Design Process Master Class: Create Poster Designs Like a Pro!

1. Class Introduction: Hello, and welcome to an epic design journey. Now, do you find it hard to harness your creativity. Do you wish you could come up with more compelling ideas? Do you want to be more confident in your design? Are you looking to improve your design process? Or are you simply looking to level up your design game and improve the quality of your work? If you said yes to any of these, then this is the class for you. Come join me as I teach you how to harness your creativity and yield exciting outcomes with a tried and tested design process? This is a class where the world of urban culture and sneakers inspires our creativity? In this master class, we're stepping into the art of poster design, drawing inspiration from the iconic presence of sneakers in pop culture and advertising. Sneakers are more than just footwear. There are a canvas for personal expression and a mirror to the evolution of graphic design. In this class, we'll use the dynamic and diverse world of sneaker culture to fuel our design process, leveraging adobe creative software to craft posters that embody the spirit and style of contemporary urban culture. This isn't just about learning software. It's about harnessing a design process to capture the essence of a global culture in your design. So my name is Gareth David. I'm a creative director with over ten years of experience in the design industry. In that time, I have worked across many projects from logo design to branding, which I've had the opportunity to harness my design process. And I've also been creating online education videos for over five years. Now, some of you may know me from my YouTube channel where to date I have over 700,000 subscribers and have released lots of design education material like this there. So in this class, I'll be taking you through a professional, tried and tested poster design process, sharing the techniques I use and have observed in my career. We'll start with a design brief, gather research and create mood boards. Then learn how to choose the right fonts, what poster grids we can use, how to generate ideas with sketching, and then jump into in design and illustrator where we will bring our ideas to life to create multiple poster designs, and then we'll look at how we can present our design to clients and colleagues. From start to finish, I'll be taking you through each key step. Now, there are many software options for creating poster designs, but in design and illustrator are the industry standard for creating professional layout projects like posters. So for those of you who have a preference or may be unfamiliar with in design or illustrator and want to know more about them and how they work, this will be a great opportunity to learn some crucial tools while creating a fun and dynamic project. So here I am in Adobe Bridge, and these are some posters I created earlier using the techniques I'll be demonstrating on this master class. For this poster design master class, we will be looking at a fictional design brief for a sneaker company looking to advertise their new product range. All of these posters have different styles with different layout approaches, so there is going to be something new to learn in each design we create. Some of these have been made using in design and some using illustrator. Later in the class, when we get to crafting our designs in software, we'll be learning how to set up poster grades, manage type, images, structure content, work with color, create variations, and export ready for print. So in this master class, I'll be demonstrating a poster design process, how I develop my designs and use in design and illustrator to bring them to life. But I would also encourage you to have a go at your own poster design process and artwork your own post designs as we move through this class to practice your skills. In this class, I have set many key tasks for you to undertake at each key step for you to get the most out of this class. Practice your skill and have something to show for your effort and time at the end. After this class, you will be able to think like a pro and design bold and dynamic posters like a pro in in design or illustrator to bring them to life super easily. Now, in this class, we'll be focusing on poster design, but this is a design process that you can easily use in anything, whether you're looking to design logos, brochures, websites, or social media. So get ready to blend craft, style, technology, and creativity as we transform our fascination with sneakers into visually compelling posters. Let's create something that showcases not only our design skills, but also our connection to the vibrant urban culture. So let's get into it. 2. Class Preparation: So before we get started, there are a few things I would highly recommend you have in place at the start to fully maximize your class experience. The first thing you will need is one, the class download folder. In this master class, I'll be featuring a ton of resources to help with your design process. Before we begin the class, I would highly recommend you get hold of the class download folder, so you have everything you need to open, as I mentioned them and present them in the class. Once you acquire this folder, you will see a structure as follows. Class Link PDF. The first file included is a class link PDF, and this document includes all the important links I mentioned throughout this class, to help you with your process and to effectively follow along. Next, you will see Task List checklist. In this class, you're welcome to follow along with my process, but I would also encourage you to have a go at your own design and practice your own skills. This contains all the key tasks I recommend you undertake to get the most out of this class. To start the class, I recommend you print this off and keep it to one side, so as we move through the class, you can check them off. And next, we have some folders. One, design process files. In this folder, you will find additional folders, Design brief, design process checklist, anatomy of poster checklist, moodboard samples, typography, poster grids, sketch examples, and blank project folder. The second folder is post templates. In this folder, you will find additional folders for assets, in design illustrator, and an design file called all posters. The third folder is poster artwork examples. In this folder, you will find additional folders for poster final examples, institute examples, and present deck, and the last folder will be media kit, which includes all the design assets as part of the design brief we will be using in our poster designs. To download the class folder, check the project and resources section, two, create your own project folder. Now, this is a big one. An important step in an effective design process is to be organized, and it really helps to have a well organized project folder to keep all of your files so you don't have to worry about where everything is and hit the ground running. Before we begin, I would insist that you duplicate a copy of the project folder from the class download folder. During this master class, you will be encouraged to create your own files, so you will need someone to place them. To make it really easy to follow along, I prepared a project folder for you just simply duplicate, so you can place them inside as we go along. This should keep your whole process organized and streamlined. Your first task for this class is to create a project folder, which we will be saving all our files in as we create them during this class. Once you have acquired the class download folder, going into the first folder, one, download process files, down to Folder eight blank project folder, make a copy and paste this somewhere where you will be able to come to during the class and rename this to Bolts sneaker posters. Once you have this in place, you're in a perfect spot to start the class. Three, drawing equipment. Now, in this master class, I'll be demonstrating a complete design process where in the initial phase, we'll be undertaking some sketching. Now, this part, the class is optional, but if you would like to participate in this phase and practice your skills, I'd recommend you have some sketching equipment ready. So when we come to that part, you will be set up to have a go. A Sketchbook, some pencils or markers should be fine. For creative software. Now the last thing you will need is certain software installed. In this class, I'll be demonstrating how to create posters in both in design and illustrator. So if you want to learn both or have a preference, I've got you covered. To follow along and have a go yourself, I would recommend you have a copy of design installed. I'll be using the most recent version of in design, but if you have an earlier version, this should be fine as backward compatible files will be provided. As well as Adobe in design, I will also be demonstrating how to create posters in Adobe Illustrator. So it will help if you have a copy of Illustrator installed. I'll be using the most recent version of Illustrator, but if you have an earlier version, this should be fine. Lastly, photoshop. To develop our poster design, we will also be using Photoshop to work with images, you will also need a copy of photoshop as well. Once you have acquired the class download folder, duplicated a copy of the project folder, have some drawing equipment ready, and your software ready, we can begin our creative adventure and start the master class. To begin, I'm quickly going to discuss the posted design process we're going to follow in this class. We're about to embark on a tried and tested design process that I have perfected and works every time. See you in the next video. 3. The Poster Design Process: So one of the most important parts of your creative approach should always be your design process. And I can't emphasize that enough. A solid design process is the ultimate path to harnessing your creativity and yielding high quality results. Now, if you're watching this and you don't currently have a design process you can confidently lean on and you are struggling to harness your creativity, then this video is going to help you out. So, ultimately, design is an answer to a problem. Design is not the destination but the journey that is taken and the process of what goes into solving problems. When taking on a project, amateur designers will sometimes dive straight into tackling the end result, drawing from their head or jumping onto the computer to artwork immediately, making it up as they go along or at worst, following trends. Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing, and I've seen it happen a lot, but taking this approach can be tiresome and inspiring and not always yield the best results. As a designer, if you want to improve the quality of your work, you will want to avoid making arbitrary designs and consider giving more thought to your design process and endeavor to take steps to develop the best creative solution. So what is a design process? Well, a design process is a roadmap that guides us from a blank canvas to a compelling, meaningful and appropriate solution. A design process will include steps to ensure you undertake adequate research, discovery, development, brainstorming, sketching, and implementation to answer complex questions with sophisticated and appropriate answers. Just as in fashion, architecture, product, or web design, the design process in poster design is a critical element that drives innovation, relevance, and excellence. So in this video, before we embark on our creative journey that goes beyond aesthetics, we are first going to delve into the poster design process. We will be following in this master class. So let's get into it. So when undertaking design projects, a designer knowingly or not, will initially focus on a process of thinking outwards, leading to a process of thinking inwards. Psychologist JP Guilford termed this process as divergent and convergent thinking. And it's this thinking process that is fundamental to the design process. Knowing and understanding it will be very helpful when tackling complex design problems. The term thinking outside the box is basically another term for thinking divergently. Divergent thinking is to expand your options. Think as open as possible and to be open to all possibilities and inspirations. Imagination and creativity live in the realm of divergent thinking. I divergent is to think outwards, well, convergent is to think inwards. Convergent thinking is to contract your opinions and narrow down possibilities. Convergent thinking is to question, challenge, criticize, and consolidate. Discipline, logic, judgment, and decisiveness live in the realm of convergent thinking. So it helps to think of divergent thinking like a shower. The more discovery you undertake, the more water source material is added. The more connections you make will add to the pressure to create a bigger spray of ideas, which will reach further where ideas will become more conceptual and original. Convergent thought is like the funnel where we capture all the creative thinking and ideas and challeng them down to identify the best potential solutions. These two thinking processes go hand in hand and will be required multiple times throughout the course of a project. Now, what makes a good designer is harnessing the power of these two thinking processes and striking a good balance and finding a good balance will help generate results swiftly. So here I have a printed design process check list, which puts this process of divergent and convergent thinking into practice. I use this as a reference to keep me on track and to harness the flow of creative thinking. Here, the poster design process consists of four main phases. Discovery, concept and design, visual artwork and design, and present poster designs. First, we have phase