Crafting a Logo for Tammy and Sam’s RV Adventure Home: CoconutRVAdventures.com
This summer, my girlfriend Tammy and I will embark on an adventure as remote workers and vloggers, navigating the open road while documenting our experiences as a digital marketer and a traveling nurse. Our home on wheels, a Class C Jayco GreyHawk affectionately named Coconut, inspired the idea to build a website, project to create a logo for the RV and website, CoconutRVAdventures.com. The logo needed to capture the spirit of our upcoming journey.
As the designer, I was tasked with bringing this vision to life and decided to embrace the challenge of integrating AI into the design process. Here’s my step-by-step guide, blending hand-drawn sketches with the power of Adobe Firefly, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Express to create a logo that captures the essence of our RV lifestyle and invites others to join our journey.
Step 1: Sketching Ideas with Procreate
Being your own client is never easy. I started by sketching logo ideas in Procreate, visualizing the core elements Tammy and I envisioned: RV imagery, tropical beach themes, mountains, camping, and symbols of freedom and travel. Integrating AI into the project brought both excitement and uncertainty. I wanted to ensure the design felt authentically mine, despite concerns about plagiarism and doubts about the final outcome. This sketching process served as the blueprint for the digital work.
There were additional iterations, but I won’t go into much detail on those sketches as I’ve posted about this process before. Essentially, I start with the first design that stands out. In Procreate, I recorded the process of rough sketching. Back in art school in the early ’90s, this involved using sheets of paper and markers. Procreate allows me to work much faster with no pencils and direct erase.
For more on my digital drawings and to view a gallery of sketches, check out the article on my personal site. I hope you enjoy it!
Step 2: Importing to Firefly
After importing the sketch into Adobe Firefly, using it as a reference for the logo’s structure, I crafted a prompt that I believed would return a cleaner version of my drawing. This was not entirely the case. Though I did get pieces of things I really liked. I was also impressed at how the generation was able to mimic my drawing style. However, back to the prompt.
The first prompt and results looked like this:
“create a logo that includes a Class C RV Jayco GreyHawk sitting on a scee that is placedinside and spilling out of a coconut half shell. Looking like it is done in marker the main colours will be teal and purple”
Additionally, I set the style to “digital art” and the structure with the image reference to “graphic design”. I then clicked the AI’s generation process. This involved refining the prompts over a few attempts to see if I could get a result that aligned with my vision. It was essential to maintain the integrity of my original concept while leveraging AI to enhance and expedite the creative process.
Step 3: Refining Prompts with ChatGPT
To enhance the prompts used in Firefly, of course I turned to ChatGPT to refine the instructions. This included describing the specific RV model, emphasizing the use of a vibrant color palette with teal blues and rich purples, and incorporating tropical elements.
Here is the revised prompt and the results
“Generate a logo featuring a Class C RV, Jayco GreyHawk, nestled within a scenic backdrop emerging from a halved coconut shell. The style should resemble marker art, with predominant colors of teal and purple.”
This step helped ensure that the generated logos closely matched the vision for CoconutRVAdventures.com and allowed for greater precision and creativity in the design process.
It took a few tries with different but fairly similar prompts. The changes were nuanced, like specifying a Ford 450 front grill or the exact model of the RV. Sometimes, I would get a new image and swap out the style to match one of the generated images.
I was making progress, though not quite there yet. After refining the prompt one final time, I finally got the design I wanted. With that in hand, I moved on to the next stage: taking it into Adobe Express to play around with text and other elements.
“Generate a logo featuring a coconut half shell containing a beach break wave with a sunset in the background. Include mountains behind the sunset and a palm tree. Make a Class C RV the central focal point within the design”
Step 4: Refining in Photoshop and Express
After generating the logo in Firefly, I imported it into Adobe Photoshop for further refinement. This involved cleaning up the design, removing unnecessary backgrounds, and using the generative fill feature combined with more of my pencil work, I was able to enhance and create different elements like the sunset circle in the background. Additionally I was not happy with the RV pictured above. Unfortunately I was not able to screen capture the photoshop work however when I was done I had the following iteration. I was getting so much closer.
The refined logo was then pulled into Adobe Express to work on the typography, experimenting with different fonts until the perfect match was found that complemented the visual elements of the logo.
Step 5: Exporting the Final Logo
Once satisfied with the design, I exported the final logo in high-resolution formats suitable for both web and print. This ensured that CoconutRVAdventures.com had a distinctive and polished logo that effectively represented Tammy and Sam’s adventurous lifestyle.
Conclusion
Creating a distinctive logo for CoconutRVAdventures.com using a combination of hand-drawn sketches and advanced AI tools was an exciting journey. If you have thoughts on using AI to generate logos from sketches or opinions on Tammy and Sami’s new logo, let’s start a conversation. Share your insights and let us know what you think about the final design!