4), either. If your symbol or logo needs two colors, draw all vectors for one color as one "letter" (e.g. A), then all vectors for the other color as another "letter" (e.g. B), and make the second one zero-width — this way, the vectors will overlay perfectly when you type "AB", and you can still colorize each of them separately. If you put a symbol into a font and assign it to a character, and then use it — the result is text. Most design apps let you apply special effects to text, shadows, gradients and so on, so you're still very free to stylize the final design as you want.
Next time you need a special label, a funky-looking headline, a fancy title, or a hard-hit ting logo think about making a font of it. You could save yourself a lot of time.
For more information, please visit: www.fontlab.com