Affinity Designer Logo Tutorial: Simple Logo Design

[Music] this is nick with logosbynic.com and in this tutorial i'll be demonstrating how you can create this badge style logo design using affinity designer and if you'd like to learn more about logo design be sure to check out my logo design academy it's an 18 part video series where i go over my entire creative process for designing logos from start to finish i'll have a link in the description of the video if you want to check that out so to get us started here in affinity designer i'm going to create a new document i'm going to change the document units to pixels and i want to size this at 1280 by 1280 go ahead and click create and there we have our new document now what i'm going to do first is i'm going to create some text here on the canvas but before i do that i just want to make sure i have snapping enabled by enabling this icon up here the little magnet icon and then down here you're going to want to make sure you have these same presets that i have here so take a second to pause the video and make sure that your presets match my presets as you see here and then continue on okay so what i'm going to do now is i'm going to create some text on the canvas here so i'm going to grab the text tool over here and make sure you're you're grabbing the proper one there's the artistic text tool and the frame text tool if you click and hold on this icon you'll get this fly out menu make sure to choose the artistic text tool and i'm going to click on the canvas over here and i'm just going to type in i'm going to use all caps i'm going to write logo design you can obviously write whatever you'd like i'm just going to write logo design as placeholder text for this video i'm going to select all of that and up here from the font selector the font i'm going to use is called kirsty i will have a link to that font in the description of the video it's a free font but like i said you can use whatever font you'd like it doesn't really matter so let me grab this select tool now let me make this a little bigger and i just want to center this up on the page over here with the align center i'm going to click on that center it up on the vertical and horizontal axis like that so it's directly in the center of our page here and what i want to do now is convert this text to curve so come up here to where it says convert to curves click on that and then i want to ungroup these individual letters by clicking this ungroup button over here and then i want to unify them all together by coming up here to this icon that says add and it's going to combine them all together into one continuous object like that so what i'm going to do is i'm going to make this a shade of i'm going to make this a different color than black i want to make this like red or something or it could any color you want really just as long as it's not black or white and what i'm going to do now is i'm going to grab the rectangle tool which is over here and i'm going to click and drag over the text object like this to create a rectangle going over it and i want to send that behind the text by pressing ctrl and the left bracket key and if you notice over here it's going to lower it one layer beneath the curves right there i want to make this black so that it has a different so that it looks different than the text over here and again let's grab the select tool and just make sure this is centered up on the horizontal and vertical axis like that now i want to convert this to a curve so i'll come over here to where it says layer and click on convert to curves and now i want to make a duplicate copy of this black rectangle so to create a duplicate copy i'm going to press ctrl and click j on the keyboard it's going to create another copy right above the original copy you don't see it physically changing on the screen but if you look over here you'll notice there's now a duplicate copy beneath it so let's click on that duplicate copy that duplicate copy beneath it so we can select it and i want to remove the remove the black fill and then click on the black stroke and make this a gray stroke and let's take the stroke and make this a little wider maybe uh something like that right about there that's a good size i want these corners to be sharp i don't want rounded corners like that so let me make those corners sharp by clicking this button over here that says miter join and uh let's make this a a whole number because we're going to have to uh remember this let's round this up to 6 and hit enter try to remember that that number six we're going to use that same number for the other strokes that we create here now what i want to do is i want to convert this i want to expand the stroke so i'll come over here to where it says layer and click on expand stroke and that's going to turn that into a curve sort of object now let me zoom in on this a little bit i want to grab the nodes tool which is over here or you could press a on the keyboard and i want to select these nodes these four nodes on the inside of that gray rectangle right there i'm going to hold shift so i can select all four of those nodes at once and then just press delete on the keyboard and what that did was that turned it into a solid gray object instead of a gray outline what i will do now is let me grab the select tool let me click on the black rectangle let me come back over here to where it says color i want to make sure there's no stroke here so let me click this red slash to get rid of that stroke and now i want to duplicate this object as well so i'm going to uh to do this actually i'm going to hold alt on the keyboard and click and drag to make another copy of it and i want to send that to the back by pressing ctrl shift and the left bracket key and that's going to send that behind the gray rectangle and i want to take this note over here to the right bring this in so that it ends right at the beginning of the uh the name here and now let me zoom in on this a little bit by holding ctrl and rolling up the mouse wheel i want to add a little bit of a a dip right here in the middle so that it has uh it looks kind of like a ribbon so let me go to the nodes tool again let me click right about here to add a node and then just take that node and pull it in you might want to hold ct hold