one, discovery. In this first phase, we seek to understand key steps, to understand everything about project, the challenge, and get inspiration to drive our initial design thinking. This phase consists of four main steps. Step one, review design brief and poster contents. In this step, we seek to understand our projects goals, the audience, and everything that the poster needs to include. Step two, visual research and inspiration. In this step, we seek to explore the world around us for sparks and creativity. Step three, focused mood boards. In this step, we channel our inspiration and narrow down our visual direction. Step four, choose typefaces. In this step, we seek to look for appropriate and relevant typefaces we will want to work with for our poster design. Step five, review poster grids. In this step, we can review all the different types of poster grids to see which ones would be suitable for our design. Next, we have phase two, concept and design. Now, in the second phase, after we have synthesized all the information we have discovered and learned in the previous phase, it's then time to start generating possible solutions to solve the creative problem, and this consists of one key step, sketching designs. In this step, we seek to generate the blueprint of our creative vision. Here we do this by sketching composition at layout ideas to identify the strongest ideas we can take forward. Next, we have Phase three, visual artwork and design. In the third phase, once we have spent sufficient time generating ideas, and we are satisfied, we have some good options in the bag. We can then look to bring these to life using creative software. This phase consists of one main step, artworking and design. In this step, we look to use creative software tools to develop our design ideas, refine and finalize our design. Finally, we have Phase four, present poster designs. In the last phase, we will take our final polished poster artwork and place it into a poster proposal document, ready to present to a client or team members, and this phase consists of two steps. Place poster design into in situ visual examples. In this step, we look to take our poster designs and place them into in mock ups to give the right context to our poster designs, create a proposal deck. In this step, we consolidate our file poster designs and visuals ready for the world to see. Here, we will place in our file designs and mock ups into a deck ready to propose to a client or work colleagues. If you want to take a look and print out your own copy of this poster design checklist, you can find it in the class project folder. This is located in the design process files in the design process folder. Then, why does this process matter? Well, great design is rarely borne from random strokes of genius. It's a deliberate pursuit of solutions. It's about understanding a problem deeply and responding with designs that are not only beautiful but meaningful and perfectly tailored to our target audience. The design process ensures that every decision we make is informed, intentional, and aligned with our goals. Keep in mind, when we design, we're solving puzzles, telling stories, and engaging with our audience on a profound level. We are aiming for more than just good looks. We're striving for relevance, impact, and connection. This is the process we're going to undertake in this master class. During this class, you will explore how a structured design process can elevate our work from good to unforgettable, ensuring that every poster we create is not just seen but felt and remembered. Let's now jump in to the first step of the design process and take a look at the creative challenge that lies ahead. In the next video, we will be looking at the design brief. 4. Client Brief Review: In the design industry, the first step in the design process will typically start with a design brief. Now, a good design brief is the foundation of every successful design project, outlining the goals, challenges, and direction for our creative endeavors. Now, this isn't just paperwork. It's the first step to understanding and solving the design problem at hand. The design brief guides us ensuring our designs aren't just visually compelling, but purposeful and targeted. It's a critical tool for aligning our creative vision with practical objectives. In this video, we start with the first step in the design process by reviewing a design brief. Let's dive in, see what's in store, and get ready to tackle this poster challenge with creativity fueled by clarity and direction. So let's get into it. So for this class, I have prepared a typical brief one may receive in the design industry from a client. This includes all the key criteria we will need to know to develop our created solutions. If you were to take a look at this design brief, you can find it in the class download folder. This can be located in the design process files folder in the design brief folder. Now, I won't read the entire brief out as this would take some time. However, I do advise you to take a look over this before moving on with the class to get a good idea of the creative goals we will need to work towards in this class. So my brief here is split into two parts. One client overview and two design overview. Part one is where we can get our understanding of the context and the business we are working for, and Part two is where we can learn about the creative challenge, goals, and objectives. Now, generally, when I get a design brief, as I read it, I will highlight certain areas I feel are significant to keep in mind, which will drive relevant creative considerations in future. Here, you can see how I have highlighted my brief to pull out the bits I feel are important. This will make it easier for me to look back over the key details during the process. So to sum up this brief, we are required to design posters for a fictional sneaker company called Bolts, and they are looking to create some poster designs to promote some of their product line. The main audience are those who crave unique fashion, personal expression, and cutting edge designs that resonate with those eager to make a bold individual statement. Bolts followers are trend setters united by a passion for distinct style and pushing boundaries. The goal of the poster designs is to be bold and eye catching with dynamic visuals that will be showcased in urban street environments. Bolts seeks to captivate with posters that fuse futuristic and rebellious styles, making it sneakers icons for bold and forward thinkers. The company has provided us with the contents to include photography of the products and some visual assets which we can use in our design. And they have stated in the brief that they want to see some exploration of typography and layout. So this will be the starting point of this master class. As we move forward, let the brief be your compass. It's more than an exercise. It's an essential practice in the design world, preparing you to think, design, and deliver with intention. So your second task for this class is to read over the design brief to get a good understanding of what is required. My recommendation is to print it out and keep it available during this class. Be sure to refer to the task list PDF in the class download folder for more instructions for this task. Once you have read over the brief and understand the challenge ahead, we can move on to the next step in the discovery phase. 5. Review Poster Content: Now, before moving on to the next key discovery step. Another important thing to keep in mind when designing a poster right at the start is to consider the contents. Before designing a poster, it helps to have a good understanding of what needs to be included in the poster design as this can help you understand the scope, plan, and be prepared with what to include in your design and layout. It helps to consider things like how much type to include, any photos, textures or illustrations, any logos, or any tables or charts. Looking back at the design brief, we can see that the client has provided us with the copy to include in the poster. Photography of the products and some of the visual assets, which we can use in our design. The logo is provided, photos are provided, textures and assets are provided, and they have requested, they want to see some exploration of typography and layout. Here we can see a poster content deck is available, which when we open, this includes the copy options to use in the posters. On the next page, we can see the products with the names of each, and also texture assets we can use as part of the design. So once I'm aware of the elements I need to include in the poster, I can then start to think about my design approach and take the next steps in the discovery phase. So your third task for this class is to familiarize yourself with the content required for the posters. Be sure to refer to the task list PDF in the class download folder for more instructions for this task. Once you are familiar, we can move on to the next step in the discovery phase. 6. Visual Research & Inspiration: When creating a poster design, it can really help to undertake some initial research to help spark ideas. Now, of course, this step is optional. You don't have to undertake research. However, this can give you some inspiration if you're not sure what you want to create initially and can also be good if you have an idea in mind for a particular theme or style that you may want to research further. Moving into the second step of the design process, we're diving into a crucial discovery step, visual research and inspiration. In this video, we are going to look at some techniques to research and some good places to get inspiration. So let's dive in, get hyped for our design project and gather some research. So let's get into it. So once I'm familiar with the design brief, and I have a good understanding of all the important criteria such as the context, audience, and goals, I then seek to look at a broad range of research and collect anything that I find of interest, and that could be relevant and inspirational. So a good place I'd like to start with is with my digital scrapbook. First, I like to reflect on research I may have acquired previously of images online or photos I have taken out and about. For found research, I like to keep this in a place where I can easily access it and see it as a whole at a glance. Now, these could be images I have gathered from previous projects or just images I have seen out and about and have captured to add to my scrapbook. Now, my old technique was to keep found images on the computer in a scrapbook folder. But as of late, I have been using Figma, Now, Figma is designed for UI and UX design, but I like to use Figma because it offers a vast digital environment for which you can paste hundreds of images into one digital wall, where I can move them around and organize them and come back to them at any time. And the best thing about this is that it's backed up online, so I can never lose it and can constantly add to it. And it's incredibly organized as well, where you can have multiple walls and organize your found research into comprehensive categories. So here I'm using Figma as a digital scrapbook, and I find this to be an amazing platform to gather, collect and store research. So here is a huge board of poster images I've researched recently online, including a lot I have collected in the past. So a lot of research I can look over here to get some initial inspiration. And here are some examples I have consolidated that focus mainly on sneaker design. So two really good platforms to discover and build inspiration are Pinterest and design spiration. These two platforms are similar in that you can do a lot of research and build boards. So here I am on Pinterest, and I have a broad range of research I have gathered that contains a lot of sneaker posted designs. As we can see here, there are many examples with lots of dynamic design approaches. Here we have very dynamic typography, images, and texture layouts. Now, next, I'm over on design spiration again, you can search for a wide range of creative inspiration and then place them into specific boards. If you want to take a closer look at these two research boards, you can find them in the important link stock in the project folder. Now, another two good resources of inspiration are Behance and dribble. Here you can search for specific design criteria and scroll through the vast results to see if anything stands out to you. Now, unlike Pinterest and design inspiration, these platforms don't offer the functionality to create boards. Once you find an example you like, you're going to need somewhere to place it. For me, this is where Figma comes in again. Whatever I find on platforms like this, I can copy or take a screenshot and paste it onto my growing digital scrapbook on Figma. So to recap, when undertaking research, you can consider a variety of approaches. During the research phase, you will want to think divergently looking wide and collect a broad range of visual research initially to get you started. To do this, you can reflect on found research in a scrapbook, research and build boards on Pinterest and design inspiration, or browse through design creative work over on Bhands and dribble, collect and add to your scrapbook. Your fourth task for this class is to undertake some broad research to find samples of what you think is interesting and what inspires you. Be sure to keep in mind what will be appropriate for the design brief. Now, you're welcome to follow along with my initial research. But if you want to have a go at this process and practice your skills, to find your own research, take some time to do this now and be sure to refer to the task list PDF in the class download folder for more instructions for this task. Try and spend around 20 to 40 minutes on this exercise. Once you have undertaken some broad research, it's time to look at the next step in the design process. 