Alright, so today I wanted to mess around with the Detroit Pistons logo. I’ve always thought it was a pretty cool, classic design, and I wanted to see if I could recreate it from scratch. No tracing, just eyeballing it and using some basic shapes.
Getting Started
First, I opened up my trusty design software. I usually use Affinity Designer, so I fired that up.
I pulled up a reference image of the logo on my second monitor. Just a regular Google image search – nothing fancy. It’s the classic red, white, and blue basketball with the “DETROIT PISTONS” text.
Building the Base
I started with the basketball. I just created a circle and filled it with the orange-red that I picked with eye-dropper tool from the reference image.
- Created a circle for the base.
- Filled it with that classic Pistons red.
Adding the Details
Next, I added those white lines on the basketball. These were simple:
- I created some curved lines, trying to match the reference. It takes a bit of trial and error to get the curves right.
- I made them white and made sure they were properly positioned.
Then, I added shadow to the basketball, I duplicated the red circle and filled it with black color. After that, I applied a blur effect.
The Text
The text was the trickiest part. I couldn’t find the exact font, so I just picked one that looked close enough. Something bold and sans-serif.
- Typed out “DETROIT” and “PISTONS” separately.
- Positioned and curved them that, so it would match the reference image.
- Filled “DETROIT” with blue, and “PISTONS” with white, added blue outline.
Final Touches
After placing the texts, I grouped everything together. I played around with the sizes and spacing a bit until it looked just right.
And that’s pretty much it! It’s not a perfect replica, but it’s pretty darn close. It was a fun little exercise to see if I could recreate a well-known logo just by looking at it and using some simple shapes and text.
