothers OT Bold from the list.
You can also make it easier to find Typekit fonts by filtering to show only Typekit fonts here.
My font list might look different from yours and don't worry about that.
Click to apply Brothers OT Bold.
Now, because you're editing the logo, in this case, we want to try and find a little different font but one that is still similar to this original.
Click the Font Family menu again on the right if you need to, and to see fonts that are similar to the Brothers OT Bold, click Apply Similar Filter to see the fonts in your system and in the Typekit library that Illustrator CC considers to be similar to the original.
Now, you might want to turn off the Typekit filter, so you can see more fonts.
If you move the pointer over a few, you can see a live preview on the text.
You can choose another if you want but I'm going to stay with the original Brothers OT Bold.
To change the spacing between the letters, change the tracking in the Properties panel to a much larger value, like, I'll try 400 or something like that.
You can either type the value in or you can press the Shift key and click one of these arrows to make it jump by ten.
Finally, click the Center Align to align the text down here, that way it'll be easier to align it to the logo content.
With the Selection tool selected, select the Imagine text shapes and choose Object, Hide, Selection, since you won't be using them right now.
Then drag the text into the center of the logo and you should see smartguides help you vertically align it.
To save the file, you can choose File, Save.
From trying to find the closest font match to some outlined text to choosing a similar font, when you're creating and editing artwork, there really are a lot of great options available for editing text in your projects in Illustrator CC.
3 Modify shapes
It’s helpful to assess how the artwork was built so you can modify its components easily and accurately. Carefully select and edit areas without affecting the rest of the design, and work in a bare-bones mode that makes it easy to select parts with the handy Lasso tool. Gain greater control over shapes by editing individual anchor points.
Illustrator CC has a lot of tools and also various methods to choose from when you're looking to select and edit artwork.
In this video, you'll use a few of those tools and methods to select and edit the artwork in this logo.
Now, there are a few changes that need to be made to this logo.
The first change you'll make is editing the stroked path, this white area around the shape in the background.
So, select the Selection tool, now to isolate the shape or other content so you can make it easier to work with, double click the white path out here to enter Isolation Mode.
Notice that double clicking the path actually seemed to select the larger shape.
I'll explain that in just a second.
Double clicking a shape is like editing a group, but Isolation Mode isn't just for editing content in groups.
With the content isolated, this shape, it's brought to the front and you can't select anything else.
Everything else is dimmed.
So, making selections will be easier and you can focus on one object without accidentally selecting others.
With the shape selected, you can click in it if it's not selected, move the pointer over the i to the right of the Stroke in the Properties panel.
In the tooltip, you can see that there are multiple strokes applied to this one shape.
That's why clicking this white area selected the larger shape, it's actually a stroke of the shape, you'll see.
To edit all of the strokes in the shape, click more options here in the Properties panel to see the Appearance panel.
Now, when you're editing artwork, you may find that things aren't built the way you would expect, like this shape.
The white path is actually a second stroke applied to the shape.
The Appearance panel here actually shows what's applied to the selected artwork and it can be a great way to determine how the appearance of artwork was built.
Now, you'll change that white stroke.
So, click the white Stroke color at the top of the panel and change the color to a darker gray.
Then you can close the Appearance panel.
Now, if you need to reshape artwork, you'll usually select anchor points that make up shapes.
One way to select anchor points is using the Direct Selection tool.
With the Direct Selection tool, you can drag across parts of artwork or you can Shift click anchor points to select multiple.
In this case, we want to work faster and we need to make the background shape shorter without distorting the top curve you see here.
Now, to do that, you'll enter Outline mode and select anchor points with the Lasso tool.
So, choose View, Outline.
You can see that the appearance of the artwork is stripped down to one point black stroke with no fills.
This can make it easier to see what you're working with.
And it can be easier to make selections.
Select the Lasso tool in the Tools panel.
The Lasso tool is a great tool, because it allows you to draw around and select different anchor points.
In this case, you'll select just the top part and you'll exclude the rest of the shape from the selection.
So, drag around the points here and the points over here to select them all.
Release the mouse button, then press letter A to select the Direct Selection tool, that's just a quick keyboard shortcut.
Drag the path straight down.
When you see magenta smartguides showing, - it's a line with the original position- you can release your mouse.
Dragging the path is similar to dragging one of the anchor points.
Now, if you find that you missed an anchor point or you selected too many, you can also try again.
