Transcripts
1. Intro: In the last couple of years, more and more people have
started working from home. While they're at home. They're acquiring new skills and developing interests that
they may have always had, but they just didn't
have time to explore. And now more than ever, people are starting up
businesses from home. So much goes into starting
up a new business. But one thing they
all have in common is eventually you're
going to need a logo. And that's where I come in. My name is Wendy
McCullough and I'm a photographer and compositor. I started out as a
photographer in 2012. I photographed high-school
seniors, babies, and models. I started learning Photoshop at the same time that I
learned photography. I would spend hours every
day teaching myself. I've watched hundreds of videos. I didn't find Photoshop
to be very intuitive. I learned that you
really have to break it down into bite-size pieces. And just learn how to
use the tools that you need to accomplish the look
that you're going for. It can be frustrating
when you want to create something like a logo. But you aren't super comfortable with Photoshop to
where you feel like you could create a professional looking logo all by yourself. And it can be expensive, especially when you're just
starting out to have to pay for someone else
to do it for you. So I really want to
simplify this process. We're going to skip the
in-depth explanations. And instead, you'll follow simple step-by-step instructions
in this 15-minute class. And by the end of the class, you will have created a
professional looking logo. And even more importantly, you'll achieve results that
you can replicate anywhere. You'll literally be able
to go out on your own and create a completely
different logo for your company with the skills that
you'll learn in this class in under 15 minutes,
time is valuable. So let's get started.
2. 15 Minute Logo Project Coffee Cup Out Of Circles June 1: Here's the abstract
coffee cup logo will be making entirely out of circles
and sections of circles. I won't go in depth
in this class. The goal in this quick
15-minute class is to teach you a few basic techniques that
you can use in any project. You'll walk away
with some tools and ideas and you'll
use what you learn here to create your
own unique logo entirely out of circles. So wherever you are
currently in Photoshop, go ahead and click on File in the upper left-hand
corner and select new. If you're using
keyboard shortcuts, It's Control or Command N. This brings us to the
settings dialog box. Come over here and set your
width to 2 thousand pixels. Height, also 2 thousand pixels, and resolution 300
pixels per inch. And then we're going to set our background color to white. So click on Create
when you're done. So this is our Canvas, and over here in
the layers panel, the first layer labeled background represents
that canvas. The first thing we're
gonna do is come down here and click on the box with
the plus sign in it to create a new layer on top of the canvas and rename
that layer saucer, since that's the first
thing we'll be creating. And I just double-clicked
on the word itself to change the name. So let's make our saucer. We're going to come over here to the foreground and
background colors, click on your foreground
color in the front, and you can choose
any color you like. But I've already chosen this coffee color to choose a color, just click around
the color palette and choose anything that
will show up on wipe. And I'm gonna go
with something in a cream or beige color. And you can also use the
sliders on the right to move, move them up and down to choose a darker
or lighter color. So I like that right there. Once you've chosen your color, go ahead and click Okay. And now we'll choose a brush. Come over to the brush icon. It just looks like a paintbrush. If you're using
keyboard shortcuts, It's Control or
Command B for brush. Then we're going to come up and choose the shape of our brush. Right now the brush is
shaped like a circle, as you can see here. But click on the
drop-down and we're actually going to choose
under General Brushes, click on the drop-down
next to that. And instead of a
soft round brush which it was already
set to on mine, I'm going to choose
this hard round brush. That's going to create a nice hard round
edge to the brush. Up here in the upper
left-hand corner we have a dial where we can change
the perspective of the brush. So if you click on one of
those balls on the outer edge, you can pull it up
to where it looks like we're looking at
a saucer at eye level. You don't want to pull
it all the way up. Otherwise, it just
looks like a line, something like
that where you can still see the entire saucer, but the perspective is
changed just enough. These sliders on the
right, the top slider, you can change the size
in pixels of your brush. And the bottom slider, you're able to change
the hardness or softness of the
edge of your brush. But for right now we're
going to leave that at 100%. Go ahead and click back on your active saucer
layer to X out of that. And then we're going
to use a keyboard shortcut at the right and left bracket keys make your
brush larger and smaller. So the Right Bracket
key for a larger brush, I'm gonna make my thoughts are roughly the same
size as the canvas, just slightly smaller in about three-quarters
of the way down. I'm just going to click one
time and there's the saucer. So the next step is I want
to create a layer mask. And effectively what
I'm going to be doing is I want to make this sauce or look a little
bit less one-dimensional. So I'm actually going to
cut out a little section. I also want to make
it sort of abstract. So I'm gonna come
up here and you'll notice that when we create
the layer mask over here, the foreground color
changed to black. So wherever I click
you'll notice that black shows up on