7. Create Focused Mood Boards: In the early stages of the design process, it can be very beneficial to undertake broad research. Depending on how much time one will spend on initial research, one may cover a lot of ground and accumulate lots of creative options. Now, research is great, but at some point, we will have to stop and turn it into something that will work for us. It's the synthesis of visual research that becomes crucial and can determine the direction of your potential design solution. So when we have explored enough research, it's then time to edit this down. Moving into the third step of the design process, we're now looking to focus on a more decisive direction for our poster design. And we do this by creating mood boards. Moodboards are our visual brainstorming tools that bring our ideas, inspiration and visual direction into focus. Typically, mood boards are a grid or collage of design elements placed together to capture the essence of a design vision. In the last step, we were thinking divergently and looking outwards. In this step, we start to think convergently, where we will look inwards and start to establish a direction. Mood boards are great to keep you focused on a particular direction and can also be good to share with work colleagues or even clients to help present and sell your design intentions. In this video, I'll be demonstrating how I develop my mood boards for poster design. So let's get into it. So in the last step, I demonstrated how I collected and explored visual research. In that video, I showed how I use figma to create a huge wall of inspiration and pinterest and design inspiration to create boards. Once I feel I have gathered enough research, I will then look to generate a focused mood board. This is where it starts to get more decisive. What I do next is take some select samples from the vast amount of research and then consolidate it down onto one page of a few examples that give me a distinct look and feel and suggest a style and direction I want to go in. Now, this could be one or a few mood boards, depending on the nature of the project, but each one will be distinct and suggest a clear vision for a look and feel. Now, there is no specific rule in how you lay out your moodboards or what to include in them. It's important to mention that depending on the design discipline, be it interior design, product design or fashion, the nature of mood boards can change and the contents may change. Some may include color samples, photography, products, swatches, typefaces, materials, and graphic elements to suggest certain details and outcomes. Whatever design discipline, the mood board should be simple enough that you get it in around 10 seconds. Ultimately, the mood board should be on one page and give a very distinct impression, so it goes without saying what direction you're looking to go in. For poster design, we will typically be looking at poster layouts, typography styles, color palettes and applications. When it comes to layout, you could include samples that are all the same size in a grid. You could include samples and organize them into sections. You could create more of a cage, or you can use a grid and scale certain samples up to pop out. For this project, I have two main mood boards, one moodboard that looks at poster layout style and typography and another moodboard that looks more at color and texture. So for the layout and typography style mood board from all of my research, I consolidated mine down into this mood board here, where I have placed my samples on a page in photoshop and printed them out on paper. For this board, I have used a simple grid and scaled certain samples up. Now, I do this because it breaks the monotony of images and also highlights some of the samples that I'm most excited about. For this moodboard, I included poster samples, just looking at layout styles and typography I like. This is about as far as I go with my poster layout moodboards. I don't like to include too many samples as it can get a bit busy and complex. Here is my mood board showcasing the dynamic design style, I think would be an appropriate response to the brief. Here we have layout examples where there is high dynamic in layers and contrast. The sneakers are cut out and interact with typography well. Overall, the layouts feel very energetic, vibrant, spontaneous and have that youthful rebellious quality to them. They may be slightly different, but they are all familiar in their overall energy and approach. Reflecting back on the design brief, the main audience are those who crave unique fashion, personal expression, and cutting edge designs that resonate with those eager to make bold individual statements. Bolts followers are trend setters, united by a passion for distinct style and pushing boundaries. The goal of the poster designs are to be bold eye catching with dynamic visuals. So in this instance, I think this would be an appropriate design approach to take in response to the brief to appeal to this audience. So keep in mind here, I have not picked these samples out because I simply like them necessarily. I have picked them because I think they would work well to solve the creative problem of the design brief. For the second moodboard, I have focused more on color and texture here, where I have included images of the products and textures supplied by the client in the content deck, which I will need to use. For each, I have also extracted some colors from the products that I could use as themes and placed certain textures next to each product that I could use for each product specific poster design. This board, I have organized them into sections, and I've done this because there is a specific product range that I will need to cater to each product will have its own theme potentially. Here I have bunched them up into their own areas to suggest a texture and color that could be used for each product. One moodboard for layer concept and one moodboard to manage the products and look at color and texture. Now, I could explore other layout and typography style mood boards for concepts and look at other direction options. But for the sake of this class, I'll keep it simple. If you want to take a closer look at these moodboards, you can find them in the class download folder. This can be located in the design project folder in the moodboard folder. So your fifth task for this class is to refine your broader research and create a layout and typography style mood board of your own for a posted direction you would like to develop. With your broader research, identify samples of what you think is interesting and then consolidate your samples down into one single layout and typography style moodboard. Be sure to refer to the task list PDF in the class download folder for more instructions for this task. Now, you're welcome to follow along with my mood boards. But if you want to have a go at this process and practice your skill, take some time to do this now. Try and spend around 20 minutes on this exercise. Now you may be wondering why have I not included typefaces here in my mood boards? Well, that's because when it comes to poster design, this is a task in itself. Once you have completed at least one moodboard, it's time to look at the next step in the design process. 8. Choosing Typefaces: Now, one of the most important steps in the design discovery phase is research. In the early stages of the design process, especially for poster design, as well as researching layout and style, it's practical to think about typefaces. Moving to the fourth step of our design process, here we delve into the art of choosing typefaces for our poster design. Now, typography is not just about readability. It's about personality, tone, and impact. The right typeface can elevate your design, convey the right message, and resonate with a particular audience. So choosing typefaces should not be done lightly. Before we start thinking about poster design layouts, it helps to have a good idea of the style of typefaces we will want to use to capture the right result in our design when we come to layout our posters later. Now, keep in mind, searching for the right type can take a while, and it can take a lot of trial and error to find the right typeface. By deciding on our typography early, we ensure we consider options that are well thought out and are appropriate for our design solution. This also offers a seamless transition into our artwork phase later, keeping our creative flow uninterrupted and saving precious time during the layout phase where we can hit the ground running. To make the process of creating my artwork easier and to have something to start with, I like to be ready with at least a handful of typefaces. In this part of the class, we'll explore how to choose typefaces that are aligned with our mood board, message, and aesthetics. This step is all about preparation and organization, ensuring that when we begin to build our poster in the creative software later, every piece fits together perfectly. So let's dive into the world of typography and prepare ourselves for a smooth, efficient process. Remember, the fonts you choose are the voice and tone of your poster. So let's get into it. So in this video, we are going to be covering three main topics. One, considering typefaces, two discovering typefaces and three previewing typefaces. So quickly reflecting back on the design brief, the main audience is those who crave unique fashion, personal expression and cutting edge designs that resonate with those eager to make a bold individual statement. Bolts followers are trend setters united by a passion for distinct style and pushing boundaries. The goal of the poster designs are to be bold and eye catching with dynamic visuals. Looking at my layout and type style moodboard, These are some options I thought work really well to align with that sentiment in the design brief. Here, we have examples where there is high dynamic in layers and contrast. The sneakers are cut out and interact with typography well. Overall, the layouts feel very energetic, vibrant, spontaneous, and have that youthful rebellious quality to them. This is what I thought was relevant in the research I found, and this is an appropriate approach, I think would be a good direction in response to the design brief. This is the type of visual communication that would appeal to this type of audience. Now, regarding the typography, the type as a whole is very impactful, punchy, and has personality. We have some stroke effect here and we have some typefaces with a bit of flare to them. Looking closely, we can see that the typefaces that have been used are bold sans serif typefaces with the occasional use of a serif typeface and some custom type. In this instance, the layouts are rather busy and there is a lot going on. So the simple typefaces used work well not to overclicate the design and to ensure a good degree of legibility. For my posters, I want to aim for a similar approach where the typefaces are both impactful and have flare to them. Your sixth task for this class is to review the typefaces used in your layout and typography style mood board. Look carefully at the typefaces in your research, identify the styles of typefaces used, and look at how they work as part of the designs. Once identified, make a note of the styles you feel you want to use in your poster design. Try and spend around 5 minutes on this exercise. Once you have an initial idea in mind of the styles of typefaces you want to use, you can move on to the next step where we can search for typefaces. So once I have a clear idea in mind of the style of type I want to use, it's time to go out and look for some type faces. Now, there are many ways you can source type faces. You can buy type faces, you can make type faces. But today, we are lucky enough to have a wide variety of free type faces. If you click into the important Links doc you can see a list of font websites I have listed that you can use, some of which are free and some where you can get paid fonts. For the sake of this class, we will use some free typefaces. Now, there are lots of websites where you can search for free fonts. For this class, I want to showcase a helpful resource. I have put together to make the process easier and that I am currently using. Now, as researching, specific styles of fonts can be laborsome and time consuming, I use my font book, which is a collection of typefaces. I have put together with over 1,000 free fonts. So in the important Link stock, there is a link to the GDS font book. And if we click this, we will come to the Font Book website. On the home page, you can see that currently there are a range of categories we can choose from from San Serif all the way through to brush and Extended. If we click on these, we can see a curated list of free fonts, Google fonts, and Adobe fonts to choose from. Here we can simply browse the type faces on offer, and if we click on one, we'll be taken straight to the typeface to download it. This can save you a lot of time if you know what style of typeface you want, where you can dive directly into a category and see some quality examples. For my approach, before even looking at any type examples, I knew I wanted to look for some really strong sands of typefaces that would work well on a typographic poster. I was also open to looking at some examples with a bit more flare that could add another element of style and expression to my poster designs. Here, I looked into the sand serif category, the serif, the slab Serip, the display, the chunky and the condensed category. Now, one technique I like to use, which I would also highly recommend is to preview your fonts as you find them. I find this helps me to get a nice holistic view of a typeface to quickly see the qualities and if they are suitable for my design and also quickly compare them to other