With respect to creating or replicating text in logos, here are some ideas I have and how I go about things.
(1) In almost all cases, unless there’s a font in the editor that matches the text you’re working on exactly, always best to create your own text.
(2) Keep in mind how the completed work is going to be used … obviously if the logo/decal is going to be really small or in an inconspicuous place, you can get away with less accuracy and it won’t be noticeable.
(3) Also, depending on how the final work will be used, I have three different processes for creating text.
(a) If the text needs to stand alone, then you will need to take care to work closely with the edges to make sure they’re all aligned properly, use the same skew, etc.
(b) If the text or logo is going on a background that you can duplicate in the actual logo itself and the text or logo is more complicated, sometimes it’s much easier to recreate the background in the decal itself and then you have a lot more leeway to overlap layers of different shapes to create more complex designs.
(c) If the text will be a cutout or mask, I always create the actual text first as if it was a stand alone and then create the mask around it. To me, much easier to do it this way than to just try and create the mask by itself.
(4) I always work in white because it’s easier to see and use the gridlines in the editor. Color is usually added as the last step for me. Sometimes I will use a neon green or orange when working with multiple layers to be able to see the layers on top better.
(5) Another thing that I always use when recreating logos or text … I open an image of the logo in Photoshop and use that as a reference. The gridlines in Photoshop match the gridlines in the editor … so it’s very handy to get sizes, orientations, angles, etc. more accurate. The color picker in Photoshop also can be used to accurately match colors to the original logo.
(6) I actually only use a handful of the basic shapes in the editor to create text. Obviously, the square, circle and two triangles. The half-circle and quarter-circle and the ‘half-ring’ as i call it (bottom row of Primitives tab, third from right). Those are basically all the shapes I ever use to create any text,