Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi. My name is Vasjen Katro. I'm graphic and web designer. I run a series on Instagram called Baugasm where I design a poster everyday for one year. This is the sixth class here in Skillshare. I'm going to show you how to make a poster similar to this one. This class is a bit different because I'm going to show you the technique I use to create this poster, but also this one, and this one. This class consists of making three different posters. You're going to learn how I use the technique in Photoshop, and how to use the same tool, the same technique, but to create three different posters. The cool part of it is that it's pretty simple and it's straightforward. I'm pretty sure all of you have been waiting for these and asked for these. Also, you're going to learn something and use it on your own designs. Doesn't mean it has to be a poster, it could be anything else. Looking forward to show you what I've learned during these years, and hopefully you can learn something from these technique. Make sure you enroll on the class to watch the full class and the full tutorial.
2. Selecting Colors: Hey, thanks for enrolling on the class and welcome to another Baugasm series. Today, as I mentioned before, we're going to do a technique on Adobe Photoshop on how to create some really nice gradients by using the brushes and the brush tool on Adobe Photoshop. As always, you saw probably before the trailer of this class, but at this stage, I still don't know what the end result of this process is going to be, so this is totally experimental. I'm going to play with the technique. I know what I'm going to use to create this poster, but I don't know the final product, so it's totally experimental. Sorry, if you're going to see things that I'm going to go back, and maybe I'm going to go on a path that maybe I want to use at the end, but I think this is the beauty about it because you're going to see the full process on how I create these posters and how I create the everyday designs for the Baugasm series. Here, I have a Photoshop document, and before I jump and use the tool and the technique for this poster, I want to talk about colors because for this class, it's really important to get a basic understanding of the colors. Since usually on most of my posters, I use bright colors and colorful, and they are really selected. I'm really in love with blue, purple in general, and I try to use that as much as often, but it's up to you to choose the colors. But for this class, I think it's really important that I talk about it and I show you the process on usually how I go and select the color palettes for the design. Sometimes, I just have something in mind and I go straight away and do that. But sometimes, I have to do a research and that's what I'm trying to show you here. I'm going to go on up on Chrome, and here's something that I was browsing before and I really like, but I'm just going to go back here. Usually, you can go and use different websites like Adobe Kuler and so many other generators that there are so many cool color palettes that are made just for these. Personally, I used to use those tools before. I don't like them anymore because I want to get some backgrounds about the colors that I'm selecting from, I want to see them in action, I want to see them used somewhere. Pinterest is really cool because I can get a color palette from a photo, I can get a color palette from website, I can get a color palette from a logo or branding, and so on. I can see how those colors are used together, and maybe what is the dominant color, and so on. For this class, also it's important because we're going to choose around a palette with five or six colors in total, maybe more, but I mean, it's going to be around that number. But it's important because one or two of these colors are going to be the dominant colors. At first, when you see the poster, what you're going to see is basically the main color. If I go to my Instagram, you're going to see that, for example, on this one, the dominant color is a purple. This is what I'm trying to say that there is this green, and then this orange, and so on. But the dominant color is a purple. If I go back here, you're going to see that some of the colors are driven from a website right here, and so on. I just search for design colors palette. You can even go more specific or search for something else, but just make sure that Pinterest shows you colors. I'm just going to go on browse over these, maybe I'll change my mind. When I open this search, I saw this one and I was like, "Oh, maybe this is cool, maybe I'm going to use this one immediately." But I'm just going to guide you through some of the things to look for. The things to look for, usually what I do is that I prefer to have bright colors, not faded. For example, I could use something like these, but not as much as the one I showed you before, like here, the colors are more bright and more colorful. For example, these colors could work in a way but I think it's all about the style, and it's all about the taste, and what everybody likes in general. I think it's subjective, so that's the point of it, you can even choose something else. I really like this one, there are so