Creating a guitar logo, spaghetti-style
Here is a simple way to create a stylish spaghetti-style logo for your guitar.
Software needed
In this howto I use Inkscape which is an open source vector graphics editor for Windows Mac OSX and Linux. It is completely free. With Inkscape you can create line art that, unlike bitmap graphics, can be scaled without loss of image quality.
Creating a logo
I’ll show how to create a logo using Bézier curves.
Start Inkscape and choose the tool for Bézier curves and straight lines from the left hand tool menu (hotkey Shift+F6).
Step one
First I’ll make an F. Left click where you want the F to start, then move the mouse to the “upper right corner” and left click, then down to the “lower left corner”. The illustration above may explain this better. Press Enter when you’re done, and you end up with an angle like the one above. The blue line below our newly created angle is a guide. We may need it when creating the rest of the logo. You can make one by left clicking on the ruler above the design area, and drag a guide down to where you want it.
Step two
Next create a line crossing the angle you just made. You may end up with something like this:
Step three
Using this technique, you can create a rough outline of your logo.
After a bit of work, I ended up with this:
Now comes the interesting part: creating curves from the straight lines.
Curves
Use the node edit tool (hotkey F2). Click on your F and you can see all the corners on that path.
Left click the upper right corner node (the grey square) and, pressing down Shift, drag the cursor out a bit. See the example above. This creates a curve. How far you pull the node handle (the circle) away from the node determines the shape of the curve. This takes a little practice.
Using this technique and quite a bit of time, I ended up with this:
Now it’s starting to look like something!
Creating an outline
Before you do anything else, select the whole stroke you’ve created and make a copy of it (Ctrl+c), then paste the copy on a new drawing area or in a new file.
What we want to do now, is to create a transparent inner area of the letters, so that we can either fill it with color in Inkscape, or hand color it with metallic markers. The logo on the guitar at the start of this tutorial is colored with a gold marker.
Right click on the F (or rather, the angle part of the F) and choose Fill and stroke. A new window appears.
Choose the Stroke style tab, and enter width: 5 px. If you want your curves to have rounded start and end points, choose the rounded Cap. The 5 pixel width we chose will be the transparent area in the letters later on. Repeat this for the “dash” across the F angle. For the rest of the word, try 4 pixels.
You’ll end up with something like this:
Create a new copy of your logo and paste it into a new document or a blank area in your existing drawing.
Use the Select tool (hotkey F1) and drag a rectangle around the two components of the F. Choose Path from the menu bar, then Stroke to Path. Right click on the F and choose Fill and Stroke. On the Fill tab, set Paint to none (the button with an X), on the Stroke paint tab, set Paint to Flat color and choose your favourite. Finally, on the Stroke style tab, set width to 1 px.
Now we’ve got this:
With both components of the F still selected, choose Path menu, then Union. The F looks good now, doesn’t it?
Repeat the steps above with the rest of your logo, and you end with this:
Now you can print it out on decal stock.
If you want to hand colour the inside like mine on the top of this page, here’s a handy trick:
Reverse the logo in Inkscape by selecting all of it, then click the Flip selected object horizontally button below the menu bar.
After printing the reversed logo and letting it dry for a bit, you can color the backside of the decal. The logo will look sharp when applied to the guitar.
2008-02-15 22:11 | Filed under diy
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