Transcripts
1. Intro: Welcome to the first. My name is the salt upset together. Some of the most support in this course we're gonna be learning about hierarchy live in contrast. And as I say, I read the scores. Beginners in life. So he is a little before the shop for the Sisi because that's using. But anything else. So I hope you're excited to hurt. That's get started.
2. Preparing for the project and setting up the workspace: Alright, guys. So once again, thank you for being here. I'm really excited to have you on board. And I'm looking forward to this class on. I hope you enjoy it. So first things first, I start off by knowing what I'm going to create on having a plan set in my mind for what I'm going to be working on. So for this class, I've chosen to create a rock poster event, and what I would need to have is the imagery I'm going to use or the illustration if that's the style I'm going to be following, Um, I'd also need to know the info that needs to go on the poster. So whatever you're trying to deliver as a message to your audience, you'd want to have that ready. So, for text, I personally like using Evernote. But of course, you can use any text anything softer out there, such as the notes, um, application that comes built in with Mac, and I guess North bad that comes with windows. And I just want to say guys in advance, I'm a Mac user. I haven't used windows in maybe over a decade. So, um, um, if if I don't know the exact shortcuts for Windows. I apologize, but I will try my best to make it clear. Eso you could find the equivalent on Windows in case you're using that platform. Um, but I guess they're pretty similar. Especially when you're using photo shop and industry standard software's eso. Like I said, I'm using Evernote and I've got my text info already right here. And this is what I want to have on my poster. So I've got the title of the event. I've got date and location. I have a line up of the bands that are going to be performing, and I also have some information about where to get the tickets and what time you could access the venue. Um, next, what I would want to do is get an image. But maybe it would be best to have some inspiration, Especially if you're a beginner and you still don't know how to lay out the the poster. And I'm guessing that's why we're taking this last s o. The first thing you do is you want to get some inspiration. There are a lot of amazing designers out there so you could find some things that would inspire you and guide you towards what you're looking to create. Um, so you could actually start by looking on Pinterest? I think interest is amazing. You can find so many things there, um, for for anything you're trying to create. So here, as you can see, I just searched for poster design. Um, I I didn't want to narrow it down into a rock theme poster because sometimes you could find inspiration from different types of design, and then you can have your own spin on it on, but the car put it in context. Eso as you can see here, you can search. You can go through a lot of amazing designs by some great designers. Um, and then another way for you to search would also be Google. That's also a great way to find anything. Basically, eso here. I just wrote Brock poster design because I don't want to have a 1,000,000 results. So, as you can see, you can actually use both of them to kind of balance out um, like, pure context and then maybe some general inspiration, if you'd like. Um, I also like to point out something important um I don't like to ever ah, copy anything the way it is. I mean, it's fine to to get inspired to to, like, a certain layout, maybe a composition of a piece, but never, like, follow the exact same work. I'm sure the designers would not appreciate that. And also, you want to challenge yourself in. You always wanna have that unique touch when it comes to your work. So now that we've gone through this, um, I'm gonna take you through to websites that are personally, really like to get stock photos from and stock photos. Guys are images that are available out there for you to use in any kind of design. Um, what you want to make sure of is that these photos need to be, um, available for, you know, um, royalty free use. So you don't have to. I mean, you could always go to paid websites and by the license for an image. But since you're just doing this class for fun, you're trying to learn something. Um, maybe you don't want to go into Ah, that extra expense. So what I would recommend are these two websites here, and I'll be posting the links to them in the project. Up in the class. I also be posting Ah, a few other things as well. So picks obey. I personally, I really like this website. It's it's just Fantasticks. And a lot of people are amazing with their contributions and the stock images they provide , and these are free for use. So if you go through the web site and you read, you'll see that you're allowed to use although images here for commercial purposes on, and this is what I wanted to say in the first place. So whenever you're using an image, make sure that you have If the, um let's say the permission to use them in your work to modify them and to redistribute them in case you're you're making this for, clients are gonna be selling this poster or charging someone for it or, you know, so you want to make sure that you're allowed to do that. Um, and here I just search for rock music. I wanted to find images from that domain, and I wanted to see what would speak to me. So I'm not gonna waste your time by going through the images and like filtering them and selecting them. Just wanted to show you where you can get these on. I'll show you what I end up selecting in the next video. The other website is called pixels. It's also an amazing resource. So the same thing is picks obey. You can just go search like I like. I like I did before I wrote rock music. And these are the results of amazing photography over here s so we can choose what you want . See what suits your style on. Just one tip I would give you, um, is when you're choosing an image and you're creating a poster, you know you're going to have text. So you need that info to be clear and to be communicated properly. You don't want something that's too busy. So this image right here might require more work and more ways around it for you to have that text pop out and be easy to read. Um, meanwhile, something like this where you have enough, um, empty space and clear solid backgrounds would be easier to deal with. Um and yeah, one more thing. Even Google. You can find great images. So