If you go to Urban Dictionary, you’ll see a kittyloaf described in two main ways. A loaf of bread with a cat’s head attached to it, and the way a cat lies down with all four legs tucked under the body, so it looks like a loaf of bread with only a head and tail.

When I had the idea for the Kittyloaf logo, I knew what I didn’t want to create, but wasn’t positive on what I did want. Originally I had wanted to use a loaf of bread type shape for the wording, but after trying a few quick versions of it I decided it wasn’t what I really wanted. Creating a logo can be hit or miss sometimes, and this was no exception. Finally I settled for choosing a somewhat “blocky”, thick font and then squishing it together a little. Then I found a photo of a cat walking in silhouette and traced the outline of it in Illustrator. Separating the head of the cat and the tail, I put one at each end of the lettering.  I initially wanted the cat to be facing the right, since we read from left to right, the logo is the first thing I want people to see, and because I wanted it to be facing inwards towards the content of the page. Unfortunately that wasn’t possible because of the shape of the letters- namely the letter “F”.

I then converted the type to outlines, and used the scissors tool to cut away the portions of the letters K and F where the cat’s body parts would be attached. After lining them up, I used the direct selection tool to select the end points of the letter and the cat body part and joined them. Four joins later, and I had the head and tail attached. Then I took the text tool up again, and added the word “DESIGNS” underneath. After adjusting the letter spacing outwards, the word fit nicely underneath the cat. It still wasn’t quite right, so I added the thin black line that runs between them, which tied the two pieces together nicely.

I thought about just using a solid fill on the entire design, but it made it look too heavy. I played with only filling the first and last letters, but it looked unbalanced. Finally, I tried the multi-colored, patterned fill that I ended up using, and was almost happy with the results. Thickening the stroke around the KITTYLOAF design, it emboldened it and made it more substantial without it becoming overpowering. A matching stroke was added to the DESIGNS portion, only this time in a deep red matching the fill.

I saved the file, closed it, and came back to it a few hours later. It still looked perfect to me, and I knew my job was done.

Sometimes it takes less work to create a perfect logo, and sometimes it takes more, but either way, when the end result is right, you just know.