After selecting the Direct Selection tool, you could press the Shift key and drag across or click an anchor point to deselect it or add it to the selection.
To deselect the anchor points, choose Select, Deselect, and then choose View, GPU Preview as you see it here.
That way you go back to the normal viewing mode.
Press Escape to exit Isolation mode, or you can double click away from the shape.
Save the file by choosing File, Save.
In Illustrator CC, there are a lot of tools and methods for editing your artwork like I mentioned in the beginning.
Using the Appearance panel, Outline mode and the Lasso tool are just a few of those options.
As you progress through learning Illustrator CC, you can choose the methods and tools that suit your needs best.
4 Change appearances
Now you’ll fine-tune selections to make it easy to change colors in the artwork.
In Illustrator CC, editing the appearance of artwork can lead to some really amazing creativity.
In this video, you'll explore a few different methods for selecting and editing the appearance of this logo.
So, let's start by changing the color of different parts of the logo.
Select the Selection tool and click this white shape in the logo.
You need to change the color of all the white shapes to the same gray color, all those you see here.
But notice that it's part of a group of objects.
If you open the Layers panel on the right and click the Locate Object button, you can actually see that it's a series of nested groups.
In other words, these are groups that are grouped together.
You can select the shape you want in the Layers panel, if you can find it in the layer stock, but sometimes that proves difficult.
Or you can try another method.
Press Command + on Mac OS or Control + on Windows once or twice to zoom in.
Then press A to select the Direct Selection tool.
Click away from the logo artwork, so you deselect it.
Then click in the fill of the white shape, not on the edge, to select that object without selecting the group.
To switch back to the Selection tool, you can press the letter V and the shape should be selected.
Because this object was in a group, you could have also double clicked several times to edit the shape.
Unfortunately, double clicking would actually dim all the other artwork, so you couldn't select it.
Now, to select all the artwork with a white fill, in this case, so you can change the fill of all of them, you can select artwork based on appearance properties.
Choose Select, Same, and you can see a series of options for selecting artwork, that share appearance properties, like Stroke, Fill and there's a whole bunch of them in here.
Choose Fill Color to select all the artwork with the same white fill color.
Now with all the artwork selected, click the Fill color in the Properties panel over here, make sure you can see the Properties panel, and make sure that the swatches are showing.
You can see that the white color swatch is applied.
A gray color needs to be applied.
So, you'll actually create and save a gray color you make as a swatch.
To make a new color, click the New Swatch button here.
In the Swatch Options dialog box, you can change the name if you want.
I'll change it to Light gray.
Make sure that Global swatch is selected, and it should be by default, that way in the future, if you edit the swatch, all the artwork with the swatch applied, no matter if it's selected or not, will update.
With CMYK chosen for the Color Mode, change the black or K to 18.
Deselect this option, Add to my library since we don't need to add this color to a Creative Cloud Library right now.
Then click OK to create the color and apply it to all of the selected artwork.
Now if you spend some time making a selection and you think you may need to select the same artwork again later, you can actually save a selection.
So, let's make and save a selection from these eyes.
Press V to make sure the Selection tool is selected.
Then select the group here.
Zoom in just a little bit closer by pressing Command + on Mac, or Control + on Windows a few times.
To select the Direct Selection tool, press the letter A, then click away from the artwork to deselect it.
I actually had you select the artwork because when you zoom in using Command + on Mac, or Control + on Windows, it zooms into the selected artwork.
Now, click in the center of one of these smaller shapes first to select it.
You'll actually see the word Center show up.
Make sure you don't click the stroke, otherwise it won't select all of the anchor points.
Press the Shift key and click in the center of this other smaller shape over here to add it to the selection.
With the Shift key held down, continue clicking in the other eye shapes to select them as well.
When you're finished, you can release the Shift key.
Now with these shapes selected, choose Select, Save Selection...
Give the selection a name that makes sense to you, maybe something you can remember easily.
I'll name this selection Eyes.
Then click OK.
Saving a selection allows you to select and save objects or select anchor points and save those as well as a selection.
Now, let's try it out.
So, choose Select, Deselect, then we're going to reselect those eyes.
So, choose Select, Eyes and the eyes are selected again.
To make a simple change, press the Up-arrow key a few times to move those shapes up.
So, you can see the entire logo again, choose View, Fit Artboard in Window.
