the last few days ive been starting to use photoshop and doing some photoshop tutorials and learning some new skills

 

i want to create a logo for my music site, and here is my first attempt

 

Im not sure what the whole design process is but my website is about music so the vinyl and tonearm forming the first letter 'b' is pretty self explanatory but the rest of the design i guess its meant to mimic the cardboard sleeves that hold vinyl in and i try to make the rest of the text look like it was stamped on

 

what do you think?

 

any feedback will be much appreciated

 

 

see the full size here -

I really like!

It's nice enough, but in no way does that look like a 'b' to me. I read it as 'eatplexity' until I read through your post.

It's nice enough, but in no way does that look like a 'b' to me. I read it as 'eatplexity' until I read through your post.

 

me the same ... i did not read the b ... until i read your post ...

I thought the "b" worked well.

 

Edited: But the fact that others don't may be significant.

looks like eatplexity

 

put the b in there in the same font and it would look good to me. ur trying too hard... maybe use the decks as a symbol rather than part of the b

Add me to the list of people reading it as "eatplexity"...sorry :\

 

Nice work picking up Photoshop so quickly, mind!

How about trying to blend th vinyl into the space in the p or the a it'll be a little more subtle.

thanks for the feedback so far everyone

 

ok ive tried to make the 'b' look more like a letter b

 

ive changed the colour of the black text to a dark gray so it blends in with the vinyl colour

 

shortened the vinyl tonearm and made it fatter to make it look more like the letter

 

resized the vinyl so the circle is now the same circumference as the other letter

 

As for the 'eatplexity' text im really not to savvy with making font look good, its just one i downloaded from the net, im not really sure what i can do to spruce it up

 

let me know what you think, does it still read 'eatplexity' to you

 

The vinyl is too large for the x-height and your kerning needs a lot of work. It definitely reads better now, but I'm not so sure that the tonearm looks right.

please explain what x height & kerning means

 

im not sure whether to add the shadows and bevel effects back onto the tonearm

 

is it better to have a logo look flat or not?

x-height is the height between the 'base line' and the 'median line' in a font, the base line being the bottom of the font i.e. the point where the font would sit if it was solid and sitting on a solid floor and the median line being where the sticky up bits of the font meet the smaller bits ;-) It's easier to explain in an image!!!

 

From WIki:

 

 

After my pathetic attempt above I'll leave the kerning explanation to Wiki . . .

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerning

 

 

Ste

An idea i got when you mentioned to work "vinyl" was to use the vinyl itself as a background and have a text overlay on it

thanks for the explantion Steve, i understand both now, im not sure how i can make sure the kerning is right on the font, i just downloaded it from a free site, its hard to get the height exact in photoshop i have no guidelines and just use my eye

 

ive been trying to spruce the other text up by trying to make it look like the vinyl texture

 

let me know your thoughts

 

 

 

I will try lee's idea of place the vinyl and tonearm where the 'p' is to see if the word beatplexity is more readable

ok so i tried lee's idea and i think he was right

 

i also came up with another idea to make the vinyl and tonearm look more like a letter, i merged the layers and then gave it a border using outer glow

 

im very happy with the results

 

Ive also added some colour, seeing as my website has a orange,red and brown colour scheme i thought i may aswell include at least one of these colour

 

what you prefer

 

 

 

 

Edit

 

ok added one more design as well

 

i tried to go with a yingyang sort of thing, i really think using the border helps users distinguish that its a letter, and i could even use the 'b' and 'p' letters on the own to form a smaller logo

 

 

edit 2

 

here is the idea i had regarding the use of the letter 'b' & 'p'

 

I like that you've gone from a b to a p with the vinyl and arm but I think the arm in the very first screenshot should be put back in as that looks realistic where as now it just seems flat and not that distinguishable especially with the detail of the vinyl itself. Would you not want the vinyl and arm separate from the wording as I think that would look nice too.

grrrr i just can decide what to do

 

ur thinkin too much about it. simplicity is the key to a logo like this. u are over working it

ur thinkin too much about it. simplicity is the key to a logo like this. u are over working it

 

ye you know what...i think you are right, i mean its all nice being able to see the details of the vinyl graphic on a huge sized version of the logo

 

but realistically this logo is going to be view only on the internet, in forum signatures, and on my website so i think bold and simple is the key.

 

i also like going with this simple bold style as i can use the letter 'b' and 'p' to create a logo for avatars on social websites.

 

taking this in note ive redesigned the logo and im happy with the outcome so far, i need to decide a colour scheme though and need to make it look neater and maybe redrawn the letters that look like vinyl

 

 

 

I really like the 2 colour scheme and love orange and blue combination, but my website doesn't incorporate any blue, does this matter???

 

 

Here is the logo for avatars

 

i think the simple orange one is best, thouhg maybe with the 'p' from the 3rd one but in orange

first one for me

 

just a slight bit of kerning and you've a cracking logo imo

how the hell do i get this kerning right, im tinkering it for ages and cant get it to fit, and because i keep resizing it the image starts to look a little distorted and off :/

 

Ive finished designing the 'p' letter, the one used in the images above was a bit rough, ive redone the lines and made the circles more smooth

 

have 3 ideas to choose from, im leaning more towards #1 as it is the most simplest and boldest, i doubt you will even be able to see the little white dot in #2 on a small image

 

#1

 

#2

 

#3

yeah #1

ye you're right dave cheers dude

 

ive filled in the small circle at the bottom of the p aswell

 

OK so i have finshed the p design, now just gota decide what colour(s) to use and how to get this kerning sorted properly

 

What program are you using

photoshop cs4

For logos i would use illustrator as its easier and makes the logos vector and crisper when finished.

 

Just a point. If your business takes off and you want flyers/ brochures/ T-shirts/ Posters you will need a vector logo so you can resize it to what ever you want, Otherwise you have to redo the logo each time

photoshop cs4

 

With the text tool click inbetween the letters and then Its either left & right arrow keys or left & right arrow keys with Alt, this way you can reduce the space between the letters individually

robertg - its taken me too much time to learn photoshop already i dont think i can handle another bit of software yet

 

mteam - thanks for the tip but its adjusting the height of text to fit the measurements of the logo that im having problems with

This one rocks, my man. I love the nice orange-black contrast. Just bring the fonts closer to the 'p' because there is too much whitespace.

 

thx for the feedback acrylic but i have finalised the version i will be working on

 

 

i just need to figure out how to get everything the same height

How about 2 turntables together to form a capital B?

 

----

St Albans Web Design

Web Design, Development and Email Marketing

It's nice enough, but in no way does that look like a 'b' to me. I read it as 'eatplexity' until I read through your post.

 

yeah, it's hard to see that it is a B, it seem just a symbol.

the font and background looks nice.

I would reduce the size of the B and make the needle arm a bit thicker to help with legibility