Design Your Own Creative Brush Packs in Photoshop & Illustrator

This class is for anyone who has access to Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, and a scanner or camera (if making raster brushes). If you have an inclination to start creative side projects that can help enhance your work and the work of your peers, then this class is for you!. As an added bonus, your digital resource could generate passive income if offered as a product for sale on Creative Market.

Designers, artists, illustrators, and creative professionals have an amazing opportunity to make and sell pre-made design resources on Creative Market.

In this class, students will learn how to research, brainstorm, and create a unique, artistic brush pack in either Photoshop or Illustrator from concept thru completion — with the opportunity to potentially sell it on Creative Market too!

Through the brush creation process, we'll discuss what it means to incorporate artistic techniques such as using: artistic brushes, pencils and markers, watercolor paints, scanning physical objects, photographing surfaces, and more.

I’ll walkthrough the process and options available to you as you produce your Photoshop and Illustrator brush pack, respectively. 

What You'll Learn

• Research and Idea Development. In this unit, we’ll cover the process of coming up with a brush idea from research through a personal creative brief. This will include steps such as brainstorming ideas for a PS or AI brush set, foraging visuals online for an inspirational mood board, and shaping up your approach and creative brief before you walk through the production process.

• The Creation & Refinement Process. In these units, we’ll walk through the entire brush creation process. If your starting point is physical illustration, we'll discuss the different opportunities available. If your starting point is sourcing found objects and textures, we'll explore what you can do. If your starting point is vector illustration, we'll discuss how to start creating vectors in prepartion for making Illustrator brushes. Lastly, students learn how to appropriately adjust their produced set of artwork in order to output it into Photoshop raster or Illustrator vector brushes.

• Output, Packaging & Marketing. In these units, we’ll take our finalized artwork set and convert it to a brush set in Photoshop or Illustrator. This will include exporting the final artwork set into the brush, producing examples of use for potential buyers, and lastly, naming the brush pack, creating compelling marketing copy and screenshot visuals to promote the brush pack online. 

What You'll Make

Together, we'll explore what it means to research objects, materials, textures, patterns, stamps and more as we conceptualize and build a creative idea into a flexible, high-quality brush pack. The idea and content are totally up to you! I'll offer a wide variety of suggestions, but ultimately you get to chose your own design adventure. Regardless of the path, student will end up with a raster, vector or combo brush set to enhance their design projects.