what you have to do is go to tools. You want to make sure in the usage rights that you say it's labeled for. You reuse with modification. That means you're allowed to modify them and do whatever you want with them. Um, And then, of course you want. Make sure they're high in quality. So you going to go for a large sites? All right, so now we're done with how you can find inspiration and gather that material for your artwork. Um, now we're gonna go into Photoshopped. I'm using photo shop CC 2018. Um, you could be using an older version. That's fine. Ah, I I don't think I'm going to be using any of the new, um, features the more advanced features, so you'll be fine, even if you're using a no older version of Photoshopped Eso. Now we want to choose our workspace. We want to set up the art board. What I'm going to do is create a new piece and, uh, you might want to print this once you're done, so I'm gonna go for a three. And if you're not familiar with the sizes of paper, um, it would be Ah, good exercise for you to just take a look at, um what the paper sizes are. I think a good way to do that. It's just to go to Google and check Baber Sizes shorts. That should be fine. Yeah, And as you can see here, you can have a clear understanding of, um, the paper size on and then, like, compare this to what you find on Photoshopped. So for this class, I'm gonna be using a three. Um, I'm gonna keep everything as it is. I'm gonna make sure my resolution is set to 300 pixels per inch and that means it's high resolution. In case I decide to print it. It's gonna be crisp and clean. I'm not gonna have any broken pixels or any blur in the print. And just for the sake of designing now I'm going to stick to RGB. You see, here you can choose others. There is CEO Mikey. I don't know if you've heard of this before. Uh, I'll explain this later. I'll get back to this later, but at the end of the class, But for now, let's stick to RGB color and then create this. So here you have your workspace ready for you. Um, if this is your first time on photo shop, it's already going to be in the default layout, and that's completely fine. Um, if I need to add any extra tool bars or properties here, uh, show this to you as we go, but for now, this is fine. Just did the fault would work a great. So make sure you have gotten to this point and I'll see you in the next video.
3. Importing the elements: All right, guys, welcome back. So now that we have the workspace it up, I'm going to start importing my material. So that's the image and the info that I've prepared. Um, I'm not gonna be paying attention to the layout or the details at this point. I just want to bring everything into photo shop. Ah, and then we're gonna be fixing everything step by step together. Um, so first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get my image. So to do that, I'm gonna go to my folder where I've saved it. I've chosen this image. So what I can do is I can just drag it and drop it right here and to photo shop. And as you can see, when you drop the photo, it has this box around it. And once you see these points, um, this means urine transform mode. So you're able to transform this image. And what I want to do is I want to make this image the background, so I want to make sure it's large enough to cover all my workspace. Um, now, if you just grab this and start moving it, you see that it's not, um looking right. And the reason is your you're not scaling proportions. So you're just stretching the image, and that looks very, very bad. So if I keep this here, obviously you don't want to use it this way. So I'm just gonna do and undo this. And to do that, I'm gonna click Ah, command Z on my keyboard, and I'm gonna bring this image back here once again. So what you want to do it to fix that problem is to hold shift and then used the mouse on the corner to enlarged image. So this way you're scaling and proportion, and you're preserving everything the way it should be s o. I just want to make sure this covers all the edges. I don't want anything to be left empty. And like I said, I'm not gonna pay attention to where the images placed there. Which part, um, has more focus. I'm just gonna click enter. Ah, and then this will stay here. Um, now, you don't have to worry about where you place the image because it's still there. Although although we've it looks like it's been cropped, it hasn't. So if I move this around, I can still choose which part of this I want to show most. Um, so like I said, we'll get back to this later on. Um, now I want to import my text. So to do that, I'm gonna create an empty text box. You can either click here on the T. Ah, and ah, I can in the toolbar. Or you can hope you can. Sorry. Oh, are you can press t on your keyboard. Ah, and then using the mouse, you can just click and drag to create that box. So again, I'm not being attention to the size of the box of the font or anything. I'm just gonna bring in my text. So to do that, I'm gonna go to my prepared text here. I'm gonna grab it one by one. So I'm copying this. Obviously, the command for copy is command. See its control. See on windows, I'm gonna go back to photo shop, and now you can see that the box is gone and basically because it's empty. So you're not seeing anything on the screen and for you to get back into that box and to be able to edit the content of that box. All you have to do is come right here to the U three layers. Ah, and so you can see this is your empty layer on its called layer one because it has no content and you want to double click on the tea and this gives you access once again to that box. And in here I can pace using Command V or Control V on windows. Of course, you can always do that using, edit and then paste eso. Now that I have this here, um, obviously I can create another box and then go back and get the rest of the text. So it's the same step. Ah, again, If you don't want to keep using this, you can switch back to your move. Move, tool. The shortcut for that is V on your keyboard. Or you can click right here on your toolbar on what you can do is you can duplicate this layer by using command J on your keyboard or control J on windows and then once you have a duplicate of this, you can obviously grab and just put it down, and this gives you another text. But this time, a task content inside of it. So as you can see, the content is still there. Um, so I'm just gonna copy everything else, and there you have it. So as you can see, we have our image and we have the text, and now we can move on to the next video and start laying everything out.