shift to lock it onto the horizontal axis like that now let me zoom back out you can move the page around by pressing down the mouse wheel and moving the mouse go to the select tool i want to duplicate this as well so i'm going to hold alt and then click and drag and then hold shift at the same time so that it locks it onto the horizontal axis like that put this over here on the right side of the name and let me just flip this vertically i mean sorry horizontally flip that horizontally so that it's like that let me just move this over a little bit so that it matches up just like that now what i want to do is hold shift and click on the other piece we have both of these pieces right here selected and i want to add them together so we'll click on this button that says add and then just make sure this is centered up on the page it should be but if it's not just make sure to go ahead and click on that okay so we have the name with the ribbon design what i'm going to do now is i'm going to zoom out i'm going to create the background design or the polygon rather so what i'm going to do is i'm going to click and hold over the star tool over here and you're going to notice there's a whole bunch of different shapes to choose from i'm going to choose polygon tool click on that and up here in the settings we want to make sure we have six sides and the curve is at zero percent now i'm going to click and drag to create this i'm going to hold shift so that it locks the proportion so we get a nice symmetrical shape like that and let me take right now this has no stroke color which is good that's what we want now let me activate the fill color and let me give this a black fill and let me place this over here over the design i'm going to click and drag this up then hold shift to scale it up proportionately and bring this down i want to make sure this is centered up on the page as well and i want to send this to the back so i'm going to hold ctrl shift and the left bracket key to send that to the back and what i want to do now is let's grab let's first go to layer and click on convert to curve so we can edit this further and now i'm going to grab the nodes tool over here i'm going to click and drag over this node and press delete on the keyboard to get rid of that and then i'll take this node right here and just move it up a little bit hold shift um yeah hold shift to move it up like that that angle right there is what we're looking for let me grab the select tool let me bring this down a little bit or maybe not that's good how it was if you if you need to undo anything you just did just press ctrl z like if you do that by accident just control z and it puts you back to where you were so let me duplicate this as well i'm going to hold alt click and drag on this hold shift so that it locks into the vertical axis axis and bring it up here and i want to flip this vertically like that then i'll just take this and move this down hold shift so it locks like that and put this right about here hold shift click on the piece beneath it make sure you have them both selected and then add them together by clicking on add and what i'm going to do now is i'm going to come over here to the node tool i'm going to click and drag over these top three nodes and i'm just going to position these so that they're sticking out to about right about here you want to make sure that it's sticking out a little bit in the bottom but much more on the top so let me go back to the select tool now once that's in place i'm actually going to scale this down a little bit if you notice here there's not much space between this ribbon and this edge right here i want to put a little more space there so i'm going to scale this down hold shift to lock the proportions that looks pretty good now let me go back to the nodes tool to pull this out a little more looking good and now i want to duplicate this so to duplicate this i'm going to press ctrl and j and it's going to put a duplicate copy right beneath the original so let's click on that duplicate copy beneath the original let's remove the fill and let's activate the stroke and give this a gray stroke just like we did for this object now by default it should default to whatever size stroke you gave this gray object so if you notice here the thickness of this gray border matches the thickness of this great border if that wasn't the case for you just come over here to the stroke tab and make sure that it's six points just like we did for the other one and now i want to repeat the process that we did before so we'll come over here to where it says layer and click on expand stroke let me zoom back in let's grab the nodes tool again and i want to delete these nodes on the inside of the shape right here so hold shift and click and drag over each of those to select them and by deleting these nodes we're going to make this a solid fill object so let's just press delete on the keyboard to get rid of them go back to the select tool and i'm going to duplicate this one more time so again we're going to press ctrl j and now i'm going to click on the one beneath that to activate that one come back up here to the color tab let's give this a black stroke and let's click on the fill and remove the fill color and come over here to the stroke menu and let's just manually bring this up so that it's thicker than the original like that again we want sharp corners so click on miter join over here that's looking pretty good okay so let's do the same thing let's go to layer expand stroke go back to the nodes tool and delete those nodes inside of there we're holding shift and clicking and dragging over those inner nodes to delete them because we want to make this a solid fill object just like that now let me zoom back out okay that right there is what we're looking for what i'm going to do now is add in an object right here just to make this logo look more complete you can add in whatever whatever object you'd like but i'm going to link in the description of the video a copy of a vector deer silhouette that you can use if you just want to follow along with what i'm doing here so to open that i'm going to go to file open and i'm going to look for deer.svg and it's going to open in a new tab if you notice up here here's your tabs here's what we were originally working on