Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
I'm going to show how to create a simple, but powerful logo design and how to modify its colors.
You can customize the shapes of your letters for your logo using the techniques I'll be
showing you in this tutorial.
Before we begin, if you're not already a subscriber to Blue Lightning TV.
Click that small "Subscribe" button at the lower, right corner to let you know as soon
as I upload new Photoshop tutorials.
The first step is to create a new document by going to File and New.
For its name, I'll type in "Logo", but you can name yours whatever you'd like.
For the sake of this tutorial, let's share the same settings.
Make its Width: 1920 pixels, its Height: 1080 pixels and its Resolution: 300 pixels per inch.
The Color Mode is RGB and 8 bits per channel.
Make the background black.
Make its Color Profile: "sRGB" which is the most common for web images.
Click the lock icon to unlock the background and double-click the layer to open its Layer Style window.
Click "Gradient Overlay" and the gradient bar.
Click the black/white thumbnail and the lower, right Stop.
Click the color box and for the Brightness, type in 40%.
The Blend Mode is "Normal" and the Opacity is 100%.
Check "Reverse".
The Style is "Radial", the Angle is 90 degrees and the Scale is 80%.
Click the New Layer icon to make a new layer.
Open your "Rectangular Marquee Tool" and drag out a rectangle approximately this size and shape.
Open your "Gradient Tool" and make sure the Linear gradient icon is active.
Click the gradient bar and click the "Black, White" thumbnail.
Click the lower, left Stop and the Color box.
In the hexadecimal field, type in 008AFF.
Click the lower, right Stop and the color box.
Type in 030B46.
Go to the top of the selection
and press and hold "Shift" as you drag it straight down to the bottom.
Deselect it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + D. Make a copy of it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + J.
We'll hide "Layer 1", but not delete it in case we need this shape at some point for
a vertical part of our logo.
Basically, we'll be using this shape multiple times at different rotation angles to assemble our logo.
You'll be following the steps with me, so you'll know how to apply the techniques for
your own custom logo.
If you want to include curved characters,
I’ll show you later how you can incorporate them into your logo.
We'll rotate the shape by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + T to open your Transform Tool.
Go to a corner and when you see a curved, double-arrow,
rotate it counter clockwise to approximately minus 21 degrees.
Then, press Enter or Return.
Let's move it over a bit by pressing "v" to open our Move Tool and dragging it.
We'll level out the top and bottom by cropping them off.
To do this, open your Rectangular Marquee Tool and make sure the "Add to" icon is active.
This will add selections as we drag them out.
Drag out a selection, so the bottom is just below the left corner of the shape.
Drag out another selection over the bottom of the shape, so the top of the selection
is just above the right corner.
Press the Delete key on your keyboard to delete the areas of the shapes within the selections.
Then, deselect it.
Make a copy of the active layer
and press "v" to open back your Move Tool.
Press and hold the Shift key as you drag the copy to the right until there's a slight gap
between the two shapes.
Make a copy of the copy
and go to Edit, Transform and "Flip Vertical".
Press and hold Shift again as you drag it across, until the corners meet.
We want to place this shape behind the shape next to it.
To do this, drag this layer below "Layer copy 1".
Make the top layer active and make a copy of it.
Drag it over until the corners meet.
Next, we'll make it into the letter "A".
To do this, open back your Rectangular Marquee Tool and place your cursor approximately here.
Drag out a rectangle approximately this size and shape.
Press “v” to open your Move Tool and mask sure “Auto Select” is checked.
I’ll explain why in a moment.
Click this shape.
Auto-Select automatically makes whatever shape we click on, active.
Go to the thumbnail of that layer and press Alt + Ctrl or Option + Cmd as you click on it.
This will deselect this shape from the selection we dragged out earlier.
Go to Select and “Transform Selection”.
Press the right arrow key on your keyboard until there’s approximately this much of
a gap between the selection and the shape to its left.
Then, press Enter or Return.
Go to the thumbnail of the top layer and press and hold Ctrl or Cmd + Shift as you click
on it, which will merge the selection of its shape onto the selection we just dragged out a moment ago.
Go to the top of the selection and press "G" to open your Gradient Tool.
Press and hold Shift as you drag down the tool to the bottom of the selection.
Release your cursor to fill the selection with the gradient colors.
Then, deselect it.
Remember, this is just an example of how you can add custom shapes to existing shapes to
ultimately create your logo.
To incorporate curved characters into your logo, the easiest way for this particular logo design
is to use an existing font called, "Antapani Extra Bold".