4. Hierarchy: Okay, so now that we've imported the image in the text into photo shop, we have everything set and ready to go. Now it's time to have some fun. The first thing I want to talk about is hierarchy. So when we see hierarchy by the fold, our eyes are made in a way, Ah, where we notice things in a certain order. So take a second to think about it. And I'm sure you can relate. Um, we're always looking at things either from biggest to smallest or maybe boldest two lightest and so on. Um so there are so many ways where hurricane can be done, Um, that could be color, weight size and other stuff. So for the sake of this class, and since we're focusing on the info that we're trying to deliver through this event poster , um, I'm going to be focusing on size and weight, and that means we're gonna be, um, going into the most important to the least important part of the message. Now we're going to start here with the image, and we've already set up the image in a way where it's taking a lot of space. It's the background for your work. And, um, as you can see, I've selected an image where there's, ah, enough, um, empty and solid space for me to have that text, um, laid off. Um, so let's take this guy right here in the center. And this guy is going to be a big and crucial part of the poster. So he is an important part of that message because you want people to see the poster even from far away, before being able to read the details and to understand that this poster is about music and more specifically about rock music. And you can easily tell the context of this poster by looking at the visual. So in this case, the image. And then, um, we're gonna move on to the text from most important, least important. And in this case, um, what you want to stand out the most is the name of the event, because that's what you want people to remember. And they want You want them to, um, refer to the event by its name, and you want them to be able to discuss it amongst themselves. So uhm, I'm going to start, um, laying out the the hierarchy for the text. And like I said, I'm gonna be focusing on size and weight. And when I say wait, it means either bold light or medium, and you'll see that in a bit. So, um, as you can see here, I've set my screen to be, Ah, a bit smaller. So So it can fit most of your screens, and especially if you're watching this class on a tablet. Um, but I usually have a bigger workspace in this, So it's fine if if you can't see your layers at this point like like this happened here, you can just click on layers and this will make it expand automatically. So this is a nice thing that everything is still there. You can easily maneuver and travel through, so I'm gonna go to the rock out. So to do that, I can either scroll down here until I find it or I can actually right click on it using my move tool, and then it shows you the available options, and I'm gonna choose the rock out, and that immediately takes me into the rock out layer. So from here, I want to double click on the t so I can edit the text and then I want to go to the character toe up on my list. If you can't see this, if you can't see the character top over here, you can go to window, search for character and then click on it. So by by clicking on it because it was already there, I made it disappear. So I'm just gonna make it appear again by clicking on character. So here you can see you can choose the font. Um, if the font has sub classes, you can choose whichever is available. Um, and then we're gonna be talking about these in a second. So, for starters, um, what you would need to do is go through the fonts and find a fund that you like on selected . So to make sure that's the phone you're gonna be using, um, you can always have different phones for the title. For the subtitle for the details are personally always like to keep thea amount of fonts used on one piece to a minimum. So I would usually either use one fund that has two or three classes or I would use to funds. So in this case, I've already actually going through My phone's on. I've selected to funds that I liked. Um, before I move on to two ah showing you which funds have used. Ah, I want to show you Great resource is where you can find great phones, the 1st 1 being the built in adobe type kits, which is available in and photo shop and Adobe CC in general. So what you would do is you would click on the phones, and from here you can just add phones from type kit. By clicking on this, I can It will take you to the website and with your adobe subscription, you're capable of getting a lot of fonts from here and sinking them right into your photo shop so you can browse. You can go through many types of phones, see the results and see what you like, and then select them and sink them. The other great resource is the font dot com. This has a lot of funds. Some of them are free for personal use, others for commercial use. So you always want to make sure you're checking the type of license available for that fund . And here you can also search by category, and then you can find so many amazing options. So I've gone through my funds and I've selected these two, um, for the title. I decided to choose a phone called Lemon Milk and let me just zoom in here and to zoom in. Guys, um, you can use command and the plus button on your keyboard or control and plus on PC. So for the rock, out for the title, I've used this font lemon milk. I felt it had some nice edges to it, and I like the way they are looked and the overall layout of the letters for the rest of the information. I've chosen one phone. So, like I said, I like to keep my phones to a minimum. So I've only chosen these 21 for the title and one for everything else. So the other funds is called Al Vania, and it only has one weight, as you can see here. So now it's time to start laying things out and playing around with the size and and the other features. So, basically, let's start with the title, and to do that, I'm just gonna grab everything here. And as you can see, to select these layers together, you can either click one and then hold down, command or control on windows and click on each layer you want to choose, or you can start with the one at the bottom here or the one of the top, and then hold down, shift and click on the one that's going to be the end of these layers as a group. So by clicking here, it's going to select these two layers and everything in between. So now I can control all of these together. I'm just gonna grab them, get them out of the way. I'm just gonna place them down here for a bit, and I'm gonna go back to the title. So for the rock out, um, this is obviously too small. Um, I wanted to take ah, big chunk of the screen. I want to make sure it has the most attention right after the background image. Um, so I'm just gonna jump in here and try out 150 points, and of course, you're never gonna get the exact right number just by typing it down on do something for that you can always play around and change and see what fits best. So let's see what this does. Um, as you can see, things look