Logo Design Advice: Spirals and Gradients

[PluginJunkie]

Hello everybody,

I recently saw these designs for a Pear Logo on Dribbble by Second Eight.

I love the overall aesthetic but I was hoping you could please provide some guidance on the following things:

1. How would you go about creating the path of the spiral in Affinity Designer? Would you use a series of Boolean shapes and join their paths? If possible, please can you shed some light on how you would recreate this design?
2. Is the second design simply the first one with a stroke applied to the border, or are there other steps to be aware of?
3. Is it possible to get the gradient to follow the path of the spiral in Affinity Designer? If not, can this be achieved in Affinity Photo?

Apologies if these are newbie questions! I will be grateful for any help you're able to provide. 

Thanks in advance!

 

[firstdefence]

Interesting shapes, I would have said those are path/curves with a gradient fill applied running with the curve. The right-hand one will likely have a stroke applied.

A puzzle for the creatives to solve lol! The gauntlet hath been dropeth’d first one to get a lookilikey wins shag all but for praise from on high lol!

[GarryP]

In addition to the advice above, this sort of design can be deceptively simple and could take a lot of experimentation to get right because of the complex geometries.
I would suggest getting to know the Node Tool and Geometry functionality very well.
Also, remember that a layer can only be in one ‘z-plane’ meaning that a layer cannot go both behind and above another layer, so you may need to construct multiple layers, possibly ‘overlapped’, to get the result you want.

I don’t know if I will have time to try these for myself but I’d certainly like to be able to make them.

[Wosven]

As said by fellow forumers, an interesting exercise

If I had to redraw them, I would distinguish 2 ways of doing this:

• simple copy (like redrawing a bad logo send by a client, but I want a good result in my document): I would redraw the curves and add -- inside if needed --, other shapes with gradients or transparency to get the same result. It's a copycat work, no real brain damage...
• If I want to get a process and be able to apply it on other shapes, I would put my brain on it and search which features of the apps, which styles or tools can get the same result, or the closest...

Doing this the 1st way can help for the second... 

[PixelPest]

I see it total negatively: 😅

[Wosven]

@PixelPest And if the shapes are created in order, applying it to shape 5 would be good!

[PluginJunkie]

4 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Interesting shapes, I would have said those are path/curves with a gradient fill applied running with the curve. The right-hand one will likely have a stroke applied.

A puzzle for the creatives to solve lol! The gauntlet hath been dropeth’d first one to get a lookilikey wins shag all but for praise from on high lol!

Thank you for your input @firstdefence! Appreciate this. Is it possible to apply a gradient that runs with the curve? I've only been able to apply gradients in the basic directions (linear, elliptical and radial etc.) with Affinity so far.

[PluginJunkie]

2 hours ago, GarryP said:

In addition to the advice above, this sort of design can be deceptively simple and could take a lot of experimentation to get right because of the complex geometries.
I would suggest getting to know the Node Tool and Geometry functionality very well.
Also, remember that a layer can only be in one ‘z-plane’ meaning that a layer cannot go both behind and above another layer, so you may need to construct multiple layers, possibly ‘overlapped’, to get the result you want.

I don’t know if I will have time to try these for myself but I’d certainly like to be able to make them.

Thank you @GarryP! I completely hear you. I'm really interested in learning more about grid systems and geometric design. Will definitely take your advice on board

[PluginJunkie]

1 hour ago, PixelPest said:

I see it total negatively: 😅

This looks brilliant @PixelPest! If you don't mind me asking, how did you go about creating that shape? I'm guessing you used three concentric circles fo the base? Also, did you have any luck with the gradient effect applied? Would be really interested to see your results. Thanks for sharing!

[PluginJunkie]

2 hours ago, Wosven said:

As said by fellow forumers, an interesting exercise

If I had to redraw them, I would distinguish 2 ways of doing this:

• simple copy (like redrawing a bad logo send by a client, but I want a good result in my document): I would redraw the curves and add -- inside if needed --, other shapes with gradients or transparency to get the same result. It's a copycat work, no real brain damage...
• If I want to get a process and be able to apply it on other shapes, I would put my brain on it and search which features of the apps, which styles or tools can get the same result, or the closest...

Doing this the 1st way can help for the second... 

Thanks @Wosven! Appreciate your thoughts and feedback

Edited June 5, 2021 by PluginJunkie
Spelling

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, PluginJunkie said:

This looks brilliant @PixelPest! If you don't mind me asking, how did you go about creating that shape? I'm guessing you used three concentric circles fo the base? Also, did you have any luck with the gradient effect applied? Would be really interested to see your results. Thanks for sharing!

I don't know how he made it but it appears to be just one open curve -- note that there is only one red node.

[firstdefence]

4 hours ago, PluginJunkie said:

Thank you for your input @firstdefence! Appreciate this. Is it possible to apply a gradient that runs with the curve? I've only been able to apply gradients in the basic directions (linear, elliptical and radial etc.) with Affinity so far.

With regard to gradients, affinity has the basic grad types such as linear, radial, conical etc but no gradient that will follow a curve yet.

There are, however, a few workarounds, a stalwart phrase of affinity apps. One method is to nest as children various shapes with the colours you want to represent the gradient and then apply a blur such as the example below...

Another method is to make an image brush that can be applied to the stroke.

[PixelPest]

5 hours ago, PluginJunkie said:

This looks brilliant @PixelPest! If you don't mind me asking, how did you go about creating that shape? I'm guessing you used three concentric circles fo the base? Also, did you have any luck with the gradient effect applied? Would be really interested to see your results. Thanks for sharing!

It´s manually drawn in 1 stroke. One looped stroke for the color in the background assigned an image texture brush of that particular gradient:

 

[thatGuy]

instead of an image brush you could also stack gradients in the appearance panel (100-0% opacity), this however requires some masking to have them not bleed into overlapping areas

untitled.afdesign

[PluginJunkie]

15 hours ago, PixelPest said:

It´s manually drawn in 1 stroke. One looped stroke for the color in the background assigned an image texture brush of that particular gradient:

 

This honestly looks so good @PixelPest! Thank you for mapping out your process like this. It's really interesting to see! 

[PluginJunkie]

3 hours ago, thatGuy said:

instead of an image brush you could also stack gradients in the appearance panel (100-0% opacity), this however requires some masking to have them not bleed into overlapping areas

untitled.afdesign 14.31 kB · 1 download

I had no idea this was even doable. Thank you @thatGuy

[PluginJunkie]

17 hours ago, firstdefence said:

With regard to gradients, affinity has the basic grad types such as linear, radial, conical etc but no gradient that will follow a curve yet.

There are, however, a few workarounds, a stalwart phrase of affinity apps. One method is to nest as children various shapes with the colours you want to represent the gradient and then apply a blur such as the example below...

Another method is to make an image brush that can be applied to the stroke.

Good to know. Thank you for outlining a few workarounds @firstdefence

[uneMule]

Bonjour à tous. Une petite piste de construction.

Hello to all. A small construction track.

[uneMule]

Une base de travail plus aboutie. Si cela peut vous aider. Avec la bêta 1.9.4.1065.

*****

A more complete basis for work. If it helps you. With beta 1.9.4.1065.

754628150_final.afdesign brosses.afdesign