Ovyron wrote:Ok, here it is (I use Xara Xtreme, but maybe these ideas work in general:)Tony Thomas wrote:Awsome Ulysses, can you give me some tutorial on how to make something similar? Please do a step by step logo making directions for dummies.
1. Draw a rectangle that is 130x65 pixels in size (or any size you want for the logo):
2. Make it transparent and add a one pixel black outline:
Whatever appears inside this rectangle will be the logo itself at the end (Doing this saves a lot of time since you don't need to crop any images.)
3. Now, you need to know how do you want the logo to look at the end, and picture it in your mind. One way to get inspiration is to go at Google Image Search and search for related images on the issue or logos containing part of the words that you're going to use (Already made logos are a good source of inspiration, since the logo making experts have probably made something already similar for what you are looking for.)
This is the most important step as it needs some creativity, but being a graphic designer helps- I'm going to make a logo with your name for this example, and here's the main idea:
Since the T appears in both names, it's a good idea to make a big T that covers both words and work from there.
4. After you have decided what kind of logo do you want to make, and typed it, search for a font that goes right with your idea.
If you don't have in your PC a good font, an easy way to get one is to go to dafont and type your text down to see how does it look:
I decided to use the Teacher font, so I downloaded it, unzipped it, and copied it over C:\WINDOWS\FONTS - Then I apply it.
5. Align the text. This process can be automated by doing "Arrange > Alignment", but since we're working with 3 objects (the T, the ony and the homas) they must be aligned manually. Also, the sizes can be changed further to fit it as desired, just remember to keep the "ony" and the "homas" the same size so it doesn't look weird.
After the alignment, choose the three text objects, choose "Arrange > Group", select the new group and do "Arrange > Alignment > Align Centraly." This should give it a professional look.
6. That was the hard part, now you can just give it a background, color the text and you have a decent logo. But I always want to go beyond that. The secret of good logos is to make them different from other logos (Unless you are copying the style of an existing logo and you want it to look similar, as that's valid.)
So, I'm going to add some neon signish effect to this one. Begin by getting a back up of your work, just in case something bad happens, then select the text, do "Arrange > Convert To Editable Shapes" and un-group as many times as necessary. This effect requires that the T is a different part of the rest, so select the "ony" and the "homas", and do "Arrange > Combine Shapes > Add shapes." This gives us a very easy shape to work with (It's no longer just text.)
Now, pick the big T, select the contour tool, size 6px, Inner contour, Miter join, Attribute profile 0.5,0 and set the steps to 8. Now hit ESC and select the gray part in the middle and paint it red. Repeat the same for the "ony+homas" shape, but use size 2px and 4 steps.
So we end with this:
7. Get your back up copy and select the 3 text elements and do "Arrange > Combine Shapes > Add shapes", rotate -40° degrees, then do "Edit > Clone", press the down key 4 times (so the clone is moved 4 pixels down.) Select both shapes and do "Arrange > Combine Shapes > Subtract shapes" and rotate 40 degrees.
Paint this new shape white and position it over the logo like this:
Apply a 1.7 Feather:
Add Wall shadow, 4px, 50%, 2,-2. This is how it actually looks:
But that's way too big so let's get back to reality:
8. I consider that good enough, so we just need to find a background. After you find a background, just paste it and do "Arrange > Put to back." Now you can move and resize your background freely until it looks like you like:
(I made the shadows 25% so they are more noticeable.)
9. Now, select the transparent rectangle we started with, change the outline to none and then do "Export > PNG > True Color > Export":
10. Additional details. These ones are for perfectionist like me that are very hard to please, so I added Fractal Plasma+Stained Glass transparency for realism, linear fill for brightness, fixed saturation and Gaussian blur (These are optional, and some people will like the logo without all this better anyway):
So there it is! (As basic I could get...)
Thank you, I also made a logo for you so you don't get jealousgeots wrote:I knew that you were very knowledgeable about computer chess, and very enjoyable to chat with- but i had no earthly idea you were this good at making logos. These above, and the prior ones- this is some damn fine work, my friend.
Christ, thanks Ulysses. Im taking mine and loading it as the logo for Rybka 2.3.2a! Now all we need to do is get some bright guy to work on a new engine named Tony Thomas. We already have plenty of logos to choose from!