jumbled right now. The reason behind this is that over the years there's something called leading, and that means how much space there is between the lines. And obviously, this doesn't fit on one line anymore. Eso It has gone into two lines, and the leading here is too little. So they've actually merged with each other. Um, so you could either set it on auto here and see what happens. And as you can see, it's it's completely gone. The reason behind that, as well as because your text boxes small. It's not big enough to contain all the text. You have insight. So to fix this, just simply double click on the tea right here and just make that box bigger and keep going until you can have all the letters inside. Now, if you run out of space over here, ah, you can always go the other way on. Just shift things around. Um, so this is fine now in terms of with, um but I don't want it to be this far away from. I don't want them to be this far away from each other. S o actually, don't want to use the auto anymore. Um, I could either go back here, Andi, choose from the drop down list. But since my number here is much larger than than any preset option over here, um, it's most probably not gonna work. So what I want to do is I want to get the number that's pretty close to my, um, size right here. So I'm just going to try 1 40 Um, that looks nice, but it's the little bit far away from what I wanted to be. So I'm just gonna drop it down to 1 30 Yeah, this looks much better, at least for the way I like it to. Look. Um, so, again, guys, anything I'm going to be doing here in this much detail will be personal preference. You might like things differently. Your client might like things differently. Um, so he could always experiment and change things around to suit what you're doing. All right, So now that we have this, um, here in a nice size, I'm gonna be moving down to the other information. Um, so obviously the the next most important part, I guess, would be, um, the attraction for the event. And that's the, um, lineup bands that will be performing live right here. Um, and again, this comes from either having some experience in in the industry for which you're designing or simply by by discussing this with your client or whoever you're working on this with. Um, so the lineup is gonna be quite important. So I wanted to be the second most important part of the text. So I'm gonna go to this, and I'm just gonna right click here and select it. And as you can see it immediately selected on my layers tab eso from here, Um, I'm going to start by making sure I have enough space to to in large things the way I want them to be. Um, so as you can see again, these air jumbled there meshed together. I don't want that to happen, but let's start with a size first. Once I'm satisfied with died, we can start tweaking things just like we just did with the title. So for this, let's start by trying to go to 50 see what that looks like. Um, that actually might be, but to large, considering the amount of names I have. So I guess I'm just going to drop it down to, um 30. Yeah, that looks much better on it. Makes sense when I compared this size to this size and considering I'm gonna be laying thes out, um, and spreading them ah, all about it's gonna look much better. Um, so for this, um, I also want to set the letting 2 30 and that gives me very nice facing right here. Um, So what I want to do is I don't want to have this as a list of drop down names. I wanna have them next to each other, and that would make it look more interesting. And we think less space on the screen as well. So what I want to do is you want to keep spend some spacing here, uh, and then keep giving more and more space between them. So again, guys, personal preference. I mean, I could do this, have more space, or I could just keep it this way. So don't forget, we're just focusing on hierarchy. At this point, I'm not getting into the other details. I just want to make sure things look different in terms of size and weight. Now, the next thing I want to do is focus on the date for of the event and the location. That's also important information. Um, I think this size actually looks quite nice, because if I compare it to this one right here, it makes sense on and it still looks, um, proper. So I'm just gonna place this right here on. There's no need for me to edit anything in the leading, because it's all on one line. Um, as for the final part, which is which are these right here? Um, I think I'm gonna make this, uh, on one line as well. That would look better. There we go. Yeah, that looks nice. So if you want to place this down here Yeah, that looks good. All right. That looks good. Um, you know what? I don't want to keep these two. Ah, the same size. So I'm gonna go back to this one, considering it has something much larger next to it. I'm just gonna increase it by two points. Yeah, and that's that. Looks pretty good. So this way we're done with our hierarchy. If I zoom out and to zoom out, guys, you just need to use command minus on your keyboard. That's control minus on your windows and you can see everything nice and tight. And if you want to zoom in white at the edges of this artwork, you have to use the command zero on your keyboard, and that will give you an exact zoom on the artwork here using so looking at this from here , I can see the image is quite clear. The guys taking very good space. I've got my header or my title. It's quite clear the next thing that catches my attention in terms of size is gonna be this right here on moving on to the smaller parts of the text ID. Like to show you these two examples just to have Mawr reference for something that has good hierarchy versus something that has bad hierarchy. So, as you can see, I've made these two quick poster designs just to illustrate the concept. So here we can see the car and it's it's properly placed. You can you can understand that this ad or this poster is about a car. Um, if you can notice the brand and recognize it, then you understand It's about Alexis. Um and then you can look at the text. Now, I'm sure you agree that when you see the text, you see all of this as one block. You're not going to look at any word before the other. Nothing will grab your attention. Your if you're intrigued to read that you're going to read it. Otherwise, nothing here is gonna be interesting enough for you to look at whether if you take a look at the left side of the screen, you're going to see that immediately. The first thing you look out after the car is win. And that's the word. You want to catch your attention the most because now you understand that this poster isn't at about you having the chance to win a Lexus. And then it says so right here. By adding more information, brand new Lexus eso. As you can see, you're I will automatically switch from the boldest and largest down to the lightest and smallest text in part of this design. So again, just another example for you to use as reference and keep in mind when, when thinking of hierarchy, I hope you enjoy this and let's move on to the next video.
