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Welcome to the first SteamPunk'd, a semi-regular feature where you, my readers, can suggest web sites that could use a good steampunking. I'll pick one, then steampunk the hell out of it. Hopefully we'll all learn a little something about web design along the way. And maybe a little something about courage.
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Today's makeover is Google. How can we take a fairly boring search engine and turn it into a waistcoated, begoggled steampunk monstrosity? Google makes it easy for us with all those Os. First, we'll need some gears.
There are plenty of places online where you can find free stock art for non-commercial purposes: Morguefile, deviantART, NASA, and Flickr.
Wait, Flickr? Isn't that copyright infringement or something?
It is important to note that all images are copyrighted from the moment of their creation. Many people choose to put their images in the public domain, or allow certain uses.
The great thing about Flickr is that it can list images by license type. Search on images that allow derivative creations in their Creative Commons license. Often these images will contain a requirement to credit the artist or send them an email. USE ONLY IMAGES THAT YOU ARE ALLOWED BY THE ARTIST. Underlined. Three times. In red ink. Unless you modify the image so it isn't recognizable anymore*.
Back to our gears: once you find something appropriate, copy the image and fire up Photoshop. Or create one from scratch.
What's that? GIMP? Sure, use the GIMP, you cheap bastard. I'll wager your goggles are made of toilet paper tubes.
Draw a bezier curve around the gear to create a clipping path. Eh? You don't know how to draw a bezier curve? I'm sorry, this is the steampunk tutorial. You'll want Photoshop tutorials, Room 42.
Cut the gear out and place it so it's over the first O. Find or create a nice semi-circular bit for the G and create a nice little handle doohickey for the tail of the G. Now we get tricky.
We're going to take out one of the O's and replace it with another G. Ggogle? Silly, no: Goggle. What's steampunk without goggles? Google 'goggles' and see if you can turn something up to use. If all else fails, you can use the circle marquis tool and make some from scratch like we've done here. Or toilet paper tubes, GIMPster. We'll stick these over the tops of the two Gs.
What about the L and E? We don't want them to feel left out, do we? I think it's time to get creative.
I found a nice vertical doohickey a long time ago which we'll use for the L. I use that doohickey a lot. Make it appear as if it belongs there by adding some drop shadows. For the E you can try another gear, but here I've used something a little different.
Et voilà ! Goggle, you've been SteamPunk'd.
* I'm not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. I'm a designer, and this is design advice. So don't sue me, but feel free to draw nasty pictures at me.