fonts. For this, I'd like to use an illustrated document. I have prepared where I have set up a series of pre filled text boxes where I can simply change the font on the fly to look at the qualities of the typefaces and get a first impression. Here I can quickly look at the upper and lower case letter forms to get a quick feel for them. After a while of exploring a range of typefaces, downloading them, installing them, and placing them into my type sheet, I then printed it out on paper to take a closer look. Here I have three sheets with nine samples on each, and I have done this to get a good view of a range. I think I spent about half an hour on this searching and selecting a few to place in here. If you want to take a look at this type sheet preview, you can find it in the class download folder. This is located in the design process files folder in the typography folder. Also, if you click on any of these fonts, I have included the links, which will take you directly to them to install. Here on the first page, I'm looking at some bold sands of typefaces with a range of qualities with some that are more condensed. On the next page, I'm looking at some extended sands of typefaces and also some with more rounded samples. On the third page, I looked at some other typefaces with a bit more personality and flare. Here I have some slab serif and serif examples. After careful consideration, you can see I have a nice range of type faces to choose from that I feel are appropriate for my direction that I can consider using in my poster design. Now I have my visual mood boards and my typeface research. I am now in a really good position to move on in the process. Now, keep in mind this process is just to get me started. There is still a chance some of these fonts I chose may not work in the final layouts later. But there is a strong chance that Sam will and at the very least I have some good samples to get me started. The seventh task for this class is to acquire and preview some typefaces to use in your design. As recommended, you can either go to the Font Book website, browse at the platforms or use any typefaces you may already have. Be sure to click the Class Link Doc in the class download folder to click on the Links for font websites to explore. Be sure to refer to the task list PDF in the class Download folder for more instructions for this task. Try and spend around 30 minutes to an hour on this exercise. Once you have settled on a final set of typefaces, you would like to see in your design, you can then move on to the next step. 9. Poster Grids Review: So when it comes to poster design, one key principle we should always consider is alignment. Aliignment is how we can make sense of a design, how we can create order, structure, and suggest relationships between visual elements, which can all lead to a clear sense of visual hierarchy in our design, which is something we should always be striving for. When we design a poster, we should always be thinking about alignment. Now, one of the key ways to focus on alignment and help with alignment in our poster design is to use grids. Moving to the fifth step of our design process, here we look to review poster grids that we can use in our design. Now, starting with a blank canvas can often be bewildering. But if we start with a grid, it can help give us a framework to help lay out our visual elements. Now, if you sometimes struggle with your design and want more ideas and inspiration, then this video is going to help you out. In this video, I'm going to discuss grids and the various grids you can consider using, which is really important for those of you who want to improve on your layouts. So let's get into it. So what is a grid? Well, in design, a grid is an underlying structure that can be used to align and contain visual elements. Most often, grids are visual frameworks, a design can be based, but in some instances, a grid can be part of the visual design itself. So why are grids so important? Well, there are a lot of reasons why grids are beneficial and why a designer will choose to use one. Ultimately, grids help solve layout problems. When it comes to layout design, a grid can establish a solid foundation to work from, which can help create order, structure, and establish consistency in a layout. A grid can help break a blank page into sections to contain and align visual elements, which can help develop relationships between elements which leads to more structured and pleasing layouts. What are the different types of grids we can use in poster design? Well, there are a variety of grid systems you can consider in your design, which all serve different purposes. So here I have a document that contains the different types of poster grids you can use. This is a quick reference document you can refer to as part of your process. If you want to take a look at this grid reference PDF, you can find it in the class download folder. This is located in the design process files folder, in the poster grids folder. Some of the classic grids that are commonly used in poster design are column grids, modular grids, hierarchical grids, and baseline grids. However, there are also some alternative grides that one can consider such as axial grids, diagonal grids, and radial grids. One of the most common grids used in poster design is the column grid. The column grid is one of the most simple and practical grid systems. A column grid separates a page into vertical zones, and typically columns are contained in a margin, which is the space around the outside of a page. Depending on the amount of information intended for a design, a column grid can vary from two to several columns. A column grid can easily divide your page into clear sections in which you can assign content or line type or image. Another common grid used in poster design is the modular grid. Now, the modular grid builds on top of the column grid with the addition of horizontal rows. Where the column grid divides pages into zones and sections, the modular grid divides a page into multiple squares and rectangles. These are called modules, and the gutters between help add breathing space between contents contained or lined to modules. Depending on the amount of information intended for a design, a modular grid can vary from a few modules to many. Another common grid used in poster design is the hierarchical grid. Where the column and modular grid will typically present a neutral structure of repeated modules and columns of the same proportion. The hierarchical grid will typically include modules of various proportions to outline order and priority to establish a clear primary hook or focal point. Even though it's possible to use both the column and modular grid to establish a very clear visual hierarchy, the hierarchical grid is used for the sole purpose of establishing a very clear visual hierarchy. A typical hierarchical grid can include a column or module grid base, though contain additional areas which can cross or overlap to establish a focal point with supportive elements. Another column grid used in poster design is the baseline grid. Now, the baseline grid is made up of a series of horizontal lines that typically fills the entire page, just like a page from a note pad that can be adjusted. The base line grid is not normally used to structure or line image content like the previous grid, but more so to manage type and define lines where type can sit. Those are some of the common grids designers will use, but there are some other grids to consider using for more alternative layout approaches. The first to consider is the axial grid. Now, unlike the previous grid system, the axial grid is free from technical columns and modules and encourages a more free and simple layout. A axial grid consists of a distinct axial line running along through a system. This axial line can be horizontal, vertical or tilted in different directions, and we'll typically divide a composition into two distinct zones where text and images can then be placed or aligned on either side of the axial line. Another alternative grid system to consider is the diagonal grid. Diagonal grides are column, modular, or hierarchical grades placed on the diagonal rather than the vertical and are used to create more edgy and alternative layouts. In essence, diagonal grids are a little like axial grids, where they can suggest a clear direction and movement of content. However, tend to be more complex, sometimes using multiple and contrasting directions and include more visual content. The last alternative grid system to consider is the radial grid. Now, unlike all the previous grid systems that tend to be rigid in their approach, the radial grid offers a far more organic alternative. Where other grade systems flow vertically, horizontally or diagonally, the radial grade revolves around a central point, pulsating and emitting outwards. Visual elements aligned to a radial grade tend to gravitate around or emit from a central point of focus, which can stem from anywhere in the composition. Depending on the nature of the design, the eye is either drawn inwards, pushed outwards, or moved around. Okay. So in conclusion, grids simply make sense and can give us confidence as designers to know that there is order and structure to our design. When you're designing posters, be sure to consider using a grid as it can help you solve your layout problems. So the eighth task for this class is to familiarize yourself with the various poster grids we can use for our design. In the next step, we'll be moving into generating ideas for our poster design. So this will be a good task to undertake to gain some inspiration for what comes next. Be sure to refer to the task list PDF in the class download folder for more instructions for this task. Once you're familiar with the poster grid types, we can then move on to the next step. 10. Generating Layout Ideas: At the heart of every great poster and indeed, every great design lies a powerful idea. Design in its essence is about solving problems with powerful solutions. It's the process of thinking, questioning, and exploring before arriving at a design that speaks, resonates, and connects. In today's fast paced technology driven world, it's tempting to dive straight into digital tools and start creating. Of course, creative software excels at helping us execute ideas, but does it truly excel at making us think. True creativity often starts away from the screen. So before we launch our creative software, there's a critical step that ensures our designs aren't just visually appealing, but are meaningful and effective. Moving to the sixth step of our design process, here we undertake the process of generating ideas for our poster design. Before we jump into software tools, it's crucial to take some time to think about our design intentions and the direction we would like to go in. It's an important time to reflect on our mood board and begin to use our imagination to generate ideas. And one of the most effective ways to do this is by sketching. Sketching is not just about drawing. It's about translating our thoughts and inspirations into tangible concepts. It's where our ideas begin to take shape, offering a direct path from imagination to visualization. Sketching is a timeless, tried and tested process that has worked for hundreds of years. So as we continue into the sixth step of our design journey, we move into a new phase where we enter into the realm of sketching to generate visual concepts for our poster design. So why is sketching so important? Well, essentially, sketching encourages us to think divergently, which encourages us to be more inventive and go beyond what may be in front of us to discover more compelling creative ideas. Sketching is an essential part of the design process where creativity flows without the confines of software. Also, the great thing about sketching is that anyone can do it. It's not about perfection here. It's about ideas. This hands on approach ensures that when we move into design software, we're building on a solid foundation of well thought out ideas, not just improvising on the screen. I find there is spontaneity and chemistry when sketching. A lot more magic can happen on the page than on the screen. Also, ideas can come very quickly when sketching, which allows us to realize creative solutions much faster. So in this part of the class, we'll dive into sketching techniques that lay the groundwork for our poster design. You learn how this crucial step not only streamlines the design process, but also elevates the final product. Let's grab our pens and pencils and start sketching our way to compelling designs. So in this video, we are going to be covering two main topics. One, generating rough ideas and two crafting refined scams. So when it comes to design, I often like to start on paper first. Having an idea first makes the experience of artwing on the computer later much easier. So I'm not just pushing pixels around on the fly and hoping for something to look nice. A process I'd like to take is to first reflect on the subject of my poster and its contents, consider the anatomy of the poster design checklist and review the poster grid types reference dock. In this instance, I can look at the poster contents deck supplied by the design brief, where I can see the copy options available to me, the product photography, and also design assets I can include. Also, I'll have my color and texture moodboard I have prepared earlier, which outlines all the visual elements I will need to consider. The anatomy of poster design checklist is something I have prepared earlier, which I use as a tool to help me in my process. Here, I can look over all the important elements. So when I'm sketching, I can keep in mind what I need to include. And the poster grid types reference dock is another tool I can use to consider how I may want to manage the visual elements and how I may want to lay them