5. Alignment: all right. So now that we have the hierarchy set up and everything looks nice, it's time to get into alignment. And the reason we care about alignment is because it's much easier for eye and brain to, um, perceive things that are properly aligned versus something that's scattered and chaotic and all over that makes your brain and your eyes work extra hard to make sense of them. And that's never something comfortable to look at. So if you think about if you were reading a book and all the lines started the left and they're properly aligned, you have enough space between them, then you're gonna be enjoying reading those those lines versus if if every line was shifted and it went right once and then left ones and and then maybe went into being vertical and then back again into being horizontal. Nobody wants to deal with that. Nobody is going to read that. It's gonna be really irritating, so there's a trick that I like to do. It's it's kind of Ah, small tip here. Ah, that rather than aligning text as text, I like to choose all my text layers right here and again to remind you to do this. I just like the 1st 1 hold shift and then flicked the last one so I can select, um, the first and last and everything in between. I'm gonna group thes by hitting the folder I can right here. And this creates a group, and I'm gonna call this my text. So to rename it, all we have to do is double click rename and then hit Enter. Now I'm going to duplicate this group by hitting command J on my keyboard and I'll be hiding this one. So this way I'm preserving my text in case I want to edit it later. O r. I want to make some changes. Ah, but here what I want to do is, um, go into these Ah, and then hold them right click. And I want to rush the rise type. So what that means is my type is no longer visible, so it's not text anymore, but rather layers that are shaped like So the reason I'm doing this is because it's easier for me to align these more accurately to my artwork. I'm going to start by, um, using my obviously my tighter because that's the biggest and most important, And what I want to do is I want to make sure this has enough margins at the top and at the side. And the reason for this is if I put this all the way here, it's too close to the edge, and that's not really comfortable for you to look at. The same would apply if I went all the way up here. So you always want to make sure you have enough space around your text. So I'm just gonna and I'm nudging these using my arrow keys on the keyboard. If I hold down shift and used the arrow, it's gonna move in bigger increments. If I don't use shift, it's gonna be smaller increments. So I'm just gonna go and other thes until I find a place where it looks good. This looks fine on that. I'm gonna move to this one. Um, now, again, guys, um, it's all a matter of personal preference and taste. Um, there's no wrong way of having things a line, so I could align everything to the left, and that would look great. I could apply it to the right that also look great. you could go for a center alignment that works as well. So you see what you like and how you want to go with things and choose that, - as you can see here, I've got these pink lines showing on. That's a new feature. It's in Adobe CC. Um, it's called smart guides on. I highly encourage you to use them because these make things so much easier for you. So as you can see, once I've moved here, that pink line indicates that I am placing this at the center, um, off the rock out peace. And if I move it a bit further, you see that big line crossing in the middle of the entire artwork, and that means I've completely centered this piece, and that's what I actually wanted to go for. And then once I release, it just stays there, and I'll be doing the same over here. So in terms of alignment, I'm quite happy with this. Um, I've chosen to keep these centered, and I wanted this to be at the right of my title, which is, um, kind of aligned to the center of the peace, but slightly going to the left because That's what I wanted to go for, the way the text is laid out. And here are a couple of examples for bad alignment versus good alignment. I designed these two posters to illustrate the purpose. Like I mentioned the video. Um, if you had Ah, an article or a piece to read in this case is just on informative. Ah, design where you can have Ah, a short paragraph to learn something new. If you look at the right side here and you can see this is very bad alignment your your eyes in your mind they're working extra hard trying to keep up with all this shifting and information in alignment, you're gonna be moving from left to right and back into left. Ah, and so on and so on. But if you look at the left side of the screen, you're going to see that when things are properly aligned, you're gonna be reading this with much easier, gonna be comfortable looking at it and traveling through the information with a nice proper flow. So I hope this helps, and I'll be seeing you in the next video
6. Balance: now that's sick to look at the overall artwork and assessed the balance situation, so battles could either be symmetrical or asymmetrical. So that means things could be aligned and and balanced out properly in both planes of the screen. So if if I put a line down here in the middle, I can see that we have the same space over here and then over here on and things look like they're somewhat mirrored. If I put a line down here is well in the center in a horizontal away. Um, you'll see that we also have the same thing going on. So we have information here. Information down here on this is right there in the center, so it's mirrored on both sides. Now, this looks great, but I personally feel like this would look better if we went into a asymmetrical balance for it. So what I'm going to do is I'm gonna be fixing things around even more and see where that goes again. Just to remind you it's a matter of personal taste. Feel free to experiment. It's always great to change things around and see what you like most. You can always go back to a ah previous ah, rendition of what you've made. So always take the time to try things out and see what you like best. I'm going to start by selecting this image right here, and I'm gonna be moving it to the right. So I don't want this part right here to show because it kind of ruins the balance. So what I'm gonna be doing is just moving it slightly until doesn't show. And this looks quite nice. So you can see already. I've got that asymmetrical battles going on where things are no longer completely mirrored . So you have the empty space here. You have context here, and then you've got the text and the content all around. So, um, from here, I also want to, um and you see, um, the's principles that we're working on they worked together. So it's not a step by step. Ah, thing that you do. I'm just breaking things down into steps