Design an Isometric Logo for an Architecture Studio

Open Lopsy. In the New Document dialog set Width to 1600 and Height to 1200, leave Background on White and click Create.

1. Select the Background layer and set the foreground colour to #F2ECDF in the Color panel's hex field. With nothing selected, Edit → Fill floods the whole layer.
2. Click the top ruler at 120, 800 and 1480 to make vertical guides for the side margins and the centre line.
3. Click the left ruler at 72, 329, 650 and 1120. Those mark the top margin, the back corner of the park slab, its front-bottom corner and the bottom margin.

Logo sheets often show the geometry the mark was built on. Here that's four 30° rays that meet at the slab's corners.

1. Double-click Layer 1 and rename it Construction.
2. Pick the Pencil, set Size to 2 and use #4D61E3.
3. To draw each line, click its start and then Shift-click its end.
4. Draw the four rays:

• from (503, 157) to (1055, 476), which passes through the slab's back corner at (800, 329)
• from (1097, 157) to (545, 476)
• from (620, 727) up to (1055, 476)
• from (980, 727) up to (545, 476)

1. Add three verticals from y 133 to y 727, at x 800, 583 and 1017. The outer two line up with the outside edges of the outer towers.

Every ray stops exactly on the slab's left or right corner, so no stray ends stick out past it.

1. Pick the Elliptical Marquee and drag from (515, 145) to (1085, 715). That's a circle 570 px across, centred on (800, 430).
2. Choose Select → Inverse and press Delete. Every line now ends on the circle.
3. Press Cmd+D to deselect.

1. Click Add Layer and name it Ring.
2. Draw the same circle, from (515, 145) to (1085, 715), and fill it with #4D61E3 (Edit → Fill).
3. Choose Select → Shrink, enter 2 px, and press Delete. That leaves a 2 px outline.
4. Deselect and choose Layer → Merge Down to fold the ring into Construction.
5. Set Construction to 30% opacity with the opacity button on its row. The lines should whisper, not shout.

1. Add a layer named Sun. Drag an elliptical marquee from (747, 198) to (853, 304) and fill it with #FFC845.
2. With Sun selected, click New Group in the Layers panel and name it Mark. Then add a layer named Slab inside it.
3. Pick the Lasso and drag straight from corner to corner around the diamond: (800, 329), (1055, 476), (800, 623) and (545, 476). The construction rays run along its edges, so you can trace them. Fill it with #8FDCA9.
4. The slab is 26 px thick:

• Lasso the left side, from (545, 476) down to (800, 623), then down to (800, 650) and back up to (545, 502). Fill it with #3FAE73.
• Lasso the right side, (800, 623), (1055, 476), (1055, 502), (800, 650), and fill it with the darker #237A4D.

The light comes from the upper left, so left-facing sides are mid-tone and right-facing sides are darkest.

Add a Paving layer. Draw the curb first and the paving on top of it, so a sliver of curb shows under each path.

1. Curb. Set the colour to #5DBE86.

• Lasso the right path 3 px lower than its final spot: (813, 489), (925, 554), (899, 569), (787, 504). Fill it.
• Do the same for the left path at (787, 489), (813, 504), (701, 569), (675, 554).
• Draw an ellipse from (753, 470) to (847, 524) and fill it too.

1. Paving. Switch to white #FFFFFF.

• Lasso the paths again at their true positions: (813, 486), (925, 551), (899, 566), (787, 501), and (787, 486), (813, 501), (701, 566), (675, 551). Fill each.
• Draw the plaza ellipse from (753, 467) to (847, 521) and fill it.

1. Fountain. Draw an ellipse from (775, 479) to (825, 509) and fill it with #6FB6F2.

An isometric circle is an ellipse 1.73 times as wide as it is tall. That's why the plaza is 94 × 54.

Shadows go only on the shade side, away from the light.

1. Add a layer named Ground Shadows and set the colour to #1E5E3C.
2. Lasso and fill two thin strips:

• (774, 432), (785, 438), (645, 519), (634, 513), along the base of the left building's shaded facade
• (1017, 483), (1027, 490), (976, 519), (966, 513), at the end of the right building

1. Fill three small ellipses for the tree shadows, offset to the right of where the trees will stand. Drag them from (769, 580) to (803, 600), (838, 580) to (872, 600), and (807, 596) to (834, 612).
2. Set the layer to 30% opacity.

Each block gets its own layer, filled face by face with three colours:

• Top: #AEBBFF for towers, #8A9CF5 for podiums
• Left face: #4D61E3
• Right face: #232F92

Top-face corners are listed back, right, front, left. The side faces drop straight down from the top's edges: 153 px for towers and 47 px for podiums.

Add a layer named Inner East Tower.

