Custom MRR Logo Design

Hello everyone,

I believe I've seem some folks on the forums who have custom logos or heralds for their model railroads in their avatars or even on their equipment. I am interested in coming up with a custom logo/herald for a layout in the near future that is based on the Nevada Northern's Safety First herald (not sure why I just really like it ). Can anyone recommend any programs they use to create their logos/heralds, or has anyone actually commissioned a graphic designer or artist to create one?

I always thought this was a neat and fun part about freelancing and would love to give my equipment that little extra flair.

Thanks and hope everyone's having a good day,

-HL

P.S. I'm currently looking at Adobe Illustrator as it appears it is one of the programs that Microscale takes artwork from.

 

I have used Paint Shop Pro exclusively for decades now
it does everything I need it to
I think it is a bit less expensive than corel products
and a whole lot less expensive than adobe products
FWIW
Gary

 

Thanks for the suggestion Gary, I'll have to look into Paint Shop Pro.

Here are some results of spending a few minutes in Illustrator just trying to figure out the program and get a basic idea of what I want. Thoughts? Seems the image lost some quality when converting to jpg.

-HL

 

I sort of cheated. I have a friend who's a professional graphic designer. But if I was doing it myself I would use Inkscape and/or GIMP. Both free.

 

There are many good programs, a couple have been suggested already. Vector graphics are usually better(illustrator, inkscape) than raster (bitmap, jpg, gif, tiff as done by MS paint, photoshop). Vector graphics can be a little more intimidating at first blush, but they scale up and down cleanly. That's because they are stored as a plot of "line goes from a-b, draw a circle at c of radius d) and so scaling becomes just adjusting the numbers. Raster(bitmap) graphics store each pixel with no context of whether that pixel is part of a line other shape and get blurry or choppy as you scale them up and down. I believe paint shop pro does both, but I don't use it, so I'm not sure. It will come down to what file formats are supported. If the app properly supports the file format, the decal print shop wouldn't know any better.

I've done signs in power point to print on my own printer, but I don't think I'd use it for a herald that would appear all over on a layout.

 

And a Very Talented Staff!

 

Boxcab,

I've been a supporter for 2ish weeks now and saw that custom avatars were available but I wasn't too sure how the process worked. Looking into that now.

Messing around with illustrator a bit more and came up with this herald that's a bit more complicated (for me atleast). I have affectionately dubbed it the "safety star". Not really sure how well these would show up on a locomotive, but I'm finding they're fun to make non-the-less.

Thought/opinions appreciated!

-HL

 

Thanks Mike!

How about a last version for the day? A nice scenic'd out Safety Star. I'm fairly proud and happy with the results after only a few hours experience in Illustrator (though most additions are symbols in the program).

Can you tell I've had fun with this?!

-HL

 

Actually, Paint Shop Pro is now a Corel product. I have used it for many years, and it became a Corel product a few years ago. However, I note that Download.com still offers the old Paint Shop Pro 8 for free.

- Jeff

 

Another voter for Inkscape. It's a free vector-based program similar to Illustrator.

http://www.inkscape.org/en/


Steve S

 

Anyone willing to hazard a guess/know what size a herald should be as a decal for HO equipment?

-HL

 

Definitely something to try and would probably be my best course of action. I guess I didn't think that as long as it fits on the equipment it is technically to "scale", it just might look a little off. Hillcrest Lmbr. had some fairly large heralds on their locos, so I'm thinking about maybe trying something that size first.

Thanks

-HL