Learnings: Logo Design

A million dollar business

You may think that designing a logo is just a lazy process. Little did you know that designers put all their heart and soul to every logo they have made. Every inch, every pixel, is product of hard work.

- Adonna Velez 

Learnings: The Type Tool

The Type Tool

The power of words is unparalleled. Words can speak of courage, empowerment, love, hatred, anger, and a lot more. Words can be inspiring. But without the Type Tool, this words will never be . . . . well, typed.

Words can also be used as a design aesthetic, you can either put it with a picture or manipulate it so it can be as interesting as a photograph.

"Are there pictures?"

Reading can be such a burden. Whenever people are handed a book the first thing they would do is look for photos. Words are never interesting - until the type tool came.

To access the type tool, left-click the T icon in the toolbox near the canvas. You can also easily access it by clicking the same letter on your keyboard. T for Type Tool, easy, right? Right-clicking the icon will give you more options such as the Vertical Type Tool, which instantly allows you to type vertically. You can change the typeface, as well as the size of the font by accessing the drop-down menus. Beside the sizes, you'll see another drop-down menu which determines the quality of the font. You can change the color of the font too. And an interesting feature awaits after click the icon that shows a T above an arc, you'll be offered a variety of choice to arc/bend the text in different ways.

More features

More features to toggle with are available in the Character menu, found parallel to the toolbox. To access the menu click the icon that shows an A with a vertical line beside it, if you can't seem to find what I'm describing to you, enable the Character menu by going to Windows>Character.

(A) Font (B) Leading - the space between lines of text (C) Tracking - uniform space between the letters (D) Stretches the letters vertically (E) Stretches the letters horizantally (F) A number of options to style the font such as [from left to right] Bold, Italic, Uppercase, Small Caps, Superscript, Subscript, Underline, and Strikethrough.

**left side of B: Font size

***left side of C: Kerning - space between two letters

****below D: Baseline shift - allows to move the letters above and/or below the baseline

IN SUMMATION

Typography is not as easy as brushes. And it is far more technical than colors. Words need to be understandable. They are not just there to be an aesthetic to the design. Of course they are there to add beauty, but not JUST beauty. It has to have a purpose. Whatever you want to say, make sure it has a purpose, or else just shut up. :)

signing out . . . . . . . . 

Learnings: The Brush Tool

The Brush Tool

There is this one tool in Photoshop that is powerful. With it you can create anything; the possibilities are endless. It goes by the name of "brush."

Now when do we usually use a brush? In the real world you need a brush to paint and in Photoshop the tool is basically the same.

The brush tool is one of the numerous tools that is available in Photoshop. It is located on the right side (by default) of the canvas, inside the toolbox. You can easily access it by pressing the letter B on your keyboard.

Mother of tools!

I would say that this tool is powerful because most of the tools in Photoshop was based on brush and/or functions like one. Only that for different tools, they have different functions (duuh), but to explain some tools, you would have to refer to it as "use it like a brush."

The Power

Brushes are amazing. You can literally make an artwork just by using brushes - just like the picture above. I used a variety of brushes to mask and design the photo. Photoshop allows you to use a variety of brushes. There are presets available. To view these, you can click the arrow on the side of the brush preview (after you select the brush tool) or just select the brush tool and then right-click anywhere inside the canvas. You can also change the size by accessing the same menu that shows the other brushes available, just toggle the toggle thingy (I don't know the right term teehee) or just use the [ key to make the brush diameter smaller and the ] key to enlarge it.

The Power: Part 2 - Just can't get enough

But that's not all. Photoshop allows even MORE options to customize each brush. On the left side of the canvas you'll find an icon that looks like a can of brushes (if you're not able to locate it, it's probably disabled, so you'd have to go to Windows>Brush or just use F5 on ya keyboard) left-click it and it'll take you to Wonderland - of brushes for that matter. More options await you such as Shape Dynamics (allows you to change the angle, roundness, and size of the brush), Scattering (gives the brush an automatic scattering effect so you don't have to scatter each and every brush point no mo'!), and Color Dynamics (my favorite one! basically, in one brush stroke, there will be variety of shades, tints, and colors available.)

The Power: Part 3 - You didn't thought it's gonna be this interesting with brushes

Okay, did I already tell you brushes are amazing? Because it is some kick butt tool you know. Now this is like the cherry on top of the features of the brushes tool. I have already told you that Photoshop gives you a variety of brush presets you can use. But if you get bored (which is less likely to happen because BRUSHES ARE AMAZING), don't you worry, Photoshop allows you to install brushes to its system. Aaaaaah! That's more brushes for you. You can download brushes online (don't worry a lot of them are free). There are websites such as brusheezy.com where you can download several brushes/brush packs for you to install. And don't get worried about installing them, it isn't very technical. After selecting the brush tool. Go to the menu that we use to resize the brush. Now, just near the size toggle thingy there's a little gear, left-click that and then choose "Load Brushes...", now find the file you downloaded, choose "Load" and voila! the set of brushes you just downloaded are now loaded along with the pre-existing ones. 

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE. The Photoshop gods have allowed us, puny, creative humans to make our own brush. Which is fun! Just load the picture you want to make as a brush. Now, you can select a part that you want to make into a brush using the selection tool (and other tools that allow you to select). It can be ANY shape you want. Now, having selected the part you want to use, go to Edit>Define Brush Preset, you can rename it, then choose OK. And now you can finally use your face as a stamp!

IN SUMMATION

Photoshop gives us a variety of tools to help us with our design/designing. Most of them functions just as their real-life counterpart and/or namesake. And with the power of brush tool you can create anything.

signing out . . . . . . . .