many color variations and so many shading of these, and I really like this one, maybe I will use this one. I think the yellow is the most dominant color in here and other colors that are close to it. But you can use this one or you can use totally something different, but I'm just showing you that you can get inspired from something else, you can even get inspired from a photo, you could use something like that. Even though for the poster, what I'm doing, these colors are going to be dark and not so colorful. But depending on what you're going to do the poster for, you can just go and select maybe that color palette. I also could spend hours doing this, and sometimes I really do because selecting the colors is really important, especially when doing commercial work or when doing work for a client. Because for me, doing the Baugasm series, it's totally experimental and it's totally subjective, it's something that I just experiment until I'm visually and aesthetically happy with it. Sometimes, it's also difficult because also I want to show a message or something, and that's the most difficult part of it. But when doing commercial work, you have to think about the client, you have to think about the requirements and what you want to sell, because basically you are making it pretty to attract the eye and to attract the attention to it. Then, you want to show a message, you want to show that this thing is good, this thing is not just pretty but is functional, this thing needs to be a product that maybe you want to buy or something that you might like or consider to use. Are all these things that you have to keep in mind when selecting colors for a brand or for a commercial work? But for this case, I'm usually free and this is why I love Baugasm, and this is the reason why I started in the beginning because I wanted to have a freedom and create something for myself everyday that I'm happy, different from client work and commercial work. You have to keep that in mind when selecting colors, because sometimes you can just do things the way you like them. What I mean by that is that it's not like, "Oh, I like this, I think it's pretty." You have to think about it and you have why is that color going to work for this specific project, or for this specific website, or poster, and branding, and so on. But for this case, you can do that like, "I like this, I don't care, and this is what I'm going to use." This is the fun part of it. All right, enough talking, and enough of explaining on this area but, yeah, I'm just going to go and try to select the colors. I really like this one, maybe I'm going to consider this one, but I'm going to go back to what I had in the beginning because I think this is something that might really work for what we want to do. As I said, this video right now is just to show you the process of selecting the colors and talking a little bit about it, and I think we did. But right now, I'm going to use this color, and I'm going to show you how I take the colors from here and use them on the design. Right-clicking here, go "Copy Image" and then go and open Photoshop or the file you're going to be working on. Here, I have a template that I have made for Baugasm posters that I use every day, and I'm going to just go Command-V for paste, you can even go to Edit-Paste. I mean, this is general, you all should know. If you don't, I think you should go on YouTube and see what are the most used keyboard shortcuts. But as always, I'm going to show you the shortcuts I use because I think it's good to know some of them, especially for Photoshop and other softwares. All right, so I got the image here, I'm just going to make it bigger, and there is a reminder to do the poster. All right, so here I have the image and what I want to do is select only the part where the colors are, and then press "Command-J," Control-J on Windows, and then delete this layer, and I have only this one. You can even keep this as a separate layer and then get the colors from here. But for the sake of learning and showing you extra tips, you can do this and add them to the swatch here. You can even make the swatch large thumbnail so you see them bigger. Let's make them bigger like this, all right. Now, what I'm going to do is press "I" on keyboard and I drop, select that, and edit in here, and then do that for the other one, and do that for the other one, and so on, and so for the last one. I have the colors here anytime I want to use them, I can go back here and use them. I'm going to delete this layer. You can even keep the layer. Usually, I don't do this adding to the swatch, it's so time consuming, but for this case I just wanted to show you that you can do that. Maybe most of you know how to do that, it's pretty basic. All right, so for this video, I just wanted to touch base with the colors and talk a little bit about it because it's really important. I haven't done this on previous classes and I always wanted to do and talk about the colors. Here I did and here is a process that goes behind selecting the colors for each poster. Now, on the next video, I'm going to show you the technique and the tools used to create this upstart gradient, I don't know how to call them, [inaudible] posters. See you on the next video.
