Designing a Fox Sports Logo in Inkscape

In this tutorial, you will design a sports logo from scratch. A lot of such logos are similar in style: a mascot with a thick outline and bold shadings. Unlike the Meteor and Instagram tutorials, you won’t be using shapes for this one. Instead, the Bezier and Node tools will take up most of your workflow.

In this tutorial, the Inkscape version used is 0.91

LET’S BEGIN!

1.

I have chosen a fox as the mascot for this tutorial and came up with a simple concept sketch. Feel free to use my sketch by right clicking on it and Save Image As… If you have a graphics tablet and a drawing program such as MyPaint, I recommended coming up with your own concept and applying the techniques taught here.

2.

Let’s open up Inkscape and import the PNG file by pressing CTRL + I. A dialog will pop up. The options don’t really matter, so choose whatever works best for you. A note though: Embed saves the image to the document, while Link captures the image from its current directory. In other words, should you ever delete the sketch from your workstation, you will still be able to view and edit it in the SVG file if it’s embedded, but not if it’s linked.

3.

Next, use the Bezier tool to trace out the sketch. You don’t to be too accurate — focus on adding nodes to the corners and turns of the sketch for now.

4.

Since the traced lines are not very visible on the black lines of the sketch, let’s make them thicker and change the colors. Also, notice how I grouped the traced lines by color based on different parts of the fox’s face. If you are using your own concept, you will have to group them based on your own discretion. It’s a bit hard to explain in words, but you will understand with more practice.

5.

Once the traced lines are in place, you can use the Node tool and adjust the lines until they match the sketch. If you’re unfamiliar with the process, please refer to An Introduction to Inkscape to learn more. It’s pretty straightforward for sharp corners, but for curves such as the one below, you have to make the selected node smooth. Don’t be afraid to play around the Node tool and see what works best for you

You should get something like this:

6.

Let’s make the red outline thicker and fill in the green shape. I also added three yellow shapes to better match the sketch. Go to the Fill and Stroke dialog and adjust the stroke width.

7.

For the eye, you want to cut out the inner part from the outer shape. Use the Node tool and select both blue shapes by holding down SHIFT. Now go to the Path menu, click on Difference, and be amazed by the result! You might notice a few other options there, such as Union and Division. Again, feel free to try them out. Also, make sure to remove the stroke outlines from all the filled shapes.

Change the RGBA of the red outline and filled shapes to 0A1632FF.

I don’t really like how the right ear looks; let’s adjust it we get a straight curve.

8.

Now, click on the outline and fill it in with FF3402FF. We’re almost there.

Since a fox’s face is usually white at the bottom, create two shapes like the example below and fill them in with FFF9FBFF: one for the face and the other for the eye.

For the eye, you can simply bring the white color below the outline by pressing Page Down. Unfortunately, if you try the same method for the white at the bottom, it will be covered up by the filled in face.

My solution is to select the outline, duplicate it with CTRL + D, then remove the fill color. Here’s what you should get:

9.

Let’s give it a background color. I went with the same orange as the fox.

Looking good. For the final touch duplicate the outline with CTRL + D, change the stroke color to D1D0DFFF, adjust the width so it’s thicker than the original, and bring it to the bottom. Do the same for the left ear.

Done! Hopefully what you have looks good as well. Feel free to share them in the comments below.