Web 2.0 logos for dummies

View blog reactions Written on April 24, 2007 by Chris Heald

There are all these great logos out there for the so-called “Web 2.0″ companies springing up every 15 minutes. How do they do it? It’s easier than you may think.

I’m going to show you how to create one of these logos in Photoshop in 5 minutes, or your money back. So fire up Photoshop, think of a name, and let’s get cracking.

We need some text. Pick a font and write down your brilliant, million-dollar logo idea.
Pick your colors. You’re going to want to pick a color, and then pick a secondary color that is slightly darker than the primary color.
Apply your colors as a gradient to your text. Open the Layer Style, go to Gradient, set a vertical linear gradient with your foreground and background colors. Have the dark part on top (click reverse if necessary).
Do the same with the Stroke style. You want a vertical linear gradient, but this time, make the dark part be on the bottom, so that the dark part of the stroke is at the light part of the gradient.
Select the Pen tool (P) and draw a complete shape around the upper half of your text. You may find it helpful to set the Opacity on the layer to about 50% so you can see what you’re doing. After you do that, use the Direct Selection tool (A, then Shift-A if you have a black arrow rather than a white arrow) to manipulate the handles of the path that you just created so that we get a nice curve along the middle of your text.
Open the Layer Styles for the path, and go to Gradient. We want a black and white vertical gradient this time, and be sure you set the Blend Mode to Screen.
Save the layer style, and then set the Blending Mode on the layer itself to Screen. Set the Opacity to about 40%.
At this point, it’s just cleanup. I decided I didn’t like the font, so I picked another one. Also, I used the Direct Selection tool to tweak my path’s nodes and handles so that I got the shine I was really after.
And that’s it! You’re done! Now you just have to put it online and make your millions.