Making and saving selections in Illustrator CC can be a bit of an art form, but with a few essential techniques, you can save a ton of time and work that much faster in Illustrator CC.
5 Create a logo variation
With the logo looking the way you want, create a separate version to hand off to your client, or save it in an Adobe Creative Cloud Library to use in other Illustrator documents and in other Adobe apps.
With some edits made to the logo, we need to make a version of this logo in different colors.
Now, there are a lot of ways to set up your file and content to make multiple versions of something.
In this video, you'll make a copy of the artboard along with the logo, so you can export all logos you create as separate Illustrator CC files later if you need, maybe to place one in Adobe InDesign CC.
With the logo document open, choose View, Fit Artboard in Window so you can see the entire artboard.
With nothing selected and the Selection tool selected, click Edit Artboards over here in the Properties panel.
That will select the Artboard tool and you can edit the artboards.
Press Command - on Mac OS or Control - on Windows, a few times so you can zoom out far enough.
To make a copy of the artboard and the logo, press Option on Mac OS or Alt on Windows and drag the artboard to the right.
When it's aligned with the original, you should see a magenta smartguide.
If you see that, release the mouse button and then the key.
To fit the new artboard in the window, press Command 0 on Mac OS or Control 0 on Windows.
Now, if you want to make a version of this logo, maybe black and white or maybe a single Pantone color or PMS as they call them, you can recolor the logo artwork using the Recolor Artwork command, instead of editing all the colors separately.
For this example, you'll make this copy of the logo, one color.
Press V to select the Selection tool.
Then to select everything on this artboard, choose Select, All on Active Artboard.
Now with it selected, you can recolor all of it.
So, click the Recolor button in the Quick Actions part of the Properties panel so you can open up the Recolor Artwork dialog box.
In the dialog box, you can actually see all the colors from the selected artwork.
Click the Edit tab and you can see the colors found in the logo on a color wheel.
With the colors unlinked - you can see it here - drag one of the colors to change it.
If you link the colors by clicking here, you can edit all the colors together by dragging one.
Now, I'm realizing I really don't want to edit the colors this way, so to work with the original colors from the logo, click the Eyedropper up here, click the Assign tab and now you should be able to see all the colors found in the logo listed here.
To the right of each color is what the specific color can become.
This version of the logo needs to be one solid color with different - what are called - tints or shades of that one color.
We're going to use what's called a Pantone color.
So choose one from the Colors menu.
That's going to make all the logo artwork colors different shades of the one color you see here.
Now to be able to choose from a specific color library like Pantone, click the Color button down here and choose Color Books, PANTONE+ Solid Coated.
Of course, you can choose other libraries, but we're going to choose a Pantone color.
Now, if you edit the color that all the other colors are going to become, you'll be able to choose from the Pantone Solid Coated library of colors.
So double click the color box here to edit the color and open the Color Picker.
In the Color Picker, you should see the colors and the Pantone library.
If you don't, maybe you see this, you can click Color Swatches.
Now, to find a specific Pantone color, type 220 in this field, then click the color here.
Click OK to apply the Pantone color.
You can now see that all the colors in the logo listed here are now mapped to the single Pantone color or they'll become that single Pantone color.
The tint of each color becomes a tint or shade of the Pantone.
Click OK to change the colors.
Now, to save the logos so we can add them to other documents within Illustrator CC or other apps like InDesign CC or Photoshop CC, you can add them to a Creative Cloud Library.
In the Libraries panel on the right, make sure a library you want is chosen.
If you don't have a specific library you've created, you can simply use My Library.
With the Selection tool selected, Shift click the background shape to the deselect it, drag the logo group into the Libraries panel.
When you see a plus appear, go ahead and release.
The artwork is now saved in the library.
In another Illustrator CC file or an InDesign CC or Photoshop CC with the same library chosen, you can drag this artwork out and use it.
To save your file, choose File, Save.
In Illustrator CC, there are so many ways you can edit artwork using just some of the methods you've learned in this series will help you make your edits efficiently and even save you time in the long run.
So, go ahead and create another version of the logo using what you've learned.
And as always in Illustrator CC, be creative and keep learning.
Whether you created the design yourself or inherited it from someone else, you’ll be more efficient when you use these trusted techniques to select and modify artwork. Practice your skills — create other logo versions by changing the typeface, shapes, and colors.
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