Need logo design help

[alexkuzn]

I am about to order stencils.
Can you give me any tips if any about logo stencils. Is some type of font better than others for etching? Like bold vs. plain?
About logo itself... It'll be just plain text.
My name is Alex Kuznetsov and I wonder if my last name might be too hard for english speaking people and I should leave just my first name and city.
Like this:

Alex
San Francisco

or

Alex Kuznetsov
San Francisco

[Andrew Garrett]

Your last name is interesting and just like other often mispronouned brand names such as: Nike, Porche, Citroen, Bombardier, and Koch, yours will be remembered by those who take notice of your work.

You may even want to use "Alexander". It has a clean sound when it rolls off the tounge which is synonymous with inovation and precision. No compound consant sounds.

Just my two bits.

[mknife]

Hi Alex there aren't problems for your logo. I think that if you want you can put your last name and city. Realize your logo as you like it more. Who make Stencils on the basis of the final measures tell you if the Stencil can do or not.

[LaughAtDo0m]

Originally Posted by alexkuzn

Like this:

Alex
San Francisco

or

Alex Kuznetsov
San Francisco

Personally, I think if it just says "Alex" people will not ever distinguish it from a knife that another "alex" they know could have made. If you just have

Kuznetsov
San Francisco

then your brand will be more memorable and your knives will look much more unique. That and I would try to say the name in an accent every time I pulled the knife out . Just my two cents.

[Chris Meyer]

If it's worth marking, I think it should have at least your last name on it. Otherwise, 100 years from now people will only be able to say "This cool knife was made by 'Alex' somebody or other." With your name and city on it they'll be able to call you up an order another knife!

Personally, I like the name in an arch over the location. Something like these;

[alexkuzn]

Chris,

what did you use to draw these logos?


Alex

[Chris Meyer]

I used Microsoft Publisher 2003. I'm sure there are better programs for it. I have the Adobe CS2 suite, but I don't know how to use most of the programs. I tried Illustrator first, but found it confusing. I've used Publisher in the past, so that's what I went back to. Does anyone know which current Adobe product would be the proper one to use for a task like this?

[Drunkenduck]

Alex, I would deffinantly go with using your last name. When I get enough money together to replace the graphics program that I have that won't run on XL I'm going to have some stencils made and use my first and last names. I thought about just using my initials but their are probably thousands of "DML's" in the world.

Doug Lester

[Chris Meyer]

Alex, I only used the WordArt feature in Publisher to make those logos, so you could probably do the same thing in Microsoft Word (which also has WordArt). Publisher allowed me to save the logos as .jpg files. I don't know if Word gives you that option but you should be able to find out easily enough.

[hammerdownnow]

Maybe stylized initials.

[Andrew Garrett]

Ooo!Ooo! Then your 47th design could be.... drumroll please!!

And AK-47!!!!!!!

That would interesting for a guy with a Russian name!

[clw3]

Originally Posted by Chris Meyer

Does anyone know which current Adobe product would be the proper one to use for a task like this?

Adobe Illustrator is the perfect application for this kind of work. It allows you to work with vector art rather than pixels to display your image. Vector art does not rely on resolution to render an image. It uses points and vectors which allows you to scale artwork infinitely without getting those little jaggies you see on stuff that is made of pixels. A logo designed with a vector program can be scaled down to the tiniest mark for a knife blade or scaled up to a billboard size and still be crisp and sharp all the while taking up very small space on your computer.
I use Illustrator to render all my knife designs before creating line art templates to apply to my steel before cutting. I can place my holes and try variations easily without wasting materials. I also designed my logo in Illustrator and used it to decide where and what size it looked best on my knives. I have attached an example of one of my sketches. I had to convert it to pixels to post it but I hope you can get the idea.

I hope this info helps.

BTW: Alex- I'm just using my last name as my mark and I'm pretty happy with it so far. Good Luck!