Recently I’ve made some logos for the Italian community (osm.wiki/Logos#in_Italy) and today I want to tell you how to I make this logos.

The first step is always to analyze what data do I need to represent and research how to get it, the https://osm-boundaries.com/ has been helpful to get this data and to get a first imprint of how the border is.

I usually download the data in an OSM format and then I use the ogr2ogr tool to convert the data in a format compatible with QGIS like GPKGs, this will be important later in the creation of the logo since I need the representation to be an SVG file to put together with all the other elements of the logo, like the map and the magnifying glass.

After downloading boundaries I start searching all the elements and how I need to represent them in the map, like for the Italian railway logo I proceeded to make different GPKGs file with all the necessary railway data divided into the various types, this can be achieved with a regional osm file, osmium and ogs2ogr.

After this we have to put together the data, and believe it or not this is going to be the hard part.

After making the GPKGs we open QGIS and open the files with it, by doing this we can put them together and customize the representation of the data for the logo, after this we can make a layout and render an SVG file from all the data we’ve imported.

Once we have the SVG export we are able to use a program like Inkscape to put together the SVG file with the default Logo file, usually what I do is deleting unnecessary detail from the original logo, changing the background color and making changes to other details in SVG to mek the logo look better or more personalized.

Once done this the only thing left to do is giving the logo to the community and “fine-tune” it based on opinions.

I know this is a quite scarce guide but it’s left a little bit unexplained because I don’t want to give a step-to-step guide to make a logo, following a procedure while it may create a good result it won’t ever be as good as a logo that has been made from the creativity of one person.

This said explore and try out new approaches, that’s all from me and if you want more details you can find me probably on telegram or on the profile or by looking at my wiki page.