Bike graphics

[Hooligan]

well, i guess i'll chime in with my 16 years of professional graphic design and prepress experience (just tooting my own horn).

there are far more incorrectly created logos floating around the web than correct versions. even versions that look pretty damn good are usually wrong. the only way to get a true recreation is by a flatbed scan of a Yamaha original as found in a brochure. taking a photo of a logo applied to any type of compound curve or radius will not give you a good starting point. in a pinch i have used photoshop's distort tools to remove a slight warp in a photo, but you're still going to be fudging the letter heights and widths in order to get something close.

i have removed decals cautiously and made my scans/recreations from that, but keep in mind that most of the time once it's off, it's not going back on.

as for the official factory decals, Yamaha had only slight variations over the course of the EXUP/DELTABOX/GENESIS/5 VALVE designs. I have some image files of a few, but have found even fewer that would make a decent starting point for a recreation. as far as i know there were no typestyle differences between logos on USA/EURO/ASIA machines, just color and placement.

the EXUP logo that I sent to thom is about 99% as close to the original as it gets. don't forget, these were most likely originally created by hand then transferred into an electronic format by the original designer, so they will not be "technically" perfect.

[FZRDude]

The 2 compainies that I have used in the past, one no longer has a presence on the web, and the other has suspended Liscensing with Yamaha and no longer carry the logos.

[ThomVis]

Finally squared the EXUP drawing Hooligan send me:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27755071/Decal%20EXUP.svg

Next up are the deltabox and genesis.
@spook, can you send me a hi-res flatbed scan of the deltabox sticker you have there? (if it's too large for 1 go, I can stitch delta and abox back together when scanned at the same res ; )

[spook]

Sorry Thom... what is posted is the best I can do.

If any of you mad font people are interested in Macromedia fontographer 4.1 for windows let me know. It's a relatively small program so I should be able to email it if I zip it. I have to ask you don't share it around on pirate bay (where there are Mac versions) or the like, as I actually own the software... Ten years ago it was $800 us! Ouch!

[Hooligan]

ha! i had that program for a bit. too bad they stopped supporting it for the mac years ago.

[ThomVis]

Did the deltabox: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27755071/Decal%20Deltabox.svg

[spook]

Hey Thom, can't open the link? if I can print it I can overlay it on an original

[FZRDude]

I was able to open it.

[Monsterbishi]

Hey Thom, can't open the link? if I can print it I can overlay it on an original

have just emailed it to you if that helps?

[spook]

hmmm. is it a 64 bit file by chance? I downloaded the file that Mark (thanks!) sent over, but can't open it in Photoshop or illustrator. Any chance you could save it as a Adobe file Thom?

[Monsterbishi]

hmmm. is it a 64 bit file by chance? I downloaded the file that Mark (thanks!) sent over, but can't open it in Photoshop or illustrator. Any chance you could save it as a Adobe file Thom?

if you open it in Internet explorer you can save it as a png or bmp if that helps?

[ThomVis]

hmmm. is it a 64 bit file by chance? I downloaded the file that Mark (thanks!) sent over, but can't open it in Photoshop or illustrator. Any chance you could save it as a Adobe file Thom?

No 64 bit file, and sorry, no AI export available. Actually SVG is just plain text, you can open it in Notepad or TextEdit.

When your Operating System doesn't support SVG, you can always right click the link (sorry, Mac OS users; ) and select Save As. Some graphic programs do support SVG but don't register the extension in the OS. Saving the file to disk and opening the SVG from within your graphics program is the best way to test that.

Another way would be to install Inkscape on your computer, which is freeware and available for Linux, Windows and Mac. If you're familiar with Adobe Illustrator or the likes, you'll figure out Inkscape in no-time, else the online support community is immense.

And for you lemmings that refuse to go the OSS way, I've put up two files, PNG & PDF. But hurry, I will not tolerate inferior file formats on my server that long.

[spook]

thanks Thom, looks good. I will scale it and let you know how it looks in relation to OW and TZ. Cheers.

[spook]

I had a go at scaling with a pdf file in Photoshop, but that was a not so good as it rastered up. I'm downloading ink-scape and will have a look at scaling the SVG through it. Sorry about the delay with this, I sort of forgot.

[Hooligan]

photshop won't scale a raster based image very well unless you import and convert at a particular setting. you're better off using a raster based software package like illustrator.

[MsHap]

i can do the vinyl if anyone needs any of that and the format does not matter.