out. So once I understand the design brief, I'm aware of the poster contents. I have my mood boards for inspiration. I can then begin to sketch out poster design ideas, keeping in mind all the key criteria. To do this, I like to draw out poster outlines on paper first, where I can sketch my initial design ideas easily. Now, drawing out poster outlines can be time consuming, so I often use a template doc I have prepared earlier. Provided in the class download folder is a grid sketchbook containing a range of poster grid templates, similar to those contained in the poster grid reference doc. I can use to sketch on. On the first page is a four by two layout of portrait poster outlines. To do this, I'd like to first print out some poster outline sheets from the poster grid sketchbook. This is a sketchbook I have carefully created from scratch that contains lots of grid samples I prepared earlier that I can use to base my design on. Instead of purchasing blank or generic grid sketchbooks where I'll have to draw out my outlines multiple times, here I have prepared specific grids on individual sheets, which makes it easy for me to print out, focus, sketch, and plan my poster design quickly and effortlessly. From this sketchbook, I'll print off some simple poster outlines on a few pieces of paper, and then I'm ready to start generating some ideas. At this point, I can also reflect back on my poster grid types reference dock to consider what kind of grids and structure I could base a design on, and then I'll start sketching out some initial design ideas. Now, this will typically start out really rough where I'll sketch and test some initial concepts. Here you can see a range of ideas I had for a variety of layouts and permutations of my ideas, also considering the types of grids I could use. When sketching, it's important to think about visual hierarchy, how I want to lay out my elements, and how I intend to balance them. Personally, I like to use fine line markers as I like the ink. And if I make any mistakes, I can use hip BAX to remove anything. Here, I'll just draw with a series of very simple lines to map out the form of my poster and how I want certain elements like image, type, shape, form, and space to work and how I may divide the page up into sections and place on my elements. Across the ideas, I'm looking at various ways in which the sneaker product images and the type can work as the primary hook and how the other elements will work around them. As you can see, this is mega Ruff here, where I'm just going through lots of ideas quickly. Now, while sketching, it's very common for one idea to trigger another, and this is why sketching is so important because you can generate a lot of ideas fast and generate ideas you may not have had originally. So your ninth task for this class is to undertake some quick sketching. Now you understand the design brief. You have your own mood board, and you have some type faces selected. Have a go at sketching out your own designs. Remember, this is not about perfection. It's about ideas. So try and travel fast and sketch down your thoughts. Be sure to refer to the task list PDF, the class download folder for more instructions for this task. Now, you're welcome to follow along with my sketches. But if you want to have a go at this process to explore your own ideas and practice your own skill, take some time to do this now. So give it a go, start rough and try and generate eight to 16 layout ideas. Try and spend around an hour plus on this exercise. And if you do undertake some sketching, be sure to share them in the class project section below, as we would all love to see what you can come up with. So once I have lots of ideas down, and I feel satisfied I have covered lots of ground. I will then start to think convergently and shortlist the ideas that I think work best and stand out to me as options I'd like to develop further. Now, if I'm only sketching for myself, I'll just generate a bunch of rough sketches like you see here. That makes sense to me. They may be a bit rough here, but that's okay because these are just for me, and I could now jump onto the computer and start to work these up. However, sometimes when I'm working on a project, I may have to show work colleagues or even a client in the early stages, or I may just want to take a closer look at how type will play a part in my design to get a more accurate preview to see if and how a design will work. Sometimes I may even have to pass these concepts onto another designer to work up. Sometimes, as a creative director, I don't always design the finished products myself. Sometimes I will pass on ideas to other designers. To brief them and give them something easy to follow, a scam will do that perfectly. If this is the case, then I'll generate more refined sketches that outline an idea more clearly. These are called scams and are more refined clear drawings, which clearly and comprehensively outline the approach and intention for a design. Where my initial sketches were quick and rough, these are a lot more refined, where I will focus more on the individual elements of the composition. For these, it should be very clear what my intention is and how I want to manage the elements on the page. At this point, I may also reflect back on the tight face research I did previously, draft and incorporate the font to see how this will look and work in the design. Also, in the scams, I will focus more on the grid that I plan to use and draft my layouts on grid templates. I can print out and see more precisely how I can manage the layouts and what approach I may take on the computer. To do this, again, I can print off some poster outline sheets from the poster grid sketchbook. This time, I can scroll through the many grid types and samples included and print grades that I'd like to explore. Normally, I'll compose these either on a separate page or include two on a sheet to maintain clarity. For this, I printed out a range of grids and drafted my designs on these. For my scamps, here you can see a range of compositions I felt worked quite well. Here I'm using a mix of column grades, baseline grades, moledula grides and even diagonal radial and axial grids to realize various outcomes. This enabled me to look at how a range of type alignments could work to explore how dynamic I could make my compositions. From these, I can see how typography can work inside the grid, and what kind of type faces will work to fit the message comfortably and not compete too much with surrounding elements. What I also like to do when drafting my scamps is draw a thick line around the part of the poster, I want to draw the two first, the primary hook. In this case, the sneaker product images, and the rest of the elements, I draw with a range of different thicknesses and weights to see how the supportive elements work in the hierarchy. With some other layouts, I have explored going bold with the logo and using modules where I can include some image textures and graphic imagery. Here I have some very typographic layouts, where I'm making the type large and eye catching. Here I have some more alternative designs looking at diagonal, radial, and axle compositions. Right now, I feel these are pretty clear and I can see how I'd like to manage each element in the composition and the types of grids that I can use to construct them. Now, keep in mind, these may not be final designs here, but they do a good job of clearly showcasing a concept for a design, which can be good to discuss with colleagues, clients, or other designers in the initial stages. So this can save a lot of time over committing to a design on the computer where discussions and decisions can be made before investing time to artwork a final piece. So once I feel I have some good ideas down, I'm excited about some of my compositions, and I know which ones I want to develop into finished designs. I'll then think about jumping onto the computer to start crafting my design and bringing my designs to life. So your tenth task for this class is to try and refine some of your rough sketches. Now, this task is optional, but if you feel you would like to have a go to practice your skill, pick at least two ideas from the rough sketches and try and draft them carefully into refine scamps. Now, if you're curious, you can open my scap examples to see how I have approached this as a reference. Be sure to refer to the task less PDF in the class download folder for more instructions for this task. Now, try and spend around an hour plus on this exercise. If you do undertake some refined scams, be sure to share them in the class project section below as we would all love to see what you can come up with. Once you have undertaken some sketching and you have some ideas you want to develop further, we can now jump onto the computer to bring them to life. 11. TUT #1 - Typographic Baseline Grid Design - Adobe InDesign: So everything we have done up to this point in the class has been in preparation for this moment where we begin to bring our design to life. In this step, we move into a new phase. The previous phase was all about generating ideas for our poster design. Now we have some solid ideas in the bag. It's time to enter the third phase of the design process where we come to artwork our design on the computer. By this point, if you have been following the design process, we will have looked at a design brief, seen the poster content required, undertaken visual research, prepared a moodboard, selected some type faces, and sketched out some designs ready to bring onto the computer. So I have all my prerequisites ready here in front of me. Now I'm ready to jump into in design and bring one of my posters to life. This video, I'll demonstrate how to use the tools of in design to create this poster design specifically, and later, we will look at how to make some variations. So to create our poster in in design, we are going to cover the following key steps. Step one, project folder setup, step two, document setup, step three, grid setup, step four, working with type, Step five, working with image, step six, working with color, Step seven, refine composition, Step eight, create layout variations, and step nine, exporting. This is a methodical process that will ensure we create quality poster designs and not leave anything unchecked. So get ready for an epic design adventure. After this video, you will be able to create dynamic typographic posters like this in Adobe in design super easy. So let's get into it. So here I am in in design, and these are some dynamic posters I created earlier using the techniques I'm about to demonstrate. If you want to take a look at these, you can find them in the class project folder. These are located in folder two poster templates. If you open the all posters in design file, you should be able to open them like so. Now, for this tutorial, we're going to focus on this poster design here. If I select this poster, with this selection tool, then come over to the Link panel and click the edit icon at the bottom. We will jump into another in design document, where we can see variations of the same poster design. Basically, what I had there was an in design document with links inside to other files. This is the file where I created the poster design, but this dock here is just so I can see all my posters at a glance, and each of these is a link to a different document. In the poster document, what I have done here is develop a poster design from one of my sketches, which I have here. And on the computer, I have looked at how this could work in different variations with different fonts and colors. Now, if I also press W on the keyboard, I will be able to toggle between preview mode and normal mode. In normal mode, you can see the grid system that I used to structure this poster design. So your 11th task for this class is to follow along with my poster design method. The purpose of this task is for those of you who may be unfamiliar with in design. This is a chance for you to learn some crucial techniques and get comfortable working in Adobe in design. Now, this stage is optional. You can either watch and participate or follow along and develop your own poster design. However, I will be encouraging you to do this later. So let's now jump into in design and look at how we can develop a poster like this. And we are going to start with Step one. Now, a quick step I like to take before I begin any project is to first set up a project folder. This is going to set me up to be super organized and have a place to keep all my assets and know where everything is. When working in in design, it helps to be organized to improve your workflow. I can either set this up from scratch or I can duplicate a folder I created earlier. So if you have not already done this yet in the class, come into the class download folder, into the design process folder, and the last folder called project folder, we'll have some additional folders inside. Now, these folders are going to help us organize our project. So to begin, I would recommend you copy this folder and paste it somewhere you will be able to access through this part of the class. For now, I'm going to paste all my files into the folder I created earlier in this class. So once you have your project folder set up, let's start art working poster. So in in design to begin, I'm going to set up a new document. I'll come up to file new and select document. Now, on this occasion, I'm going to use a standard print size document. On the top tab, I'll click print. I'll click view or presets. I'll select A three. Over on the right, I'll make sure my orientation is set to portrait. I'll set my units to millimeters. Now, this is just my personal preference. You could use whatever units you feel most comfortable with. Deselect facing pages. I'll leave pages set to one for now. On this occasion, I'll set my margins to zero. I'll set the bleed to 3 millimeters, and