Logo Design Studio Pro Guide – Part 4

Working with Shapes

Logo Design Studio Pro includes a number of geometric shapes that you can add to your logo project and modify as you see fit. You can resize, rotate, change the color, or add special effects to your shapes.

Adding Shapes to the Canvas

The Shapes section of the Insert menu lets you add geometric shapes to your logo canvas. Logo Design Studio Insert Menu

The available shapes include Rectangle, Ellipse, Line, Arrow, Polyline, Triangle, Diamond, Pentagon, Hexagon, and Star. The section also includes two other controls, Object and Direct, which are used with text converted to a Bezier shape. Choose one of the options to highlight it and then move your cursor to the canvas area. Move the cursor to the location where you wish to place the shape. You may either click your left mouse button to place the initial default shape on the logo canvas or hold it down and drag out an area in which to place the shape and then release it. You can manipulate the shape using the sizing and rotational handle dots that appear around the object or by using the object manipulation tools in the Advanced Tools slide-out pane on the right of the canvas. You can also change the color of any selected object(s) by using one of the color options from the Color menu tab, and you can add special effects to the way the shape appears using the choices in the Effects menu tab.

Modifying Shapes on the Canvas

Logo Design Studio Pro lets you modify the shapes you added to the logo canvas and Add Color and Effects to make it visually appealing.

Resizing and Rotating Shapes

To modify a shape on the canvas, click the shape you want to change. It will be surrounded by a group of sizing handle dots; when you move your cursor over one of them, it will change to a two-headed arrow, indicating the directions you can move the cursor to enlarge or shrink the shape. To enlarge your shape, hold down the mouse button and drag the cursor away from the shape’s center; to shrink your shape, drag the cursor toward the shape’s center. Two of the available shapes, Rectangle and Ellipse, also have rotational handles. Move your cursor over the rotational handle; it will change to a set of four arrows. Hold down your mouse button and drag the handle to the right to rotate the shape clockwise or left to rotate the shape counterclockwise.

Advanced Shape Manipulation

Use the options on the Shapes tab of the Advanced Tools menu to make changes to the shape’s appearance not possible by using the sizing handles. To display the Advanced Tools slide-out pane, click the Advanced Tools button on the right sidebar or in the View menu. Logo Design Studio Shapes

Click Duplicate to duplicate the shape. The new shape appears lower and to the right of the original and may be moved and manipulated by selecting it. Click Delete to remove the selected shape from the canvas. Slide the Opacity slider to the right to make the shape more opaque, to the left to make it more transparent. Slide the Stroke slider right to widen the thickness of tleft to make it narrower. (For the Line and Arrow, thickround its edges. For the Star, a sufficient line thicknesspentagram appearance to a filled-in star.) Use the Flip Horizontal button to flip the shape to a mirror image or the Flip Vertical button to flip it vertically. Use the Width and Height sliders to adjust those dimensions of the shape. Slide the slider to the right to lengthen that dimension, to the left to shorten it. (Setting the slider values to the same length for a rectangle produces a square; doing so for an ellipse produces a circle.) To adjust both sliders proportionately by sliding only one of them, check the Preserve Aspect Ratio box. Use the Rotate slider to rotate the shape. Slide the slider right to rotate the shape clockwise, left to rotate it counterclockwise. Use the Skew sliders to slant the shape horizontally or vertically from the bottom. Slide the Skew Horizontal slider left to slant the bottom of the text to the left and the top of the text to the right, or to the right to slant the bottom of the text to the right and the top to the left. Slide the Skew Vertical button to the left to tilt the left edge of the text down and the right edge up, or to the right to tilt the right edge down and the left edge up. (Skewing a rectangle will produce a parallelogram or rhombus shape, while skewing an ellipse will add perspective to it.) Note: Sliding one of the Skew sliders resets the other slider to the center (0) position The Rectangle shape also features the Corners slider, which can round the rectangle’s corners. Slide the slider to the right to increase the rounding, to the left to sharpen the corners.

Changing Shape Color

When you add a shape to your canvas, the default color of the shape is always transparent (fill) with a black outline (stroke). To change the color of a shape, use the options on the Color menu. You can select from Solid Color, Gradient Color, or Fill With Picture — or use Clear Stroke/Fill to remove the color entirely. Before selecting a color option, select the Fill button to apply the color option to the interior of the shape or the Stroke button to apply the option to the shape border.

Adding Effects to Shapes

You can add Outer Glow, Drop Shadow, Bevel, Blur, and Emboss effects to your selected shape(s) by clicking the Effects menu tab, and then clicking the checkbox(es) for the section(s) whose effects you wish to apply to your shape. Note: The Drop Shadow and Bevel effects will not be noticeable on the Line, Arrow, and Polyline shapes unless you thicken the component lines by using the Stroke slider in the Advanced Tools menu. Combining Shapes Logo Design Studio Pro lets you combine two existing geometric shapes on the logo canvas into new shapes. You do this with the options under the Boolean option button in the Editing section of the Home menu. To combine two shapes together, first position them with respect to each other according to the effect you want to achieve. (You do not have to overlap the shapes, although most of the combining outcomes will be more effective if you do overlap them.) Select both of the shapes by holding down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and clicking both of the shapes you wish to combine. Select one of the four combining options under the Boolean option button:

Union – Creates a new shape whose area is the combined area of the two shapes. Its perimeter bounds the total area of the original two shapes. (This is equivalent to the Boolean operation OR.) When colored in, the total area of the two shapes will be colored.)
Intersect – Creates a new shape whose area is the area where the two original shapes overlap. Its perimeter is made of the line segments that bound this overlapping area. (This is equivalent to the Boolean operation AND.)
XOR – Creates a new shape that duplicates the overlapping of the original shape. The two shapes’ perimeters are duplicated in their entirety, including the boundary of the overlapping area; however, when colored in, only the areas not common to the two original shapes will be colored. (XOR is short for “Exclusive OR.”)
Exclude – Creates a new shape whose area is that portion of the first shape selected that does not overlap the second shape. (How the positions of the layers the shapes are on has no effect on how the new shape will appear; however, the order in which the shapes are selected before being combined with this operation does.

It does not matter whether the original shapes have been colored in or have special effects applied to them; the combined shape will be displayed without color or special effects, which can be added later. The combined shape can also be modified using its sizing handles or the options in the Advanced Tools menu.

<< Part 3: Logo Slide-Out Panes

Part 5: Working With Logo Graphics >>

Working with logo shapes