#25 Mix Up You Textures And Colors, Create A Cool Logo

With all the 1-click logo making software on the web, you might ask why should you even go through the hassle of making one yourself? The answer is simple. Originality(and brag rights too). If you are using overused templates in logo creation software, chances are your logos style has been done to death.

To get things going, write up the text for your logo in PhotoShop. Rasterize it(right click on the layer, Rasterize Type) and make a couple duplicates of that layer, one on top of the other.

Now, color all of the layers differently. To help you do this, make the layers you are not currently coloring invisible so you can see the layers under them. So lets say you have something like this:

I have 3 differently colored layers. You may have as many as you want of course. The next step is setting up layer masks for all of them. Just select each layer, and click on the little “circle in a square” on the bottom of the layer window.

With this you get a white thumbnail next to your layer thumbnail. It works like this: The areas that are white on this new image are the areas that are visible on the original, and the areas that are black on this image will be invisible. Gray colors grant a level of transparency.

Now that you know how this works, use this to mix up the visibility  of the different layers, and don’t forget to use a black(or white) brush with the “Layer Mask”(the white thumbnail) selected.

This is a pretty simple tutorial, which represents the point of this blog, but as with other tricks, you can use this new knowledge for practice and combination with other skills.

You can use the same technique on images(in this case, 3D images), and even combine that result with text. Add some formatting to the text, an interesting layout, and you got yourself a logo! Hmm, I think I will be using this one until I make a better one. My first blog logo! Celebration time!