Creativity in Linux: Logo creation (Part 2)
Well, after some searching around, I found some online documentation stating flat out that Scribus doesn’t support clipping and masking from Inkscape SVGs. Grrr. Well, as I said, I wanted to redo this logo as it wasn’t quite what I wanted it to look like. After doing some image searches and looking at some vector logos, I had a better idea of how to start out. I redrew the shapes, giving them a thick black outline and a 50% gray fill.
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For the mic grill I created the lines as before, converted them all to paths and unioned them all into one big symbol. Then I duplicated the top of the mic by left-clicking and holding down on the shape and pressing space, which ’stamps’ another version of the shape (a very cool way of copying shapes and something Inkscape has over Illustrator). Still holding down on the shape, I positioned it over the grill shape and using the intersect function to ‘cut away’ everything that wasn’t going to be inside of the mic head. It was just a simple matter of using the align tools to ensure they were positioned correctly. The difference between this process and the clipping process is this method is destructive and actually affects the shape while clipping just limits what part of the shape is being shown. This method has a couple more steps involved, but since the pattern isn’t all that complex to create, I’m not weeping over having to intersect it.
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After this I ’stamp’ new versions of all the shapes, turn them white and scale them in. I then created a shape with a curve that would cover all these shapes. This was going to be the start of that smooth icon highlight look. Again, since clipping isn’t going to be an option, I stamp a copy of the top shape and then subtract it from each white shape. I then apply gradient to each that fades from white to transparent. This is another way in which I feel Inkscape improves over Illustrator in that there’s a gradient tool where you can simply click and drag a spline to adjust the angle and length of the gradient, making it much faster to adjust and easier to experiment with. Illustrator has nothing close to this tool.
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After this I took a small break and came back to it with fresh eyes. I then realized I could give some depth to the logo by adjusting some colors. For example, since the idea of this logo is to emphasize a combination of audio and visual, I could lighten the grey in the mic head and the brush, while darkening the accents (the paint on the brush, the mic grill) to draw emphasize them. I also drew a brush stroke. This took me a bit of experimenting. I originally started out with a waving line that was outlined like the rest of the logo. It didn’t seem to jibe with the rest of the logo, even with numerous adjustments. I abandoned that and redrew it as a straight, thicker line and applied a gray-to-transparent gradient. This worked out much better. I though of adding some sort of soundwave to the mic head to complement the brush stroke, but decided against it. This way, the logo can be more easily positioned in a corner of a banner or header.
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Last time I mentioned a problem with Scribus not being able to handle Inkscape SVG. I also saw that I was using an older version. I found version 1.3.3.8 in Synaptic (1.3.3.9 and 1.3.4 haven’t made it on there yet.) and got it on my computer with no problems. So I open up a blank document and import the logo. As I did it gave me a warning screen that some of the features of this file aren’t supported. At least I get a warning this time. The earlier version didn’t even give me that. Oh well, let’s see how it looks then…
Hey! This looks great! And as the black box I placed behind the logo indicates, even the transparencies seem to be working. I don’t see any problems at all. What’s wrong? Let’s try exporting this bad boy as a PDF!
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Oh. That’s what’s wrong. Apparently, Scribus has some problems translating colors with alpha values to print format. Well, it looks like I won’t be building any billboards with vector graphics in Inkscape and Scribus. I’m going to have to export to PNG before I place anything in Scribus. Kinda bittersweet ending after getting the design the way I wanted it.
In any case, the immediate future for this logo is as a web header for the top of this site, and thankfully it translates well for that, as we’ll move this into the pixellated world of GIMP. Next time: creating lettering from scratch. I’ll be designing the lettering for a new ‘hoodyhoo’ logo and possibly for a new font.
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