[Tutorial]Abstract typographic art

[Coolis®]

 

Before you begin the tutorial, download the abstract image from stock.xchng, tinyurl.com/cvql7t, and the aged film texture from Lost and Taken, tinyurl.com/ah297b. These images are both free to download but read the conditions carefully before using the images in commercial work.

 

 

01. Start by creating a new A4 document in Illustrator at 300dpi in landscape orientation. Now select the Ellipse tool and use this little party trick: hold down the ‘ key on a PC (or the ~ on a Mac), and click and drag to draw with the Ellipse tool, moving your mouse around. This key command is continuously duplicating the shape as you move your mouse. You can use this technique with any of the shape tools.

 

 

02. Now it’s time to draw our letters. I’ve chosen the word ‘HEIST’. Have a play around and practice with this technique until you feel confident, it shouldn’t take too long. Holding down the key I specified earlier, click and drag with the Ellipse tool until you have created forms that resemble the shape of the letters – but remember to keep it simple, bold and abstract.

 

 

03. Now let’s bring the letters into Photoshop. Create a new A4 document at 300dpi in landscape orientation. Copy the first letter from your Illustrator document, then paste it into Photoshop as a Smart Object. Do this for all the letters. Now scale and position them until you have a good layout that fills the canvas. Highlight all layers and go to Layer > Rasterize > Layers. Now invert each layer by going to Image > Adjustments > Invert.

 

 

04. Time to add some texture. Grab one of the old film textures you downloaded at the start and drag it into your document above all layers, then set the blending mode to Screen. This makes only the white of the texture show through, so we have no textured background. So grab another texture – I chose some rough black paper, and increased the levels so it’s mostly white, setting the blending mode to Multiply at 50% opacity. You can scan your own texture or download similar ones for free from stock.xchng at www.sxc.hu.

 

 

05. Now it’s time to incorporate some colour – bringing in colour at this stage will give us a much clearer idea where we’re headed. Grab the abstract stock image you downloaded before starting the tutorial (see the introduction) and bring into Photoshop, rotating it 90° clockwise and flipping it vertically. Go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation and tick Colorize, set the hue to 60 and the saturation to 93, then drag it into your main document. Place this layer underneath the textures, set the blend mode to Darken at 50% opacity. Duplicate this layer a few times, position and scale it around the canvas and put the opacity back to 100%.

 

 

06. Time to work on the S – because it’s the largest element, it needs to blend in more subtly. Grab the Magic Wand tool (W) and on the layer with the letters on, hold Shift and click between the lines. Once you’ve got your selection, create a new layer and go to Edit > Fill, and fill with white.

 

 

07. Now we’re going to tighten up the composition and letters by drawing a series of connecting lines. Create a new layer underneath the letterforms, grab the Line tool with a weight of 1 pixel and begin drawing lines connecting the edges of each letter. Continue this until you feel you have drawn enough and you have tightened up the composition.

 

 

08. To enhance the structured direction, let’s fill in some shapes where the lines cross over with a pattern. I’ve made my own pattern using an image of a water droplet, which is on the cover CD, but you can use any pattern for this. Using the Polygonal Lasso tool, draw a series of shapes and fill them with your desired pattern in black and make sure the shapes are dispersed around the canvas.

 

 

09. We need to add more yellow into the piece. Grab the Polygonal Lasso tool again and create a new layer underneath the patterns layer. Then draw a shape that is constrained within the linework we created earlier. Go to Edit > Fill and choose yellow, then set the layer opacity to 15%.

 

 

10. Let’s create a yellow texture effect. Duplicate the last layer we created with the yellow and put the opacity back to 100%. Go to Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All and with one of the texture layers selected, grab the Magic Wand, with the tolerance set to 15. Click at various places on the canvas and fill them with black on the mask – this will give the effect of flaky yellow paint.

 

 

11. It feels as though we need some extra detail on the I to make it more unique and to bring its form closer to that of the letter I. Grab the Ellipse tool and draw a small black circle and, on another new layer, draw a slightly bigger yellow circle. To make them blend in with everything else add a layer mask to each like we did earlier and, using a brush, erase parts to give it a rougher feel.

 

 

12. To add detail duplicate the layer used for the white stripes on the S shape. Cut it in half using the Marquee tool, then set the layer’s blending mode to Color Overlay, and the colour to yellow. Now resize, position, and scale this shape in three or more different areas on the canvas. Feel free to create another colour overlay in black or white, depending on your preference.

 

 

13. Now we’ll do something similar to the previous step with a different layer to add in more detail over the top of the letters. Duplicate the layer with the pattern fill and give it a yellow colour overlay, now move the layer up over the letters. Scale this layer down significantly and rotate and position it. Duplicate a few more times and scatter around the canvas rotating and scaling to make each different.

 

 

14. Extract a selection from one of your textures by highlighting that layer and using the Marquee tool, go to Layer > New > Layer Via Copy to create a layer from the selection. Make sure the texture extract looks as though it could be the horizontal part of the letter H. Colour overlay this layer with yellow and rotate and position it neatly over the letter.

 

 

15. To boost the ‘constructed’ feel and add more detail, duplicate the layer with the lines on which we drew earlier three times. Then scale, rotate, and position these new layers in and around the letters. Duplicate the original lines layer again a few times and place it over the letters layer, then go to Image > Adjustments > Invert to make them white and scatter them around over the letters.

 

 

16. Let’s bring out the light background texture a bit and add a sense of depth. Create a new layer underneath all your layers except the default white background, and click on the Gradient tool. Draw a black to white gradient from the bottom right to the top left then set the opacity of this layer to 10%.

 

Credits: Digital Art