I have started to learn about paths and vectors in Photoshop recently and it has completely opened my eyes into some of the abilities of the program I had no idea about. I feel like my life just got easier by knowing how to used these tools but I also feel I have a lot more to learn.

Brisbane band and friends Vassals asked me to design a logo for them a few weeks ago. Automatically I had an idea to do an ambigram design using the reversed V as the LS on the opposite side. Done.

I sat with a sketch pad and lightbox for a while trying to line the lettering up and designing a V that looked like a mirrored LS. OK, this at first was giving me the shits as nothing was working. Eventually I realised that the SS in the center was the issue and made an easy alteration to fix that.

When I took this on, I decided to try to complete it using only pigment markers as I have been trying to refine my abilities with them for some time. This to was difficult due to the fact I have shaky hands and they fuck with my life some times. This was working well at some point and getting a good solid and smooth line, but every now again I would slip and fuck it up. I repeated this about 4 times before I realised it wasn’t going to work this way, I wouldn’t be able to ink the entire design and have it perfectly mirrored and symmetrical.

I started cutting down what I was inking, only doing half of the design and mirroring that in Photoshop, it took me a little while to figure out I still sucked at this. I eventually broke it down to separate selections the SA and the LS drawn and ink by themselves and would touch them up after I scanned them. Upon opening the file up and saw the line widths looked fucked and horrible on the screen and was thinking about how much I suck. I tried the best I could to touch this up and make it look half respectable only to get more frustrated and waste a few hours.

At one stage I felt like I was on the losing end of this battle and rang in for help. One of my good friends is slightly a design mastermind and knows Adobe products like no other. So I rang him asking for any tips for correcting line widths and smoothing designs out. We came to the agreement that I should go to his place and he could show me some ways of using paths and vectors and learn to use the program a little more productively.

I learned what I could, went home and sweated over this design for about 4 hours trying to get my new skills to work as smoothly as I had just seen that afternoon. Around the 3 hour mark I had a break through and everything just started to sink in and make so much more sense.

The next day I knuckled down and got everything lined roughly using paths and my original scanned image of the lettering for reference. I had also started to move everything in place and smooth it out and within a few hours I was happy with what I was staring at. Did a quick copy and mirror and sent it over as a rough to see what Vassals thought of it. They loved it, so I got to work by adding some bells and whistles. Filling everything in, and designing some flourishes for the top and the bottom. Got them finished and set it back over as a proof and then a final.

This is the finished product -

This is the first design I have ever done using vectors and paths and I am quite happy with it. I felt I was able to really pick up on the tools and produce something that not only I was happy with but also my friends who asked my to do it.

I have more designs on the way of my learning and development of skills in Photoshop. Hopefully soon I can actually use Illustrator instead though.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 27th, 2010 at 00:01 and is filed under Art, Bands. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.