our layer mask. So let me just click one time. And there's the
edge of my saucer. And you'll see over here, right where I clicked
is a black spot. And that just kinda
shows you where you, essentially what
you did is you cut a hole in this top layer
so that you can now look down onto the canvas so that section of saucer
is no longer there. Now we want to create the cup. So let's click back
on her saucer layer and I'm going to create a new layer on top
of that for the cup. I clicked back
down on this icon. My new layer is going
to be labeled cup. For this one, let's
grab the brush again. And this time we'll
come up to the icon that shows you the
shape of your brush. And we're going
to pull this dial back out because we just want a regular round circle now. So we'll click back on her
cup layer to close that out and re-size to however large
you want your cup to be. I'm going to hover
mind right about there and click one time. And same thing again, we want to create a layer
mask to cut part of this out. So I'm going to hover
above the circle a little bit right about there
and click one time. I'm going to Control Z and try that again just
because I don't like it. That's the nice thing
about working on layers. You can make as many changes
as you want or mistakes. So let's try that again. I like that a little bit better. Now it's time to create
the rim of the mugs. So once again, we're
going to create a new layer, name it rim. And we'll grab our brush, come up here to the brush icon. And again, we want eye level, so we're gonna go
ahead and change our perspective to look like the rim of a cup
scene from eye level. I'll come over here and
click right about there. And there is my top of the cup. And I'm going to create one
more layer mask here and just cut out a little section just the same way with
it that we did. I'm going to create our cut out a little section
right there. Now looking at this, I notice it's a little farther up than I want
it to be on the Canvas. So I'm just going to
click on my top layer, hold down the Shift key and
click on the bottom layer, not including the background, and grab the Move tool up here. That's the looks like
arrows in a cross pattern. And we're just going to click
and drag everything down. So that leaves us a little
more room for the steam. Click on your top layer
and we're going to create a new layer for our first
little bit of steam. So we'll label that steam. And once again, we're just
working with circles. And so we want to make sure that the dial now
is stretched out all the way just to
make a regular circle and click one time. And I'm going to create
another layer mask. Make sure your foreground
color is black. It should change automatically when you create a layer mask. And I'm just going to click
right inside the circle. So now I've got that
little half-moon shape. So I want to do the
same thing with another little bit of steam. So click right back on
the layer, not the mask, but the layer itself and
create another layer over top. And we're going to
rename that one, two. And I might want to make
this one a little smaller, maybe move it down here. So I'm gonna click one time, create a layer mask, and this time I'm going to
cut it out the other side. Okay? So I'm gonna click
back onto my layer and come down here and
create a third layer. And we're going to name
that one steam three. Steam three. And then I think I'm gonna go
a little bigger this time. Maybe up here and create
another layer mask. And I'll cut out
this side this time. Okay, so now we've got
three little bits of steam. If I wanted to make changes,
I definitely could. Let's say, I don't really like the position of
steam number one, this first one we created. So I just clicked on
that layer in a control T creates a bounding
box around it. And so you can just grab
the corners and turn. You could flip it horizontal. If you right-click and
click on Flip Horizontal, you could flip it the other way. I think I'm going to put
it back where it was. So yeah, you can also
change the size of it, make it larger or
smaller just by dragging on the corners. So I guess something like
that looks pretty good. Maybe I'll make it a
little bit bigger. Here we go. Turn it in a little check mark
when you're done. Okay, So the next
thing I wanna do is let's create a shadow. We want this shadow
to be under the cup, but above the saucer
because there'll be a shadow being cast
from the cup itself. So we want to create a
layer that's under the cup, but over the saucers. So click on your saucer layer
and create another layer, and that'll be placed right directly on top of the saucer. I'm going to
double-click on the word and rename this shadow. Let's come over here and
change the perspective. We want to flatten things
out a little bit again. And let's actually turn
the hardness down. And what that's gonna do is
it's going to create more of a soft edge around the edge of where we
click with our brush. And you'll see here
in just a minute, my right bracket key to make the shadow just
slightly bigger. And then I'm going to
click right about there. And there's our
nice little shadow. And you can also use a
bounding box hit Control T, and you can use this
to move it around. You can change the size, all kinds of things and
then you would just click that check mark up
here when you're done. But I like mine. I think I'm going to leave
it right where it is. But you know what it is
bugging me is the saucer. So I'm going to grab that saucer and put a bounding box
around that as well. I feel like it's just
a little too wide in comparison to the rest of logo. So let's, I'm gonna hit
my shift key and drag. And what that's gonna
do is it's just going to flatten it down a little bit. And I don't know, something like that looks
a little better to me. You can totally just do
whatever looks good to you, but I feel like it's just a