in the class for the sake of it. But, um, in your actual practice, things will always work together. So right here is a good example. After I've shifted things around, uh, I I want to go on and change my alignment. So I'm no longer satisfied with how this looks. So I'm just gonna grab this. I'm gonna be moving it over here. So as you can see, when I'm aligning this, I'm keeping in mind the space I have here on the space I have here. So things look different and they fit this style more in this scenario. And I'm also noticing that over here I've actually aligned this to the center of the art board. But I havent centered and aligned the text to be the same from both sides. Eso that's a mistake. And it's fine to make mistakes. While you're designing, you're always gonna make mistakes. And that's the beauty of working in photo shop that you can go back on, change things around. And this is why, um, if you remember, I duplicated my text before Rast arising it. And this way I could go back, um, grab my original. So I just need to activate this again. Um, I'm gonna hide thes for second, so I'm gonna go back into these on from here. I'm gonna go back to my character on this time. I want to go to my paragraph, Um, And from my paragraph, I want to make sure it's centered. Ah, centering the text in itself. So back looking this I've got it the way I wanted to be. And since we're here, um, you know what? I'm gonna also add something that I believe would look nicer. And I'm just gonna space thes out by using the bullet points. So to create bullet points in Mac, you need to hold down the option key and the number eight, so this will create a bullet point for you. Um, I'm not sure if it's the same thing on windows, but from what I understand, it's probably holding down the bulky and then typing down the number 01 for nine as you hold down the all key again. I'm not certain. Ah, you could try it. And I hope it works. Otherwise, I'm sure you can find this in your character map eso from here. I'm just going to make sure I have spacing done right. You're gonna go back, all right. And I believe this looks much better. So I'm just going to duplicate this layer. I'm going to restaurants type, and I'm just gonna grab this, and I'm gonna drag it to my other folder over here, right below the older one. I'll hide these again. Activate this one. And now you just wanna grab this one and replace it with the older one. So I'm just gonna hit delete just back space for that one, and I'm gonna center this one to the artwork. And there we go. This looks much nicer. So moving forward with balance. Um, I feel like this. This text could use, um, something around it, which would add more attention. And it would also balance things out. Because if you look at it the way I see it now it's it's missing more design elements. And I like I like, I like using geometrical shapes. I believe they add a nice touch to posters and artwork in general. So I'm just going to create ah rectangle around the sport. And to do that, you can either go down here to this Aiken, or you can just hit you on your keyboard, and that would help you create a rectangle. So for this rectangle, I don't want to have a fill. I'd like it to have a stroke. Um, around it, and I'm just gonna make it white so it could match the text, and I'm going to draw it right here, okay? And in this case, you can see it's too thin, so I'm gonna go back into my rectangle, and I need to keep my, um, rectangles tool selected so I can go and control the with the size of my stroke. So I'm just gonna set this to 17 see how that looks. That actually looks pretty good. Um, so now we need to, And what I see here is an opportunity to make this stand out even more and have it look more unique. Eso I'm just going to grab it with the rectangle. I'm going to move it down here on. I'm just gonna grab this, move it down here and now there's gonna be fun. What I want to do is I want to hide this part that's going above his head, and I wanted to look like it's going behind him. So a good way to do that without being destructive and what I mean destructive is without having to change things in a way where you wouldn't be able to edit them later on is to create a mosque. I'm not gonna go into details about masks, but I'm just gonna do a quick overview of it. So by selecting this rectangle, um, let me show you. If I If I try to delete this with the racer, it wouldn't let me because it needs to be rest arised first. And if I do that, I won't be able to edit this anymore. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to create a mask. And to do that, I'm just gonna click on this icon right here. And as you can see, this creates a small box right next to your layer, Aiken, right here. And by selecting this, um, you're going to go into your brush. And now, like I said, I'm not gonna go into details. But just a quick overview and just a quick tip. By using masks, you're able to, um, high 30 certain things in a layer or reveal them just by painting over them. So, by selecting your brush and make sure you have black and white selected, if you don't only have to do is hit the D button or new keypad and What that does is that it's going to reset your colors to black and white. And if you click the X on your on your keyboard, it's going to shift them around. Um, so right here, I'm trying to hide it. So I want to make sure I'm selecting the black as the foreground color, and my brush is going to be a standard brush. I want to make sure my hardness is set to 0%. And, um, size doesn't matter. I can change it around, depending on the size. And then you want to make sure you zoom in enough where you can see where you're working s o. I'm gonna make this smaller by hitting the left bracket button on my keyboard, and then I'm just gonna start to paint over. And as you can see, I'm not, um I'm not using a hard brush because I wanted this effect. So I want to have that little shadow style going behind the box. I'm just gonna lead the sport completely, and I'm gonna do the same thing over here. So you want to be as careful as possible so it doesn't look, um, botched up. Now, if we zoom back out. As you can see, that box looks like it's going behind his head. And that's the effect I wanted to go for. So I'm just gonna use command zero to have that full zoom on my artwork. Now, looking at this, I believe I can create another, um, rectangle down here because I think this also deserves a bit more attention and I don't want to increase its size. Don't make this bigger. So I'm just going to, um, choose this rectangle hit command J. And in this case, you see, if I drag it down, I still have that mask applied to it. So I don't want that mask. I'm just gonna select the mask. So you make sure you click on the mask I can right here and you hit delete. It's gonna ask you and you're gonna see the lead. And this way you get your rectangle back as it was. And that's what I meant about nondestructive. So as you can see, although I have this effect going on here, I haven't actually lost the full shape of my rectangle. Um, now for this one, I wanted to stand out more and I wanted to be a bit different from that one. