Logo Design Tips and Tricks

[Faroo6]

I figured that since there are a few of us around we could share some tips and tricks with each other as well as have this be a thread newcomers looking to make their own logos could reference.

Photoshop

-Create Actions: This works very well when you are doing things over and over.
- For my Ring Logo Template I have an action that Creates a New Layer, The Ring Selection, Fills the Ring and switches my Paint Swatches. I was trying to get it to stroke the ring but it won't just use the foreground color. So I have to Stroke and Deselect. Not a big deal. I have the action on the F3 key, so all I have to do is decided on my primary and secondary colors, F3, stroke, deselect.

- I believe this may be the most important action you can create. I call it Replace True Black. First it merges all the visible layers. Then it goes to the Replace Color and swaps out all instances of 0,0,0 with something like 20,20,20. To the eye it looks black still but it won't show up in OOTP as transparent. After this I save it as a .jpg and then use the history to undo the merging of the layers. I have this assigned to F2. It makes life a lot easier to just hit a key when you are done creating the logo and not have to worry about the black.

- Save Selections. I do this because I've notice that after a while of just filling a particular color area the edges start to get fuzzy. I have my Ring saved as a selection that I fill on a new layer for each logo I make. I've found it keeps the edges nice and crisp.

- Try to save every piece of art for the logo in a seperate layer inside the same file. I know the file will get large, in which case start a new one and just transfer your template layers over. If you ever need the old artwork you can always drag it in as a new layer. I know I've made a few logos that I just flattened and saved as .jpg's with out saving the .psd file. Sure enough someone will like the logo and ask for a small modification that takes much longer than it should because you have to edit a .jpg instead of a quick layer edit.

[Faroo6]

Seriously, no one else has anything to add? Maybe we could take questions in here and kinda make this a logo FAQ.

[f.montoya]

You know, I've only been making logos for 3 months or so but I just thought that to go along with this thread, maybe we graphics individuals could throw out some pre-made templates without text and some pre-made mascots. This would help even the beginner, without expensive programs like Photoshop or Paintshop Pro, to be able to combine or copy and paste elements together in a simple program, even Paint or Photo Express and the like.

Templates could come in three parts(or the layers):

1. The background
2. The base design elements(rings or squares or whatever) in several colors with transparent backgrounds
3. mascot or themed images with transparent backgrounds

Just a wild thought.

[reds1]

Faroo6, if I wanted to create some logos, would Adobe® Photoshop® CS2 software be the program of choice? I have visited the photoshop site and was wondering if the standard program is fine or if Adobe Creative Suite 2 Standard is the better choice.

My use would be simply logos and other recreational things,nothing serious - at first anyway.

Is the program quite daunting to learn or is it fairly staightforward?

What you logos wizards do looks like ALOT of fun!

[f.montoya]

Since I'm still online, I'll take a stab at this.

Any version of Adobe Photoshop will do wonders for logo making. As far as being "daunting", I wouldn't say that, but the learning curve could be such that you may want to take a whole weekend to read the manual and play with it as the interface is quite detailed.

Paintshop Pro is another pricy but good piece of software for logo making as well. While similar to photoshop, Paintshop, as the name implies, is very well suited to painting and the "artist" in you.

I use both for ease of certain processes but either or would be an excellent choice.

[Faroo6]

Anyone not looking to drop coin on Photoshop should look at GIMP.

http://www.gimp.org/

It's a free program and actually has some of the powers of Photoshop, most importantly layers. I recommend it to those just starting out. I've got a copy myself and have been playing around with it. It is different in the interface from Photoshop but if you've never used either then it shouldn't be that hard to learn.

[Eugene Church]

Originally Posted by Faroo6

Anyone not looking to drop coin on Photoshop should look at GIMP.

http://www.gimp.org/

It's a free program and actually has some of the powers of Photoshop, most importantly layers. I recommend it to those just starting out. I've got a copy myself and have been playing around with it. It is different in the interface from Photoshop but if you've never used either then it shouldn't be that hard to learn.

Once I get my website finished...actually when F. Montoya finishes it...he is an excellent webdesigner...and I complete an OOTPB project, then I think I will try to learn to do logos.

Faroo6, thanks for telling about the GIMP software. I will probably start with that.

[jdew]

Would anyone be interested in my going through what I do to make a logo... in a step-by-step fashion... ? Would that be helpful to anyone?

[Faroo6]

Originally Posted by jdew

Would anyone be interested in my going through what I do to make a logo... in a step-by-step fashion... ? Would that be helpful to anyone?

Throw it in here. I figure this should be a thread worthy of a sticky. Any and all info we can provide should be in here. Then maybe I or one of us could sort through and make an actual FAQ + Walkthrough. I think it would be cool to show a step by step from as many of us as possible since we all have different styles. That would allow people to choose what they like when they branch off into doing their own if they wish.

[reds1]

Originally Posted by Faroo6

Anyone not looking to drop coin on Photoshop should look at GIMP.

http://www.gimp.org/

It's a free program and actually has some of the powers of Photoshop, most importantly layers. I recommend it to those just starting out. I've got a copy myself and have been playing around with it. It is different in the interface from Photoshop but if you've never used either then it shouldn't be that hard to learn.

