Trendy Shopping / Fashion Logo - 6 Steps in Photoshop

Logos can be one of the most frustrating items to come up with when establishing or creating a new business. You want it to be attractive, but simple enough to be remembered. Most of all, you want to do it yourself because it will save you tons of money on hiring a designer. Fear not - you can do it. This guide will help you create your own shopping or fashion logo in minutes using Photoshop.

You will need Photoshop 7 or above, or any graphics editor with tools comparable to Photoshop to complete this tutorial. You may want to reference the illustrations attached to this article, which contain graphics illustrating the steps. However, in general, it is much easier to go in-depth within the article itself because of sizing of images. So keep the article open if you decide to use the illustrations.

As with all my Photoshop tutorials, please feel free to use your own colors. Save your final piece as a Photoshop PSD file, and you can easily change colors later using layer styles. I have focused on the easiest methods of creating and customizing your own graphics.

Ready to get started? Great!

One: First, we're going to create the background for our logo. Create a new canvas (File, New) that is sized about 500 x 500 pixels. You want it to be large so it can be used for many things. Immediately fill your background with #4a295e.

Two: Now, we want something for our shopping bag to be placed against. This will give the logo a sense of depth.

Set your foreground color to #945697 and your background color to #583367. Then, grab your elliptical (circle) SHAPE tool. Make sure it's the shape tool, not the marquee, or you'll never be able to rasterize. Hold the shift key down on your keyboard as you draw the shape, to make it a perfect circle. Then, right-click the shape layer and choose "Rasterize". This is the only way you're going to achive those crisp, sharp edges that aren't all pixellated.

Finally, we're going to add a gradient to our circle. Click "Layer", choose "Layer Style" and click "Gradient Overlay". In the dialogue, apply the light-to-dark purple gradient (leave settings at default), and click OK.

Three: We're ready to jump right into the shopping bag itself - and I promise, it stays just as easy as it has been so far.

First, create a new layer (Layer, New, New Layer). Then, grab your polygonal lasso tool. What you want to create is a rectangle-ish object that has top corners slightly in further than the bottom corners. The easiest way to do this is to create 1/2 of the bag, duplicate the layer, and flip the duplicated layer. If you have a graphics tablet or are really comfortable using Photoshop, feel free to do it all at once. Fill the bag with #f66db3.

Four: Next, we need to make this look more like a shopping bag. We're going to add a handle to do that. Use the elliptical (circle) shape tool and #45063b to create a circle that matches the top of the bag's corners at its middle. Then, rasterize (right-click and choose "Rasterize Layer"). Finally, click "Select", choose "Modify", and click "Contract". Enter 10 in the dialogue and click OK. Now, hit the backspace key on your keyboard and wala! A handle.

Five: Our last bag step! First, create a thin line (using the same color as your handle) across the upper 1/3 of your bag. Dissect that line with a rectangle shape. Inside the rectangle shape, using the same color as your bag, create a second rectangle to make it look cut out.

Six: Turn off your background and circle layers. Then, right-click another layer and choose "Merge Visible" Our very last step - click "Layer", choose "Layer Styles" and pick "Drop Shadow". Adjust to your liking, and you're ready to save your logo! Great work.