I'll do this because some printers like a three millimeter bleed when sending off to print, so I'll just do this at the start. I'll leave my slug set to zero and click Create, and up will pop my new document. So here we have our new document set up and you can see around the outside, we have the bleed line. Now, for those who don't know what that is, it's where you extend your artwork off the canvas area. When a printer cuts the artwork, they can trim a little bit off so you don't get white borders. Again, if we press W on the keyboard, we can flick between normal and preview mode, and you can see when in preview mode, you cannot see the bleed line. Now, if you're following along, make sure you can see your control panel at the top of your UI. If not, come up to window and make sure there is a tick next to control. Now, you're also going to need to have your swatches, layers, and links panel visible, so make sure to come up to window and click these to activate. Another thing to make sure of is come up to edit, scroll down to transparency blend space, and make sure to select document RGB, and this will prevent your images from looking dull when you bring them in. Lastly, if we come up to view, come down to display performance on this occasion, let's make sure to select high quality display. So that's our document setup, and before we continue, I'd like to save it. So I'll come up to file, save as navigate to the project folder we set up early in the class, into the second folder, concept and design, into the design folder and save it in the design folder as Bolts surge step. Okay, so before we start adding any visual elements, I want to set up a grid. Now, looking back at one of my original sketches, I really like this idea here of having a very typographic poster and having the statement footwear for the feelers run boldly down the left hand side with the product image in the bottom right. As you can see, I like the idea of the sentence running across five lines. This was a really rough sketch initially, but when I looked at this poster design a little closer in my scamp draft. I worked out that to do this, I would position the type on a baseline grid and each line would fit into three baseline grids like Zoe. For this poster design, I determined that I would need a baseline grid of 17 for five lines to fit into three lines and to give me two leftover for foot elements, one on the top, and one on the bottom. As you can see here, I planned to position all the type elements within the baseline grid structure. So first, I'll set up a simple baseline grid to match my sketch. Do this, I'll come up to layout and select Create Guides. Upon click, le Pop a menu, and in here, we can easily set our parameters. Now, I know I want a baseline grid of 17 on my page. First, I'll make sure preview is checked, and for the rows, I'll type in 17, and for now, I'll set the gutter to zero, click k, and now the poster Canvas is divided into a baseline grid of approximately 17. So with the initial grid setup, we can start to bring in some visual elements. Now, depending on your design, sometimes it can be easier to start with the image elements of a poster. But for this particular design, I want this to be primarily type based and include the image on top. So to begin, I'm going to start with the type elements in the background. So looking back at my sketch, I want the main heading type of the poster to sit on the left hand side and run across five lines. So let's start with this part. To start, I'll come over to the tools menu. Click on the type tool, come over and draw a frame to start under the first baseline and drag onto the bottom baseline across the page like Z. Upon release, we will have our first frame, which I can place in some type. So at this point, I'll jump into the Poster content Dock, and I can do this by coming into the class download folder, into the Bolts media kit folder, and double clicking on the content deck shortcut to open in the browser. So on page three, I'll see the poster text contents. For this poster, I'll go with option two. I'll copy the title, then back into in design, I'll paste it in, and now we have our first bit of type, which is small. So I'll quickly push up the font size to around 50 so we can see what we are working with here. So at this point, I need to look at how I'm going to fit this type into my baseline grid as I designed previously in my scap. And also, what type face am I going to use? So first, let's look at the typeface I'm going to use. So at this point, I could use any typeface, but I already have an idea of what I want to work with. In a previous step, I undertook some typeface research where I looked at a range of typefaces I'd like to use. Now, on the first page of my research, I quite liked the look of this type face here. The reason for that is because of its condensed nature, which would allow me to fit the headline onto the page. And if we look at my scamp, this is how I planned it would work. So to start, I'll apply my font, and here I'm going to start with the typeface Zoom Cut. With its large cap height to letter width, this is a particularly condensed typeface. So a good option if you want to achieve a text heavy headline in your poster design. Also, this typeface has a very distinct look and feel with its slight indentations, which gives it a bit of a flare. This is a very bold and impactful font and would work really well in this particular design direction. This is an adobe font and can be used for free if you have an adobe account. You can find the link in the typeface PDF in the class download folder. In folder one design process, in folder five typography, and if you open the PDF, you can simply click the font and it will take you to the link. Now, if you're watching this and you do not have an Adobe account, for whatever reason, for now, I'd recommend you use BBAs, which is a free font which you can get by clicking on BBs on the type PDF. This is another condensed font that should work just fine. So Ben in design, I'll select the type and up in the font selector, I'll type in Zoom and apply the font. Next, to adjust the size. So with the type fa selected, I'll just type in 200 points and hit Enter. Now, I'll just punch up the points until I can see the x height of the letter forms in the top row. I'll fit nicely into three rows of the baseline grid, just like my sketcher. Now, in doing so, we can see that the leading between the words is way off. With the type still selected, I'll press and hold alt and press up on the keyboard until the letter forms fit nicely into three baselines like Z. Now we can see we have achieved something very similar to my scap, and the type is looking really bold there. Now, at this stage, we could even tweak the tracking, but I'll leave that for now. Now, if I quickly press escape and then V to activate the selection tool, I can grab the middle frame anchor on the right and pull out to the right. And we will see the words will come across. But in this instance, I actually want the words to cut across into the next line. So this is one occasion I actually want to have hyphenation turned on. Up in the control panel, I'll click the paragraph formatting control button. We can see that in the middle, we have the hyphenation turned on. I'll move the frame back across so my type breaks into each line like so. Perfect. So now for some quick housekeeping. Over in the Layers panel, I'll double click on the Layer name and change this to type. So with the biggest piece of type in place, let's look at the next one. Looking back at my scamp, here I also want to include a paragraph of type to the right of my header. Back into in design, I want to place a new text box here on the right. So with the type tool again selected, I'll try and click and drag up to the top right. But when I do that, it's selecting back into the type box. So this time, I'll grab the frame tool and draw the box, and it should place the box here with no problem. Next, I'll select the type tool and click once into the box, back into my content document. I'll copy the paragraph text, back into in design, I'll paste, and push the type up to 25 points so I can see it. Now things are starting to get a little loose here on my page. My main headline is positioned nicely in the baseline grid, but now we have this paragraph text box, where am I going to position it? So I have my baseline grid looking at how I manage things vertically, but what about horizontally? Now, I didn't think about this in the sketch. But as I look to bring it to life here, I could think about this now. A solution here would be to bring in a column grid to give some structure. So at this point, I'll come up to layout, click margins, and columns, and apple pop in menu. So I'll go ahead and look at how many columns I can use. So first, I'll make sure that the preview tick is selected, and I'll type five into the column number and click into the Gutter to apply. Now, I don't think this is looking right. My problem here is it looks like the headline has no way to sit on the left side of the page. So here I'll look at a margin, but only on the left and right. So I'll come up to margin and make sure that there is a line through the lock, so they are not all the same. Then on the left, I'll push it up to 20 as I like to have a round number, and I think that looks good. So I'll type 20 for the right, and that looks like a nice space on the left and right for my margin space. Ever, I still don't think I have adequate columns for the new textbox. Sometimes when it comes to columns, you have to play around with this a little. So I'll go ahead and type seven this time. And I think that's looking a lot more promising. See here, I have two columns here where I can place my elements down the right hand side. Lastly, I'll bring the gutter space down. I'll type 2 millimeters. I'll click, move my headline, so it sits nicely on the left margin and resize my new paragraph frame to sit into the two far right columns. And I think this is beginning to work. Keep in mind that sometimes you will have to make some adjustments to grids and things on the fly as you develop your composition. Even though I had a good idea of the baseline grid from my scam, I didn't think about the columns. So when working this up in software, I needed to solve this problem here. Okay, so this sorts out my grid structure for this poster. Time to bring in my next type elements. So looking back at the scamp, there are some footer elements and some other type elements, but next, I'll look to place in the footer elements. So looking at the scamp, I want to include three lines of type, which I can see on the copy deck. I want these to sit equ distant from each other at the base of the poster design. Now the most straightforward way to do this is to use a simple table. In my poster, I'll select the frame tool. I'll draw a frame from the left margin on the last baseline and drag to the bottom right margin of the poster. Having this new column grid here is really helping me. Next, I'll select the type tool and click into the frame. I'll come up to table and click Insert table. I know my body rows will be one, and I'll set the columns to three and click k, and there is my table. Now, I'll click on my selection tool, which will select the frame, and I'll come over to the middle of the control panel and click a line center. And now the table will sit nicely in the middle of the frame, sitting perfectly in the bottom baseline space. Perfect. Now, I'll just come into the copy deck and select each footer one at a time. Come back into the poster, click the Type tool, click into the table and paste in its contents. And I'll do this for the middle cell and the far right cell. So right now, the type is justified to the left in each table cell. So with the type tool, I'll click into the middle table cell, and up in the control panel, I'll set the text to align center. I'll click into the third cell, and up in the control panel, I'll select the text to align right. Next, with the type tool, I'll click into the first cell and drag across into the third frame, so it's all selected. Then up in the control panel, I'll make sure that all the lines are blue in the table stroke box and set the table stroke to zero. I'll click the selection tool to D select, then press W to enter into preview mode, and now we can see the type in the footer is positioned exactly how I want it. Perfect. So before we move on, let's look at the typeface for these two new type elements. So the font I'm using for the headline is Zoom. But this is an epo case font only, and I do not want the paragraph font to be epacse as well. So I'm going to need to apply a different font. So to compliment the bold sand serf typeface in the header, I think I'm going to look for a clean sand serf typeface for the other type elements, but nothing that is going to compete too much. So looking back at my typeset, on the first page, there is one typeface I thought looked like it could work well. For my body copy, I chose to go with a typeface called Dagla. This looks like a nice clean sanseraf with a nice look and feel to it, and it has a very subtle personality and flare that will work well in my design to complement the header typeface. This is another adobe font and can be used for free if you have an Adobe account. If you open the type research PDF, you can simply click the font and it will take you to the link. If you don't have an Adobe account for whatever reason, for now, I'd recommend you use Archivo, which is a free Google font, which you can get by clicking Archivo on the Type PDF. Go back into design, I'll select the paragraph frame once and then double click into it and dive into the type selection. I'll press command A for Mac or Control A for PC, and up in the font section, I'll type in D go and select medium. I'll hit the paragraph formatting button and deselect hyphenation, and just