Tutorial: Create An Origami Style Logo in Photoshop

Origami style designs are a great skill to use for a number of tasks, such as logos, typography and even poster design. Even if you are using Adobe Illustrator, the principles of creating the effect still remain the same.

Today I’m going to be using Photoshop to show you how to create a simple origami style logo. I have chosen to to use the iconic crane as my logo for this tutorial but feel free to experiment with other shapes for your own work.
Ok let’s get started.

Step 1. Creating Basic Shapes

The first thing we need to do is create our basic shapes that will form the basis of our logo. For the crane, I have used a total of 7 shapes. Use the pen tool to create your basic structure. If you look at the final render closely, you will notice there are two colours, a light green for the foreground shapes, and a darker shade for the background shapes. Try not to over-complicate your design, this effect works best when things are kept simple.

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Step 2. Adding Shadows

The way this effect works is by creating the illusion of depth by using shadows. To do this, duplicate all your foreground-coloured layers and change the color to black, then put the duplicate behind the original shape.. Next go to Filter->Blur->Gaussian Blur and use a small radius – between 3px-6px should work well. Keep in mind the radius size depends on the size of your document. If your canvas is really large and your working at 300dpi you will need to use a larger radius.
The idea here is that because the origami looks semi-flat, rather than completely 3D, wee need to use a sharp shadow. This will create the effect of the layers being close together.
Next, we need to make sure the shadows only appear when needed, i.e – between the two layers of ‘paper’ rather than between the background and the shapes. Use the eraser tool to erase the pieces of shadow that are not overlapping another shape.

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Step 3. Final Touches

Lastly, we need to lift the whole logo from the background slightly. Group all your shapes and shadows, then duplicate the group. Apply a small drop shadow to the group and reduce the fill to 0. This will essentially lift the logo from the background.

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Step 4.  Finishing Up

Finally add a slight gradient to the background and some text. For this if have used a font called Rezland which you can download for free from dafont.

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If you have any questions or just want to say hi, drop them in the comments section below. Thanks