3. Designing First Poster: Hey, welcome back. As you can see here, I have opened Adobe Photoshop document. This is the template that I use for the posters. I've made the background white and at some annotations but on the right side on the swatches, we have the colors we selected previously. So basically, what this class is about is how to use the brush tool on Adobe Photoshop to create gradients. I'm going to show you an example. So I'm going to create a new layer, command shift and control shift and on Windows. I'm going to go right here on the brushes and then I'm going to select a brush that is with a feather and something similar to this, probably I'm going to go with what it is right now like 2,200 pixels, and as you can see what I mean by making gradients with a brush, it's something like this. I can paint with this and then I can select the other color, I'm going to go and select this color here and then paint with that color. Then go with the brighter one, lighter and then go with the red one and paint with that one, then the yellow. So basically what we did here is we have a gradient and it has a shape and you can go crazy with this, you can do so many cool stuff with that. But basically, this is what I asked you before when selecting the colors because, we don't know what we're going to end up doing but we know that we're going to use this tool and this technique to create something cool. So for this case, I just made this to show you the technique. But what you can also do is that let's say you can create a circle. So I'm going to go with a circle in this case it's yellow, we don't care and then on the right side, you have the layers on the layers panel. What you can do is that you can create a new layer and then right click on that layer and do Create Clipping Mask meaning that we created a mask above that circle and now we're going to select the layer one, the one that we just created and then I'm going to go and grab the brush tool. Then now as you can see, I can select let's say the red. I can paint within the circle because I made a clipping mask of that. So I'm going to do this maybe I can grab a blue and let's do this blue like that. Maybe we can add a lighter blue somewhere here and as you can see, basically what I'm doing is that I'm making a gradient. You can play around with these and you can make pretty cool stuff but I'm just experimenting. Maybe the colors I chose are not the right ones but you can go back and change and play with different colors. Something else that I usually do is that I select these colors and then I go to Image, Adjustments, Hue and Saturation and I sometimes increase the saturation. Maybe I want to make it more like colorful and maybe somewhere here it's okay. Also keep in mind that, if I right-click and release the clipping mask, you can see that basically this is what I did and then I did a mask above that one. So now you have the possibility to move it and place it inside the circle and change the position but you also can press ''Command T'' on the keyboard and maybe you can transform it and make it bigger. Something similar to this and play even more around. What else you can do is that you can right-click and then go to warp and you can even change the position of the colors and maybe give it more like bit more red or yellow and so on. I don't know about the colors for this one basically, I wanted to show you the technique but it's not that bad. Maybe I can try something else. So for this one maybe I can create a new layer and then select this red in here, select the brush but in this case I won't do a mask but I'm just going to click in here and expand that color outside of that. But now it looks weird like that so I'm going to rotate it and keep it somewhere there. Also the red, I can drag it and bring it here. I like where I'm going but I'm not that happy with the colors to tell the truth but, you can experiment with this and maybe you're going to like it but something else you can do is that you can change the color maybe of these ones. You can go and select the layer where all the colors are and go to Image, Adjustment and Hue, Saturation and play with Hue. Maybe you can get something right or maybe you can start something over with completely different colors. I like this one and I like what you can do with these. Maybe I can expand a little bit of the red. Also something else that you should consider is that when you're doing these things, I think it's important to go to Filter and add some noise. Adding noise makes the gradient look more like a mix together and doesn't look that bad like such and pixelated. I think adding the noise helps a lot to mash the colors together in a way. All right. For this class, this is one of the techniques. I'm using this technique to create this poster, but the cool part of this class is different from the other ones is that I'm going to show you this technique to apply it on how to make a different poster with exact technique. So I'm going to show you how to make three different posters with the same technique and in the end, I'm probably going to use one of the posters for the daily post on the biogas. So for this one, this is the first poster, so on the next video I'm going to show you how to make something similar to this with the same technique but with different style, different poster may be different colors. See you on the next video.
