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Typographic Poster You can’t design without type. However, you can use only type (or mostly only type) to create breath-taking designs. In fact, many graphic designers and artists take exactly this route to communicate their ideas through their works. The results are sometimes crazy, sometimes artsy, sometimes beautiful, but often just different from things we’re used to. [Content Care Oct/14/2016] The world, as we know it, can never be understood without letters. Letters go beyond the simple shapes and characters used to convey a message into an expression of love, hatred or any other emotion. Letters and text have become an object for art expression. This fusion of art and writing is what we now know as typography. Typography is the art of arranging, designing and modifying text based on typefaces, point size, line length, and spacing to deliver art and information in a beautiful medium. Designing typographic posters is not an easy task, and takes time and patience. When a poster focuses on typography as its main element, the designer has to carefully craft his design to make sure that the type is both legible and artistic at the same time. Things In Life by Brian Hurst Last Time by Fabio Perez

Typographic Poster - dteq.weebly.com€¦ · Typographic Poster You can’t design without type. However, you can use only type (or mostly only type) to create breath-taking designs

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Page 1: Typographic Poster - dteq.weebly.com€¦ · Typographic Poster You can’t design without type. However, you can use only type (or mostly only type) to create breath-taking designs

Typographic Poster

You can’t design without type. However,

you can use only type (or mostly only type)

to create breath-taking designs. In fact,

many graphic designers and artists take

exactly this route to communicate their

ideas through their works. The results are

sometimes crazy, sometimes artsy,

sometimes beautiful, but often just different

from things we’re used to. [Content Care

Oct/14/2016]

The world, as we know it, can never be

understood without letters. Letters go

beyond the simple shapes and characters

used to convey a message into an

expression of love, hatred or any other

emotion. Letters and text have become an object for art expression. This fusion of art

and writing is what we now know as typography.

Typography is the art of arranging, designing

and modifying text based on typefaces, point

size, line length, and spacing to deliver art and

information in a beautiful medium.

Designing typographic posters is not an easy

task, and takes time and patience. When a

poster focuses on typography as its main

element, the designer has to carefully craft his

design to make sure that the type is both

legible and artistic at the same time.

Things In Life by Brian Hurst

Last Time by Fabio Perez

Page 2: Typographic Poster - dteq.weebly.com€¦ · Typographic Poster You can’t design without type. However, you can use only type (or mostly only type) to create breath-taking designs

Resources

The design we’ll be creating is based on a quote by Albert Einstein;

‘Logic will get you from A to B, imagination will take you everywhere.’

- Albert Einstein

Fonts:

Every subscription to Creative Cloud includes an Adobe Typekit Portfolio plan, which

includes hundreds of fonts for both desktop and web. Any subscription to an

individual Adobe application includes a Typekit account. Adobe’s Photography

Bundle, which is significantly discounted, includes a selection of fonts for web and

desktop with Typekit’s free plan. (Adobe.com FAQ)

In addition to the fonts available via Adobe’s Typekit, there are thousands of free

fonts available online. Google Fonts is a great source for open source designer fonts

however an internet search for “free fonts” will give you a wealth of other sources. I

found links to several cool fonts for designers (including Comfortaa and Le Super

Serif) in this article at creativebloq.com.

Many fonts are downloaded as ZIP files. You'll need to unzip the files before you can

use the free font. After the free font file is unzipped you'll then need to go through

the simple process of installing the font on your computer before you can use it (if

you are working on a restricted network you may not have permission to do this).

From a design point of view it is best to limit fonts to no more than three different

styles. However you might consider this more of a guideline than a rule depending

on your poster design.

For my poster I plan to use:

Comfortaa as my general font: Comfortaa

Elemental End for my logic font: ElementAl End

Le Super Serif as my imagination font: Le Super Serif

Page 3: Typographic Poster - dteq.weebly.com€¦ · Typographic Poster You can’t design without type. However, you can use only type (or mostly only type) to create breath-taking designs

Step 1 - Set Up Your Workspace

Create a new canvas (Ctrl + N). Choose the following settings:

Preset: International Paper size

Size: A4

Resolution: 300 Pixels/Inch

Background

Contents: White

Make sure you can access your Character Panel Window

Character or choose the preset Typography workspace.