little bit too big and wide. Another thing you can do with these bounding boxes
is if you right-click, you can actually click on
warp and grab some edges. Now this takes a little bit
of practicing and finessing, but it's something to kind
of play around with it in your free time if
you're interested in learning a few more tools. But for me, I'm going to
mess with this a little bit. You certainly don't
have to do this. I just sometimes you
just gotta, gotta do it. Another thing I want
to show you is how to create a reflection
on the saucer. So what we're gonna do is
we're going to click on the saucer layer mask, and then we're gonna
come back over here. And another thing about this
dial is you can actually change the direction of it by just dragging on this arrows. So maybe we'll try sort of a diagonal
direction this time. I'm going to use a soft
brush instead of hard brush before we had it set all
the way at 100% hardness. Let's turn that
down quite a bit. What that's gonna do is
it's going to create a nice soft feathered
edge for our brush. And the other thing we can do is turn down the brush opacity. Over here, you'll
see it says opacity. If you just turn
that down a bit, once we click on the layer mask, it's not going to
completely cut through. The layer, is just going
to take out part of it. So it'll be somewhat opaque. So you'll see what I
mean in just a minute. I'm gonna make that slightly
smaller and click one time. And I created a little bit
of a reflection there. So if you don't like it, you can always control Z and play around with
different sizes, different angles, until
it looks good to you. So I'm going to Control Z again. Maybe I'll turn up
my opacity a little bit because it's not
quite bright enough. And I think I also
want to turn my dial slightly so you can just play
around with these as well. One more time. That looks better to me. I almost forgot to
make the handle. Let's do that. So
it's super simple. We can actually just copy one of the steams and make
a handle out of it. So let's go to steam one. I think that was this one. If you click on the eyeball, you can turn it on and off to see which layer
you're working on. So let's grab steam. Our very first steam
layer in control J will copy that layer. So now we're gonna do Control T to put our
bounding box around it and we can just drag it and pull it down where
we want the handle to be. Once again, I'm going to turn it like a manipulated in
any way that I want, make it bigger or smaller
or maybe I'll make it I guess we'll do it a little bit smaller and pull it out here. Okay. That looks good. So click on the check mark
and there's our handle. You can create text
over top of your logo. So click on the top layer. You can change
your font up here, your font size and color. So just simply click
where you want to type and click the check mark. And then you can
just move it around by grabbing the move tool. Also the bounding box control T. And you can re-size moving around whatever
looks good to you. Click the check mark. Let's talk about clipping
masks for a minute. Let's just say maybe
you want polka dots on your saucer or some
other kind of pattern. Let's create a new layer right
above the saucer layers. So make sure you click
on the saucer layer and create a new layer that'll
go directly above it. And we'll go ahead and name this layer polka dots, or just dots. So what is come up here and
change our brush again to just regular circles and
will decrease the size to the size of a
little polka dot that would fit on saucer. And click back on your layer. Let's just randomly
click around the page. Don't even be careful about
keeping dots on your saucer. Just randomly click in the general area of where
you want them to be. In order to get these
just onto the saucer. We're going to come over
here and right-click on the dots layer and choose
Create Clipping Mask. What that does is
whatever you do on this layer is only going to affect the layer
that's below it. So our polka dots or only on
top of the saucer itself. And if we were to
continue clicking around, you could click anywhere. And now that we have
that clipping mask, those dots are only going
to show up on the saucer. Now let me just quickly show you a keyboard shortcut to
create a clipping mask. I deleted that layer. I'm going to recreate it and
grab a few polka dots here. Then if you wanted to
use a keyboard shortcut, hover your mouse between
your polka dots layer, which I haven't renamed again, and the saucer layer right
below it, click Alt. And you'll notice that
now your cursor change to a box with an
arrow pointing below. So that indicates that it
is now a clipping mask. So you can just go
ahead and Alt click. So Alt click is the
keyboard shortcut, but you have to
remember to be sort of hovered in-between
your two layers, the polka dot layer and the layer below that you
want it to affect. And I'm gonna go ahead and
drag this to the garbage can because I like it better
without but that's it. You guys, we're done. Congratulations, nice-looking logo in under 15
minutes using only circles. Now your assignment is to create your own unique logo using some of the tools that
we talked about here. There's only one requirement. You must use only circles. You can alter the
perspective of the circle. You can cut out portions of it. You can warp it to
change it completely, but you must at least
start with a circle. So challenge yourself to see
what you can come up with. You could even stick with plain round circles in
different sizes, colors, and patterns to create
a complex design, anything you can imagine. Then post your project
in the project gallery. You can wait until it's all
finished or post as you go. This is a great place
to share your work, ask questions, and get
feedback from others. So let's get started. I can't wait to see
what you come up with.
Wendy Thompson, Photographer, Compositer