and here is the new tab that we've opened up with this so to be able to work with this i first want to expand to this menu right here by clicking on this icon and we're going to see the path the path right there is what we want so i'm going to click on the path to activate that right click it and go to release and that's going to release it onto its own layer and let's take the original layer layer one and just press delete on the keyboard to get rid of that now i want to right click this object this deer silhouette and go to copy and come back over here to our original tab and go to edit or you just right click and go to paste like that now i want to move this over here towards the center of the logo like that right about there is where i want to place it that looks pretty good now i want to lower this beneath the ribbon or the banner so to hold to do that i'm going to hold ctrl and press the left bracket key once twice three times three times put it beneath the banner there so what i'm going to do now is i'm going to give this a gray outline like i did for these other objects so let's duplicate that by pressing ctrl j and let's grab the copy beneath it come up here to the color tab let's get rid of the fill and let's activate the stroke and give this a gray stroke just like we did before and again we want to make this six points so come up back back up here to where it says stroke and change this to six press enter there we go that's what we're looking for and then we're going to expand this stroke as well so we'll come over here to where it says layer and click on expand stroke now let's click off of that to deselect everything what i want to do now is just put a little star over here in the bottom just to complete this design and then we'll go about finalizing this so that this is all all of this gray area is negative space so let's come back over here right click the polygon tool and look for the star tool and click and drag to create a star hold shift to lock the proportions like that come up here to the color tab let's remove the stroke let's activate the fill and make the fill color white grab the select tool place this over the design right here hold ctrl and shift to scale that down let me zoom in a little bit so i can see a little better that's what i'm looking for right there and i just want to center this up on the page as well just like that now let me zoom back out now let's begin the process of finalizing this design so that this gray area is negative space so to do that let me zoom in i'm going to click on this gray border right here and i'm going to hold shift and click on the black border behind it and with them both selected i'm going to come up here and click on subtract and if you notice that is now negative space in there now let's do the same thing with the gear graphic i'm going to click on the uh the gray deer graphic and you know you have it selected when you by checking the uh the menu here i'm going to hold actually you know what i want to duplicate that let's press ctrl j we're going to need a couple of copies of this ctrl j to duplicate it and then hold shift click on this inner black polygon and do the subtract function right there and then finally take on the uh take the original gray copy hold shift click on the border over here and again do a subtract if you notice it's starting to come together so let's do the rest of this over here let's take this gray this gray rectangle we're going to have to subtract this from these ribbon tails right here we're going to have to subtract it from the deer and then subtract it from these two objects as well so let's activate that press ctrl j to get a copy hold shift click on the dear subtract same thing again take the gray object ctrl j to duplicate hold shift click on the black polygon in the middle subtract again click the gray box ctrl j to duplicate hold shift click on the border subtract and then finally we don't have to make a duplicate because this will be the last one we do take the gray box hold shift click on the banner uh the banner ends there and subtract now the final step would be to take the star hold the shift click on the uh polygon in the middle subtract and then take the text hold shift click on the ribbon or the banner and subtract and if you zoom out you can see we are done we have created our design you can select all of this and make this whatever color you'd like now what i did for the thumbnail the video i gave these all different colors so let me make these colors similar to what i did for the video i'm going to click on this object hold shift click on this object so that we have the banner selected hold shift click on the border so that we have the the banner and the border selected and let's make this a single color like that and then i will take the inner shape right here and i will make this you know what i will make this border i'll make this border a brown color you could really make this whatever color you'd like it doesn't really matter at this point make that the same color okay that's good right there and now i want to take the deer i want to make the deer the same color as the banner so i'm going to grab the dropper over tool the dropper tool and actually no the deer is going to be the same color as the border so let me make that the same color as the border and now let me grab the select tool let me take the black polygon and make that the same color as the banner i'm pretty sure i got the order of this wrong but that's okay you can make this whatever color you'd like now if you notice the red is showing through the deer here because it's layered beneath the deer so to do that to to lower this beneath the deer i'm just going to press ctrl shift and the left bracket key to lower that beneath like that and there you go that should do it for this tutorial that is how you can go about creating this simple badge style logo design using affinity designer if you have any questions leave a comment down below and as always thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Design Made Simple

Views: 53,690

Keywords: affinity designer, affinity logo, affinity designer logo tutorial, logos by nick, logosbynick, nick saporito

Id: WPnuAYBqFC4

Length: 17min 29sec (1049 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 25 2020