The Logo Creator MEGA Pak – Get Professional!

reviewed by Robert Pritchett

The last time we reviewed The Logo Creator was back in August of 2004 when it was under macXware. Since then, sales of the app reverted back to Laughing Bird Software and their software development team has improved the product and updated it to version 5.0.

The Logo Creator is a cross-platform app designed to help us create professional banners and logos for our companies.

We were privileged to get the MEGA Pak because after a year or so of fighting with a gremlin the text page would poof on me) and with help from the MacSpeech programming beta team, we figured out what the heck was going on and why my machine would not let the app perform properly. Would you believe it was because I had the keyboard configuration set to US Extended and Unicode instead of US Standard and Roman? Seems Mac OS X Tiger has this bug that needs to be addressedÉ

We also were told that folks who live in Canada also had keyboard issues and had to set theirs to US Standard as well with other apps. Can you imagine how good we felt when I was able to apply the same ÒfixÓ to The Logo Creator and the app didnÕt poof on me? You have no idea how much time was spent (since October 2005) trying to figure out why the app wouldnÕt work on my machine. So Marc Sylvester sent us the MEGA Pak and Chuck Rogers over at MacSpeech is going to work on a ScriptPak for iListen to work with The Logo Creator. How cool is that?

So what is the big deal with this MEGA Pak anyway? It is the version that has all the Logo Set templates that have been developed so far: The Corporate Set, The Entertainment Set, Business Mascots, Real Estate Pak, The Spiritual Collection, The Sports Pak and the Travel and Leisure Set, each costing around $40 USD or $20 for all, if they were part of the earlier ValuePAK. If a previous version of the MEGA Pak was purchased, it is only $20 for the upgrade to Version 5.0. So pick and choose, or get them all.

In Version 5.0, a number of additional logo templates were added, the rendering engine runs faster, custom templates can be saved, elements can be dragged and dropped from the Element Library, the startup screen includes links to tutorials and other website information and the Real Estate, Sports Pak and Spiritual Editions were added. And of course, like all software, there are a few bug fixes for Mac and non-Mac systems.

We can generate web page headers with The Logo Creator as well.

Now we can get down to business. First, if you havenÕt downloaded the demo, go do that. Then go follow the tutorials online.

If none of the existing images catch your fancy, you can always import from other graphics apps. Each template is completely modifiable now. Exporting can also be done as GIFs, JPEGs, PNGs, PDFs, TIFs, or sent either to PhotoShop or FireWorks.

If you wish to gussy up the text, there are lots of options to choose from. Try gradients, 3D effects, mirroring, play with how angles are slanted on the logos, etc. and text can be rotated. There are also sliding scales for size, character and line spacing. Similar controls are available for graphics. You can really spend a lot of time playing/working to make any logo or font unique.

Let your creative juices flow! This is just a fun app to mess/work with and Version 5.0 is worth the hassle it took for me to get working on my machine.

Just donÕt let Joe or Jane-Sixpack know about this one, because if you are a Logo Consultant, this app just made the job a whole lot easier and they might not really need your services any longer!