press Escape to deselect the type, and I'll leave the type as it is for now. Next, I'll select the type tool, click once into the first cell of the table and drag across to select all. Up in the Font selector, I'll type in D go and choose medium. I'll set the size to 18. Then I'll come to type, scroll down to change case, and select uppercase. Click on the selection tool to D select and press W to enter into preview mode, and that's looking good so far. But I'll quickly double click into the first frame to select the type. I'll click and drag to select all three, and I'll press and hold Alt and press right five times to push out the tracking a bit to give the type some more space. I'll click on the selection tool again to D select, and that is looking good so far. Looking back at the sketch, I can see that I also want the web address to be in the top left. An easy way to do this will be to duplicate the type below. I'll press W to go back into normal mode with the selection tool, I'll click on the bottom foot to frame, and while holding alt, I'll drag it up and place it into the top baseline space to make it quick duplicate. Easy. So now, in my copy dock, I'll select the web address, and with the type tool, I'll select all free frames and press delete to remove the type. Then I'll click once back into the first cell and paste and it will sit in there nicely. Looking back at the sketch, there was another type element I wanted to include, and that is the product number and name of the sneaker as a design element to sit in the bottom right of the poster next to the product image, but align vertically. Also, on the sketch, I wanted this to be in uppercase, similar to the main header font. On this occasion, I'm going to look to use the same font as the head. So back into design, I'll press W to enter into normal mode. With the selection tool, I'll click on the head of frame, press and hold alt and drag to the right to drag a copy into the pasteboard area. I'll come into the poster content deck, product name page, and I'll select the name for surge step, copy and back into Indesign, paste it in L exo. On this occasion, it will completely disappear because the type is now too large for the frame. With the frame selected, I'll come up to window and select properties. In the properties window, I'll come down to type size and set this to 50, and now we can see the type inside. Right now, I have my type and a huge frame around it. A quick tip here, if you have a type box with only a small amount of type in it. If you double click on the bottom right anchor point, the frame will snap to hug the type inside, which will make it a lot easier to work with. Great. So I'll drag the new type element into the poster. I'll press r to activate the rotation tool. I'll place my mouse cursor next to the bottom right anchor point and click and drag up and hold shift to snap to approximately 90 degrees. I'll press V to activate the selection tool, and I'll drag it down to sit against my grid comfortably in the bottom right so. So, now looking at my sketch, I also want this weight to be different here. So I'll use the text tool to select the first four letters. I'll come up to the drop down on the font family and change this to light, and that's created a nice bit of contrast there. Also, you may have seen that the type no longer fits in the frame. So I'll zoom in and use the selection tool to grab the middle anchor and I'll just drag it up like so. Now on this occasion, I want to try a different style and effect for this. So with the Type tool, I'll select Serge step. Then over in the Tools panel, I'll make sure the type icon is selected, and I'll click the Swap fill and stroke to set a stroke effect to the type instead. I'll come over to the stroke panel and set this to not 0.5. I'll click on the selection tool and click off to D select and press Command plus zero on MAC or Control plus zero on PC to fit the Canvas area to my work area, and we can get a good look at this. And our main type elements are now composed on our poster. I'll press W, and we can see that the header sits perfectly in the baseline grid on the left margin. Paragraph sits nicely in the last two columns comfortably, and the foot elements sit in the bottom and top baseline space perfectly. So right now, I feel the type is working and is in a good spot, and I can begin to think about working with images. So looking back at my sketch, we can see that for this poster, I want to include an image of the product at the bottom right. Looking at the content deck. On the product lineup page, there is a product here called surge step, and this is the one I thought would work well in this poster composition. Looking at my poster design, I plan to have this sitting in the bottom right in that space next to the type and possibly cover some of the type to achieve some dynamic layering to suggest a clear visual hierarchy to get you to look at it first. So let's see how we can get this image into our poster. First, let's jump into the class download folder and into the Bolt media kit folder. This is the folder that the client has supplied, which includes everything we need to design the posters. I'll come into the product images folder and start by opening the surge step image in Photoshop. This is the product image that has been supplied to us. Right now, as it stands, this image is not going to work because for my design, I want to have the image. Out. So for this poster design, I'm going to have to cut the sneaker out first. Thankfully, this is a very clear image, and it should be very straightforward to cut this out. So I'll just zoom in here to get a better view. What I can do is come over to the rectangle Marquee tool. I'll draw a selection around it and up in the Control panel and click Select and Mask. Up in the control panel, again, I'll click Select Object, and Photoshop will do its best to select the sneaker. Now, if I zoom in here, I can see that it's not perfect. Now, there is another thing that you can do here. Over in the Tools menu, there's a button here called Object Selection Tool. If I click this and move my mouse over the sneaker, Photoshop will see what I'm trying to select as an object. I click this once, I will see all the imperfect bits have magically been brought back, and that is looking a lot better. Now, if I zoom in on this, I can still see some bits that need to be removed. I can do this easily by clicking on the Polygon Lasso tool, and if I press and hold alt, the icon will turn to a negative. If I start to click around, once I get back to the staff and then double click to commit to the selection, it will take that part away. So I can spend a little more time going around my object here and fine tuning the selection, and once I'm happy with it, I can click in the bottom right corner, and the selection will be made. The new selection, I can come over to the Lays panel, and at the bottom, I can click the Ad layer mask button. Upon clicking, I have now added a layer mask and cut out the sneaker. Perfect. Now, I don't want the image to be this large. I don't need the space around the sneaker. So I'll come into my lays panel. Press and hold command on Mac or Control on PC and click on the Layer mask. Upon click, a selection around the sneaker will be made. And if I now press C on the keyboard to crop, a crop box will appear around the sneaker. At the top in the control panel, I make sure delete crop pixels is unchecked and press enter twice, and that will crop the image. Perfect. So I'll press command Shift F on MAC or Control Shift S on PC to save. I'll navigate to my project folder. I set up earlier and save this into the assets folder and save this as surge step PSD. So now I have the sneaker image nice and prepared. I can now bring it into in design. So back into in design, before I bring in my new images, I'm going to do some housekeeping. Over in the layers panel, I'll come and click the plus icon on the bottom right. This will add a new layer, and I'll call this images. Now I'll click the Lock icon on the type layers so as to not accidentally select anything while I'm dealing with the image I'm about to bring in. So with the images layer selected, I'll press Command D on MAC or Control D on PC on the keyboard to bring in an image. So here, I'llnavigate to the project folder into the concept and design folder into the design folder, into the Assets folder and select Serge Step PSD and click Open. Then click and drag a frame like so to drop in the image. Easy. So once the image is in in design, it's easy to resize and position. With the image selected, I'll press S on the keyboard, and this will activate scale. Now, the best practice here is to move your mouse just under the bottom right anchor point, and if I press and hold shift, then click and drag, you can increase or decrease the image size to scale like, so. So I'll just scale up the image until I'm happy and place it in the bottom like so. So that's the first image in my poster. Now, if we come across and look in the link panel, we will now see our image in here. It's from here where we can keep an eye on the links inside our document where we can make edits and changes in future. So next, I want to bring in another image that will work as a background image. Now, as part of the media kit provided, there appears to be a range of graphical textures. For this design, I'd like to use one of these to add some interesting texture to the background. In design, I'll come over to the layers panel, add a new layer and call this base. I'll be sure to click and drag this to the bottom, so it's under my other layers. Again, I'll hit the lock icon on the image layer to not accidentally select this. So I'll come over to the frame tool. I'll press W to enter into normal mode so I can see the bleed around my canvas area. I'll click and drag a frame from the top of the left bleed corner down to the bottom right. My frame in place, and it's selected, I'll press command D on Mac or Control D on PC to place in an image. So here, I'll navigate to the media kit folder provided into the texture folder, and I'll select Gel Flux J peg and click open. Upon click, this will place into the frame. Right now, the image is in the frame, but we can see it's not positioned in the frame correctly. Now, if I zoom out here with the frame selected, if I press A, this will activate the direct selection tool. This will then enable me to click into the frame and select the image inside. If you do this correctly, you will see the outline of the image is now visible. So what I'll do here is move my mouse over the middle right anchor point. I'll press and hold shift plus t and then drag to the right carefully. And as I do this, I can scale the image up inside the frame like so. What I'll do here is scale the image up inside to crop more into it like so. Easy. If I press W to enter into preview mode, we can see the image in the background more clearly. With the image still selected in the frame, I'll press up or down to reposition the image inside to position how I feel it works the best. The next image I want to bring into this poster is the logo. I'll press W to go back into normal mode. In the layers panel, I'll hit the lock on the base layer and this time, unlock the type and the images layer. I'll select the image layer and press command D on Mac or Control D on PC to place an image. I'llnavigate to the media kit, and I'll click into the logo folder and select the Bolts logo Black EPS file and click open. So this time, I'll come up to the top of the poster. I'll click at the start of the second from last column. Click and drag across the last two columns and release. The logo will now be placed inside the poster across two columns. And for now, I'll move my paragraph type below to give it some space. The last image I want to bring into this poster is the little bolt icons to sit in the footer. On the images layer, press command D on MAC or Control D on PC to place an image. I'll navigate to the media kit. I'll click into the images folder and select the bolt icon. Black EPS file and click Okay. This time, I'll come to the bottom near the footer and click and drag to place in a small bolt icon. Then I'll press S to activate scale. Move my mouse cursor to the bottom right and click and drag while holding Shift to scale to a size I'm happy with and place between the first and second footer element. Click on the selection tool, click and hold lt and drag to the right to quickly duplicate the bolt icon and place between the second and third footer text. I'll press command zero on Mac or control zero on Windows to fit my poster to the view area. I'll press W to go into preview mode, and now all the major elements are included in the poster. So up to this point, we have been working to get all our elements into the poster design. This point, everything is now in the poster, but it's important to keep in mind that nothing is final yet. I still have some tweaking to do to get this all perfect. Now everything is in, we can now start to think about color and finalizing our design. When it comes to poster design, I typically don't start thinking about color until the overall poster composition is in a good spot. I typically work in black and white, and once everything is in, I can then start sampling colors and applying colors. The first thing I'm going to address is the background. I like the texture, but right now I think it's way too vibrant and takes away from the impact of the type and sneaker image. I'll come into the layers panel unlock the base layer. I'll select the background image frame, come into the link panel, click the edit original button, and for me, it'll open in photoshop. For this image, I want to transform it into a black image so I can really punch out the type on top. I'll come down to the bottom of the layers panel, hit the adjustment layer icon and select black and white. I'll then press