Create Eye-Catching Logo Mockups in Inkscape

1. Introduction: If you want to learn how to use Inkscape to make your logo designs pop. And this is the class for you. We'll start by creating a logo, which will involve plenty of shape and text manipulation. After that, we'll learn two ways for creating mock-ups for our logo so that we can make it look really nice and put it on display for potential clients. If you have at least a basic knowledge of Inkscape and you want to take your design skills to the next level. Then I welcome you to class 2. Class Project: For your class project, I would like you to create your own seal logo using the methods we learn throughout the class, and to create at least one mockup for your logo, for your mockup images, you can use one or both of the images that I use, which I'll provide as downloadable resources or you can use different images. And when you're finished with your project, please don't forget to submit it because I would love to see your awesome work. 3. Create a Seal Logo: To begin, I have a new default Inkscape document open using the standard A4 size for the page. I'm using Inkscape version 1.3. But if you're using a different version, don't worry because you can still follow along with the class. We won't be needing the page for the class. So we can paint over here just so it's out of the way right now to start creating a logo, Let's go to the stars and polygon's tool. In the settings up here, we want to be on star mode, let's say corners to something pretty high like 50. And for now we'll leave the other settings on the defaults. Can always click and drag on the canvas to create a large star with many corners. The color doesn't matter at the moment, so I'll leave mine read. However, let's change the opacity here to something like 50%. So we'll be able to see everything better as we create the logo. We don't want the sides of the star to be so long. So let's grab the inner handle here and drag it towards the outer handle. It can hold down the Control key or Command on Mac to prevent the sides from skewing. We can keep the corner sharp or we can go up here and increase the rounded setting to round the corners. Next, we'll create some circles that are centered in the star. To do this easily, let's first turn on snapping up here. Let's click the arrow button next to it, go to Advanced Mode. And down here under other points, Let's enable snapping to object rotation centers. Now we can close this backup. Let's go to the circles and ellipses tool. With snapping to object rotation centers enabled, we can hover near the center of the star, but not directly on the x. And we should get a pop-up that says handle to object rotation center. Then we can click and drag. And if we hold down control and shift and create a circle is centered in the star. A snapping is getting in the way. So let's go ahead and create the circle. Then let's turn off snapping. Now we can go to the Select tool, hold Control and Shift and scale up the circle to about right here. Next is duplicate the circle by right-clicking and choosing Duplicate. Let's scale this one down while holding Control and Shift and to a slightly smaller than the other one. Let's duplicate this circle or Control and Shift and scale it down about this much. This one is kind of hard to see, so I'll change the color. Okay, next we want to cut the biggest circle out of the star and cut the smallest circle, edit the second biggest one. To do this, Let's zoom in a bit. Let's click the biggest circle to select it. Then this hold Shift and click the star to select that as well. Let's go to path. Difference. Can always grab the smallest circle, hold Shift and select the other circle. And again, let's go to path difference. Alright, the next thing we'll do is put some texts that curves around the inside of the circular part. We'll put some texts both at the top and at the bottom. So first let's create a text object by going to the Text tool and clicking somewhere in the Canvas. Let's type the title of the company they were creating a logo for. I'm going for a travel company logo. So I'll type something like adventure travel and all caps. For the font. I'll go with a serif font like buy tongue. Another thing we want to do up here is change the alignment of the text to centered. This will make things much easier when we go to center the text inside the logo later. Alright, now we can go to the Select tool and we can scale up the texts object or holding down the control key to maintain the aspect ratio. That should be big enough. Alright, now let's go ahead and create the other texts object by duplicating this one and bring it down here. Let's use the text tool to change the text to a slogan for the company. I'll go to something cheesy like live free. Let's go back to the Select tool. Let's scale this one down a bit. Next to get the texts objects to wrap around inside this circular part of the logo will first need to create another circle in here. So let's turn on Snapping. Then let's go to the circles and ellipses tool. Snap to the center of the logo here. Let's hold Control and Shift and create a circle. That's good enough for now. Let's turn off snapping. Then let's go to the Select tool. And with the circle is still selected as hard as **** and it's like a top texts objects. And to wrap the text around the circle, we can go up to the text menu and choose put on path. Right now we can de-select everything and select just the circle. Then we can rotate the circle while holding Control to snap the