Inkscape Tutorial: Custom Lettering

[Music] yes this is Nick with logos hi Nick's calm and in today's tutorial I'll be demonstrating how you can create these custom letters using Inkscape and in order to keep this video at a reasonable length I'm only going to be demonstrating how to create letters A through H but if you'd like to have the rest of the alphabet to use hopefully you could take what I've taught you in this video and apply it to the rest of the alphabet so let's go ahead and get started here in Inkscape the first thing we want to do is set up our document so we'll go to file document properties and we're going to set the display units to px for pixels and then we'll uncheck the box that says show page border and then close out of that and then we'll go to view make sure you have custom selected and then we'll zoom in at 1 to 1 and then we're going to open up the align and distribute menu with that button there we're going to want less selected chosen from that drop-down and then we'll open up the Edit objects colors gratings and Stroke menu with that button there and what we want to do up here in the toolbar now is right here this box to the far left up here that says when scaling objects scale the stroke width by the same proportion we're going to turn that off and up here for the snaps we want a snap to custards turned on and yeah we'll just leave that one on for now so the first thing we're going to draw here is a circle so we'll grab the circles and ellipses tool and hold ctrl + shift on the keyboard and click and drag to create a perfectly round circle like that and we want to give this a black outline but get rid of the fill color so let's hold shift and click on the color black and then click the button click the X button to the left of it to turn off the fill so we have a black outline what we want to do now is come over to the stroke style tab and I'm going to change this measure of Union to this measurement units to pixels for px and I'm going to make this I'm going to make this a bit thicker so I change this to like maybe 25 see how that looks still not thick enough let me grab the Select tool and I'm just gonna hold control and shift and scale that down a little bit I'm gonna make this a little thicker I'm going to try out maybe 75 maybe 85 or maybe I'll just do a hundred see how that looks all right that's pretty good right there so you may have to use different numbers depending on the resolution of your monitor but for my screen here we we ended up with about this thickness right here at 100 pixels and this is about this is roughly the thickness you want to use right here because we're going to use this ring right here to create all of the individual letters so whatever width you used for the stroke remember that number because we're going to use that elsewhere so once we've done that I'm going to bring the opacity of this down in half and bring this over to the left and I'm going to duplicate this by hitting ctrl D and I'm going to hold ctrl and click and drag this off to the right so we have another copy and now I'm going to take that and convert that to a path so I'll get a path stroke to path and now I want to create a rectangle which we're going to use to create like the the arm of the B and the D and everything else like that so to do that I'm going to grab the squares and rectangles tool I'll click and drag to create a rectangle and I want to fill that in with black and get rid of the outline by holding shift and clicking the X and for the width of this let me go to the Select tool I'm going to change the width of this to whatever the size of the stroke is that we use so I entered a hundred I'm just going to erase whatever number that is in there and hit one zero zero and enter and we want to make this long we want this to be significantly longer than the height of these two circles here and I'm going to put this off to the right right here and what I want to do now is take half create a half circle what I'm basically doing here is I'm creating all of the parts we're going to use to construct the individual letters so in order to create like the letter H for example we're going to need a half circle so I'm going to create half of this circle right here I'm going to click on that and hit control V to duplicate that and let me just bring this over to the left over here let me bring that out of the way and I'll put this one right here and I just want to create half like this so I'll grab the squares and rectangles tool again I'll create a rectangle going over that I'll grab the Select tool and then I'll duplicate this by hitting ctrl D and I'll bring this down here and I want to make this red and then I'll hold shift and click on the black rectangle and I'll come over to the align menu and I'll click the button that says align top edges about objects to the bottom edge of the anchor so it stacks it up right underneath it and then I'll Center it on the vertical axis and now we can group it together with the group selected objects button up here and we have this now so what I do now is with this selected I'm going to hold shift and click on this ring and center it on the vertical and horizontal axis and then ungroup everything and then click off it could be select everything now we could take this red shape down here and get rid of that by pressing delete on the keyboard and now we can take this rectangle right here hold shift click on the ring and go to path intersection and we now have a half circle that we can use to construct shapes of the letters and we have to create one more little piece and that would be a quarter of this ring so