Couldn't find a high quality version. So I recreated it in about 3 minutes.

Pepsi recently released their new logo. It is estimated that they paid about 1 mil+ dollars to Omicom’s Arnell Group to work for 5 months on the logo. Yes, you heard me right, they spent five months and 1 million dollars making a logo that shouldn’t have even taken 5 minutes.

Of course I understand that making a logo takes a little more than just opening Photoshop and whipping something up. Especially for a large company, it needs large amounts of planning, reviews, and revisions, but this is just ridiculous. Although, my opinion may be biased due to me being probably the biggest cokehead you’ll ever have the misfortune of coming into contact with (I also hate PepsiCo, and all of it’s products- including Quaker Oatmeal, Gatorade, and FritoLay- with a burning passion).

That supposed 1 million dollars to just create the logo is just the beginning, as PepsiCo will need to replace all the old logos. Think of all the trucks, vending machines, billboards and whatnot that is still sporting that old, somewhat less boring logo. All of this replacing is supposed to run at several hundred million dollars.

Apparently, the same company is redesigning Sierra Mist, and Mountain Dew. Mountain Dew will be renamed “Mtn Dew”. I get it, they are trying to reach today’s youth by using “txt tlk”! However removing all the vowels from your product’s name can’t be a good idea.

This is why I love Coca-Cola, they’ve never changed their logo, which by the way is the most valuable brand image for the eighth year in a row.

Did I happen to mention how awesome Coca-Cola is? I highly suggest getting some Mexican Coke, it has real sugar instead of High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Open the Image in Photoshop

This tutorial should work in most (if not all) versions of Photoshop. For this tutorial I will be using Adobe Photoshop CS4. Open (Ctrl + O) the Image you would like to modify.

I’ll be using this image of leaves that are being lit up by the sun.

Duplicate the Original

It’s good to duplicate the original image, and leave it sitting there just in case you need it later. Make it a habit. To duplicate it, right click on the layer and select “Duplicate Layer…”.

Play with the Levels

Next up, we will change the levels. You use Levels to correct or adjust the tonal range and color balance of an image by adjusting intensity levels of image shadows, midtones, and highlights.

Drag the black, gray, and white arrows around until you are pleased with the outcome. The black arrow controls the shadows, the gray arrow controls the midtones, and the white arrow controls the highlights.
Try not to overdo it.

Make it POP!

Now it’s time to make this photo look great. Duplicate the layer you changed the levels on. Your layers palette should now look similar to this.

Next, do a Gaussian Blur on your new layer. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur.

Make the Image look blurry. A Radius of somewhere around 5 pixels should do the job, depending on the size of your photo.

Now set your Layer Mode to Soft Light, and give the layer an Opacity of around 40-80%.

Final Result
Quite a transformation. More advanced users should consider using Curves, Color Balance, and cropping the photo, for a better effect.

There were two recent posts that offered ideas on how social media can help the world and do more than promote lolcats, Apple, and anti-Palin stories.

• A Plan for Social Media Sites (and Users) to Give Back
• With Great Social Media Power Comes Great Responsibility

The idea is simple. Social media sites send a lot of traffic to web pages across the Internet. There should be a way that these sites can send more traffic to pages that are trying to do right in the world. Causes, charities, and information about the two can find their way onto these social media sites and do more than promote the latest post on Huffington Post or Torrent Freak.

It just makes sense.

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Read more about social media on this blog.