I was bored, so I decided to try finding a guide to making a Google-like logo. There are plenty of how-to’s available for Photoshop, and even online logo generators, but nothing that I quite liked (and nothing available that worked in The GIMP). So I decided to make my own procedure, and thanks to the technical advances of the Internet, now you, too, can have your very own knock-off Google logo by following these very simple steps!
NOTE: I now have a “Google Logo” script (off-site link) that does most of the work manually. It even includes a set of gradients with all the right colors included. See the link for details.
Results are not guaranteed to bear any resemblance whatsoever to the actual Google logo.
This guide assumes you have a decent working knowledge of GIMP (or can follow along with badly-written instructions that I’m basically making up as I go along). It also assumes you’re running GIMP 2.4 or later, since that’s the version I use to write this.
Don’t use this to impersonate Google. You won’t get away with it. (As far as I’m concerned, I claim fair use.)
Start The GIMP and create a new image (640x240, white background).
Use the text tool to type your logo text. I used Book Antiqua, 130px. It’s not the same font as Google uses – they use an expensive commercial font called “Catull” – but it looks close enough. (The lowercase letter “a” is noticably different, however...) Any old-style serif font should work nicely, just make it big.
Use the magic wand to select each letter (with anti-aliasing turned off). Float it using Ctrl-Shift-L. You can do multiple letters of the same intended color at once by holding Shift as you click the letter shape.
The letter colors are blue, #0039b6; red, #c41200; yellow, #f3c518; and green, #30a72f. The “official” order is blue, red, yellow, blue, green, red (and after that, I guess it repeats). Colorize each letter appropriately, then anchor the floating selection (right-click → Anchor Layer).
To create the lighter “glow” on the letters, duplicate the colored logo text. Go to Layer → Layer to Image Size. Use the color-selecting tool (with anti-aliasing turned off) to select the transparent area around the text.
Go to Select → Feather and enter 10 pixels in the “Feather selection by” box. Press Ctrl-I to invert the selection. Open the color picker, and drag the white background color over the image. The logo text should appear lighter towards the center.
Go to Layer → Mask → Add Layer Mask. Select the options “Layer’s alpha chennel” and “Invert mask”. After applying the mask, move the layer about 4px right, 2px down. Go to Filters → Blur → Blur three times. Reduce the transparency to about 75%.
To create the darker “shadow” on the letters, repeat the previous step, but color the feathered area black (instead of white), and move it up and left (rather than right and down).
Set the “glow” layer’s mode to “Addition”, and the “shadow” layer’s mode to “Subtract”.
Add drop shadows or other effects to taste.
Gloat until the cease-and-desists come in.
It’s not a bad thing to experiment with different values. For example, feathering by 25px (as opposed to 10px) works rather nicely. 100% opacity on the glow/shadow layers doesn’t look bad either. Play around with your logo until it looks right.
You can get a good drop shadow using X offset 2px, Y offset 8px, blur radius 5, 50% opacity (leave the color at black).
Sources (in .xcf format) for the above logos: ultimapcs, Martin Ultima. I think the Martin Ultima one came out slightly better (25px feather; 25% opacity on light; 100% opacity on dark).
Updated: May 10, 2008
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