that would be half of this half ring right here to create like say for example the letter F I know the letter R will require that as well so let's duplicate that by hitting ctrl D and just hold ctrl and click and drag this off to the left and I'm going to move that over out of the way some more I'm going to create another rectangle going over this like that I'll go to the Select tool right click that and go to duplicate and I'll make this green and I'll just actually I'll just take this and snap it onto the corner of the red rectangle right there then hold shift and click on the red rectangle and group it together and again we want to take this and hold shift click on that Center on the vertical and horizontal axis ungroup everything then click off with the deselect and we can take this green object press Delete to get rid of it and then we can just click and drag over both of those objects and go to path intersection so we now have all of the pieces and ingredients we're going to need to create our our letters so the first thing I'm going to create is the letter a lowercase letter a like you see here so to do that I'm going to grab the ring right here I'm going to hit ctrl D to duplicate that and just hold ctrl and bring this over to the right and to create the letter a we're going to need we're going to need to put like a little arm right there at the bottom so to do that I'll grab our rectangle over here and let me just go to path object to path to convert that to a path first and then I'll duplicate that by hitting ctrl D and then I'll hold shift and click on this ring and I'll Center it on the vertical axis actually no I'll align the right sides of that button there and just click the button that says Center and horizontal axis and click off to deselect everything so what I want to do now is create some guides to set where the boundaries are for the top and the bottom of the letter so to do that I'm going to come up to the top of the edge the edge of the screen up here where we see these little these little measurements and I'm just going to click and drag down there and it's going to create a guide but before I do that let me turn on this button up here that says snap to smooth nodes including Quadra points of ellipses turn that on they're going to come up here and create a guide click and drag it down and snap it to the top of this circle up here right just like that and that's going to be the cutoff point for the top of like the like the lower part of the letters like you see here on this line in the mock-up so I'm going to create another one for down here as well click and drag create another one so we have that set and now we can turn off the snap to snap to smooth nodes and what I want to do now is cut off the bottom of this rectangle where the a is where this ring is sitting on this line here so I'll grab the Bezier pen which is over here or you can just press B on the keyboard and I'll snap onto the guide right here and click and then hold control and bring the line straight across until it goes past a rectangle and then click then we can let go of control and finish this up going around the outside of the rectangle then we go to the Select tool hold shift click on the rectangle and go to path difference and what we have to do now is get rid of the top part of this rectangle so to do that let's click off of it to deselect everything let's click on the Ring then hold shift and click on the rectangle and let's duplicate them by hitting ctrl D and then go to path intersection and let me just turn that red so you can see what I did there it took the intersecting area and what I'm going to do with that intersecting area is I'm going to hold shift and click on the the rectangle down there this is a larger rectangle and go to path difference and then path break apart and then I'll hold shift and click on this bottom part of the rectangle to deselect it and we'll just have this selected up here so I'll just press Delete on the keyboard to get rid of that and that's gone and now we can click and drag over both of those objects and go to path Union and we can bring the opacity up and you'll see we have created the letter A now to create the letter B I'm going to use this same shape I'm just going to hit control D on the keyboard to duplicate it and then hold ctrl and just click and drag it up to the right over here and then I want to flip it vertically and then flip it horizontally and you can see we have the letter B we just have to go to the edit pad by nodes tool and click and drag over these two nodes right here and just hold ctrl and click and drag them up about that far however far up you'd like it to be I think maybe right about there looks pretty good let's go to the Select tool click off of that to deselect everything we're going to want to put another guide up here at where the height of the letter is because that's going to be a reference point for like the letter F and the letter H and other things like that as you'll see here the top of the B is where like the F ends and where the H ends as well so let's go ahead and grab another guide and put that just snap it on to the corner there and we're going to need another guide on the bottom at an equal distance that this is for like the letter P and the letter Q and whatnot so to do that I'm just going to grab the letter B here I'm just going to hit control V to duplicate it and I'm going to bring this over here and flip it vertically and then hold shift and click the letter A and come over here where it says align top align top edges like that and now we can click off but to deselect everything and I'm going