A couple logo designs

I've been doing some freelance graphic work lately, just thought I'd post a couple designs I liked. My strategy for designing stuff like this is to keep it as clean as possible, using as few colors as necessary to get the desired end product. Click both to enlarge.

I also just thought I'd comment on my philosophy when it comes to designing logos in photoshop vs. illustrator. While I can appreciate the benefits of doing things in the vector format, I'd much rather have the pixel-basis ease of editing you get with photoshop. Vectors are too limited in what you can actually represent graphically, and in photoshop if you simply design at a very high resolution, it's almost as good as having a vector for all intents and purposes. I did both these logos at a resolution whereby they would be 10 feet if printed at 100%. Things always scale down nicely, so I just design at a very high resolution.

Something from my harddrive

So I love the fact that I keep so much old shit on my harddrive. I found a project I did in 12th grade for an art class. It was like a week after 9\11 and the project was supposed to be related to that (please disregard whatever political statement I thought I was making here). I didn't really finish this before I had to turn it in, and then I just never got around to it and it felt wrong to go back and finish it. I'm happy with the crosshatching texture effect on the flag and jacket. I didn't get to finish the face or tie and wanted to re-do the hair. Anyway, here it is. Click it to enlarge, it will look way better:

Contact: mblomquist@berklee.net

Favorite links..

Just thought I'd share some great Photoshop tutorial links that I've had bookmarked for a long time. Most of these involve the use of a digital art tablet:

General digital painting:
http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm

Skin tones:
http://www.gfxartist.com/features/tutorials/14033

Color theory:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=17837

Fur:
http://www.3dtotal.com/team/tutoria...nder_fur_01.asp

Tutorial #2: Manual Shadow and Bloom effects..

So I was just fooling around with source images and making various composite pieces, and I decided to document the making of one in particular as a tutorial for the site. In this tutorial I'll show how to make a simple piece using composited source images, and then tie them together with some nice hand-made bloom and shadow effects.

Photoshop has filters for both of these effects, but sometimes the same thing done by hand will look a million times better and more authentic. Both of these techniques are more easily achieved with a Wacom digital art tablet or similar device, but can be done by a mouse with relative ease.

First came the random idea: I'll put a giant baby seal stranded on mars with a nice space backdrop. Next I needed source images. I found a nice hubble shot of space, and a nice high res shot of mars. As always, make sure your source images are of high quality! If they're roughly the same dps that's even better. Here are the shots of mars and the baby seal, so you can see what I'm working with (though I encourage you to find different images, so your piece is unique!):

First I play with the contrast and hue of both images to get them a little more lively looking. Then I use the magic wand with a tolerance of 20 to select the black section around mars. I then go to selection -> inverse to get only mars itself. Cut the image and now go to your space background and paste it in. I situated mine in the lower left corner. I now have this:

Bloom Effect:

-Next I take the airbrush with a pressure of 5% and a size of about 100, and begin to dot in areas of light blue around the edge of mars that occludes the bright stars of the background. After this I set the color to white and the mode of the airbrush to 'color dodge' and begin to add even brighter areas within the light blue. When I'm done I have this:

-Now to finish off this effect I go to render -> lighting effects. I use the default flood light as I find that works the best 90% of the time. I set it to match the source of the light and adjust the settings to get the desired effect:

The Seal:

Now I want to paste in the seal, but I first need to select him. He has fine furry edges, but I won't worry about that for now. I'm going to use the polygonal lasso tool to select him. If you use a good number of clicks, thus making a lot of nodes on the path, you can get very clean and accurate selections. Make sure anti-aliasing IS selected:

-Once you're done with the selection, cut or copy it and paste it into the main project. Scale it down and position it.

Shadow Effect:

-Create a new layer above the planet and below the seal. Select the airbrush, the color black, and set the size to about 80. The pressure should still be around 5%. Begin to dot in shadow behind the seal. Make the shadows darkest in areas that are adjacent to dark areas on the casting object (like under the arms of the seal). Optionally, you can use a subtle gaussian blur when you're done airbrushing to blend the whole thing together. I didn't do that here though.