4. Designing Second Poster: Hey, welcome back, sorry for the background noise, I don't know if you can hear it or not. The computers working very loudly, I don't know what's happening, but on the previous video, we saw how to use the brush tool on Photoshop to create some experiment and shape gradients, and we did a poster with that, but basically on these one, I'm going to try to make a different poster by using the same technique and the same tool. Let's get rid of this and I'm going to delete all these layers or maybe I'm just going to group all of them and unselect them. As I said, I use those colors as we selected in the beginning, but for this one I'm going to use different ones. I'm going to go and select a rectangle, or I'm going to go with circle again. I'm going to draw a circle in here, make sure you create a new layer, sometimes it doesn't work. I created a new circle, so I don't know if you have seen it, but I've done this on my previous poster where I use the same technique for now, the background is white, I'm going to make it a little gray. Now. I'm going to make the circle white, and I'm going to create a new layer in between of the rectangle and the ellipse. Now I'm going to go and grab the brush tool and maybe change the color, for this one, I won't go and select the color, I'm just going to experiment with some other colors just immediately here in Photoshop. I'm going to go with blue. Sorry, I've been sick lately, I don't know if you can hear that on my voice, but I hope you can hear me well and I'm not annoying. I get the brush, I made it smaller little bit, and now I selected blue color. What I'm going to do is, I'm going to paint on the background of the circle, so I get these colorful light coming out of the circle. Then you can even go and select different color I might go with a green turkizy one like this, you can even go and add the third color, here, even do something like this. But I want to give to that orange a bit more red at some point, so I change the color and then I'm going to add it here, a bit more red, and I'm going to create a new layer and add it on the background, just make sure that all of these color right now are on the same layer, so we don't want that usually. I would recommend that you create a new layer for each color, but for this case, I use one. I create a new one because I want to add some color on the background of that. Now the cool part of this is that you can make a layer and you can add the color on a different layer and then you can just, reshape it and resize it with free transform by pressing "Command T" or you can go Edit and Free Transfer. The cool part is that you can go and do the work on this stuff. In case you want to reshape them in way, like these or, I don't know. I'm going to delete this, I'm going to leave it as it is right now. You can even make the circle now some other color, you can make it black and maybe you can even change the background to some where more dark, maybe more properly somewhere here. As you can see on the background, now, when we do this, it's like you can see these rings, and we might want to add to that layer. I showed to you this on the previous video, to add some noise. You add noise either to the gradient, to the brush stroke, or to the background. In this case, I want to add it on the background because it would work that way, so "Add Noise" and just make it minimal so you won't see that much, but still, this doesn't look that good because the red part, it's such a bright color and doesn't really pop on the black, I should have considered that since in the beginning when I added, maybe play around with color to get a better color, where it doesn't look that bad on the background, but I'm going to go back to this, change the color of the circle. I liked it white, but now you can even add different elements on the background, you can even add some text to this and play around. The meaning of this class is that I want to show you what you can do with a brush tool and how you can use that to make the poster toward different elements. This is really easy basically to do this, sometimes I like to do this thing because it's easy and it can get really nice if you play with the colors, and I did this for different posters, and you can tell me I'm lazy or something, but am not, sometimes it's difficult to just come up with something and sometimes it's also difficult to make these. I could even spend one hour playing with this tool and finding the right colors and so on, but this is a nice technique to know and hopefully you learn something on this one. On the next class, I'm going to show you how you can use the same tool, the same technique, but to achieve a different poster. See you on the next video.
