Inkscape Hands-on Class 03: Orange Juice Logo

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Brandon and welcome to the Inkscape hands-on series of lessons. In this series, we're using entirely hands-on project-based approach to learn how to create stunning digital art with Inkscape apparel for free and open-source vector graphics editor. This lesson, we will create an orange juice logo with texts. And the process will learn how to use the text tool to create a modified sex objects and change font attributes, will learn how to turn texts objects into paths and modify individual letters. We'll learn how to use the put on path feature to curve text around a path. And we'll learn some more PET operations including break apart and dynamic offset. The things we've learned in this lesson, we'll be very useful every time we want to create custom typographic logos. Alright, let's go ahead and start up a new Inkscape document, and I'll see you in that lesson. 2. Orange Juice Logo: To begin, let's switch to the circles and ellipses tool by pressing the E key, hold Ctrl and create a circle on the Canvas. Now let's open the fill and stroke dialog with this button up here, and let's give this circle an orange fill. Okay, now let's switch to the select tool with the S key, duplicate the circle by pressing Ctrl D, then move the duplicate over here. We're going to use this one to create a slice of an orange. First, let's make it a bit darker than the other circle. Now let's duplicate it with Ctrl D, make this one a very light orange, almost white, then let's hold Shift and Ctrl and scale it down some. Next we want to create some segments in here, like the inside of an orange. Let's first de-select everything, then we can switch to the squares and rectangles tool by pressing the R key, choose a random color for the moment, and let's create a rectangle that doesn't quite touch the top of this circle and make it kind of long. Okay, now let's take this circular handle at the top-right and drag it down as far as it will go to round the corners all the way. Let's make this a lighter orange than the first circle over here. To do this easily, we can click this eye dropper button at the bottom of the fill and stroke dialog, which will temporarily switch us to the color picker tool, then click the circle over here. Now we can make it a bit brighter. Now let's switch to the select tool and Shift-click one of these circles to add it to the selection, open the align and distribute dialog with this button, and with last selected chosen in the relative to box, let's align them vertically. Next, we want to be able to work on the nodes of this rectangle. As we learned in the previous lesson, we first turn it into a path by selecting it, then going to Path -> Object to Path. Now we can switch to the node tool with the N key to see the nodes. Let's first select these three bottom nodes. We want to join these nodes together, which we can do by clicking this button in the controls bar. And let's turn the node into a symmetric node by clicking this button. Now we can grab this handle here, hold Ctrl and drag it down and to the right some until the handles are aligned horizontally and the segments are a bit rounded. And we want to make sure we have enough space between this node and the center of the circle. If we click the circle, we can see this x at the center. I'm going to select the path again and bring this node up just a bit more while holding Ctrl. Okay, now let's select these two nodes near the top, hold Ctrl and bring them up some more. We also want to spread them out a little more to make the path wider. To do this, we can toggle on this button up here that says show transformation handles for selected nodes. Now we can hold Shift and drag out one of these scale handles to spread them out evenly. And we can go ahead and turn the transformation handles back off. Next we're going to put duplicates of this path spaced evenly around the circle. To do this, let's turn snapping on, click the arrow here, go to advanced mode, and we want to enable snapping to object rotation centers here. Now we can switch to the select tool and click the path to get the rotation handles, and drag its rotation center down until it snaps to the circle's rotation center. This will let us rotate around the center of the circle. Let's turn snapping back off for now. Okay, as we learned before, we can duplicate objects with Ctrl D. However, a faster way to duplicate is with stamping. To demonstrate, let's create a rectangle over here. Let's go ahead and make the corners sharp with this button up here, then switch to the select tool. To stamp, we move the object to where we want a copy and press the spacebar. We can do this very quickly. Okay, so let's delete these objects, and let's select the path here again, and click it again to get the rotation handles. Now let's hold Ctrl and grab one of the rotation handles, but before we rotate, let's go ahead and press the spacebar to put a copy here. And let's rotate clockwise three times. It should say in the status bar that it's rotated 45 degrees. Now, without releasing, let's press the spacebar to stamp, rotate again, stamp, and let's continue around the circle. For the last one, we can just release the mouse without stamping. Okay, now let's select all of the segment paths, which we can do easily by right-clicking one, then going to Select Same -> Fill Color. And let's group them together with Ctrl G. Now let's select all the parts of the slice, and let's scale it in some by dragging in one of the side scale handles. Now let's Shift-click the circle over here, and align them vertically and horizontally. Let's select just the segment group and the really light ellipse, hold Ctrl, and move it to the right just a bit. Okay, now we want to remove the right half