Tim Pietrusky/breaking-bad-logo

Breaking Bad Logo

I really love the series and thought: What would be better than recreating the logo with awesome web technologies?

NOTHING! So here we go...

Before we start I want to show you a screenshot of the final result

The Basics: CSS

I started with the chemical elements Br & Ba, because they are super easy to create with CSS. But what font is used here?

Google: "breaking bad font"
First hit is MyFonts.com

myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/forum/case/282847

One of the fonts is Arial MT Bold, so I can use the default Arial... nice! But wait. The other parts of the logo are set in a font called Bundy? I searched for a couple of minutes, but could not find this specific font. So what are my options?

An image? No: Not resolution independent and much too big in file size.
Another font? No: Are you kidding me? This must be real for god's sake.

Special font operations: SVG

I never created a SVG before, but it is just an ordinary vector right? Perfect, so I opened Photoshop (inside my virtual Windows) and created the path for every letter.

And now just save as *.svg right? What? Are you kidding me? No SVG with Photoshop? Thanks Adobe. Luckily, I have also Illustrator installed, so I exported my Photoshop Paths to Illustrator..., opened the exported *.ai (with Illustrator) and saved it as *.svg! That's easy... isn't it?

You can download the created SVG here:
timpietrusky.com/img/lab/breakingbad_eaking.svg
timpietrusky.com/img/lab/breakingbad_d.svg

Everything is perfect now. The logo looks just nice. But something is missing? Yes, the meth lab smoke you idiot!

How to create SVG

I wrote the article SVG - How to create & use vector graphics on the web where I describe how to create vector graphics (+ screencast).
timpierusky.com/svg-how-to-create-and-use-vector-graphics-on-the-web

Meth lab smoke: HTML5 canvas

Cause I'm really new to this hole canvas stuff I searched once again for a nice tutorial explaining how to do it right.

Google: "html5 canvas smoke"
One of the center hits is Astronautz.com

astronautz.com/wordpress/creating-realistic-particle-effect-with-html5-canvas

And boom: What a nice smoke effect by Ed Welch. I had to create a few meth lab alike smoke puffs with Photoshop and adjust the default values of the JavaScript particle emitter.

Official theme song: HTML5 audio

For the third time in this article I use Google to find something... boring, but what should I do instead?

Google: "breaking bad theme"
One of the center hits is televisiontunes.com

televisiontunes.com/Breaking_Bad.html

I converted the *.mp3 to *.ogg, because the main browser don't support every audio format. Why should they? That would be too easy. By the way: WE WANT OGG!!!
wewantogg.com

You might be wondering: How do you know what audio format you take for what browser?
The answer: I don't, I use Modernizr!
modernizr.com/docs/#features-html5

Modernizr.audio.ogg ? '*.ogg' : '*.mp3';

Watch the "Making of" as a Codecast

I used a nice feature on cssdeck to create a codecast. What is a codecast? You can record the stuff from the CSS/JS/HTML editors, save it and watch it again as you would watch a movie! But instead of actors you will see me typing some characters and creating the Breaking Bad logo.

cssdeck.com/labs/breaking-bad-codecast