MAKE TEAM LOGOS - IN 10 EASY STEPS!
Here's a quick and dirty guide to making football team logos, using the recent one for Inter Cardiff as the example. I use a programme called
Paint Pro on my iMac but there are similar packages available for just a few quid on PC, too.
STEP 1 - (below, left) - Do an image search for "shield logo" or "shield illustration" and select a suitable shield shape for your logo, like this one. Save it as a .png file and size the canvas to a large square shape (mine here is 695x695px).
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STEP 2 - (above, right) - Irrespective of whether the space around the shield is transparent or filled with white or some other colour, use the fill tool to fill it with a neutral colour that contrasts against the black edge of the shield.
STEP 3 - (below,left) - Use the transparency tool to remove the black outline of the shield, then Merge All Layers > Select All > Cut > Paste. This groups everything onto a single layer and enables you to put objects behind that layer.
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STEP 4 - (above, right) - Do an image search for your choice of textured background colour. As you may have already noticed in this thread, I favour gold edging on my logos - this one was the product of a search for "gold background" (shown smaller here because the site wouldn't let me post the large original).
STEP 5 - (below, left) - From the large original version of the gold background, copy and paste it into your shield image file. Move it down to the bottom layer so that it is only visible through the transparency that you created earlier. You can now see why the surrounding area is grey... to block out the rest of the gold. Using the cursor keys, position the gold so that the highlight effect running through it can be seen within that edging, to give it that metallic effect. Merge All Layers.
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STEP 6 - (above, right) -
BobbyMoore wanted his Inter Cardiff logo to have Internazionale style blue-and-black stripes. Knowing that I wanted to have some texture within the blue, I decided to search for black-and-white stripes and placed them into the central area using the same transparency and layer features that I have just demonstrated, to remove the white and place the stripes image behind the gold edging. The expanded black and white stripes image blurred a little at the edges of each black stripe, so I used the fill tool to make the stripes clearer and more distinct, being careful not to encroach into the gold edging with either the black or the white fills.
STEP 7 - (below, left) - Back to the transparency tool now to remove the white stripes, then > Merge All Layers > Select All > Cut > Paste. Do another image search, this time for a blue background.
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STEP 8 - (above, right) - I decided that the textured dark blue area at the bottom left of this blue background was the most suitable for an Inter style blue stripe, so I enlarged the original quite a bit then flipped the image vertically and horizontally before taking it into the shield image file and placing it on the bottom layer. Then, with the cursor keys, I positioned it so that the textured portion was visible in the transparent stripe areas. Merge All Layers.
STEP 9 - (below, left) - The grey blocker has done its job now, so use the transparency tool to remove it - making sure not to damage the edges of the gold trim in the process. Merge All Layers. You can now select your preferred font and colours to add and position your text. Use the handles on your text box and the text alignment options to centre your copy across the width of the shield. I've gone with a font called Hattenschweiler Regular: 125pt for Inter Cardiff and 73pt for Football Club. I put spaces between each letter in the second line to achieve a similar width with a smaller font size, and the yellow provides a nice contrast against the white text and the blue-black background (plus I think yellow features in Inter's kit, too).
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STEP 10 - (above, right) - An image search for a Welsh dragon, a bit more tomfoolery with the transparency tool and my gold background resulted in this handsome chap, to give this Inter team a distinctly Welsh flavour. The soccer ball image is from another search and one I use constantly to provide a visual balance to these logos. Click on the finished logo and you'll see that the dark line at the very top edge isn't really there.
I normally size logos at 400x400px for large preview, and then when people choose their favourites, I size them for FM at 180x180px for the main logo and 25x18px for the icon version.
I have a set of folders that I keep my shield templates, stripes, animals, footballs etc in for quick reference but when somebody requests something in particular, I go searching for it and continue to build up my library. Avoid any images with watermarks on - you're supposed to pay to use them.
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Anyway, something different for my thread tonight since I was a bit tired. I have started on Glasgow Ultras for
MrToad and will resume when I next return.
Like your black / red logos with the devil