1. Lasso the top at (876, 249), (915, 271), (864, 301), (826, 279) and fill it.
2. Lasso the left face from the left corner (826, 279) to the front corner (864, 301), then down 153 px to (864, 454) and (826, 432). Fill it.
3. Lasso the right face from (864, 301) to (915, 271), then down to (915, 424) and (864, 454). Fill it.

Add a layer named Inner West Tower and build it the same way. Its top is (724, 249), (774, 279), (736, 301), (685, 271).

The sun now peeks through the gap between the two towers. That gap is the heart of the logo.

Podiums are 47 px high, and their roofs use the slightly darker #8A9CF5 so they don't merge with the tower tops.

• East Podium top: (915, 377), (978, 414), (928, 444), (864, 407).
• West Podium top: (685, 377), (736, 407), (672, 444), (622, 414).

Build the podiums after the inner towers. Each podium is nearer to you, so it should cover the bottom of its tower.

Add the outer towers last, because they're the nearest:

• Outer East Tower top: (978, 308), (1017, 330), (966, 360), (928, 338).
• Outer West Tower top: (622, 308), (672, 338), (634, 360), (583, 330).

Now each wing reads as a letter U: two equal towers with a low base and an open counter. The left U faces you in shadow; the right one catches the light.

Windows are much easier to draw flat and then wrap onto a face.

1. Add a layer named Window Source.
2. With the Rectangular Marquee, drag a bar 140 px wide and 11 px tall in an empty spot, starting at (1250, 766).
3. Hold Shift and drag six more bars below it, one every 24 px.
4. Fill them all at once with white.

For each face:

1. On Window Source, marquee the bars you need, from (1248, 760) down to (1392, 928) for all seven. Press Cmd+C then Cmd+V. The paste lands in place on a new layer.
2. Re-draw the marquee around the pasted bars, from (1250, 760) to (1390, 928) (or to y 856 when you copied four bars), and pick the Move tool.
3. Click Distort in the options bar.
4. Drag each corner handle onto the matching corner of the face's window area.
5. Press Cmd+D to commit.

For the inner east tower's lit face, the corners are:

• top-left (832, 294)
• top-right (857, 309)
• bottom-right (857, 433)
• bottom-left (832, 418)

Distort maps the rectangle with a true perspective transform. On an isometric face that keeps the bands evenly spaced and parallel to the roofline.

Repeat for the other faces, using seven bars for full-height faces. The window areas (top-left, top-right, bottom-right, bottom-left) are:

• Outer east tower, lit face: (934, 353), (959, 368), (959, 492), (934, 477).
• Inner west tower, dark face: (743, 309), (768, 294), (768, 418), (743, 433).
• Outer west tower, dark face: (641, 368), (666, 353), (666, 477), (641, 492).
• Outer east tower, end face: (973, 367), (1009, 346), (1009, 470), (973, 491).
• Outer west tower, end face: (591, 346), (627, 367), (627, 491), (591, 470).

The two inner towers also show a face above their podiums. Only four floors are visible there, so copy just the top four bars (down to y 856). Map them to:

• Inner east tower: (871, 308), (907, 288), (907, 358), (871, 379).
• Inner west tower: (693, 288), (729, 308), (729, 379), (693, 358).

1. Select the top pasted layer and choose Layer → Merge Down seven times, stopping before it merges into Window Source. Name the result Windows.
2. Delete Window Source.
3. Open the layer's effects drawer and set Blend to Soft Light.

Soft Light lightens each face by an amount that suits its tone. The same white bars read as pale glass on the lit faces and as subtle reflections on the dark ones.

Add a layer named Trees. Pick the Brush at Size 6, Hardness 100. Then finish each tree in turn, left, right and front:

1. Trunk. In #6B4423, click the base and Shift-click 26 px straight up: (766, 590) to (766, 564) for the left tree, (834, 590) to (834, 564) for the right one, and (800, 604) to (800, 578) for the front one.
2. Canopy. Drag an elliptical marquee for the crown and fill it with #2E8F5A: (748, 535) to (784, 571) on the left, (816, 535) to (852, 571) on the right, and a smaller (785, 552) to (815, 582) in front.
3. Highlight. Keep the crown selected, hold Shift+Alt and drag the same-size circle again, 6 px up and to the left (5 px for the small tree). That keeps only the overlap. Fill it with #6CCB8F.

The crescent left in the dark green is the shade side, so the light matches the buildings.