You can download it from the link I provided in the description below the title of this video or in my project files.
We'll come back to the point in time where we are now after I show you an example of how to add a curved character.
First, make a new layer
and open your Horizontal Type Tool.
We'll make out text white, so we can easily see it.
To make it white, check your foreground and background colors.
If they aren't black and white respectively, press "D" on your keyboard.
Invert them by pressing "x". Now, white is your foreground color.
Open the Type Picker and type in, "Anatapani".
Click on the document and type out your character. Open your Move Tool and move it.
To resize it, open your Transform Tool" by pressing Ctrl or Cmd +T".
Go to a corner and drag it in or out. Then, press Enter or Return.
Drag the curved character under the shape that you want to hide it under. Position it to where you'd like it
and Ctrl-click or Cmd-click the thumbnail to make a selection of the character's shape.
Make a new layer above it
and hide the Type layer.
Press "G" to open back your Gradient Tool and go to the bottom or the top of the selection.
Drag it up or down respectively, to fill it with the gradient colors. Then, press Ctrl or Cmd +D to deselect it.
Let's go back to the point in time just before I showed you how to incorporate a curved character.
We'll copy these two shapes, flip them and add them on the right.
Make the second layer from the top active and Shift-click the layer under it to make it active, as well.
These are the two parallel shapes on the left.
Make a copy of these two layers and go to Edit, Transform and "Flip Vertical".
We'll slide them to the right.
First, press "v" to open your Move Tool and uncheck Auto-Select.
If we don't disable it, we won’t be able to move the two shapes together.
Press and hold Shift and drag them to the right until the corners meet.
We'll place all of the layers that comprise our logo into a folder.
To do this, make the top layer active, scroll down and Shift-click the bottom visible shape
to make all the visible shapes active.
Then, press Ctrl or Cmd + G.
Next, we'll center our logo vertically by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + A to select our visible
document and click the "Align Vertical Centers" icon.
Then, deselect it.
Next, I'll show you how to change the colors of individual shapes.
To easily activate the shape you want to change the color of, check "Auto-Select".
Click the shape you want to colorize.
This automatically opens the folder and activates that shape.
Click the Adjustment Layer icon and click, "Hue/Saturation".
It's important to know that Adjustment Layers affect all the layers below them in the panel.
In this particular example, these two shapes plus the background are below the layer.
When we drag the Hue slider to the right or left, the adjustment layer is affecting all
the layers below it.
The background isn't changing because it's basically black and white, so there's no color to change.
If you want to change the color of any other shapes, click the shape to activate it in the Layers panel.
If we want it to have the same colors as the other two, go to the adjustment layer and
press and hold Alt or Option as we drag a copy of it just above the new layer we want it to affect.
As we know, the adjustment layer is affecting all the layers below it the Layers panel.
If we want this adjustment layer to affect just this shape, we'll clip it to that shape
by clicking the Clipping Mask icon or by going to Layer and "Create Clipping Mask".
Next, we'll add a slight highlight bevel to each shape.
Double-click the top layer to open its Layer Style window and click "Bevel & Emboss".
The Style is Inner Bevel, the Technique is Smooth and the Depth is 50%.
The Direction is Down, the Size is 3 pixels and the Soften is 0.
The Angle is minus 10 degrees, the Altitude is 30 degrees and the Gloss Contour is Linear.
The Highlight Mode is Color Dodge, the Color is white and the Opacity is 100%.
The Shadow is irrelevant, since its opacity is 0%.
We'll copy the "Bevel & Emboss" effect to each of the other shapes in the folder.
Go to the "fx" icon next to the top shape and press and hold Alt or Option as you drag
it onto the layer of the shape below it.
Continue to copy the "fx" to all the other shapes.
Then, close the folder.
Click the New Layer icon to make a new layer.
This will be our text layer.
Open your Horizontal Type Tool
and Type Picker. I'll pick a font called, "Agency FB Regular",
which I provided the link to in my video's description below,
but feel free to use whatever font you like.
I'll make its size 21 points, but again, use any size you like.
I'll make the aliasing "Smooth" and Center Alignment.
Click below your logo and type out your text.
We want to ultimately have a lot of space between each character.
To adjust the amount of space, known as "Leading", highlight your text
and click the "Character / Paragraph" icon or go to Window and "Character".
Drag the "Leading" scrubby slider to the left or right to decrease or increase the spacing.
We can close the panels now.
Open your Move Tool and move it.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
Thanks for watching!