Alright, so today I’m gonna walk you through how I recreated the Portland Trail Blazers emblem. It was a bit of a head-scratcher at first, but I figured it out eventually. Let’s dive in!
First things first, I grabbed a high-resolution image of the Blazers logo off the internet. Couldn’t start without a good reference, right? Then, I fired up my trusty Adobe Illustrator. This is where the real work began.
I started by creating the basic shape – the pinwheel. That thing’s iconic! I used the ellipse tool to make a circle, and then I duplicated it a bunch of times. Next, I carefully rotated and positioned each circle to match the way they interlock in the logo. It took a while to get the spacing just right, let me tell you.
Okay, so after I had the basic circle layout, I needed to make those curves that give it that pinwheel look. I used the pen tool for this. It’s a bit fiddly, but it’s the best way to get smooth, accurate curves. I basically traced around the inside edges of the circles, creating the outline of each pinwheel “blade.”
Once I finished tracing one blade, I duplicated it and rotated it to create the other blades. This saved a ton of time! I just had to make sure everything was perfectly aligned and symmetrical.
Then came the color! The Blazers’ colors are pretty simple: red, black, and silver. I used the eyedropper tool to sample the colors from my reference image. Then I filled each pinwheel blade with the appropriate red or black. For the silver outline, I used a stroke with a metallic-looking gradient.
Next up, the text. “Portland Trail Blazers” has to be there, right? I found a font that was close to the one used in the original logo. It wasn’t perfect, but it was close enough. I typed out the text and placed it below the pinwheel. I also added a slight curve to the text to follow the shape of the logo. This bit took a few tries to get right, adjusting the kerning and spacing ’til it looked balanced.
I added a subtle drop shadow to the pinwheel to give it a bit of depth. Nothing too crazy, just a little something to make it pop. I also tweaked the colors a bit to make them more vibrant.
Finally, I saved the logo in a bunch of different formats: PNG, JPG, SVG… you name it. I wanted to make sure it was ready to use for anything. Boom! Done.
Lessons learned? Patience is key! Recreating logos takes time and attention to detail. But it’s also a really good way to improve your Illustrator skills. Plus, now I have a sweet Blazers logo that I can use for whatever I want.