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to select my rectangle tool again. And instead of having a stroke around it, I'm going to have a field. So I'm going to select no stroke. And for the Phil, I'm going for the same white I've used before. Now, as you can see, um, this and the text have the same color, so you no longer can see what's going on. So to do that, I'm just gonna double click on it. And you want to make sure your double clicking on this area Because if you double click on the tax, you'll be renaming that layer, and that's not what you're looking for. So you double click over here, you go into the color overlay and let's move this away from the screen a bit so we can see what's going on down there. And then from here, you can select whichever color you want from the picture. You can see the changes are happening immediately as a preview. Now, uh, I don't want to use a foreign color to this design. I'm just gonna go and use the eyedropper, which automatically shows over here. And I'm going to sample this purple dark blue color over here. So I'm satisfied with this color. I'm gonna hit, OK, Select. Okay. Again. And that looks quite good. So I'm just gonna zoom in over here, and I'm going to select that rectangle again by going back to my move toe and then selecting my rectangle. And first of all, I'm gonna align it to my background, and then I'm gonna hit command T, and that allows me to transform it. What I want to do is I want to make this a bit smaller, so it doesn't take too much space around this. Looks good. Zoom out again. All right? I'm quite satisfied with this. So, in terms of balance and hierarchy and alignment, I'm quite happy with the results before moving on to the next video. Um, I designed these quick posters to further illustrate the concept of balance. So, as you can see on the right side here, um, the images to a small the header is is kind of lost, and then the text is taking way too much space. Um, and things don't really look that appealing or attractive, although it's nicely ah aligned and the hierarchy is correct. So you can see that the header has, ah, Maura traction and more attention than the actual content and the images definitely popping out because of its color. Um, that's still not a good example of balance. So if you look on the right left sorry, if you look at the left side over here, you can see that by adding some, um, elements such as the white background here and the the big bullet points over here and having things laid out differently and giving this more size and attention, you can see that this is properly balanced. It's more more appealing and more comfortable for you to look at, so I hope this is helpful and let's move on.
7. Contrast: up to this point. Everything is looking quite good. I'm very happy overall with the with the layout of this design. Um, but if you look closer, you're gonna notice that some things are not as vivid as they should be. So right here you've got the white against the colors behind it, and they're a bit washed out, and they're not really popping out. You don't really get that sharp feeling that you should be getting from this text, which is quite important in this design, as opposed to this part where everything is very vivid and it pops out quite nicely, and that's due to the dark background behind it. So nothing is distracting. Um, you from looking at the text in this case? So to fix this, um, we're just gonna go and find you in this and at some nice touches to it, to finalize things. The first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna make sure that this text right here on districts right here gets more attention. And that's by focusing on the last principal we're going to be discussing, which is contrast. So contrast in this case, it will be based on color eso. As you can see, this white and the light colors, even this wait right here are too close to each other in terms of brightness that you don't get that differentiation between thumb. So I'm just gonna right click on this one. And what I want to do it in this case is I want to add a drop shadow behind it. So I'm gonna double click on the layer here. And just as a reminder, I double clicked on this area and not on the name of the layer, because otherwise I'd be renaming the layer instead. I'm just gonna move this out of the way so I can see what's happening. Toothy layer I'm working on and I'm going to select drop shadow. And as you can see, it already applied that shadow beneath it. So if I turn it off and on again, you can see the difference. I'm gonna play around with these settings. Um, so feel free just to experiment and see what you like and what you don't like. I usually like to keep things settle. I I don't like anything to be too out there. Um, so I'm just gonna play around with these until I find what I'm looking for. All right. I guess this looks quite nice. So as you can see things, um, have a sharper edge now. And you can see things with better clarity due to this contrast, which is created using the shadow. So I'm happy with this one. I'm gonna do the same thing for the sport. So now you can look at the text from top to bottom and everything can be read with clarity. Now, let's add some final touches. I mean, at this point, you could be done. You could call the day, be happy with it and say, this is it. Ah, I person like this a lot, but maybe we can add a few artistic touches to it. So I'm just gonna close this down, and I'm gonna go to my background. So, um, how about if we from looking at this, um, perhaps I could use less colors. Maybe. Just keep these, Um, let this guy, uh, bop out more and then just have the rest be in black and white. So what I'm going to do is and again, this is a nondestructive method. I'm going to create an adjustment layer for black and white. And to do that, you just click on this icon right here, and I'm going to create a black and white adjustment layer. Now, this layer would work over all the layers that are beneath. In this case, it's not gonna matter, because the only there we have, um, is the background. But just in case you have more layers here, um, I don't want to do to find this confusing. So what I want to do to do is, um I want you to basically clip this to this layer on Lee. To do that, I want you to hold down the option key, and this icon right here will start showing. And this means that you'll only be applying this adjustment layer to the layer beneath it. So hold down the option key on Mac, assuming that's Ault on PC, and then click. And once you see this, this means this adjustment layer will only apply to the layer that's