Sound Guy Music Logo in Photoshop

Logo creation can be both terrifying (coming up with just the right look to express everything you are in a single graphic? Yeah. Terrifying) as well as wonderfully fun. It can be great seeing how a single concept gets expressed in one little graphic. And it's even better when you can look at the finished effect and be proud that your hand created it.

In this easy Photoshop tutorial, we'll create a logo of a guy wearing headphones. With a few personal touches, this logo can be made to suit any music-related business. All that you'll need is a copy of Photoshop version 7 or higher, though this tutorial is being written using Photoshop CS3 so some of the tools may be located in different places depending on what version you're using.

Headphones Sound Guy Logo

1. New Canvas - Open a new canvas that is sized at least 500 x 500 pixels in Photoshop (File, New). The larger the canvas you start out with, the more uses you can put your logo to without losing any quality in your image. If you want to be able to print your logo, for example, you might want to consider working in inches and making a very large logo. For logos that will only be displayed on a computer screen, you can work at a smaller size - but always begin larger than you think you'll ever need. That way, you'll still have a larger logo if you need it, and can size it down to keep quality high.

Make the canvas in RGB mode with a background that is compatible with whatever uses you will be putting your logo to.

2. Draw the Guy - We're going to make this one easy. All that we need is a contrasting color for the guy's head (since my background is nearly black, I'll be using white) and the circle SHAPE tool. Make sure you're using the shape tool, not the marquee tool. The shape tool will put the circle on its own layer, and it will be in vector format until you right-click its layer and choose "Rasterize" to set it all smooth and straight.

With the contrasting color and your circle shape tool, draw a circle for the head and then - switching back to your background color - create a small circle mouth. You can also create eyes if you like, using a Photoshop custom shape. For the eyes on my sound guy, I just created 2 more circles and cut out what I didn't want. Just make sure that when you've drawn each shape and are happy with it, that you right-click the layer and choose "Rasterize".

3. Draw the Headphones - There's three parts to this step, and none of them are too difficult. We'll start with the easiest one first; we'll begin by creating the "band" of the headphones. To do this, use your contrasting color and the circle shape tool to draw a wide circle above the head. It should be just a bit wider than the head circle, and a little bit shorter. When it's drawn, right-click and rasterize the layer, and then use your circle marquee tool to erase the lower 90% of this circle. (Reference Illustration 01).

The next part is to create the actual ear pads; this step isn't difficult, but it might not be something you've tried before so bear with me. First, you'll need to draw two rounded rectangles on each side of the head, representing the ear pads. Do NOT rasterize these layers yet. Before you rasterize, click "Edit", choose "Transform", and pick "Warp". The only thing that's different about this transform tool than any other is that you have a lot more handles to play with. Use them to create a look that sort-of echoes the curve of the head, but more or less resembles headphones. When you're done, rasterize the shapes.

Finally, we'll create the outer "case" that fits outside the ear pads. This is done the exact same way that we made the band. Use your circle shape tool, rasterize it, and cut part of it out. (Reference Illustration 02).

4. Finishing Touches - All that's left is to add text and any additional elements that you like. Off the top of my head, I can easily imagine little music notes floating out of the headphones, or a bolt of lightning flashing behind the head. It's yours - personalize it to make it something you'll be truly proud of.