Next up... The Logo

"Using the existing Yo! Sushi logo you are required to apply elements of the city's 'brand" ethos.... Each brand extension of the logo for your chosen city, should include the name of the city or town.... The existing logo is to be used but with a new typeface for supporting elements that will allow consistency and uniformity across the company's signage, lettering and typographic style."
The brief.

This is the logo Yo! Sushi have at the moment..

Very simple, nice bright colours to see and an all round nice logo to have.

Anywho i have to create a Amsterdam styled logo, the logo must have something that can relate to Amsterdam and this is harder for me as i dont have a easy city e.g. London or New York and i dont ant to have any drug related images on the logo as the target audience is so wide some may not appriciate a cannabis leaf.
First thoughts were:
- Background is in the shape of a building
- There is a partition at the bottom and then a bridge
- The logo looks like a window
I got very frustrated with this logo idea as nothing really stood out but i thought i may aswell try and maybe it will come out better... I tried the first idea and this is what it looked like..

I did this and thought what the hell have i created, it looks nothing like a building and the gap looks terrible and the font doesnt go. I tried have 3 houses above but it still didnt work and so i scraped the 3 ideas above and start thinking about what is Amsterdam..
What is Amsterdam?
- Nightlife
- Creativity
- Ethinic
- Nature
- Water
- Boats
None of my thoughts made sense but i then had an idea for the font, i did a red light district neon vector in my mural and i thought i could do the "Amsterdam" in neon and so i carried on thinking "ok what about the rest" and then it hit me, why not all neon? The neon plays of the red light district and the moulin rouge lights but it also combines a Japanese taste to the logo as it will be neon and Japan is full of light based signs. In my head i had an image of a sign outside the Yo! Sushi bar which is actual neon and lit up.
I started looking at neon signs before i started so i could do a neon effect as i have never played with neon before..(source: http://abduzeedo.com/awesome-nostalgic-neon-signs)

My own tips for myself when looking at these so i can have a good neon look:
- The neon tube is lighter than the light produced
- Different syle of neon
   - Tube that can go all the way around the image
   - Tube that can only go in sections so there are gaps
- Some neon signs have a backboard with the lettering in solid colour normally white
- Neon is just the outline and not the fill

I looked at a few tutorials and different neon fonts..
Tutorials:
http://www.photoshopsupport.com/tutorials/cb/neon-sign.html (not what i wanted)
http://layersmagazine.com/night-lights-creating-a-glowing-neon-effect.html (Good but i felt i could do it another way)
Fonts:
http://www.fontspace.com/category/neon
They didnt really help me out much...

I thought to myself after looking at the tutorials and fonts that i have the capability to look at the images and recreate it by myself.
My first idea was the have a single strip of neon in each letter...

I liked the idea and the neon works really well but before i move on i had another idea of having an outline instead of doing the fill (sticking to my own rules).

This is my second idea, the idea is that the neon is a style where it cant go all the way round and has that neon look to it, it also goes round the outline..

I feel this is much better than my first idea and so im scraping idea 1. I have a few problems with this, the first being it looks very cartoon-y and not very neat but it does look like a neon sign however i was thinking about having a neon strip over each outline or letter in solid colour behind the neon but im afraid that it might take the focus away from the neon.


My third idea is to have neon that can go all the way round each outline, i also changed the shape to landscape and no orange outline..

This is much more like it and when put with the other two it puts them to shame, this looks professional, aesthetically pleasing and much brighter. I still have to add amsterdam into the logo but i have done the Yo! Sushi part and i really like the neon effect.

To get the neon effect on each idea i created the path in illustrator, brought it into photoshop where i added a colour overlay to the line, an outer glow and following the rules what i found out from my neon sign examples i was able to get the colours right.