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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
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
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.
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.
‘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.
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.
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.
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.
Final Image
A typographic quote poster created using type and shapes.
Final work including textures and a weathered border