to create one more guide and just put it down here snap to that edge and that should be an equal distance here as it is here and that's we pretty much have our guide set these are our boundaries for you know how we create these letters and we now actually we have a letter P as well so if you want you could just delete it or you could just move it off to the side and use it as a letter P later I'm just going to delete it because I'm not going that far in this tutorial so the next thing to create is the letter C which should be pretty easy so again if you want to move the page around I'm just pressing down the mouse-wheel and moving Mouse so let's grab a copy of our ring over here hit ctrl D to duplicate it then hold ctrl and just click and drag it over to the right I'm going to create our letter C so to create the letter C we have to take a chunk out of this right side over here so let's create a rectangle or square actually we'll grab the rectangle and squares tool hold ctrl and shift and click and drag to create a perfectly symmetrical square like that and I'll go to the Select tool and I'm going to click on it again to get the rotation handles and hold ctrl and just grab one of these corner arrows and rotate it around one two three three steps now the corners are going vertically like that and I want to place this over the ring right here and then I'll hold shift and click on the ring and just make sure it's centered on the horizontal axis and now we can click off it to deselect everything now let's take this red rectangle let's just make that white so we can get a preview of what this letter will look like we can actually take this ring and bring the opacity all the way up and if you notice you could adjust how it'll look by holding ctrl and moving this rectangle back and forward like if I move it too far to the right the C doesn't really look right it doesn't look like it goes a little too far but if I bring it too far to the left and it gets a little law again it doesn't look right it doesn't go far enough so I think you have to find like a good happy medium which is like I'd say right about there that's pretty good and once you have that set like that you can just hold shift and click on the ring and go to path difference and there we have the letter C so what I'll do now is create the letter D which we already have created leatherby we could just click on that and duplicate it by hitting ctrl D hold ctrl bring this over to the right flip this horizontally by clicking the button that says flip selected objects horizontally and there's our letter D and if you ever want to get a look at how things are coming out so far you can hold ctrl and roll down the mouse wheel to zoom out and you could temporarily make the guides invisible by holding shift and clicking the slash key the one that's next to of the backspace key at the top at the top of your keyboard with the backspace key is it's the first key to the left it's like that slash key I don't know what it's called I don't know the name of it but it's that one and you can turn them back on by holding shift and clicking that key again sorry I don't know the name of that one maybe I'll figure it out when I'm done and put it in the description of the video so okay now that we have the letter D finished and create the letter e so let's grab the ring again hit ctrl D to duplicate that and then hold ctrl and bring it over here click and drag it up to the right holding ctrl and the letter e has like a little arm going through the center of it so let's grab our rectangle and duplicate that by hitting ctrl you can actually just right-click it go to duplicate or ctrl D either one and I want to flip this around 90 degrees so I'll come up here to where it says rotate selection 90 degrees clockwise go ahead and click that and then hold shift and click on that ring and Center it on the vertical and horizontal axis and click off it to deselect everything so now we want to get rid of the part of this rectangle that exceeds the ring so to do that and I click on this ring and hit control D to duplicate that and go to path break apart and then past Union and then hold shift and click on that rectangle and go get path intersection and what we could do now is with that selected hit ctrl D to duplicate that and then hold shift and click on the ring and go to path difference and then path break apart and let's let's hold shift and click on the top half of that ring to deselect it and then while still holding shift click on the bottom part of that ring to deselect it and whatever is left left over that's still selected is just invisible little fragments that shouldn't technically exist so you just press the lead on the keyboard to get rid of them and the whole point of what we just did it so that we could break these these ring up into two different pieces because we want to take a chunk out of this ring right here to create complete the letter e so to do that I'll click off of the graphic deselect everything and again I'll grab the bezzie a pen which is over here or again just press B on the key on the keyboard and I want to start this line on the inside right here and I'll just hold ctrl and move this down through here like that and then go ahead and click now we can let go of control and finish up the shape going around the outside of that arm down there let me go to the Select tool hold shift click on the lower part of the Ring and go to path difference now we can click and drag over all of that and unify it all together by going to pack Union and bring the the opacity all the way up and there we have the letter E and that's all set