angle until the text is centered at the top. Then we can change the size of the circle. Well, how do you control and shift until the text is centered inside the circular part of the logo. Okay, Now one thing we might want to do is add some extra spacing between the letters at the text. To do this, we can select the texts objects, go to the text tool, then go up here and drop down the spacing box. Now we can add some spacing between the letters using this box. That should work. But now there's a little too much space in between the bees and the letters next to them. To fix this, I can click between one of the V's and one of the letters next to it. Then adjust the spacing between the two letters using the horizontal kerning box here. I'll do the same between the v and the e here. And I'll repeat this for the other V The texts could definitely use some more adjustments, but since I don't actually plan to sell this logo, it's not too big of a deal. Okay, Next we'll wrap the other texts object around the bottom of the same circle. But at the moment, if you go to the Select tool and resize this circle, it will also affect the positioning of the top texts. To stop this from happening, because slug the text object and go to Path, Object Path. Now we're free to adjust the size of the circle. Can now select both the circle and the other texts objects. Let's go to text, put on path. If we rotate the circle now unto the text is centered at the bottom. We can see that the text is upside down. You fix this with the circle selected. We can click this button up here to flip the circle vertically. Then we can rotate the circle again until the texts at the bottom. Let's put the text on the inside of the circle though. So we'll need to scale up the circle a bit more. We definitely need to add some spacing between the letters. If we try to select the texts object though we can't because the circle is actually on top of the text. So with the circle selected, let's click the lower selection wants step button up here. Now we can select that text object. Then we can go to the Text tool and add some spacing between the letters. Finally, we want to delete this circle. But first we need to turn the texts object into a path like we did with the other one by going to path, object to path. Now we can delete this circle. Next, we'll cut all the texts and add the logo. To do this, let's first select both texts pads. For using an older version of Inkscape. You also have to ungroup the texts pads by going to Object Ungroup. But Inkscape 1.3 takes care of this step automatically, can always turn the paths into a single path by going to path union. Now we can cut the text path out of the circular path here by selecting them both going to path difference. Okay, and to fill in some of the empty space between the texts on each side here, we can cut some kind of shape out of the area. I'll go with a star. So first I'll go to the stores and polygon's tool, and I want a normal five cornered star this time. So I'll click the button here on the right to reset everything to the default settings. Now I'll create a star here. Then I'll go to the Select tool and center the star in here. To mirror the star over to the other side, I'll turn on snapping. Snapping to object rotation centers still enabled. I can click the star to show its rotation center, which is this little cross here. And I'll drag it into a snaps to the center of the logo. Then I'll duplicate this star and click this button up here, which flips it horizontally along its rotation center. Now I'll turn snapping back off. Then I'll grab both stars, turn them into a single path by going to path union. Then I'll hold Shift and select the pad under it and go to path difference. Alright, the main part of the logo is finished. Now we can work on filling in the empty space in the center. For mine, I'll create some waves here with a small island that has a couple of palm trees on it. First for the waves, I'll go to the pen tool and click inside the pad here. How can show to keep the line Horizontal. Click over here and right-click to finish the path. To make this path wavy, I'll go to the Node Tool and select both nodes of the path. Then I'll add some more nodes by clicking the insert new nodes button here three times. Now I'll select the second node here. Then I'll hold Shift and select every even node. So skipping all of the odd ones. Now I'll hold Control and drag the second nodes up a bit. Then I'll select all of the nodes and click this button up here to turn them into smooth nodes, which gives the path of wavy look. Next I'll go to the Select tool and I want to increase the stroke width at this path. So open up the fill and stroke dialogue. Go to the stroke style tab, increase the width here. Now I'm going to duplicate this path. Hold control and bring it down here. I'll do that a couple of more times. I want these paths to have equal spacing between them. So I'm going to select them all. Then I'll open up the align distribute dialog. Click this button that says distribute vertically with even vertical gaps. I also want them to be vertically centered in the logo. So hold Shift and select one of the main logo pads with the last selected, chosen as the anchor. How could the center on vertical axis button? Next to create the island, I'll go to the circles and ellipses tool and create an ellipse here. I want to center this vertically in the logo. So I'll go to the Select tool, hold shift and select one of the logo paths, and click the center on vertical axis