Deke’s Techniques 086: Designing an Indiana Jones Logo

086 Designing an Indiana Jones-style logo

Today, I’m offline on a personal adventure. And yet, I still manage to offer you a kind of adventure as well. In the form of Adventure Type in Photoshop.

Here’s the official description from lynda.com:


If you’re craving real Photoshop adventure, this week’s Deke’s Technique is just what you seek. In this free-to-all video, Deke creates a classic Indiana Jones-style logo. Start with whatever text you like and use Deke’s process to turn it into this multicolored, Saturday-matinee, cliffhanger effect. Just like the one below.

Inidiana Jones type in Photoshop

Grab your bullwhip and hat and set out on the adventure that Deke has in store. Your quest begins with downloading the Fedora font from Shy Foundry. Then you’ll load a special Deke-created “Indiana” gradient so that you have just the right mix of orange-to-yellow-to-white traveling intrepidly down your text. (If you aren’t a member of lynda.com, you can still roll your own gradient based on the info in this video.) After applying few careful transformations and a clipping mask, you’ll suddenly find that you’ve turned your ordinary text into the stuff of treasure-seeking legend.

If you’re on a search for the elusive sharp corners and you’re a member of lynda.com, then this week’s exclusive Online Training Library video shows you how to take your logo into Illustrator, square off the corners of your type, and re-import the results into Photoshop for a pristine replication of this classic effect.

And of course, for further Photoshop adventure, join us next week for another free Deke’s Technique.


(Cue the music.) Ba-ba-ba-bah! Ba-ba-bah! Ba-ba-ba-bah. Ba-ba-ba- (music grinds to a halt) . . . oh, for the love of John Rhys-Davies, just watch the video.

Next entry:Deke’s Techniques 088: Masking with Photoshop’s Blunt Instruments

Previous entry:Deke’s Techniques 084: Drawing Rays of Light in Photoshop

  • Catacombs of Photoshop

    Well, I watched the videos at Lynda.com, and then I thought: “as much interesting and instructive as it is (so thank you for that!) wouldn’t have been easier to do almost all the typing trick (the warping, bending and stroking)  in Illustrator and going to Photoshop just for the coloring part?”

    PS: I was among those guys who kept hammering Lynda about having short courses on practical cases and techniques, and I feel a bit proud that they have finally taken this approach along with their broad courses series.

  • Mitered Edges

    For those of us that do not have Illustrator, is there any way to get the mitered stroke edges in Photoshop?  I have come across this problem in the past and I can’t believe there isn’t some way to do this.  DP

  • Well, I considered Illustrator for the whole thing

    But it was the warped gradient that weighted things in favor of the Photoshop/Illustrator split shown in the videos. It’s not that you can’t create that kind of gradient in Illustrator—-there are a few ways, including creating a fan-style blend—-but I was able to perform the trick faster using Photoshop. Not way faster, but it shaved a few minutes. And then I figured, more folks use Photoshop. And thus we have Photoshop.

  • I’m afraid you’ll have to believe it

    All of Photoshop’s pixel-based options—-growing a selection, spreading a mask—-result in slices at the corners. Meanwhile, Photoshop’s only vector-based solution, the Stroke effect, rounds corners.

    Illustrator lets you edit vectors in all sorts of ways that Photoshop doesn’t, including expanding pointed corners to a perfect point.

    At least, that’s how it is this year. (2011, for visitors from the future.)

  • sffedora

    Went to shy foundry for sffedora, but the link is for the next font in the list. I sent an email, but the link is still wrong.. just fyi.

    Bob

  • Alternate link

    Try http://www.dafont.com/sf-fedora.font

    Time flies like an arrow.


    Fruit flies like a banana.

  • Hey thanks imonkey.. got ‘em

    Hey thanks imonkey.. got ‘em ;O)

    bob

  • awasome

    greeting from Chile.

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