1. Select Sun, click New Group and name it Wordmark.
2. Add an empty layer called Type Anchor. Select it before you create each piece of text. That way a font change can't restyle the type you already set.
3. Pick the Text tool and choose Poppins, Bold, size 84, colour #1B2266. Click in empty space, type URBAN and press Tab to commit.
4. Open the Text panel and set Letter spacing to 6.
5. Make UTOPIA the same way in #4D61E3.
6. Make the tagline ARCHITECTURE · CIVIC DESIGN in Poppins Medium, size 20, letter spacing 8. There are two spaces each side of the dot.
7. Move the words with the Move tool:

• URBAN's first letter starts at x 459 and UTOPIA's at x 804, both with their cap tops on y 770. That leaves a 36 px word gap and centres the pair on the page.
• The tagline's first letter starts at x 537 with its cap tops on y 866, which centres it under the wordmark.

Make a Labels group the same way, with its own anchor layer. Set four labels in IBM Plex Mono SemiBold, size 13, letter spacing 4, colour #4D61E3:

• URBAN UTOPIA / IDENTITY SHEET 01, top left at (120, 72).
• ISOMETRIC 30° · ONE GRID, top right, its last letter on the 1480 guide.
• SECONDARY MARKS at (120, 948).
• PALETTE at (800, 948).

1. Select Sun again and make a Variants group with a Tiles layer.
2. Pick the Shape tool and set Shape to Rectangle, Output to Pixels and Corner Radius to 22.
3. Shapes grow from where you press. Set the options bar's Fill swatch to #1B2266 and drag from (190, 1050) to (260, 1120) for a 140 px tile.
4. Repeat from (370, 1050) with the Fill set to #4D61E3, and from (550, 1050) in white.
5. Add an empty layer called Tile Suns above Tiles. You'll use it shortly.

Small versions of a logo need less detail.

1. Hide Background, Construction, Sun, Windows, Trees, Ground Shadows and the Variants group.
2. Marquee around the buildings and slab, from (535, 238) to (1065, 662), and choose Edit → Copy Merged.
3. Show everything again.
4. Select Tile Suns and paste. Name the new layer Mark Full Colour.

1. With the Move tool, hold Cmd (to keep the proportions) and drag the bottom-right corner handle in until the mark is about 98 px wide, roughly 19%. Press Cmd+D.
2. Move it into the first tile, with its top-left at (141, 1016).
3. Select it with a marquee, copy, paste, and move the copy into the second tile at (321, 1016). Name it Mark Reversed.
4. Repeat for Mark Mono at (501, 1016).

1. Select Mark Reversed and choose Layer → Group Layers. Name the group Reversed.
2. With the group selected, open its effects drawer and choose Add Adjustment → Gradient Map.
3. Set stop 1 to #141A4A and stop 2 to white with the hex field.
4. Click the gradient bar at about 55% to add a third stop, and make it white as well.

Everything above about 55% brightness turns white, so the mark reads as a white building on the blue tile.

Group Mark Mono the same way, name the group Mono, and add a Gradient Map with three stops:

• #1B2266 on the left
• #4D61E3 at 50%
• #AEBBFF on the right

The faces keep their light and shade but use only the brand blues. That makes a one-colour version you could foil-stamp or embroider.

The Gradient Maps would turn a sun grey, so the suns live on Tile Suns, outside the mapped groups and underneath the marks. On that layer, fill a 20 px circle in #FFC845 behind each mark, centred on (190, 1017), (370, 1017) and (550, 1017), just inside the gap between its inner towers.

1. Select Sun, make a Palette group, and add a Swatches layer.
2. Fill eight 56 px circles in two rows of four. The left edges sit at x 800, 982, 1164 and 1346, and the rows are centred on y 1008 and 1092.

• Top row: #1B2266, #232F92, #4D61E3, #AEBBFF.
• Bottom row: #3FAE73, #8FDCA9, #FFC845, #F2ECDF.

1. The cream swatch would vanish on cream paper, so outline it:

• Fill its circle with #D9CFBE first.
• Choose Select → Shrink by 1 px and fill with #F2ECDF.

The swatch block sits level with the tiles, from 980 to 1120.

1. Select Swatches before you create each label. It's a plain pixel layer, so it works as the anchor here and no label gets restyled. Set each hex code in IBM Plex Mono Medium, size 14, letter spacing 1, colour #1B2266.
2. Place each label 14 px right of its swatch, centred on it vertically. The last column's labels end on the 1480 guide.
3. If a row of labels needs to move, click the first label in the Layers panel and Shift-click the last. The arrow keys then nudge all of them together.

1. Select Background and add a layer named Paper Grain. Fill it with mid-grey #808080.
2. Choose Filter → Add Noise with Amount 18, Mono and Gaussian, and click Apply.
3. Set the layer's blend mode to Overlay and its opacity to 22%.

Overlay hides the grey and keeps only the speckle. The flat colours get a faint printed-paper feel without looking dirty.

Finally, choose File → Quick Export PNG for the sheet and File → Save Project to keep every layer editable.