-Now for the seal's fur. Simply select the smudge tool, set the pressure to 95% (not 100%) and the size to 1. Go to the seal layer and begin to pull short straight lines away from the body. This will replicate the tips of the fur in the original photo:

-Repeat the bloom effect procedure along the seal's border like you did to the planet earlier. You should now have something that looks like this- almost done!:

-I like to play with the contrast and hue of the image (under the adjust menu) to see if I like something a little different better than the original scheme. I often do. Here is the final product:

Contact: mblomquist@berklee.net

General Design Principles

I was thinking about a few guidelines I usually follow when working on something.

-A lot of the work I do in Photoshop that isn't from scratch involves source images. These are usually background or textural images that somehow get incorporated into the project. An important thing to remember when working with source images is that higher resolution is always better. Things always scale down nicely, but rarely scale up nicely (unless you're working with a vector image or something similar). Also be sure that your source images are not protected under copyright if your work is being used commercially.

-Create a layer for the smallest of things. Layers can always be merged and consolidated, so remember to isolate every aspect of your project on it's own layer. If you want to organize things after the fact, you always can. There's nothing worse than realizing you want to do something over, but have already merged two layers together that you need separate again. In this same vein, remember to save multiple copies of your project as you go along, so you have instances saved at various points in the process.

-Make things from scratch whenever possible. It will give your work originality and it's own unique style. Many silhouettes can be made from combining or subtracting simple shapes.

More tutorials to come..

Tutorial #1: Texture Fill and Glow

In this tutorial I'll discuss simple techniques for getting nice looking texture fills and a quick easy glow effect.

-First, create a new image with a dark colored background. Use this color as a basis for your overall color scheme. For this example, I'm using a dark navy blue.

-Create a new layer, and on this new layer make a selection and give it a solid color fill of a similar, lighter color.

-Right click the new layer in the layers list and select 'blending options'. On this menu, select 'stroke' and give it a width of 8. Pick a lighter or darker border color, I'm going with lighter. You should now have something like this:


-With the selection still active, create a new layer on top of this one. Set the mode of the layer to 'Multiply'.

-Open another image to use as a texture, preferably black and white, to fill into the selection. In this instance I'm using an old sandstone texture. Be sure the texture image is larger than the selection you're pasting it into. Select all and then copy or cut.

-In the main project, on the newly created multiply layer, select 'paste into'. You should now see the latent image of the texture appear within the selection:


-Right click on the solid color fill layer's stroke effect, and select 'Create layer'. This turns the stroke effect into it's own indepedant layer. Now merge the above solid color fill layer with the stroke layer below.

-On this new combined layer, select 'blending options' again and choose 'stroke' once more. Set a thinner width this time and choose an even brighter color:


-Also under blending options on this layer, select 'outer glow'. Use a very bright color. Set the spread to ~20% and the size to 50-60 pixels:


-Also set the noise to something low like 4%. I love to use noise in compositions because it serves as a sort of canvas for the color. It's a lot more interesting to look at than perfectly smooth gradients. The finished product should look something like this:



Optional finishing touch:

This technique can be used to create a sort of dull metal effect to finish off the overall look.

-Use the magic wand on the solid fill layer to get the original selection back. Create a new layer on top of everything and set it to 'multiply'. Fill the selection with solid white and then select 'add noise'. Add about 35% monochromatic noise and hit apply.

-Keeping the selection, select 'motion blur' and blur the noise diagonally at a distance of about 45 pixels. You now have this:

Contact: mblomquist@berklee.net

Examples of work

Here are a few examples of things I've done over the years. I will put together tutorials detailing the techniques used in creating some of them. Most are website designs as well as simply banners and logos. Click any to enlarge:

John Tiberio, musician. URL: http://www.johntiberio.com


Hostile Intent Art website banner.


Quindlen Shoals, band. URL: http://www.qsmusic.net


David Stokle, photographer.


Dean's Cards sports cards website banner. URL: http://www.deanscards.com

Dean's Cards sports cards logo.

Contact: mblomquist@berklee.net