Learn how to add advanced styling techniques to your logo using vector Photoshop. This tutorial guides you through the process of adding and customizing borders, manipulating stroke options, and applying gradients to your design.
Key Insights
- Adding a border to a design can be achieved by using the stroke tool. The thickness and color of the stroke can be adjusted according to your preference. The stroke can be aligned inside, outside, or centered on the edge of the shape.
- Further manipulations to the stroke can be made, such as changing the caps to rounded for a softer look, adjusting corners, and creating a dashed line with a custom ratio for a unique pattern.
- Gradient fill can be applied to elements of your logo for a more dynamic look. Gradient options include linear, radial, angled, reflected, or diamond, and the opacity midpoint can be adjusted to change the transition between colors.
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In this video we'll be stylizing our logo as well as adding a border. With our phase 10 vector photoshop file open, let's begin.
The first thing we'll want to do is add a border to our trapezoid base. We can do this by adding a stroke. We go to our options bar with the ellipse tool or any of the shape tools selected.
We can select stroke and we can choose a color. I'll go to the color picker and I'll choose a dark gray color. In addition, if I hover over the vector I can simply sample this gray and click okay.
I now have a one pixel stroke around the edge of the trapezoid. Let's click the drop down next to one pixel and we'll just slide it up. I'll leave mine at 35 pixels and hit ENTER.
Next, we have some options of how we can manipulate this stroke. We'll click stroke options and let's choose a dashed stroke. Next, let's go down to more options and we'll have more options of how we can change and manipulate our stroke.
The first option on the left is how we align our stroke. Currently it's set to align inside so that the stroke is contained within the shape. If we change it to outside we'll see the stroke moves outside of our shape.
In addition, we can center it so that half of the stroke is outside and half of it is inside. For mine, I'll choose outside. However, you can change yours to however you'd prefer.
Next, we can change our caps by changing it to rounded. We'll see that the stroke has now rounded edges or square. And finally, butt.
I'll change mine to round. I like the look of that. It softens the whole logo a bit.
And finally, corners. Corners allows us to make some adjustments as well. If we look at our corners now with round, we'll see that they've been rounded out as opposed to our other two options.
Personally, I prefer rounded. However, you can choose whatever you prefer. Finally, we have the ability to change our dashed line.
Currently, we have a 4 to 2 ratio 4 × 2 gap and we can manipulate this as we prefer as well. For example, I'll change my dash to 8 × 2 and then we can also create a pattern. If I make it 8 × 2 and then 6 × 2 and 4 × 2, we'll see that I have the 8 × 2, 6 × 2, and 4 × 2. And this pattern will repeat itself.
I'll click OK. And looking at this now, I actually want to drop the pixels down a little bit lower. So I'll change the pixels in the option bar down to a smaller border and I'll leave it at about 20 and hit ENTER.
Feel free to choose whatever pixel and stroke options you prefer as well. Next, let's continue stylizing our logo. The next way I'll stylize the logo is by adding a gradient to ellipse 2 or the center P circle.
We can do this by going into the shape properties and we'll select fill. And our third option up top is a gradient. Here, once we see we click gradient, it'll automatically add a gradient for us.
Below, we have options for different gradients and I like the one that has a little bit of transparency. In addition, we can change the gradient by sliding these toggles around and we'll see it will manipulate where the gradient is set. The opacity midpoint diamond refers to the transition between the two and so as we change this, we'll see the transition on our logo.
We're also able to change it from a linear to a radial gradient, an angled, a reflected, or a diamond and within that we can also manipulate the angle that the gradient is set at. I'll choose linear for mine and we'll set the angle so that the gradient moves from left to right. I'll also toggle this to be a little further so that there's gray almost to the edge.
I'll then click outside of artboard 1 and we can see the result. Next, let's add a gradient to rectangle 1. We can do this by going to fill in properties and selecting gradient. As we can see, it moves from the top to bottom and I'll select the option with transparency.
We'll then toggle this opacity stop to the right and we will also toggle the opacity midpoint up so that we can see this a little more visibly. Finally, let's change the angle so that it's also fading to the right. We can adjust these a little bit further left and hit ENTER.
Let's click outside of layers and we can view the result. Here we now have our P fading to the right with gradients as well as with a custom border. Let's save our work using CTRL S on the keyboard and in the next video we'll be adding text to our logo.
See you there!