button and align distribute dialogue. I also want to cut off the bottom part of the ellipse where it goes below the top weight path. To do this, I'll duplicate the top wave path Hold Shift and select the ellipse and go to Path division. This uses the wave path to cut through the ellipse. Now I can select just the bottom part of the ellipse and delete it. I now want to turn the island path and all of the wave paths into a single path. But because the wave paths are just strokes, the union PAT operation won't work correctly on them. Our first need to turn the strokes into paths. To do this like a psych all the way paths and go to path, stroke to path. Now I can hold Shift and select the island path. Then turn all of these into a single path by going to path union. Now I just need to create a couple of palm trees. For this, I'll go to the Pen tool, click inside the island here. Then I'll click and drag appear to create a curved path. I want to create a sharp corner here. So without releasing the mouse button, I hold down, shift with the handle over here. I release the mouse, then I'll click here and click and drag down here. Hold Shift to create a sharp corner and click the first point to close the path. I'm going to turn off the stroke of this path by holding Shift and clicking the red X down here. For now, I'll give it a black fill. So I'll go to the circles ellipses tool and create an ellipse at the top of the trunk here. I'll raise the opacity up to 100%. Now I use the pen tool to create some leaves. I'll turn off the stroke of all the leaves. Make them black for the moment and adjust the positioning a bit. Alright, now I'm going to select all of the three parts. Now turn them into a single path by going to path union for another tree. I'll duplicate this one. Flip it horizontally, move it over here, and adjust the size and rotation some. And it's fine if that extends into the other part of the logo. For a final touch, I'll go to the circles and ellipses tool hold Control and create a circle up here for this sun. Right? Now I want to turn all of the parts of the logo into a single path. But before I do this, I need to remove the parts of the waves that cover the empty areas of the larger pads. To do this, I'll go to the Pen Tool, create a path through here, bring it around down here and close it off. Now let's select both this new path and the path with the waves go to path difference. I would also want to do this for the tree if any parts that they were overlapping the letters. Right now I can select everything and go to Path union. Okay, the logo is finished, so we can raise this opacity all the way up. Next, we'll work on the mockups. 4. Mockup 1: Patch on Fabric: To start creating a mockup, we first need to import an image that we want to add our logo two. So let's go up to the File menu and choose import. Okay, so we have two images here. One of blue fabric and one of would. We'll be creating mockups or both of these images. Let's start with a Fabric by double-clicking the Fabric image. We can just click OK here. Since we're going to use the logo multiple times, Let's duplicate it first. Now we can center it on the image by holding Shift and selecting the image, then using the align, distribute dialogue to align them both vertically and horizontally. Then we can select just the logo, hold Shift and Control, and shrink it down a bit. Alright, so in this image, the light appears to be coming from the top right. So what we can do first is make the logo have a gradient that starts from a brighter shade at the top right, it goes to a darker shade at the bottom-left. First, let's go ahead and change the color of the logo to the color that we want to use. I think God would look good on this blue fabric. So I'll use the fill and stroke dialogue to set the fill color to a goldfish color. Can I'll just get the logo, a linear gradient with this button, Let's grab the gradient tool over here. The spring, the first step here to the bottom-left. The other ones at the top right. For the color of this stop has raised the alpha channel all the way up and make the color a bit brighter. For the other stop, Let's make it a bit darker. Okay. So if we wanted to make the logo look like a patch or something on the fabric, one to add a drop shadow coming from the bottom left or the logo onto the fabric. And we'll need to add a highlight along the top right at the logo. We can accomplish both of these using the drop-shadow filter. To get to the filter, we go up to the filter's menu and down two shadows in glows and choose drop shadow, which brings up the drop shadow dialog. This dialogue. We can do things like set the amount of blur that drop shadow has, adjust the offsets of the shadow and set the shadow type. In the bluer color tab, we can set the color that we want to use for the shadow. I find that starting with the highlight gives better resorts for the color. We want it to be on whites. And an opacity of about 75% or so should be good. You also want the use objects color option here to be unchecked. Now let's go back to the Options tab. First for the shadow type, the two options we're mainly concerned with, or outer and inner, outer we'll make the shadow appear on the outside of the selected objects and enter. We'll make it appear on the inside. We want the highlight to appear on the inside of the logo. So let's go with inner. Next for the offsets, a positive horizontal number, we'll put the shadow or highlight on the left side of the object and a negative number, we'll put it on