Inkscape Tutorial: Shield Logo Design

• December 2, 2017
• Nick Saporito
• 9 comments

In today’s tutorial I’ll be demonstrating how you can use Inkscape to design a shield logo with a banner wrapping around it. The following is a brief overview of how we’ll go about creating this design, for those of you who may be more advanced users and would like to save some time. Otherwise you can simply scroll to the bottom of the page to watch the step-by-step video tutorial with voice narration.

Step 1: Drawing The Shield

First, we’ll be using the Bezier Pen to manually draw a freehand shape that represents one half of the shield. Then, we’ll duplicate that, flip it horizontally and unify it with the original in order to form the entirety of the shield. The reason we’re drawing it in halves is so we can ensure symmetry.

Next, we’ll use strokes and convert them to paths in order to create additional shapes with added padding around them. The converted strokes will each be broken apart and unified together to form solid shapes. After that, the shield portion is complete.

Step 2: Creating A Banner

In this step we’ll be using rectangles and ellipses to create a couple of shapes going over the shield. These shapes will represent the banner, and the foremost layered shape will be shorter in width than the other.

Next, we’ll add indentations to the larger banner, lower it beneath the entire design, then create copies of each and use strokes to add some padding around them.

Step 3: Custom Text and Finishing Touches

Now we’re going to create some text for our logo and use the Envelope extension within Inkscape to place it along curvature of the banner.

After that we’ll color everything in and add some additional minor details to wrap up the design.

Video Tutorial

If the process outlined above was a bit too vague for you then you can watch the following video tutorial. In this video I go over each and every individual step in order to make learning Inkscape easy and understandable for even a first-time user.

The font that I used for this design is called League Gothic. It’s a free font (for both personal and commercial use) and it can be downloaded here: https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/league-gothic

League Gothic is one of my favorite fonts to use when designing logos. I hope it serves you as well as it has served me!

Finally, if you’d like to know how you can make Inkscape appear dark, as it does on my screen, feel free to check out my post about making Inkscape dark. Enjoy!

If you have any questions, comments or concerns, just leave a comment below and I’ll be glad to help you out. If you’d like me to design a customized logo for you business, brand, produce or service, feel free to reach out via my contact page and I’ll be in touch to discuss your design needs shortly!