GIMP Tutorial #4--Logos

For this tutorial, I’ll use text, layers, and various tools to make an awesome logo.

First, create a new canvas. Begin by coloring the whole thing black with the Paintbucket tool.

Next, create a new layer. Name it something significant if you wish, like “gradient.” Then, find and select the Blend tool in the Toolbox. Click the gradient tab and select the Deep Sea gradient.

Now comes the fun part of using the Blend tool. Click on the image (with the gradient layer selected) and click and drag the tool on your image to make a cool light effect. See below:

Depending on how you click and drag your gradient, you’ll come up with different effects. Dragging from left to right, making a long line or a short like, or from right to left will all affect how the gradient looks. Hopefully, you’ll see something like below:

Duplicate this layer by right clicking the gradient and selecting “Duplicate Layer.”

Now, select the Flip Tool from the Toolbox. Make sure the new duplicated layer is highlighted, then click and hold the image and move the mouse to the left. Your image should flip.

Lets change the color of our duplicated, flipped image. Go to the menu bar, select colors, and go down to colorize. A Colorize window will open. Play around with the sliders, but make sure to put the saturation to 100% (for the most intense color). When you find a mix you like, select Ok. I’m using purple, but choose any shade or lightness you wish.

Now we’re gonna play with the opacity of the layers. Opacity is a fancy term of describing to what degree you can see the other layers beneath the layer you’re working with, To demonstrate this, I’ve changed the opacity of my purple layer and my blue layer to 30% each. If you have problems getting the numbers exactly right on the slider, you can click on the numbers themselves and type in what you want. Play around with it to see how opacity works, but I’ll leave mine at 30% for now. It creates a cool lighting effect. When you’re finished, you should have something like below:

Now that we’ve got the background done, we’ll insert some text. Use the text tool to write something. Right click on the text layer and select “Alpha to Selection.” You should see something like this:

Your text should now have an outline around the letters. Go ahead and delete the text layer, and you should see the outline is still there.

Create a new layer, and name it “Text” or something descriptive (we’ll have more text layers in a bit). When the layer window open, be sure to select “Transparent” instead of “White” or “Black.” This layer should automatically be imposed onto your outlined text, so your outline will have it’s own layer. Grab the Blend Tool again and find a gradient you like, then drag it across your text. If you want the gradient to be exactly straight, you can hold the “Ctrl” key.

As you can see, I’ve moved the text layer to the top in the layers panel.

If you’ve been following this tutorial, your text should still have lines moving around it. Create another layer, and the “lined” text will be imposed onto the layer again. Also make sure you create this layer with a transparent “Layer Fill Type.” Fill this new layer (the text) with white. You can do this with the paint tool. You should get this:

Still with your text selection active, create a third layer of text, the same as the last. This time, paint it black. You should have three layers of text at this point: one white, one black, and one at whatever gradient you chose. On your layers list, they should also be in order with the gradient beneath the white beneath the black. Now, we can deselect out text. To do this, go to the menu bar and click Select -> None

Go to your layers window and hide the black and white text layers by clicking the eye next to the layer. You should be able to see the gradient again. Select your original text layer, then on the menu bar go to Filters -> Blur ->Gaussian Blur.

A window will open. Set the vertical and horizontal blurs to the same, and blur it as you wish.

Once you did this with your first text layer, unhide your white and black text layers and Gaussian blur both as well, but only blur it half as much as you blurred the first text. Then, set the black and white text layers’ modes’ to Overlay. You should see something like this:

You can move your text layers up and down over each other (or hide them) to achieve slightly different shading effects. If you put the black text above the original text, for example, your image will be a bit darker, whereas if you put the white image above your original text the text will be lighter. Experiment here as you wish.

These are the basics you need for making text logos, or pamphlets. By making multiple layers of the text and overlaying them, you can create realer effects, and the text will have more depth to it. Utilizing background gradients can also help make cool backgrounds. Here’s something I made using the tools described above:

Good luck!

Go create!

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