H.P. - Logo Breakdown

We wanted to create an original, stylish logo for our print work that both conformed to our genre conventions while also appealing to a wide modern audience. As a group we decided that the best style of title we could create would have a strong 1920's appearance, but also be clear and bold to add a modern influence to it.

My process of creating the logo is broken down below. All processes took place in Adobe Photoshop CS3 and CC, with all screenshots from Adobe Photoshop CC.

• Starting with a blank work space, I typed out the word 'Shocking' with the Studebaker Regular font. This was to form the focus point of the image, so I chose to use the bolder font of the two I had chosen.

• I then typed out the other words in the album title in my second font, Aphrodite Slim Pro Regular, and positioned these words above and below 'Shocking'. I offset 'The' to the left to make a more natural line of reading throughout the text, and slightly overlapped 'Miss Emerald' over 'Shocking'. I turned these words a deep red, conforming to the colour palette we identified in our research.

• I then created four straight lines, two above and two below the word shocking, leaving gaps in the lines for 'The' and 'Miss Emerald'. This added emphasis to the title while also helping to keep it contained to a specific area, as the wavy second font made it look like it was sprawling out which was not intentional.

• I changed my mind about what colour I wanted these lines and the 'Shocking' text, so I applied a photo filter above these layers to make them yellow rather than white.

• Having done this, I converted the whole image into a Smart Object so that I could manipulate every component at once, while still having control over each component separately if I decided to change something later.

• Going to Edit, Transform, Skew, I adjusted the angle of the text. I decided to go this route rather than rotating the image as I wanted the individual letters to still appear mostly vertical and not at an angle.

• I then duplicated the whole image (Ctrl+J) and created a new group with this duplicated version inside it. On a new layer in the group I created a black solid that I applied a clipping mask to. This clipped the solid to the parameters of the duplicated text layer, making the whole image black. I offset this whole group, forming a drop shadow for the logo.

• Finally I downloaded a grunge texture from CGTextures, placed it above the logo, changed the blending mode to darken and the opacity to 76% then told it to clip to the layer below it. This added a rustic texture to the title.