Design a Glossy Dollar Sign Logo

In this simple ‘n’ easy tutorial I’m going to be teaching you how to create an effect similar to the one shown below, a glossy kind of ‘dollar sign logo’, great for Webmasters, right?

(please note: You can click on any of the images in this tutorial to see the larger images)

1. Document

Firstly, of course, you’ll want to create a new document in Photsohop – for this tutorial I’m using a 400 x 400 pixel document with a Resolution/DPI of 300. Now, design a nice basic background for your canvas – I simple used a radial gradient of #049de2 to #005d92. I came up with this:

To finish off the background you might want to add in a nice highlight effect to the background, you can achieve this effect by firstly making a path using the Pen Tool, afterwards you want to turn the path into a selection (right-click the path, then go to make selection) after making your curvy selection, fill it with some white brushing or a white gradient. You can make your white brushing blend in with the background by changing the Layer Mode to Overlay or Soft Light.

2. Create Text

Alright, time to write out the text ($). Start by getting out the Horizontal Type Tool (press T on the keyboard) then write out your text. I used a nice green for my text, #7cd120.

written text

For my text I used the font Helvetica Neue, and a font size of 50 pt, but you can feel free to use any font and any font size, it doesn’t really matter – take note that a good alternative to Helvetica is Arial.

Time to add some nice effects. Start by right-clicking your text layer in the layer’s palette, then go into the Blending Options, use the following:

And now your text should look something like this:

Looks pretty nice so far, don’t yoy think?

3. Adding further Effect

Next thing to do is add a few nice details to the text.Start by making a new layer, then select the text by holding ctrl and left-clicking the thumbnail in the layer’s palette.

Next, in your Photoshop menus, go to Select > Modify > Contract, and use a radius of about 2-4 pixels, not very important here.

So, be sure you’re on a new layer then fill your selection with white (#ffffff). With your selection still active, move it up about 2 pixels and press delete.

In the above image I have also moved the layer up 2 pixels after deleting the larger portion. To make this layer blend a little better, lower the opacity to about 40-60% and change the layer mode to either Overlay or Soft Light, your choice!

4. Finishing Off

To finish this off, you might want to make a smaller version of the dollar sign logo and move it over to the right a little beside the original. You can do this either by duplicating your original text layer and making it smaller, or you can duplicate both of your layers, merge them together then resize it.

This is what I ended up with anyway:
smaller dollar sign

I’ve also made my result image into a neat little MSN display picture, which I occassionally use

display picture

Feel free to use the display picture if you want to! Well, this tutorial is over. Thanks very much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed. If you would like to, you can download the PSD file from this tutorial from here: Glossy Dollar Sign Logo PSD (340kb)

Return home. Published Sep 27th, 2006 under Graphic Design.

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9 responses

ed1nn.exe said:October 7th, 2006

wow .. this is cool

BABU said:October 10th, 2006

Very nice!!!
Thanks

Muhammad Haris said:October 27th, 2006

Thanks for sharing!

Justin said:December 2nd, 2006

Have to say I really like this tut. Thanks a lot.

Man said:February 3rd, 2007

man, in all your tutorials, i never know how to do this “move 2 pixels up, then delete”. For me nothing changes. I move up, and then delete what i moved, so comes back to the starting point. I dont know if u guys got what i wanna say, but can sb help me?