A client I regularly deal with at Brevard Vision Care had a coworker who wanted a custom logo designed for their car shop. I was given very little direction other than to not include a car or a wrench. She wanted something different from the many small shops around town. The end product for this design is going to be white on a black shirt unless I came up with something awesome in color.

Brain storming for a bit I decided to go with a speedometer racing type theme. Again, not much to go on other than their company name of FTA, Finishing Touch Automotive. The title doesn’t lean specifically to what they do, does it?

This project was worked entirely in Illustrator CC.

First, a selection of complementary fonts is critical, and I chose Futura Extrabold Italic and Alien Encounter (I believe that was the name). They work well together and together have that sporty car feel. Then, the leaning speed dial was created from an ellipse that was adjusted to how I thought looked good with the shape tool and skew, copied, overlapped, adding lines to create the gap before the red on the gauge, and then filled with the paint tool.

I threw in a quick color version just as an option. They could still do white and red on a black shirt, it’s always the issue of cost though.

The finish line underscore worked nicely for a the small logo and was useful for creating options for the t-shirt back as well.

How would you have tackled a blank slate for tackling a automotive logo?