of this circle. To do this, let's first turn snapping back on, and when we have snapping to smooth nodes enabled here, it also lets us snap to the quadrant points of ellipses. So we can switch to the squares and rectangles tool, snap to the circle's top quadrant point, and reate a rectangle covering the whole right half of the circle. Let's turn snapping back off, switch to the select tool, hold Shift and click the circle. To get rid of this part of the circle under the rectangle, we use a Difference operation, which has the shortcut Ctrl -. All right, now let's give the orange a shadow and highlight. For the shadow, let's duplicate this semicircle here with Ctrl D, and let's switch to the color picker tool by pressing the D key, then click the dark orange ellipse here. Now let's switch back to the select tool, duplicate again, make this one any color, and let's bring it up and also rotate it some. Now let's Shift-click the path under it and do a Difference with Ctrl -. We now have a path here with two subpaths. To separate these subpaths into separate object, we can use another path operation called Break Apart. The paths are now separate, so we can select just this one by holding Shift and clicking the other one to de-select it, and now let's delete this path. Let's move the shadow path under the front objects by pressing the pgdn key a couple of times. For the highlight, let's duplicate this semicircle again, and let's use the color picker tool to make it the brightest orange. Now we want to shrink this path some. However, if we switch back to the select tool, hold Shift and Ctrl and shrink down the path, we can see it doesn't shrink it evenly. So let's undo that. To shrink or grow a path evenly, we have a path operation we can use called Dynamic Offset. If we click it, then switch to the node tool, we now have this handle at the top right of the path. With this we can inset or outset the path evenly. Okay, let's inset this path. So this is actually a dynamic offset object now and not a path anymore, which is why we don't have access to the nodes. So when we have it at the size we want, we can turn it back into a path by going to Path -> Object to Path. Now we have access to the nodes. Okay, next let's switch back to the select tool and duplicate the orange semicircle again, and let's bring it down and to the left a bit, Shift-click the highlight path and do a Difference with Ctrl -. We actually want to cut off some of the highlight path so that it doesn't touch the dark ellipse here. For this, we can duplicate the ellipse, do Dynamic Offset on it, and let's make it a bit transparent so we can see everything. Now let's switch to the node tool and outset this path. Now we can turn it into a normal path, switch to the select tool, Shift-click the highlight path, then do a Difference. All right, Let's select everything and group it all with Ctrl G, then duplicate it, flip it horizontally with the H key and bring it down here. Let's also scale it in a bit, so it doesn't look like an exact copy of the other one. Now let's rotate them both. Okay, let's add some leaves to the top path. To start, let's switch to the circles and ellipses tool, hold Ctrl and create a circle here. Let's raise the opacity all the way up and give this a green fill. We actually do want to lower the opacity some again for the moment. Now switch to the select tool, duplicate this circle, hold Ctrl and bring it to the right some until we have a leaf shape in the center. Now let's select both circles, and to get just the overlapping part, we can do the Intersection operation with the shortcut Ctrl *. Okay, Now we can raise the opacity all the way up. And let's switch to the node tool. First, let's select this node on the left, and let's hold Ctrl and click it to turn it into a smooth node. Then let's adjust the handle here on the top node to give the path more of a natural shape. Next we can give the leaf a shadow and highlight, like we did with the orange. For the shadow, let's switch to the select tool and duplicate the path, and let's make it darker. Let's duplicate again, make this one any color rotate it counterclockwise, and let's move it up a bit as well. Now let's Shift-click the path under it and do a Difference with Ctrl -. We actually have a small piece left here. So we can do Break Apart with Shift Ctrl K and delete the extra piece. For the highlight, let's duplicate the lighter green path again and make it a bright green. Now let's perform the Dynamic Offset operation, which we can do with the shortcut Ctrl J. Then switch to the node tool and inset it. Now let's turn it into a normal path with the shortcut Shift Ctrl C, and switch to the select tool. Let's duplicate this path, make it any color, then rotate it counterclockwise. Now we can select both paths and do a Difference, then do Break Apart with Shift Ctrl K and delete this extra piece down here. We can select all of these pieces, rotate them, and scale them if we want, then put them into place. Let's put it all underneath the orange by clicking this button up here. For another leaf, let's select just the main leaf path and the highlight, duplicate them, rotate and scale them down some, move them over here, and put them beneath everything. We also want to put a shadow between the two leaves. For this, let's duplicate the main path of the top leaf, make it a different color, lower the opacity some, and move it to the right. Now let's duplicate the main path of the bottom leaf, Shift-click the transparent path, and do an Intersection with Ctrl *. Let's press pgdn a few times to put it under the top leaf, raise the opacity all the way up, then use the color picker here to choose the dark green. Now let's select all of the leaf parts and the top half of the orange and group them with Ctrl G. Okay, we're finished with the