Step 2: Add Guides

When working with design layouts, and especially those involving blocks of text,

guides will help you by making it easier to align your design components.

Use a simple layout grid. You don’t need a grid made up of hundreds of tiny squares

when you begin laying out your document. Instead, set some margins and then

divide your page into a 9 square grid; then follow the rule of thirds.

To add a guide, you can go to View New Guide or drag guides from the rulers.

Set guides at:

Vertical margins: 1cm & 20cm

Horizontal margins: 1cm & 28.7cm

Vertical grid: 7.33cm & 13.66cm

Horizontal grid: 10.23cm & 19.46cm

By organizing your layout into thirds, rather than halves and quarters, you'll keep

yourself working closer to the golden ratio.

Page 4: Typographic Poster - dteq.weebly.com€¦ · Typographic Poster You can’t design without type. However, you can use only type (or mostly only type) to create breath-taking designs

Step 3 - Type your text

Using your Character panel choose a Font. I chose Comfortaa

to start at 60pt size.

We will type each line of the poster on it’s own layer. You can

create a new type layer when using the type tool by holding

shift and clicking. Proceed as follows.

Choose your Type tool (T)

Click to create a type layer and type the word

‘Logic’.

Shift + Click to create a new type layer and type

‘will get you from’.

Shift + Click again to create another new type

layer below the previous one and type ‘A to B’.

Shift + Click again to create yet another type

layer below the previous one and type

‘Imagination’.

Shift + Click again below the previous layer and

type ‘will get you’.

Shift + Click again below the previous layer and

type ‘everywhere’.

Shift + Click one final time and type ‘Albert Einstein’.

Notice each layer has been titled with its content in the layer stack.

Save your work (Ctrl + S) and continue to save regularly.

Step 5 - Set your Type

Remember that much of the detail that follows will depend on your chosen fonts.

‘Logic’ layer

Select your Move tool (V) to help avoid creating extra

type layers. Choose your ‘Logic’ layer and change the

font to suit. I chose Elemental End as it has a high tech,

logical feel. Resize to just fit within your margins. Mine is at

160pt. You can also adjust the tracking in your character

panel to increase or decrease the gap between the

letters. I reduced mine to -80.

Position your word at the top margin guide of your page.

Page 5: Typographic Poster - dteq.weebly.com€¦ · Typographic Poster You can’t design without type. However, you can use only type (or mostly only type) to create breath-taking designs

‘will get you from’ Layer

Select your ‘will get you from’ layer and resize to fit. I left this in Comfortaa at 70 pt as

it was my general font but adjusted the tracking to -50.

‘A to B’ layer

For ‘A to B’ I chose to separate this into a group as 3 layers. To do

this use your type tool (T) to select the contents of the layer. Do this

just like in a word processor. Cut (Ctrl + X) the words you wish to

move to a new layer then Shift + click to create a new type layer

and paste (Ctrl + V). Once you have separated these, Ctrl + click

to select all three layers in your layer stack. Group them (Ctrl + G)

and name the group A to B

Resize your font on each layer;

my ‘A’ and ‘B’ are at 125pt

and ‘to’ is 50pt. I then used

free transform (Ctrl + T) to

adjust the width of my letters

so that they fit nicely within my

third lines and the margins.

Finally select all 3 layers and with your move tool (V) active use the align options on

the options bar to line up your text as required (I aligned by horizontal centres).

Try to arrange all of these text elements in around the top third of your page.

Imagination Layer

Try to choose a creative, font for this layer. I chose Le Super Serif as a creative font to

reflect imagination. It includes 88 ligatures (where two or more letters appear

connected) and some “special” alternate characters.

I ended up separating each letter of this word onto its own layer and then creating

a group as in the A to B layer to take further advantage of this font.