so what we'll do next is will create the letter F so let's grab our rectangle over here hit ctrl D to duplicate that and bring this over here and since the base of the letter starts down here I want to take the base of the rectangle and put it on that guideline like there and it should snap directly onto that guideline and then I'm going to grab our quarter or quarter circle piece right here click on that it ctrl D to duplicate that and bring this over here as well but this is going to be up here it's not going to be down here it's going to be up here like that so snap it to that top line and then hold shift and click on this rectangle and click the button that says align left edges and then click off of that deselect everything and all we have to do now is click on this large rectangle and bring this down here so I'll grab the edit pads by nodes tool and I'll click and drag over those top two nodes and just click and drag them down here like that snap that on there I'll go to the Select tool and I'll duplicate this by hitting ctrl D because that's going to make up the arm of the F and I'm going to click the button over here that says rotate selection 90 degrees clockwise to make that go horizontally like that and I want to put this right about here and you can snapped onto the corner of the e right here that's pretty good and then hold control it to lock it onto the horizontal axis and bring it over here and I'll actually hold shift and click on this top quadrant of the Ring right here and align the right sides with that button over there click off it to deselect everything take this rectangle right here and just take this left arrow and just bring that in now we can click and drag over all of that unified together by going to path Union bring the opacity all the way up and I'm going to move that a little closer and there we have the letter F so what we have to do now is next up is letter G so to do that I'll grab the letter A and I'm going to add a little tail to the bottom of it up over here to create a letter G so I'll duplicate that by hitting control D I'll hold ctrl and click and drag this over to the right and I'll take the opacity bits and bring this down just temporarily and again I want to grab another quadrant piece over here I'll click on that hit control D to duplicate that and bring it over here and I want to flip that vertically and then flip it horizontally and then I want to snap it onto the corners here but I actually want to have this bottom corner snapped to this bottom guide because this bottom guide is the boundary for how low down the letter goes so I'm just going to hold ctrl and just move that straight up until it snaps onto that guy just like that and let me just hold ctrl and roll up the mouse wheel to zoom in over here as you'll see now what we have to do is fix the bottom of this this letter a we need to take these two points and put them to the top over here so to do that I'm gonna grab the edit pads by nodes tool and I'm going to click on their letter A up here I'm going to take this node click and drag and just snap it onto that corner node right there and now let me zoom back out by holding ctrl and rolling down the mouse wheel go back to the Select tool click and drag over both of it and go to path Union now you can bring the opacity all the way up and there's our letter G and now finally all we have to create now is the letter H so to do that I'm going to grab another rectangle click on that it controlled you to duplicate it snap this onto this guide down here and the height of this rectangle needs to be where this guide is so I'll grab the edit pads by nodes tool click and drag over that hold ctrl on the keyboard to lock it onto the vertical axis and just click and drag it straight down until it snaps bring the opacity all the way actually you know what let's leave the opacity where it is for now we're going to select tool and I want to grab another half circle right here click on that hit controlled you to duplicate it and this needs to be snapped to this second guy right here so just snap that up there and then hold shift and click on the rectangle and the line the left edges like that click off it to deselect everything and now we've got to create the little leg of the H right there so we'll grab a copy of this rectangle right here hit ctrl D and then just snap it onto the corners there and we'll go back to the edit pads by nodes tool click and drag over those two nodes hold ctrl and click and drag them up until it snaps onto that bottom guide and now we can go to the Select tool click and drag over all of it unify it all together by going to path Union bring the opacity all the way up and we have created letters A through H so hopefully now you get the idea of how this works you can go and finish up the rest of this if you'd like to use these letters like the letter I would obviously be just a rectangle sitting right here and the letter J would be a rectangle would be another rectangle just like the letter I but with this little tail underneath it like we did for the letter G and that pretty much does it for this tutorial so if you have any questions let me know and as always thanks for watching [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Logos By Nick

Views: 105,174

Keywords: inkscape, learn inkscape, inkscape tutorial, inkscape logo, inkscape logo design tutorial, inkscape for beginners, vector, vector design, vector graphics, vector logo, vector tutorial, vector icons, graphic design, learn graphic design, graphic design for beginners

Id: Xgw01FV7qQI

Length: 21min 56sec (1316 seconds)

Published: Tue May 02 2017