Headstock Logo Design

[Hedley]

I am trying to come up with designs for a headstock logo to make waterslides, I was wondering if anybody could recommend a program/software for the pc that is fairly easy to use. I tried paintshop but i cant get text to come out on it smoothly, has very wavy lines aroung edges of text. Also, i dont want to spend a crap load of money either. Thx

[ShadesOfGrey]

I am trying to come up with designs for a headstock logo to make waterslides, I was wondering if anybody could recommend a program/software for the pc that is fairly easy to use. I tried paintshop but i cant get text to come out on it smoothly, has very wavy lines aroung edges of text. Also, i dont want to spend a crap load of money either. Thx

What is your method? There are a lot of different ways you can go in photoshop (or simmilar progs) to make text.

You might want to try drawing the design rougly on paper first, scan it in and clean it up in photoshop instead. I find programs like that not realy conductive to designing unless I already have something to work with.

Alternativly, you could try a cad program. There are loads of free opensource cad software to use, I use freecad. Look it up on sourceforge.net. Cad isnt realy that easy to learn, but it might be worthwile if you plan on doing your own guitar designs.

Could you maybe post what you have?

[Hedley]

I'm no picasso!

I am just basically looking to make a text "logo", like on a fender headstock(not necessarily the same font), just lettering

No need for CAD, i'll just go old school for designing the guitars for now

[Quarter]

You might want to checkout Gimp, its a very good full featured open source Photoshop like program. http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/

[Hedley]

You might want to checkout Gimp, its a very good full featured open source Photoshop like program. http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/

Thanks! That looks pretty cool, and easy to operate. I will try it out

[ShadesOfGrey]

You might want to checkout Gimp, its a very good full featured open source Photoshop like program. http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/

Was going to suggest that too, but it appeared to me the OP already had photoshop so..

But yeah, I designed a logo a couple of months back on paper, drew it fullsize then scanned it in, then in gimp I made a layer on top of that to trace and tweaked / cleaned it up.

Designing stuff like that from scratch is possible with programs, but when going for something that isnt sharp angled / somewhat geometric but rather more organic or curvy I find doing it by hand first is just more intuitive or faster.

Annyway, good luck to your project

[Hedley]

I dont have photoshop, wish i did,lol. I tried the microsoft paint or whatever it is called. There is no way i could draw up text with any kind of coolness by hand, might be better off getting the guy down the road to have one of his chickens do it I have designed a small logo for my headstocks, but it is not text. I can draw guitar bodies and such, I just cant draw words out. Thanks

[cSuttle]

Photoshop, or other programs like that are bad choices for your application. Photoshop is for photos. Hence the name. You are trying to create vector art, therefore you need a vector art program. The top two in this category are Adobe Illistrator and Corel Draw. Both was fairly expensive programs, but either one would be GREAT for what you are trying to do.

If you want to find some other program, just remember that you want a program that works in vectors, not raster. This way no matter how you scale it, rotate it, skew or mangle and font or design the edges will always be smooth.

[mattharris75]

cSuttle is right, Illustrator or some other vector based software is the way to go. However, you can still get a good result using photoshop/gimp, particularly if you're just doing text. You just won't be able to easily edit the shape of the text using bezier curves if you're trying to do something custom, like you could in Illustrator. The key is to make sure you have your document resolution set to 300 dpi (or higher), and that the original artwork is generated at full size (the size that you want it to print) or larger. Scaling up is a bad thing.

[Reinhold]

I use GIMP for designing t shirts, very simple to use.

[Hedley]

Adobe illiustrator and corel = crap load of money

*** is a bezier curve?!!!!

maybe this would be a good time to state that i am not very knowledgable about PC software and stuff like that

I am gonna try gimp out, appreciate all the suggestions though

Edited May 20, 2010 by Hedley

[cSuttle]

*** is a bezier curve?!!!!

If you ever use bezier curves and get to understand how they work, you will think photopaint is for kindergarders. Bezier curves are based math and so no matter what you do to them, they stay smooth. Zoom up 20 times, shrink 10 times, modify only parts of letters, merge with other shape to make totally new shapes, none of that would matter the shape will stay perfect.

Photoshop has it's place, but it can never replace a vector program no matter how good you got at it.

[Hedley]

I installed gimp, it seems that i have alot to learn. I have never used any types of programs like these. Don't know a whole lot about computers

[Mattia]

GIMP is like Photoshop; download InkScape and start fiddling around. There are tutorials scattered about the web, but like any piece of software (or anything else, really) there's a learning curve for this sort of thing. What might be easier for you is to start by drawing your logo, by hand, importing it into InkScape or similar, and then 'tracing' it using various curve tools, etc. This should help you get a feel for the drawing tools; it's how I 'digitized' my original acoustic guitar body outlines - take a perspective corrected photo of the full-sized outline, import it into InkScape as a bitmap, scale it appropriately, and start tracing. The bezier curves and control points help smooth out areas that don't quite look right when drawn by hand. Headstock shapes I simply placed on a scanner and imported that for further processing.

[Hedley]

Ok, so i downloaded inkscape and it seems that i am able to learn this a little easier, plus they do have pretty good tutorials and it seems easier to get nice crisp edges around text when printing. I have plenty of time to fiddle with it before i need to print an actual decal. Thanks for the recommendation!

[NotYou]

Inkscape is great for making templates and altering existing designs too. It's becoming more and mor popular with guitar builders (at least those of us who don't want to actually buy software)

[Hedley]

Yeah, I am really loving inkscape. I am getting the hang of it pretty quick, it is definitely what i was in search of. It will certainly make it easy to make some headstock decals. Now i just need to find some good waterslide paper for my inkjet, suggestions anyone?