I downloaded GIMP this evening, so I'm going to spend some time this weekend playing with it and experiment.

[jdew]

Originally Posted by Faroo6

Throw it in here.

I'll start with an easy one.

[jdew]

Example 1 - Key West Parrotheads

I wanted a logo that somehow conveyed the Jimmy Buffet thing.... (goes with Key West and Parrotheads, right?) so I'm thinking in terms of parrots and margaritas. I'm thinking a parrot perched on a margarita. For Key West I want the color green used too. The first step is to find some usable images. My source is a Google image search for "parrot" and "margarita". Eventually I found some I liked.

The margarita was isolated but the parrot was not so I had to carefully trace around the parrot and cut it out of the base image. I then set the background colors of both images to the color I use for transparent (EX1 and EX2) since I will be combining the images (I want the parrot perched on the glass). Since the parrot came from a non-single color background I had to use the paintbrush and pixel by pixel recolor some of the edges around the parrot. At this point I'll use the color replacer tool to change all 0,0,0 black to another black (anything other than 0,0,0 will do) in both images.

Next step is to place the margarita on a 300x300 image. If the full image background is something other than white, I'll flood fill it before putting anything else on it. This time, its white. So placing the glass is simply copying the margarita and pasting it on the 300X300.

For an image only logo now I'll resize the 300x300 to 150x150.
Now comes the parrot. Since the parrot was a little to large I had to resize that image... 95%, if that's still to big resize again. Eventually getting the size right and placing the parrot on the glass. If the parrot needs to lean a little more right, then I'll use the rotate tool to shift the image a few degrees.

So far I haven't saved to disk anything in any image. I can use the undo function on any image to back out anything I don't like. I won't save anything until I'm finished and will work from one image into a new image, building in stages and have the ability to undo and redo anything at any stage.

Once I have the parrot on the glass the way I like it, I'll use the selection tool to copy out the combined image. I'll then open a new 300x300 image and paste the combined parrot and glass on that one in the position I want for the real logo and paste it again as a new image of whatever size. That way, if the combined image is too small or too large, I can resize and repaste the selection from the new image. If the sizing needs to be altered, I'll go to that image, undo and resize again. (I do it this way so I don't have to worry about sizing and positioning until I have the combined image I want to use.)

So far... image 1 - a glass, image 2 - a parrot, image 3 - where I combined the glass and parrot, image 4 - copied image 3 into this one as a merged image (EX3), image 5 - places image 4 for logo use (300x300). So, if the combination needs to be altered, I use image 3 and undo, redo... if the combined image needs to be resized, I use image 4. I find it easier to undo/redo, use these stages and images than some other method.

Ok now the parrot & glass are properly sized and on the logo image at 300x300. I'll resize the 300x300 to 150x150 for an image only logo and save it as a BMP.

This one will use text though so image 5 has the parrot & glass sized and placed for text. Sometimes the text comes first, sometimes the image. It depends on how the elements go together. If the parrot & glass need to be resized to fit around the text, I have image 4 from a previous stage. For this one, the parrot & glass goes in first, sized so that I'll have room for the text. I'll do the text along the top and bottom to get the most space to use. Here I can try different type faces, sizes, effects and colors to see what works. If something isn't working, I'll undo and start again. I'll resize and place the parrot and glass as needed from image 4. I may make some modifications of the design, type style or image placement... sort of move things around, try different things... undo and redo as needed using previous images until I get the finished logo.

Once I'm done I'll copy image 5 and paste it as a new merged image, resize it to 150x150 and save it as a BMP (EX4). Or if I want variations on the theme I'll copy a finished image 5 into a new image, then undo image 5 and try some other ideas.

If I think modifications may be made I'll save some or all of the stage images as psp files.

I might have 6, 8 or sometimes 10 psp images open during the construction process depending on how many elements I'm combining and altering. Each distinct element and stage of the construction is a psp image... that way I can undo/redo as needed and can alter any element individually. I suppose layers can offer the same thing but I find individual images easier for me to manage.

Paint Shop Pro

Tools used - Copy, Paste as new image, Paste as new selection, freehand selection, rectangle selection, paintbrush, flood fill, text, color selector, resize, rotate image, set color transparency

[Eugene Church]

Thanks for sharing your graphics knowledge with us, jdew.

If I ever take the plunge into logo designing, I'm sure this will be helpful.

[reds1]

OK. I played with GIMP long enough to be able to change the caption of a illustration showing the Bengals team celebrating ("BRING ON THE BRONCOS!") - after which Palmer promptly went down.
Ahem. Moving on......

Since then I have downloaded the 30-day trial version of Photoshop CS2 (along with Image Ready CS2 & Bridge).

My goal: To add a background circle to the image below along with curved text of the name of the town centered on top (inside the circle or ring) & the nickname of the ballclub below in larger straight text. Very similar to the terrific work of Faroo6 (I hope I'm not infringing on his design!)

