Inkscape Tutorial: Lightning Bolt Logo Design

this is Nick with logos by Nick comm and in today's tutorial I'll be demonstrating how you can create this simple lightning bolt logo where the lightning bolt is made out of the negative space of the circle using Inkscape and at any point in this tutorial you could look down at the bottom left hand side of my screen to see which mouse clicks and keystrokes I'm using so I'll minimize this and we'll get started the first thing I'm going to do here in Inkscape is make sure that the view is set to custom and then I'm going to zoom in at 1 to 1 and by the way if you'd like to make Inkscape appear darken with this custom icon set as you see here on my screen I will have a link to that information in the description of the video ok so once we've done that we're going to open up our fill and Stroke dialog with that button right there and the first thing we're going to do is create a circle so let's come over to the circles and ellipses tool and I'm just going to hold ctrl and shift on the keyboard and click and drag on the canvas to create a circle like that a perfectly round circle and I'm going to take the opacity of this and drop this in half and let's come back to the Select tool let's go over to the Select tool and I'm going to change the width of this but first I'm going to put I'm going to turn on this lock icon let's turn that on and we're going to change the width of that to 275 so just hit 275 275 pixels like that and that's pretty good and let's convert this to a path by going to path object to path and we can put this off to the side for now we're to come back to that in a minute the next remote the next thing we're going to do is create a square so let's come over to the squares and rectangles tool hold ctrl and shift in the keyboard and click and drag to create a perfectly symmetrical square like that and I'm going to make this one I'm going to make this red and I'll come back to the select tool and for the width of this I'm just going to change this to 1 51 5 0 and hit enter and then I'm going to convert this to a path by going to path object to path and then what I'm going to do is with this selected I'm going to come over here to the edit pads by nodes tool and I'm going to click and drag over this node right here and just press Delete on the keyboard to get rid of that and then I'm going to click and drag over that node and then hold shift in the keyboard and click and drag over that node so we have both of those nodes selected right there and with those but with both of those nodes so elected I'm going to click the button that says make selected nodes corner and it's going to turn that into like a little triangle like that and we come back to the Select tool we can right click that and go to duplicate and then we can flip that vertically and horizontally and then click and drag over both of those and we're actually going to need our align and distribute menu so let's open up the align and distribute menu with this button right here and make sure you have less selected chosen from this drop-down and what I'm going to do now is I'm going to click this button to the bottom left that says align bottom edges of the objects to the top edge of the anchor like that and then I'll click this button that says align right edges of objects to the left edge of the anchor like that so we end up with this little shape like that and then once we've done that we can close out of the align and distribute menu and I'm going to take this and put this over here let's click off of that deselect everything and then I'm going to click on just this bottom part right here and hold control and just click and drag this over to the left maybe about that much and this is going to make our lightning bolt shape that we're going to use for the center of the logo here and once you have a position like that we can go ahead and click and drag over both of those objects and go to path Union and then I'm going to click on this a second time to get the rotation handles and I'm going to take this top handle up here but first I'm going to hold down control on the keyboard and I'm going to take this top handle and slide this to the right two or three steps I think it's three let me see how it looks one two along one two three like that yeah that's pretty good so bring it three steps to the right and then we could hold shift and click on the circle tool click on the circle object and actually we're going to need the align of distribu menu again let me open that up again the aligned distribute menu I didn't think I would need it for this tutorial apparently I was wrong Center on the vertical axis and then Center on the horizontal axis and then we can click off of it to deselect everything I'm just going to leave that open for now let me come over here and the next thing we're going to do is click on this this red lightning bolt and we're going to right click that and go to duplicate and I'm going to turn that blue and I'm going to lower that one step beneath the red lightning bolt so I'll click on this button that says lower selection step just like that and then we'll come over to the Edit pads by nodes tool now I want to select these two nodes here on the right and left edges so let me click and drag over that node and then I'll hold shift and click and drag over that node so we have both of those two nodes selected and none of the other nodes and then up here this is going to be this button it says show transformation handles for selected nodes we're going to want that turned on and once you do that there's going to be these little scaling arrows that appear next to the node you can't really see it but just hover the cursor over those arrows and then hold ctrl and shift and just click and drag to pull this out maybe about that far maybe a little further like that that's pretty good and then we can go back to the Select tool and click on this red lightning bolt graphic and we're going to right click that and go to duplicate and we'll turn this green and then hold ctrl and shift in the keyboard and grab one of these one of these arrows and just click and drag this out about that much maybe about that far that's pretty good and then once we've done that we can take this blue shape right here and we could right click that and go to duplicate and hold shift in the keyboard and click on the green object and go to path difference so we end up with something like this and the next thing we're going to do is let's um let's hold shift in the keyboard and click on the black circle so we have the green object in the black circle selected and go to path difference so we end up with something like this and what we're going to do now is let's click off of that deselect everything the next step is I want to get rid of these um you notice the blue shape here you see where the edges are sticking out from the circle I want to get rid of those two points on the horizontal plane that are sticking out from the circle so let's go to the Bezier a pen you just press B on the keyboard to grab that and I'm going to draw a shape starting here and then here and then going around the outside of that tail right there so I can get rid of that piece and I'm going to do the same thing again over here I'll start this right here and click put this here click and then just bring it around the outside like that then we'll go back to the Select tool I'm going to hold shift in the keyboard and click on the other shape so we have them both selected and we'll unify them together by going to path Union and then hold shift and click on the blue shape and go to path difference okay so the next thing we're going to do is hold shift in the keyboard and click on the black circle so we have the blue shape in the black circle selected and go to path Union and you can see it's starting to take shape here starting to look like how this looks like here we should have a couple of more steps let me zoom in on this a little bit I'm going to press plus in the keyboard a few times like that and what I'm going to do now is with this black shape selected I'm going to come over to the edit path by nodes tool and I'm going to click on the button that's up here that says snap to cuspid nodes I'm going to turn that on and I'm going to take this node right here and just snap it into the corner of the red shape right there like that and I'll take this node and do the same thing just snap that into the corner of the red shape like that and then we go back to the Select tool I'll press one on the keyboard to zoom back out to a hundred percent then hold shift on the keyboard and click on the red lightning bolt and go to path difference and then finally we can click on this a second time to get the rotation handles and just hold ctrl grab one of these corner arrows and just rotate it around one or two steps one step like that that's pretty good then we could bring the opacity of this let me come down here bring the opacity all the way up and we can color this in however we'd like we are now finished with our lightning bolt logo so that's how you can do that with Inkscape if you have any questions let me know and as always thank you for watching

Channel: Logos By Nick

Views: 38,676

Keywords: inkscape, learn inkscape, inkscape tutorial, inkscape logo, inkscape logo design tutorial, inkscape for beginners

Id: drUsOJQfFZM

Length: 8min 48sec (528 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 05 2016