orange. So now let's see how we can add some text. To create text, we use the text tool, located here in the toolbox. With this tool, we can click in the canvas and start typing, and it will create a text object. If we press enter, it will start a new line. In the controls bar for the text tool, we can change things like the font family, the font style, and the font size. Another way to change the font size is by using the select tool to scale the text object. We can hold Ctrl to maintain the width to height ratio of the letters. Back in the text tool, which we can get to easily by double-clicking a text object, we can change the spacing between baselines of the text, we can change the alignment of the text, we can creat superscripts and subscripts, and if we drop down this spacing box, we can change things like the spacing between letters and the spacing between words. We can also change the kerning, which refers to the spacing between individual pairs of letters. For this, we can click between two letters and change the horizontal kerning and the vertical kerning. We can also rotate either the letter to the right of the cursor position or all selected letters. Finally, we can change the direction of the text with these boxes. We can also set the color of a text object the same way as with other objects. We can give the letters a stroke as well. Another way to create a text object is by clicking and dragging with the text tool, which creates a box. When we type now, the text will stay within the box. This is called flowed text. We can resize the box with this handle at the bottom right, and the text will flow accordingly. We can also use justified text alignment with flowed text. Okay, let's switch to the select tool and delete these texts objects. And let's create some text for our logo. First, let's switch to the text tool by pressing the T key, then click in the canvas. And I'll type "Orange Juice." Alright, let's go back to the select tool, hold Ctrl and scale this up. And let's switch back to the text tool. For the font family, we can choose pretty much anything we want. I'll go with Bemio here. For the color, let's use the color picker tool to choose the main orange. Then switch to the select tool. Okay, so at the moment the text looks kind of boring. Instead of having it go straight across like this, let's make a wavy. To do this, we can a feature located in the Text menu called put on path. First, let's move the text out of the way, then switch to the pen tool by pressing the B key, and let's create a wavy path here. We can right-click to finish the path. Now switch back to the select tool, Shift-click the text object and go to Text -> Put on Path. All right, that looks better. And this is actually still a normal text object. So we can add more text to it if we want. And we can still change things in the controls bar, like maybe add some more spacing between the letters. We can also transform the path, and the text object will update automatically. Okay, when we have the text the way we want it, we want to be able to delete this path. We can't delete it right now, however, or the text object will go back to being straight across Instead, we have to turn the text object into a path first by selecting it and going to Path -> Object to Path. Now we can delete the wavy path. When we turn a text object into a path, it gives us a group of paths. We can double-click the group to enter it and modify the individual letters now. Let's select all the letters for Juice, and let's use the color picker tool to make them the main green of the leaves. Let's also give all of the text a border, so we can see it better. To do this, let's first get out of the group by selecting an object outside the group, then let's select the text group again and duplicate it with Ctrl D. Let's make this the brightest orange. And we want to turn all the letters of this duplicate into a single path. To do this, first we have to ungroup the letters with Shift Ctrl G, then Union them together with Ctrl +. Now we can put this path under the other text by pressing the pgdn key. Let's do the Dynamic Offset operation with Ctrl J, then switch to the node tool and outset the path. That should be good. So now we can turn it back into a path with Shift Ctrl C. If we want, we can also close in these gaps showing in the border of some of the letters like the G, the E, and the A. To do this, we can use the Break Apart operation with Shift Ctrl K. As you can see, Break Apart not only separates subpaths, as we learned earlier, but it also creates new paths to fill in any enclosed, empty areas. Okay, now we can turn all of this into a single path by doing Union with Ctrl +. Okay, to finish up our logo, we can add some drops of juice splashing out. First, let's switch to the circles and ellipses tool and create an ellipse here. Let's turn off the stroke and give it the same fill color as the segments inside the orange. Now let's turn it into a path with Shift Ctrl C, switch the node tool and adjust the nodes and curves some to give it a liquid drop shape. Alright, to give it a highlight, let's switch to the select tool and duplicate the path, make it the lightest orange, scale it down some while holding Shift and Ctrl, then move it down here. Now we can select both paths and transform them however we want. Let's create some more, different-sized drops with duplicates of these paths. Let's put some at the top right as well. We can duplicate one of these drops, flip it vertically with the V key and horizontally with the H key and move it up here. For these, we want to put the highlight at the bottom-right. Let's add a few more. Finally, we can select everything with Ctrl A, and group it altogether with Ctrl G. Now our orange juice logo is finished. Thanks for watching. I'll see you in the next lesson.