I figured this would be fairly straightfoward as all I want to do is plop this image in the midst of the ring and center it. Of course, the thickness of the ring would have to be determined as well as have the color choice compliment the existing logo.

What I need is a step-by-step walk through on this process as the built-in tutorials seemed to be geared toward modifying digital photos and so forth.

So, what do I do first?
How do I draw a circle (or ring) with some thickness to it?
How do I utilize layers?
How can I insert text that follows an arc (within the thickness of the ring), etc?

Below is the logo - originally the "Aberdeen Ironbirds", I believe.

In my league though, the team is called the Altona Ironbirds.

Any takers on showing me the basics of how to modifiy this logo in the fashion described above?

Thank you in advance!

[Faroo6]

Drawing a Circle - You need to use the selection tool. I believe it defaults as a rectangle. Click and hold and more should slide out. Get the one that looks like a circle. Hold the Shift key down while dragging the selection to keep it a perfect circle. When you've reached your desired size let go. As long as you have the selection tool selected you can move your selection around. When you have the circle right where you want it press "ALT+DEL" to fill the selection with the foreground color. I recommend doing all this on a new layer.

To Create a Ring simply make a circle selection until you have the desired width of your ring then delete the selection.

New Layer - On the layer toolbox there is a button that looks like a single piece of paper. Press it to create a new layer.

I'll get to more when I have time to sit down and open up photoshop.

[reds1]

Thanks Faroo6.
I had got as far as creating a new layer and then using the selection tool and shift key to create a perfect circle. But I had a hard time getting the color I wanted to fill in the circle - it just came out black, regardless of my fiddling with the palette on the upper right side of the program screen (with the 3 sliders).

I'm beginning to appreciate though, that to create the ring, it will be composed of two complete circles with the smaller one placed on a new layer on top of the larger circle - and I bet that the smaller circle will be colored white to give the ring the 'hollow' or 'see through' effect.

I'm also assuming that I can use the default image size and then when I'm done, resize the completed logo to 150x150 px.
But what size should the larger circle be? - and the smaller circle for that matter?

Too bad these logos can't be made in AutoCAD. I've been using that program almost everyday for 15 years!

[Le Grande Orange]

My preference for logos is a vector drawing program like Adobe Illustrator or CorelDRAW (I use the latter). As it's vector-based rather than pixel-based, it means resolution of the finished logo is irrelevant since as a vector-based image it is purely a mathematical construct and thus can be scaled to any size without issue.

Drawing programs also have lots of nifty features. Putting text on a circle or otherwise modifying it is a snap, and many of the features in something like Photoshop exist in a drawing program. They also can have features you won't find in a pixel-based progam precisly because those features can't be done (or done easily) in a pixel-based program.

I know the majority here doing logos use pixel-based programs like Photoshop, but I want to put in a plug for vector-based drawing programs because they offer every bit of flexibility and creativity that a pixel-based image editing program does.

[marky32082]

Originally Posted by reds1

Too bad these logos can't be made in AutoCAD. I've been using that program almost everyday for 15 years!

You could possibly use AutoCAD since you can export any file to a .bmp file. I'm just not sure it has the functionality you need.

[Faroo6]

Originally Posted by reds1

Thanks Faroo6.
I had got as far as creating a new layer and then using the selection tool and shift key to create a perfect circle. But I had a hard time getting the color I wanted to fill in the circle - it just came out black, regardless of my fiddling with the palette on the upper right side of the program screen (with the 3 sliders).

I'm beginning to appreciate though, that to create the ring, it will be composed of two complete circles with the smaller one placed on a new layer on top of the larger circle - and I bet that the smaller circle will be colored white to give the ring the 'hollow' or 'see through' effect.

I'm also assuming that I can use the default image size and then when I'm done, resize the completed logo to 150x150 px.
But what size should the larger circle be? - and the smaller circle for that matter?

Too bad these logos can't be made in AutoCAD. I've been using that program almost everyday for 15 years!

I suggest starting at either 150 x 150 or 300x300. Images will won't distort when scaled down but text might. Don't add text until you are at 150.150. The ring is actually sharper if you deselect a smaller circle from a larger circle and fill that. Your way would work too but I can email you a .psd file with the ring template and the text to the ring path if you would rather start with that.

[Teancum]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

My preference for logos is a vector drawing program like Adobe Illustrator or CorelDRAW (I use the latter). As it's vector-based rather than pixel-based, it means resolution of the finished logo is irrelevant since as a vector-based image it is purely a mathematical construct and thus can be scaled to any size without issue.

Drawing programs also have lots of nifty features. Putting text on a circle or otherwise modifying it is a snap, and many of the features in something like Photoshop exist in a drawing program. They also can have features you won't find in a pixel-based progam precisly because those features can't be done (or done easily) in a pixel-based program.

I know the majority here doing logos use pixel-based programs like Photoshop, but I want to put in a plug for vector-based drawing programs because they offer every bit of flexibility and creativity that a pixel-based image editing program does.

I'm currently a graphic design student in college, and second everything said above. Anymore I only use Photoshop to edit photos.