Typekit is now Adobe Fonts.

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. 

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.

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.

Now you’ll fine-tune selections to make it easy to change colors in the artwork.

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.

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.