directly underneath. Now, from here, make sure you click on this one and not on the mask. So going back to the adjustment layer, um, you can play with the presets or you can do this manually. Um, I find that the presets do a good job in general. And because we don't want to go into detail about the adjustment layers, um, we're just gonna go into preset mode. I think I like this one the best. So I'm just going to stick to it. And as you can see now, we've turned everything into black and white. So how do we bring this pop of color back in? So, like we said before, we have the layer mosques that allow us to do adjustments by hiding or revealing certain parts without destroying that layer itself. So I'm gonna go into my brush by clicking on the brush I can over here or by hitting be on my keyboard. Um, I want to make sure I'm I'm here again. I want to remind you to stay in your in the layer mask and because I want to hide the parts of the mosque in this area, you need to make sure your foreground color is set to black, and I'm just gonna start brushing over. So as you can see, this is allowing the parts that are being painted over to show through that mask so the parts you reveal or hide are up to you. Like I said, it's a matter of preference and on personal taste. So whatever the style you want to go for, feel free to experiment on. The nice thing about this is even if you reveal a part that you later on decide that you want to hide, all you have to do is switch from the black brush to the white brush and paint over it again. Eso for me. I'm just gonna zoom out at this point and looking at this, I'm quite satisfied with this. Ah result. And I guess I can call this a success now, Weaken, stop here or make more adjustments if you'd like and see how you want to finalize it and then move on to the export settings to prepare the artwork for saving before moving forward . I just wanted to focus on the contrast principle, and I wanted to make sure it was clear. Um, so here I have Ah, quick, um, design I made just to illustrate the purpose of contrast. And here you can see on the right that by using this color which is close to the background color. You don't have enough contrast. It's hard to read this. It blends in at certain points like over here, and overall, it's just lost eso. Unless that's the effect you're going for, because sometimes you might need that in context. Then that's not something you want to do. Eso If you look on the left over here choosing something that works with high contracts, contrast against the background is the best practice. So this way you can read it clearly and everything stands out the way it should. I hope this helps, and I'll see you in the next video.
8. Exporting: All right, So we have a great poster. We're done with the design process. Um, we're done creating, and now it's time to export this piece for using on the Internet or even printing eso. You remember when we designed this in RGB eso? It's ready to be exported for Web on devices. So to do that, just go to file export and export as you can select the format here. There's J. Paige, PNG and a bunch of other formats. I would personally recommend PNG in this case because you want to preserve the definition and clarity of your text and image. So we'll keep this at PNG as a default, and then we'll export. You can choose your destination. Um, for for I'm just gonna put it on the desk offer at this point, and I'm gonna call my file the rock out post there well and export now for printing. It's a different process. We're also not going to go into details. All they need to do in this case is go to image mode, and from here, you want to change from RGB to see him like a So now it's going to ask you if you want to discard the adjustment layer for changing the mode, And what you want to do is avoid that because if you do that, you're gonna basically lose the adjustment layer we just created to, um, have this effect on the colors. So we're gonna flatten instead. And there it's gonna ask you about the color profiles, so just look okay on that. And as you can see now, everything became flat. So you no longer have access to the layers. Because of that, this is, um, worth pointing out that you should always save your file. And for me, whenever I'm making such adjustments or changes, I would make sure that I have a backup file. AP is defiled by creating a save as, um prompt here, which allows me to leave a backup PST on my computer. So now that we've done this, what we want to do basically, is to save this image for print. So you're going to go to file save as I'm going to use J. Peg and let's put this on the desktop as well and call it the road count. Now it's gonna ask you about the quality settings, so you want to make sure you leave things at the default, which is 12 and maximum on. Just click on. OK, Now, if you go to the files where they were saved on your computer and you open them both next to each other, you're gonna notice some difference in the color between the one you saved the Web and the one who saved for print. So mainly, this goes back to what I was saying at the beginning of the class that when we're using Web and when we created the file on photo shop, we chose RGB, which stands for red, green and blue. And those are the lights and the colors that these screens and devices used to show colors on screen. Meanwhile, when you're printing, you're going into a different method and school cm like a and that stands for cyan, magenta, yellow and black. And this is why, when you're viewing a CME like a file on your computer, its's not gonna look the same as the one you were working on initially. So if you want o share your work on the web, if you want to upload it to Facebook instagram or if you wanna hopefully added to the project section in this class, you're gonna want to use the one that we created for web. So there you have it. We've completed this project. Everything looks great. And I'm really looking forward to see what you guys are going to create.
9. Wrapping Up: All right, guys. Resend of the last real If you've driven, I hope you learned something that you'll be applying to. I really just want to say a huge thank you to everybody who did this ruling. If you have any questions, please feel free to post in discussion. Top. Go on. I highly encourage you to think part of the project and submit what you've done so far to have fun creating it could be anything from event will start like you just did it for. Maybe that set up with style will serve yourself or even any other imaginable topic you could come up with. So great to feel free to do whatever you want. And if you end up sharing it on social media, don't forget. Last not least if you join this fast, I really appreciate it. Thumbs up nice with you and maybe share people. I look forward to seeing you in future classes. They say Keep breathing
Naz Kharsa, Designer & Illustrator
