My-Photoshop: Tutorials, Templates & Software

3-Color Logo Tutorial

When coming up with all of the "things" necessary to start a business, one of the most frustrating can be the all-important logo. I was reminded of this the other day while speaking to a good friend who is beginning a new online business, and he stubbornly pointed out to me that I've not brought back any of the logo tutorials from the old site. Well, there's a simple reason for that ... I don't like them.

This tutorial will walk you through the creating of a an extremely clean, trendy 3-color logo that is suitable for a business that needs to emphasize trendiness and stability in its branding.

Difficulty Level:

Low Intermediate

Time Needed:

30 Minutes

PDF Version:

Download

New Canvas - Open Photoshop and create a new canvas that is sized about 400 x 400 pixels. You can always make the logo smaller later - work large and keep your quality. It's really important to work large with logos, because you want them to be suitable for everything from web display to print work. Some graphic artists recommend working at a size even larger than 400 x 400, and saving several sizes of the finished work for various uses.

3 Colors - First, decide the three colors you want to use. I will be using blue (#28b9c6), green (#3dc570), and steel gray (#789598). Use the brightest color, in my case the green, to draw a rounded rectangle shape like below. Make sure that you rasterize the shape after you've drawn it (right-click the shape layer and choose "Rasterize") because that's the only way you're going to get crisp, clean lines. Note: Throughout this tutorial, even if I don't specifically say to rasterize, you need to rasterize your shapes.

Steel Bar - Now, set your foreground color to steel gray or a similar color. Then, grab your rectangle shape tool to draw a bar across the upper portion of your box. It should overlap the box like below. In this case, DO NOT rasterize your bar yet.

Warp Bar - What we want our bar to look like is a subtle wave, symbolizing the fluidity of an innovative business that constantly changes with the times but remains sturdy and solid. Right - there are a lot of ways to do this, but only one that I know of that will yield a very crisp final effect: Warp.

Click "Edit" and choose "Free Transform Path". Then, click "Distort". You will end up with multiple anchors for resizing/transforming your shape instead of the common 4. By pulling these anchors up and down, left and right, you will see the bar start to bed and move. This will take a little bit of patience until you get the hang of which anchors affect which parts.

Move your anchors so that your bar looks something like the first image below. When you have it waving in a way that you like, click your Move Tool. Click "Apply" in the dialogue that appears. Now, rasterize the bar.

Duplicate and Position - One bar is okay, but for the finished 3-color effect we're going for, we're going to need two bars. Now, unless you're a complete massochist that wants to repeat all the steps and try to end up with an identical bar, your best bet is to duplicate the first one.

Just right-click the first bar and choose "Duplicate Layer". Then, make sure your "Move" tool is selected and start using the down arrow on your keyboard to move the second bar into place.

Using arrow keys moves your shape pixel by pixel in the direction you're going - in this case, it will move the second bar pixel by pixel downward, and we won't have to worry about making it "line up" with the top one because it won't move left and right.

Merge and Trim - Now to clean up that messy right-hand side of our logo. First, right-click the top of the two bars in your Layers Palette. Choose "Merge Down". Then, grab your rectangle marquee tool to select a portion of the right-side of your bars, like the first image below. Hit the backspace key on your keyboard and you'll have a clean set of bars like the second image below.

Make Way for Blue - This step will accomplish two goals: 1) it will give us an easy way to add the blue section to our logo, and 2) it will create a cool shadow effect that lets the background of whatever the logo is on look cool.

So, grab your magic wand tool and click somewhere outside your bars, on your bars layer so that everything else gets selected, like this:

Then, click "Select", hover on "Modify", and choose "Contract". Enter 2 in the pixel amount, and click OK so that your selection is tighter, like this:

Finally, click on the box layer (in my case, the green box) so that it is highlighted. Then, click "Select" and choose "Inverse", and hit the backspace key on your keyboard. You'll be left with a segmented look, like this:

Add Blue - This one's quick and painless. Grab your magic wand again, and select the middle section of your logo. Then, click "Layer", choose "New", and click "Layer via Copy". This will create a new layer with just the middle section of your logo on it. Now, go to your layer styles (Layer, Styles) and choose "Color Overlay". Pick the third color you're using and hit OK. You'll now have something like this:

Layer Styles - We're doing three steps here. What we want is a series of layer styles that affects each section of our logo. So, starting with the bars, apply the layer styles reflected below. Each step is shown with what the logo will look like after applying those styles.

Bar Styles: Apply the following layer styles to the bars.

Blue Styles: Apply the following layer styles to the middle section.

Green Styles: Apply the following layer style to the outside section.

Last Step! - All that's left is one final layer and our text. First, create a new layer (Layer, New, Layer) and set your foreground color to white. Make a series of brush strokes on your new layer like this:

Now, set the layer's mode to "Overlay". Then, hit "Filter", choose "Blur", and click "Gaussian Blur". In the window that appears, make sure you have "Preview" ticked. Adjust the slider until the blur on your brush strokes makes your logo look something like this:

Add your text and yay! A beautiful logo all ready to go. Note: You may want to lower the fill of the brush layer so that the white "shine" isn't so bright.

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3-Color Logo Tutorial