A few weeks after Gap’s logo debacle, another iconic brand is attempting to give itself a new image. The YMCA unveiled its updated logo this week, and I am definitely disappointed to see the old design go.

While it certainly isn’t as bad as Gap’s flop, I still cringe at the idea of ever changing a brand’s most recognizable and public feature. Starting a new ad campaign or attempting to adapt to an ever changing market does not require a logo redesign. Especially a redesign that tries to capture a fleeting trend, like many “Web 2.0″ logos attempt to do. The designs that fall into this trap are doomed to look dated entirely too soon; a truly great logo should stand the test of time.

I don’t mind the new logo at all, but I do question the motivation behind it.

Real enough to eat? Almost! I’ve come up with a tutorial to create a realistic looking fruit. This is the first tutorial I’ve done, so I’ve undoubtedly ignored some things by mistake. If you have any questions, feel free to comment. This took me about two hours to finish, but with the tutorial will probably take an experienced ‘shopper about an hour.

Use the pen tool to make an organic looking shape. Because no two apples are the same you can’t mess this up, there is no wrong shape!
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1680 x 1050
1440 x 900

Don’t be silly and use my shape, go ahead and use the official vectors from Twitter themselves. You can find those right here. Thanks to @gilbert for the advice.

I made wasted my time making a custom shape in Photoshop replicating the “t” icon from Twitter. A custom shape is a vector, which allows you to resize the shape without losing any quality. I thought some people might find it useful so I decided to share it here. It’s not perfect, but it is free!

Figuring out how to actually share the shape was a bit of a hassle, so I thought I’d share how to do that as well. If you make a shape (or shapes) that you want to share, follow these steps:

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