Photoshop

Photoshop Investigation

I have never used photoshop before so this week was all new to me. It kind of reminded me of the old painting app on dell computers but was obviously more advanced and much less straight forward. I struggled for a few days as I felt my way through the program, eventually I turned to watching youtube videos in class and at home to further expand my understanding and give myself a background before I started this project. I've always found making logos to be one of my favorite things and I enjoyed learning a new way to make them on a new application.

My idea is completely original. I did watch numerous videos on how to create logos but I wanted to make something that I came up with, not just following the steps of another person's ideas. I did learn a lot about some common themes with digital logos, the first being a shape that encloses the text. This defines the area that you want viewers to look at and gives a kind of unity to the project. Rather than just having text, by adding a shape, the logo becomes more complex and professional. Secondly most of the logos had some kind of emblem, I wanted to make one but I found it extremely difficult to work with shapes in the unfamiliar program. I also noticed that some logos had one or two letters that were bigger than the rest and kind of acted as the logo. So instead of just frustrating myself with messing around with shapes I went online, found a really cool text that made the letter "A" look unique and i downloaded it into photoshop. The font made the letter so different that I used it as my emblem. I then attached the two D's to the "A" ad to each other. I had to make a bar out of i's in order to fill the gap at the top and connect the two D's. Then I added the "LIFE ON" part and thought I wanted to put in somewhere that connects it to the rest of the project. Understanding that people read from left to right I wanted to incorporate the words on the left side so people would read the logo as "LIFE ON ADD" instead of some other wording. I also did this in order to avoid any confusion in that respect.  So I put it in the letter A which brought the words together and into the piece while also keeping them to the left side.

I was relatively satisfied with the basis I ha created so far but I realized it looked flat and not really up to par with other works I looked at. So I added depth by duplicating the words and letters, placing them behind the previous layers, and changing the color to a dark blue/grey, my favorite color. It was starting to look better but I wasn't satisfied, I had this great gradient on my background but the text still didn't really look 3D so I did some research on how to make shadows. I do the idea of the eclipse shaped shadow by one of the logos that I looked at but I didn't know how to create it. My research failed in offering me a solution to my problem so I continued to mess around with the program. First I tried drawing out a thin eclipse and feathering it out but it didn't give me the effect i wanted. So naturally I asked my teacher and he showed me that by double clicking on a layer a panel shows up, in the panel it gives workers numerous options on how they can edit the appearance of a layer. One of the options was a drop shadow, so i applied it to my eclipse layer, dropped the show lower from the layer, moved my shape out of the screen so it wasn't in the frame, and finally feathered and smoothed out the shadow to what I desired.

Worklog

Monday: Today I started to fool around with photoshop but was frustrated because i couldn't find the tools I was looking for and didn't really know how to use them

Tuesday: I looked at youtube videos on how to create logos in Photoshop and started to become more familiar with the application.

Wednesday: I went back to messing around with photoshop and found it much easier to create something with my new knowledge. 

Thursday: I did some more research at home and started to draw out ideas that I wanted to make in Photoshop. However when I got to class i ditched everything I planned out and just had fun creating. By the end of the period I had the large "ADD" letters down and the "LIFE ON" part in the "A". I also made a background with a radial gradient.

Friday: I finished the Logo and am planning on animating it in illustrate next week. I added depth to the text, added the box, and put a gradient on the "A"