Tiny Techniques
How to make a color-changing logo symbol in Sketch so you don’t have to keep bothering marketing every time you need the company logo in #000000 or #FFFFFF or that brand color you never remember the hex value of…
Frankly, I’m impressed you made it through that title.
Tiny Techniques are bitesized design tricks to make you a better, faster designer in Sketch. Sometimes you’ll already be doing it…sometimes we’ll blow your mind.
The Problem
You always need the company logo, but never know where that person in marketing saved the file. Not to mention the only one you can actually find looks like Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat.
All you really need one that is pure white. Or black. Or grey.
WHY IS THAT SUCH A COMPLICATED REQUEST?!
The Solution
Most worldly problems can be solved with a creative Sketch symbol, and that’s just what we’re going to make.
First off, if you’re designing anything that uses the logo more than once, it’d better be a symbol. If it’s not, the marketing gods will change the logo just to spite you, making you comb through a hundred artboards to update each logo instance to their newer one that inevitably POPS more than the old one.
Sigh.
Using everyone’s favorite color masking technique, we are going to create a symbol that allows you to change the logo color to whatever your little designer heart desires. So when the marketing gods update the logo, you only need to update ONE artboard.
Also, no more digging through 29 folders to find out the only version of the company logo that exists is an 80 x 80 pixel JPEG from 1993…no offense to any designers who lived and worked through the 90s.
The Process
It’s pretty simple, really. And no different than the popular icon masking technique introduced by my good pal Francesco Bertocci:
Our symbol is built with two primary layers:
- The Color Symbol
- The Mask
If you have no idea what a color symbol is, go read up on that first.
Step 1
Drop the logo SVG you did manage to find into Sketch and create a symbol.
Make sure that this layer is a single compound shape by using the pathfinder options for the shapes of your logo (union, difference, etc).
When you’re finished, you should be able to add a fill to your logo path and all of the proper holes should be punched out:
If things look a little funny, you might need to re-order the shapes in your compound path, and or adjust the merging options:
When you’re satisfied with your compound logo shape, remove all fills and set this layer to be a mask.
Step 2
Add one of your color symbols. Resize it to cover the whole artboard, and turn on the resizing pins on all edges:
That’s it! You’re done!
You’ve now created a smart logo symbol that will allow you to change the color at will:
Go forth and celebrate!
When I’m not searching for my company’s logo, I’m working on Sketch design tools at UX Power Tools to make you a better, more efficient designer.