5. Designing Third Poster: Hey, so welcome back. On the previous videos I showed to you how to make two different posters by using same technique on Photoshop. On this video I'm going to show you basically the same tool but to make a different poster. This is the previous one we did. I'm just going to select all the layers for this one and group them. Sorry for the background noise, the computer is working really loudly as I said before. I don't know if you can hear it but yeah. All right. Another tool, what you can do with this technique is that if I go and grab the brush again and may be select a color, I'm going to select a color from somewhere here, this orange or may be I'm going to go with the gray. Let's go with some black. I'm going to make the brush smaller. What you can do is that if I draw something like this, may be I get dark black. If you draw something like this or may be even can grab a bigger brush, do this. The cool part is that now I have that on a separate layer but I can select only a part of this. If I go and select this part and then press Command J on keyboard, I can duplicate that part. What I have now is this one. This looks pretty cool especially if you want to add some nice gradient to it or you want to duplicate it and so on. I have done a poster similar like this. What you can also do is that you can grab the eraser tool and you make it a little bit bigger and you can come here and delete some of the parts so it doesn't look that perfect. All right. I have this one. I can make another one and another one and another one. I'm going to make a few. Now I'm going to select all of them and I want to have the right spacing between them so you go right here and you select the horizontal centers, so they're all distributed equally. What you can do now is that you can may be go to another one, get the eraser tool again, make it a little bit smaller. May be you can just delete on some other parts so they don't look all the same. Here and go to the other one, take more, there. Go to the other one and we're going to do the same. Then to the last one like this. What I would like to experiment with this poster is that I'm going to select all of them and then I'm going to merge them. Now I'm going to try to add a gradient to all of it. The cool part is that using the same technique I could apply a gradient to these but not making a gradient from the blending options but making a gradient with the brush tool. What I'm going to do is I'm going to create a new layer and then I'm going to right click and make sure that layer you just created is on top of the layers where we have the shading. Then right-click on that and go create Clipping Mask. Now you can go and select the color you like, may be some blue and then you can start painting in that part that you want that to be applied. Let's select a different color, may be some purple and add it here and may be around here. Then what I would prefer is to have darker purple in some areas. This is something you can experiment with. I just wanted to show you the technique, what you can do with a brush tool to create gradients. You can even now merge these and then just go Warp and create something like this. There's so many possibilities what you can do with that. I'm really curious to see what you guys are going to end up doing. As always I'm not showing you anything that is let's say- I would really prefer to see what you're going to end up doing different from what I'm showing you because basically what I'm trying to show you is the technique and the tool how to create something. In the end I would really appreciate to see what you're going to end up doing and in your own style, with your own style and your own thoughts into it. That's the meaning of the whole thing. All right. I think I'm going to leave it here. May be you can add a background or something. Like may be you can add a background, may be make it somewhere here like this. Then let's make this to center. I like that, I don't know how to call it, that box on the background because it gives some depth to the colors and to the purple and the blue. It makes them more pop. You can even duplicate that and just drag and drop it until here and you can make that part may be white and then duplicate the bottom layer again and then make it until here and may be make it a little bit darker. The rest, I don't know. Now, I'm going to switch to what I had before. I like this. May be there is some white needed to be added here but I don't know. I can may be add it randomly somewhere here. I like this. You can add so many stuff. You can even add texts as always. I hope you really enjoyed this. I'm going to make a mixture of all these three posters for today's poster and post it on Instagram. If you haven't seen burgers and series and the project, go and check it out on Instagram. I'm going to leave a link on the description of the class. I'm doing a poster everyday. A poster like this, similar to this, different techniques but yeah.
6. Conclusion: Hey, welcome back guys. I hope you learned something through all these class, and I showed you how to make three different posters using the same technique in Adobe Photoshop, and here is the final thing I've done. I added some random shapes to the circle, to the first poster, basically, we designed. I choose the colors, I switched to this purple blue. You-all know that I love blue and the purple. I'm really liking what I did here. I'm going to spend some more time with this, adding a few small elements to it, but basically, yeah. This is what I really like, and I'm going to post probably something similar to this on Instagram today. I hope you really enjoy this class and that you learn something. I highly recommend that you go and submit your own projects in Skillshare, so I can go through them, I can give you feedback and we can discuss all the details and techniques. As I said before, I strongly recommend that you can really get this technique and create your own, and try to apply it and make your own posters and do your own style. Thanks for joining the class, and hope to see you soon with a new class, a new tutorial. I promise I'm going to do more as often as I can. See you on the next class. Thanks. Bye.
7. Bonus Ideas: Hey, here is a quick bonus. I'm going to go and show you some of the posters I've done, that I have used the technique I showed you on this class. I'm here on Instagram where I have all my posters. As you can see this poster is done by using the same technique. Then this poster is done using the same technique and this one as well. This one as well, this one as well and so many others. I'm showing you these because you can get some ideas, also this one. Basically we covered this on the class. I mean, this is a cool part of it, you know the technique and you can use it to create your own stuff. This was just a quick thing I wanted to add to the class and you can go and check out my page on Instagram and see what I upload every day. Also you can get a few ideas, yeah, thanks for joining the class and see you soon. Bye.
Vasjen Katro, Visual Artist
