I was illustrating a poster recently, a kind-of alternative universe Star Wars piece, and I wanted to use the circa-1975 Star Wars logo that was designed by Ralph McQuarrie and used in various printed material during the first film's production. I wanted to use it at a fairly large size, but I couldn't find a vector file of the logotype – so, working with the following specimens, I made my own. It may not be perfect, but it got the job done, and I'm happy to share it with the fan community.
McQuarrie triangular composition with logoPhotograph of a logotype scale sheet
I first made a bitmap from the McQuarrie illustration, using GIMP's threshold tool, then created this "clean" bitmap, checking the scalesheet image as I went along.
My "clean" bitmap, with incorrect stroke angles, but designed to vectorize well
I knew the stroke angles weren't quite right here, but I also knew that this bitmap would vectorize the way that I wanted, and that I could adjust the angles more easily once my bitmap had been vectorized. I used potrace for the vectorization, then squished the middle glyphs until the angles looked more correct.
Here's the finished SVG file, which you may download and use as you wish; I release this work into the public domain.