the right side. Since the light is coming from the top rate, we want the highlight to appear on the right of the logo. So let's go with a negative number. We can adjust the value later. For the vertical offset, a positive number, we'll put it at the top and a negative number, we'll put it at the bottom. We want the highlight at the top right. So we'll use a positive number and a blur radius of about 0.5 should be good for the moment. Now we can check live preview down here you see how the highlight looks. As we can see, it's showing at the top right of each part of the logo. The offsets are a bit too high though, so we can lower the values a bit. Finally, we can use the blur radius to just how blurry or sharp it is. Alright, when we have something we like, you can apply the filter by clicking the Apply button down here. Now we can work on the shadow. Let's first go to the bluer color tab and change the color to black by moving the lightness slider all the way to the left. Let's go back to the Options tab for the shadow, we want it to appear on the outside of the logo. So let's change the type to outer. And when we use outer, the offsets we have the opposite effects as they have with Enter. So now a negative horizontal offset, we'll put the shadow at the left, and a positive vertical offset, we'll put it at the bottom. This is what we want so we can lead the values alone for the moment. Let's go ahead and check live preview. We look very closely. We can see the shadow at the bottom-left, but it's a bit too subtle right now. So you can raise up the offset values. Awesome. Make it a bit more blurry. Alright, what we're finished, we can apply the filter. We can close that up, this dialog. That already looks pretty good. Before a final touch, we can get the logo the same texture as the Fabric. This, Let's select both the logo and the image and duplicate them. Then let's use the logo to click the image by right-clicking and choosing psych clip. To get the color back, we can go to the bottom of the fill and stroke dialogue and change the blend mode here to overlay. This makes the color a bit too dark though, to brighten it up, you can use the lightness contrast filter by going to filters color, brightness contrast. With this filter, we can adjust both the lightness and the contrast of the selected objects. Values of zero mean no adjustment. As we can see if we check live preview to brighten the object, you just need to raise the lightness value. We can also adjust the contrast some if we want. We like what we see, pink click the Apply button and close out of the dialogue at the texture is too strong. We can lower the opacity of it. Alright, and that should do it for our first Logo Mockup. 5. Mockup 2: Wood Engraving: For the next mockup as open up the import dialog again. That's important. A wood image. We can duplicate the logo centered on the image and resize the logo if necessary. This time, we're going to make the logo appear to be engraved in the image instead of on top of it, like in the previous mockup. The light and the image appears to be coming straight on from in front of the wood. So all we need to do to make the logo look in grades is add an inner drop shadow to the top of the logo and an outer highlight to the bottom. We also don't need to worry about the color at the moment, as we're just going to make it look like a darker version of the image. Alright, so for the shadows and highlights, Let's make sure we have just the logo selected. Then let's open up the drop-shadow filter dialog by going to filters, shadows and glows, drop shadow. Let's begin with the shadow. First. Let's go into the blur color tab, make sure the color is on black. And let's go back to the Options tab. The type we want to choose Enter to make it appear at the top of the logo, we need the vertical offset to have a positive number. And we don't need a horizontal offset, so we can set the value to zero. Now we could check the preview and make any adjustments if necessary. When it looks good, we can click apply for the highlight as first change the color to white. I think go back to the Options tab and change the type two outer. Now we can check the preview and make adjustments. We can also go back to the bluer color tab and adjust the opacity if we want. Okay, we're finished with the shadows and highlights. So let's click Apply and close this out. Next, we're work on adding the wood texture to the logo. We basically want the logo to look like a darker shade of the image. And easy way to do this is to get the logo a dark gray fill higher than 50% and change this blend mode to overlay. However, it will look more realistic if we offset the logo is texture down a bit. To do this as first, make the logo 50% gray. With the overlay blend mode, 50% gray becomes invisible. Alice duplicate both the logo and the image. Then I select just the image and move it down a bit. I'll just press the down arrow key about three times. Ellis hold Shift and select the logo. Then right-click and choose psych clip. Make it darker. You can use the lightness contrast filter by going to filters color, brightness contrast. It's going to check live preview. This time we want to use a negative value for lightness. We'll be like what we see, we can click Apply and close this out. Now we just need to lower this one step which brings back the shadows. And that should bring us to the end of this class. I really hope you enjoyed it. If you have any questions about anything, please let me know. Thank you very much for joining me.