So, I had to know. How the heck do graphic designers create those gorgeous icons and badges you see all over the internet? I thought, man that's got to be hard. I mean those things are designed by professionals. I'll never be able to do that.
So, I Googled it. I found a website that had a list of tutorials on how to make everything shiny.
What was great was, the guy was using Macromedia Fireworks. This is the very software I use for the snobby reason that it was free to download.
Even if you don't use Fireworks, you can apply the same concepts to any graphic software you're comfortable with. Read to tutorials here.
Or you can just enjoy looking over my obsessive learning process.
The first one doesn't have any shiny in it. It's just the original concept before I discovered how exciting and easy shining it up could be.
The second one is my first pass at making shiny icons. The tutorial I read showed how to make round ones so I made round ones too.
This has reflections. I'm gettin' fancier.
This is the last one I made before I realized I was getting on my wife's nerves by begging her to look at what I made now. Very shiny.
So, that's pretty much how I spent my Sunday off. The wife said she liked the first one best (the one that's not shiny at all...I know, right?). Incidentally, this is my first attempt to post images from a Picasa account so if everything doesn't display correctly I apologize. I can only get better, right?
The graphics look great. I have to say I agree with the wife, the first one is best, but if you must have something shiny (and who doesn't love a little shine in their lives), go with the last one. The shine on the round ones makes the images less clear and the reflection makes the text a little hard to read. All that said though, I must say that I hate you a little bit for coming with with a simple, cool logo that I'm sure only took about 20 min to design. It's ok though...I'll get over it.
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