Page 6: Typographic Poster - dteq.weebly.com€¦ · Typographic Poster You can’t design without type. However, you can use only type (or mostly only type) to create breath-taking designs

Most of the letters are at 120pt and -75 tracking. However I have resized the middle I

and N to fit inside my G, used the Transform tool (T) to flip one of my ‘A’s and

nudged letters to connect even more. I also oversized my initial I to 195pt.

I positioned this just above my bottom third guide.

‘will take you’ Layer

Select your ‘will take you’ layer and resize to fit. Keep it the same size as your ‘will

get you’ layer’ and adjust the tracking. I left this in Comfortaa at 70pt but adjusted

the tracking to 75 as this helped it fit next to the bottom of my capital I from the layer

above.

‘Everywhere’ layer

Again I chose to split this into two separate layers and then groupthem. My font is Le

Super Serif at 100pt with -75 tracking. I made the R in Every a capital to take

advantage of the font and offset the words. Position this just below ‘will take you’.

‘Albert Einstein’ Layer

This layer is Comfortaa at 18pt with 0

tracking. I also added a tilde ~ to the

front and back of the type. Centre

this layer on the bottom margin

guide.

Page 7: Typographic Poster - dteq.weebly.com€¦ · Typographic Poster You can’t design without type. However, you can use only type (or mostly only type) to create breath-taking designs

Step 6 - Colour

Click on your background layer at the bottom of your layer stack. Create a new

layer (Ctrl + Shift + N). Choose a colour for your background. I went with an orange.

Use the fill bucket (G Shift + G) to fill your background.

I decided that white would be

a better colour for my text

against the orange. To

change the colour of all your

layers at once, click on the

bottom type layer in your layer

stack. Shift + click on the top

layer to select all the layers in

between. You can then use

your character panel and

click the colour swatch. To

choose white you can type

ffffff in the hex field (#).

Step 7 - Shapes

Many typographic posters use symbols, shapes and banners to embellish or

emphasise the text. For this quote arrows would make sense. Choose the Custom

Shape tool (U Shift + U) hit Shift + U until you see the right icon.

On the tool options choose the custom shape dropdown.

Photoshop comes with more shapes than is shown

in this initial list. Click the cog icon and choose

arrows from the list. If you click replace you will hide

all other shapes from this list and load the arrow

shapes, append will add the arrows to the bottom

of the current list of custom shapes.

Choose a straight arrow and draw it out below the

‘A to B’ line. Change the fill to white and the stroke

to none in the tool options.

Choose a curved arrow to go with ‘everywhere’,

again with white fill and no stroke. I then

duplicated the curved arrow layer (Ctrl + J) and

rotated it using free transform (Ctrl + T).

Under the word ‘to’ I added a row of 5 arrow

heads in various sizes.

Page 8: Typographic Poster - dteq.weebly.com€¦ · Typographic Poster You can’t design without type. However, you can use only type (or mostly only type) to create breath-taking designs

To emphasize the word imagination I added a series of different shapes positioned

to overlap with the letters and each other.

At this point you can hide your guides (Ctrl + ;).

Step 8 - Customise your Background

Download and open (Ctrl + O) a texture to use with your background. The provided

textures include stone and timber but you can find all sorts of things online such as

paper and canvas.

Using the Move tool (V) drag the texture onto your working document. Move the

layer to be at the top of your layer stack. Desaturate (Ctrl + Shift + U) and change

the blending mode to Overlay (Shift + Alt + O) to allow the background colour to

show through. Drop your opacity to around 10% (1) to 20% (2). You can use more

than one texture if you like.

If you are unsure about your colour choice add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer

to the top of your layer stack. Click the icon at the bottom of your layer panel

and choose Hue/Saturation. Drag the sliders to choose another colour.

If you want a border you can scale your colour background layer using free

transform (Ctrl + T) and hold Shift + Alt to scale evenly from the centre.

Remember that you can turn layers off and on to choose the final background.

Page 9: Typographic Poster - dteq.weebly.com€¦ · Typographic Poster You can’t design without type. However, you can use only type (or mostly only type) to create breath-taking designs

Final Image

A typographic quote poster created using type and shapes.

Final work including textures and a weathered border