Create A Logo With Inkpad On The Ipad (Part 1)

Who needs Photoshop and Illustrator to create polished final artwork when you’re armed with an iPad and Inkpad?

You’ll need

·         An iPad

·         iOS 5 or later

·         Inkpad

It’s all too easy, as we’ve repeatedly noted, to dismiss the iPad as a cute gadget but ultimately a device for passive consumption rather than content creation. Sure, the argument goes, there are apps for music and art and so on, but can you really do anything serious with a drawing program that only costs a few pounds, on a screen the size of a paperback, with no input device except your finger? And this is one of those arguments where the questions are strictly rhetorical.

Well, recently I had the chance to find an answer. I was asked to produce a logo in a hurry for the jazz nightclub singer Zeeteah Massiah (and if you want to see what the logo is trying to convey, you could listen to her on YouTube while you read this). It was a weekend, and I was away from my desk with just my iPad. Could the $5 Inkpad app possibly be up to the job of creating finished vector artwork?

The answer is yes. Inkpad’s extended feature set and ingenious approach to interface design meant it proved more than capable of enabling me to complete the job, from initial sketches to complete printable artwork. Not so passive.

In this tutorial, we’ll follow the creative process as it took place on the iPad. What there isn’t room for here is the preliminary sketches, which led to the deci­sion to concentrate on a diamond-studded piano­black letter ‘Z’ with two cross bars (Zeeteah has spent many years working in Germany, where the ‘Z’ is crossed) marked by a shocking pink ribbon. It was only after doodling at this for a while that I moved to the iPad and began the sequence of steps you see here.

It’s worth pointing out that since all iPads now have cameras built in, you can import sketches into apps that permit them to be displayed behind your artwork simply by taking a picture of them, being careful to align yourself with the surface so that the image isn’t distorted. Who needs a Mac, flatbed scanner and graphics tablet anyway?

The initial sketch

I drew the base sketch with the Brush tool, as this produces thick strokes and made it easy to swoosh shapely curves. Reduce the layer’s opacity to around 25% using the Layers palette, and redraw and reshape the shape on a new layer using the Pen tool. This tool behaves just like its counterpart in any serious desktop graphics program.

Add the ribbons

Draw the ribbons using the Pen tool. The idea is that the ribbon will start on the left, cross the ‘Z’, then turn under itself and wrap behind the letter, before turning once more to cross back in front of the ‘Z’. For this reason, it’s necessary to create it on two separate layers; the first layer holds the two front sections of the ribbon.

The back ribbon

The rear piece of the ribbon needs to be created on a separate layer. This is easily made by pressing the + button in the Layers palette to add the layer, then drag­ging it down. The initial sketch layer is no longer needed, so clicking the eye icon hides it from view. It’s also possible to lock the other ribbon layer to prevent points from being moved accidentally.

Add the texture

To make the silk look less flat, add a tex­ture by changing the Fill type from Colour to Gradient. All the gradient stops have the same 333° Hue setting and 100% Saturation; only the Brightness is varied to achieve light and dark tones. Initially, apply the same gradient to all three pieces of ribbon to give them all the same basic appearance.

Adjust the gradients

To make the rear ribbon appear to wrap behind the front sections, you need to adjust the gradient. When just this ribbon is selected, any changes won’t affect the other two ribbon layers, so by adding shadows at either end, you can make it look as if the upper ribbon sections are casting shadows on this one, which enhances the 3D effect.

Add the diamond

Find a stock image of a diamond and import it into the artwork using the button on the top menu bar. Use the Ellipse tool to draw a circle that covers the diamond itself, and choose the Mask option from the pop-up Path menu. This masks the underlying object with the upper one so that the diamond photo will only be visible through the ellipse.

Resize the diamond

Use the Scale tool to resize the dia­mond so it fits in the curl of the terminus of the letter ‘Z’. By default, the Scale tool scales around the centre of the selected object, but it’s possible to drag this centre marker to any other position in the artwork and scale from there.

Add more diamonds

Duplicate the diamond layer, and reduce the diamond and copy it to multiple locations around the ‘Z’. Rotate them by different amounts to make them look less identical. Make a stroke around each, on a new layer, and give it a gradient fill to create the mount.