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I'm trying to create a carved stone style of text similar to Backtrack's band logo: BT Logo

I'm trying to achieve the 'cracked' and 'cut away' erosion. From my understanding, I will have to make the text 3D and in the a worm's eye perspective. Is the rest as simple as just drawing the lines in? Is there a guide I could go about to make it realistic and not too "over done"?

Also another concern is the bottom of the letters, does it look like it's just drawn in, or is there an option I can use to achieve the same style of effect?

How would you guys go about doing this?

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I would take a piece of paper and sketch out the letters with a pencil. I would then trace over that with a technical pen, adding the stippled shading, cracks, etc. I would then carefully erase any pencil.

I would then take a (digital) photograph of this drawing as tight as possible to fill the frame and bring it into photo editing software. I would use the transform tool(s) to straighten out any parralax problems caused by tilt and angle of the camera.

I would convert to greyscale and then ramp up the contrast and brightness such that there is very nearly only black and white. Clean up as needed, and then save as a non-lossy tiff.

I would open up a vector program, place the TIFF and then convert to vector using trace functionality. I'd delete the raster image, leaving onyl the trace. I would group the whole thing and add a white stroke to the outline of the group, I would place the group on top of a black square.

In the image below, I sketched the letters in 60 seconds with a Sharpie marker (so thicker lines and poor detail), but I think the result differs mainly in time and effort (and talent). It is a PNG here, but the source is 100% vector:

enter image description here

The following image is a very-much reduced in size version of the original snapshot. You can see some of the pencil lines in the final product. I did not erase and clean up the image as much as I might have for a real project:

enter image description here

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  • I'll point out that this can all be done digitally, especially using a stylus. However there are some features of the original logo that seem to tbe the product of a human mind and hand rather than computerized randomness and jitter such as the assymetry of the implied curve the text sits on and the "errors" in the single-point perspective. I am guessing a tattoo artist and/or someone who does lettering a lot (graffiti)
    – Yorik
    Commented Dec 16, 2015 at 17:49
  • Hey thanks for the reply. I am personally looking for a solely digital way of doing this. The Backtrack Logo is actually a font (minus the cracks and erosion) as it's used the same way from this band.
    – knocked loose
    Commented Dec 16, 2015 at 18:50
  • Those are not the same font. FYI
    – Yorik
    Commented Dec 16, 2015 at 19:31
  • Hmm, it probably is hand done then. Most hardcore bands have this type of brick-breaking, diy, graffiti style logos..
    – knocked loose
    Commented Dec 16, 2015 at 19:44
  • I did a quick check for album credits. "Guav" comes up as cover design for some of their albums. Guav has some connection to a "cabal design 315" and, I quickly found this cabaldesign.virb.com/illustration#_ second one down. Not the same logo, to be sure, but perhaps shows the starting point for their more finished digital work. I can't be sure. One additional step I might take is text on a path, print out, then trace by hand and decorate. Hand-done and hardcore/punk are often a shared aesthetic
    – Yorik
    Commented Dec 16, 2015 at 20:18

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