Agony an Art Lesson #1
How to Make a C7 Logo Really Fast - Page 1 of 3
By Kurt KomodaThis text describes how I complete a sample freelance assignment. In this case, the client is the organizers of the Convergence 7 event in New York City. What they needed was a a logo and t-shirt design with a fast turnaround. The contact here was the same person who runs NYCGoth.com, so I'd worked with him before and we both pretty much know what to expect of eachother. I decided that I would be doing the finished work on the computer, using Adobe Photoshop 6.0. So, taking a look at what they already had on the C7 website, I began to brainstorm on what I needed to do. So here we go...
First thing you need is an idea. How one does this is not important for this lesson. I'll let you figure out why you'd need a C7 logo on your own. From there you'd probably figure out what kind of logo you wanted and how you intended to go about executing it. What is important here is how much time you really want to spend on this thing. Important factors to consider are:
- How important is it for you to do(on a personal AND professional level)?
- How much time do you have to do it?
- Does your current schedule allow you the time to do it(check by whatever priority you have assigned it in answering the first 2 questions)?
- And most importantly, what are you getting out of this? That's right, I mean cash. This item is the most crucial to a professional artist, and any self-respecting freelancer would stake his/her career on how they make such decisions.
- How important is it for you to do? Well, the assignment came last minute, but I've always felt that I should be putting back into the scene that I take so much from. The Goth/Industrial scene, that is, and-- wait a minute! The scene hasn't really been offering anything lately- and I've certainly never taken anything above and beyond the average club shlub. Damn it- now that I think of it, I don't know why I felt that this was important. Maybe it was my self-serving egotistical need to be New York City's Goth/Industrial scene artist- or one of them, anyway. Christ, what the hell was I thinking?
- How much time do you have to do it? Like I said, the assignment came last minute, as the original sucker- er- artist dropped out or something. I had only a week or two to finish a full logo and t-shirt design.This assignment came in the midst of 2 other freelance jobs, my all-day weekday full-time job as an artist, and some very crucial trips to the beach on the weekends. Considering these factors, I realized that I had almost no time to set aside for this assignment, and that the client's deadline of "immediatly" was laughable. So, I took the job. I'm real stupid like that.
- What are you getting out of this? The payment was pitiful- really just a gesture of friendly courtesy for my troubles. On the other hand, the client may just be very cheap. In any case, what he liked to call payment wouldn't even cover the cost of me putting pencil lead to paper. In the absence of any significant financial payoff, is there any resultant exposure?- Maybe a little- this is the usual carrot that lowballing clients like to dangle in front of artists: "This'll be great exposure for you and will really get your foot in the door and blah blah blah." It's almost never true. It wasn't dangled here, but you should be aware of it anyway. Exposure here would be somewhat good, but it's not like my name would be attached to all the copies or that anyone of media influence would see it. Any artist who took this job would have to be a moron willing to throw his integrity and market value into the dumpster.
Now, let's move on to how I got started with the assignment:
Step 1
Step 1 is the idea phase. This is where we artist folk like to do what is called "thumbnails." No, they don't have to be the size of a thumbnail or any size for that matter- I'd like to shoot any art teacher that makes their students conform to a 2x2" square(or whatever) and even going so far as to make them create and carry around little 2x2" cardboard stencil! Thumbnails are just little sketches that take very little time to do(the emphasis here is on putting whatever flows through your noggin down onto the paper as quickly as possible!). Here was the thumbnail I created while sitting on the bustrip home from work:
From the thumbnail sketch, I created a larger sketch. This larger sketch goes into a little more detail and is done in the approximate size I want the final to be.
Step 3
Opening Photoshop, I start out with a new canvas that was 10x10"@300dpi in Greyscale Mode. I use the
Paint Bucket Tool to fill in the background with solid black. You can avoid this step by making black your background color and either opening the new image using this background color or you can select the entire image and Delete, making the canvas black. In short: I make everything black!I create a second layer(Layer 1) and select it as my active layer. I then make the Background(black) Layer invisible. This is because I will be working with black shapes and will eventually outline them in white. Since I need to be able to see them, I need to have the background not be black. Here's how my Layers Tableau looks at this point:
Step 4
I use the
Elliptical Marquee Tool (holding down SHIFT) to create a circle. I then use the Paint Bucket Tool to fill it in with black.
Step 5
Now, this is dirt simple: simply use the
Elliptical Marquee Tool (holding down SHIFT) to create another, smaller circle, position it, and DELETE(providing your background color is WHITE) to create a nice crescent.
Step 6
Great, we have a crescent "C." Now we need to create a "7." I call upon the
Type Tool to create a nice "7"(I used Garamond at 500 pt) and position it where I want it. I have to be careful not to position the "C" and the "7" in such a way that they look like a big "G," as in the sketch(above). When adding text, another layer is created, making 3 layers.
Step 7
I use the
Magic Wand, with options Anti-aliased, Contiguous, and Use All Layers checked off, and select any area not on the C or the 7. This will select the negative space between them. I then hit Select-->Inverse to change my selection to only the C and the 7. To save webspace, just look at the above picture and imagine that Photoshop flashing dotted line thing around the letters. I'm sure it has an official name, but for now it's just gonna be the "flashing dotted line thing."Step 8
Okay, I select Layer 1, making it visible- Here, I've made Layers 2&3 invisible, but it really doesn't matter, since they're black characters and we're looking at a black background.
I use Edit-->Stroke... and select a 50px line on the Outside of the selected area(the flashing dotted line thing) with 100% opacity in Normal mode. I selected to have the area stroked along theOutside border because I want the inside negative space to be the exact representations of the characters. I now destroy layers 2&3, since I don't need them anymore.
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