command shift N on MAC or Control Shift N on PC to create a new layer. I'll come to the Paint Bucket tool. I'll make sure to set to 100% up in the control panel. I'll set my fill color to black and click once to fill this in, and I'll set the lay opacity to 80% for now. So I'll press command S on MAC or Control S on PC to save. I'll navigate to the project folder into the Concept and design folder into the design folder, into the assets folder, and save this as Gel flux dot PSD. Now, back in in Design, I'm going to replace the current image in the background with the new image I just created. So there are a few ways we can do this. One is to come into the Links panel, right click on the Link and select Rink, and navigate to the project folder, into the concept and design folder, into the design folder, into the assets folder, and select the Doc I just created, gel flux Black dot PSD. Click open, and now that will update in our in design. But right now it's looking a bit flat. So with the image selected, I'll click again in the edit original image to jump back into Photoshop. So this time, I want to add more contrast to the image. So the black and white adjustment layer selected, I'll come down and this time add a levels adjustment layer and pull the right handles in to increase the blacks. I'll change the opacity of the black layer on top 80-60%. I'll press Command W and Mac or Control W on windows to close and save. Then back into in design, the image will update, and we can now see a more dynamic image in the background. Great. So now I'm going to change all my type to white real quick. With the selection tool, I'll click the headline frame, press and hold shift and select the paragraph frame next to it. With them both selected, I can come over to the fill and background color in the Tools menu and make sure to click the T symbol below. This will make it, so whatever color I set here will apply to the text. So I'll come over to the Swatches Panel and set this to White. One set, I'll select the Type tool, click once over the top footer element to click into it. I'll then press Command A on Mac or Control A on PC to select. Again, make sure the type icon is clicked on under the fill and background color and set the fill color to white. I'll click once into the left footer element at the bottom to click into the cell. Then drag across to select all three. Again, make sure the type icon is clicked on under the fill and background color and set the fill color to white. Then click off with the selection tool to D select. Next with the Type Tool, I'll click into the product name frame. I'll select the first four letters and change the fill color to white. Then I'll select the rest, click on the stroke color and set this to white. Perfect. Okay, so now all the type elements are set to white. I need to change the color of the logo and the both icons below. So again, these are all links inside in design. This time, if I press A on the keyboard to activate the direct selection tool, I can click directl 12. TUT #2 - Modern Column Grid Design / Adobe Illustrator: So now we can move on to the second poster design exercise in this masterclass. In the previous video, we looked at how to create a poster design in in design. Now in design is a powerful layout tool, but some designers may have a preference to work with Illustrator. So the purpose of this video is to demonstrate how Illustrator can also be used to develop quality poster designs. In this step, we move into a new phase. The previous phase was all about generating ideas for our poster design. Now we have some solid ideas in the bag. It's time to enter the third phase of the design process, where we come to artwork our design on the computer. In this video, I'll demonstrate how to use the tools of Illustrator to create this poster design specifically, and later, we will look at how to make some variations. So to create our poster in Illustrator, we are going to cover the same steps we used in the previous tutorial. Step one, project folder setup, step two, document setup, Step three, grid setup, step four, working with type, Step five, working with image, step six, working with color, step seven, refine composition, Step eight, create layout variations, and step nine exporting. This is a methodical process that will ensure we create quality poster designs and not leave anything unchecked. So get ready for another design adventure. After this video, you will be able to create dynamic posters like this in Adobe Illustrator, Super Easy. So let's get into it. So here I am in Illustrator, and these are some dynamic posters I created earlier using the techniques I am about to demonstrate. If we were to take a look at these, you can find them in the class project folder. These are located in folder two poster templates. If you open the Illustrator folder, you should be able to see the file called Luna lift. So in the Illustrator poster document, what I have done here is develop a poster design from one of my sketches, which I have here, and I have looked at how this could work in different variations with different fonts with a light and dark color approach. If I come up to view and click off Trim view and press command colon on MAC or Control Clon on PC, I can toggle on and off the guides, where you can see the grid system that I have used to structure this poster design. So your 11th task for this class is to follow along with my poster design method. The purpose of this task is for those of you who may be unfamiliar with Illustrator. This is a chance to learn crucial techniques and get comfortable working in a Dope Illustrator. Now, this stage is optional. You can either watch and participate or follow along and develop your own poster design. However, I will be encouraging you to do this later. So let's now jump into Illustrator and look at how we can develop a poster like this, and we are going to start with Step one. Now, as demonstrated in previous posted tutorials, a step I always like to take before I begin any project is to set up a project folder. This is going to set me up to be super organized and have a place to keep all my assets and know where everything is. When working in Illustrator, it helps to be organized to improve your workflow. So I can either set this up from scratch or I can duplicate a folder I created earlier in the class. So if you've not already done this as part of the class, go into the class download folder, into the design process folder. The last folder called project folder will have some additional folders inside. Folders are going to help us organize our project. So to begin, I would recommend you copy this folder and paste it somewhere you will be able to access through this part of the class. For now, I'm just going to save all my files into the folder I created earlier in the class. Once you have your project folder set up, let's start art working, the poster. In Illustrator, to begin, I'm going to set up a new document. I'll come up to file new and select document. Now, on this occasion, I'm going to use a standard print size document. On the top tf, I'll click Print. I'll click view or presets. I'll select A three. On the right, I'll make sure my orientation is set to portrait, I'll set the units to millimeters. I'll set my bleed to 3 millimeters, and I'll do this because some printers like a three millimeter bleed when sending off to print. I'll just do this at the start. I'll set my color to RGB and make sure my raster is set to 300 and click create and upward pop my new document. You may be wondering why I set it to RGB. Well, I like to start with RGB because if I decide to use this artwork for a digital composition later, perhaps for a social media post, it's not easy to change the colors from CMYK to RGB. However, it is easy to convert the colors into CMYK from RGB. So to avoid extra work in future, I'd like to start with RGB. So here we have our new document set up, and you can see around the outside, we have the bleed line. For those who don't know what that is, it's where you extend your artwork off the Canvas area. When a printer cuts the artwork, they can trim a little bit off so you don't get white borders. Again, if I press command colon on Mac or control colon on PC, I can toggle on and off the guides to toggle on and off the bleed line. If you're following along, make sure you can see your control panel at the top of your UI. If not, come up to window and make sure there is a tick next to control. Now, you're also going to need to have your swatches, layers, and links panel visible, so make sure to come up to window and click them to activate and have them to hand. In this instance, I have a lot of these panels down the side here. So that's our document set up, and before we continue, I'd like to save it. So I'll come up to file save as and navigate to the project folder we set up earlier in the second folder concept and design into the design folder, and I'll save it in the Illustrator folder and call this Lunar lift. Okay, before we start adding any visual elements, I want to set up a grid. Now, looking back at one of my original sketches, I really like this idea here of having a typographic poster and having the product image set on top of the product name repeated in the background. I like the idea of this being a symmetrical design. And since the product is called Lunar lift, I thought it would be cool to have it floating in the middle in space with perhaps a cropped moon coming in from the top and the bottom. Perhaps some footer elements positioned at the side. Now, this was a really rough sketch initially. But when I looked at this poster design a little closer in a scamp draft, I worked out that to lay all my elements out neatly, I would position everything in columns. For this poster design, I determined I would need a column grid of 16. Here you can see how I want to position my type aligned in the center so I can have a nice clear space left and right with approximately two columns on each side. Now, in my sketcher, I did not account for a margin space around the poster. When I come to second this up, I think I'm going to look to include one. Setting up a grid in Illustrator is a little different from setting a grid up in design. There are various ways to do this, but here is a really good tip on how to set up a column grid in Illustrator. To begin, I want to establish my margin space. To do this, I'll come up to illustrator settings on Mac or edit on PC and click units. With the manu open, I'll be sure to set general to millimeters and click k. I'll come over to the Shape tool, grab the rectangle tool and draw a box to the full size of the Canvas area. Next, I'll come up to object path and click Offset Path. When the menu appears, I'll type in minus ten and set mita limit to zero and click Okay, and this will reduce the size of the box by ten mills. So I now know that there is a ten mill margin around my Canvas area. Okay, now to set the grid. So with my shape selected, I'll come up to object, down to path, come across and select split into grid. Upon click, a menea pair. First, I'll click on preview, and up in the rows, I'll leave this to one. In the columns, I'll set this to 16. In this instance, I'll leave the gutter set to zero. Notice now how the grid is set into the shape. Once happy, I'll click k. Now this is where the magic happens. With the block still selected, I'll come up to view, scroll down to guides, come across and select, make guides. Upon click, we will now transform the block into guides, which we can now use for our poster design. To finish, I'll come over to the Layers panel. Double click on the top layer and name this grid. And now I have a nice column grid I can begin to develop my poster with. And if I press either command colon on Mac or control colon on PC, we can toggle on and off the guides. Perfect. So with my margin, guides, and bleed setup, I can now begin to compose my visual elements on the page. Depending on your design, sometimes it can be easier to start with a image element for the poster. But for this particular design, I want this to be heavily type based and include the image on top. To begin, I'm going to start with the type elements in the background. Looking back at my sketch, I want the main heading type on the poster to sit at the top of the poster and for the name of the product to repeat in the middle. This occasion, I think I'm going to work my way out from the middle, so I'll start with the repeated bit of type in the middle. To start, I'll come over to the Tools menu. I'll select the type tool and click once in my poster. Upon click, this will create a type element. Right now, I have a default Fontupli, but that's okay. I'm not going to worry about that too much right now. So looking at my sketch, I want to place some repeated texts in the middle with the name of the product. So I'll jump into the poster content Dock, and I can do this by coming into the Class download folder, into the Bolts Media kit folder and double clicking on the Content deck shortcut to Open in browser. On page four, I'll see the product names. I'll copy the product name for Lune Lift. Back into Illustrator, I'll paste this in, and now we have our first bit of text. Depending on your default properties, here, I'll just push the type up a little bit to fit on the poster. With it selected, up in the control panel, I'll select a line center, and I'll also click and drag on the corner pin while holding shift to scale the type up or down like so. So with my first piece of type in the poster, I'll quickly want to change the typeface for this. So at this point, I could use any typeface, but I already have an idea of what I want to work with. In a previous step, I undertook some type research where I looked at a range of typefaces I'd like to use. Now, on the first page of my research, I quite like the look of this typeface here. The reason for that is because of its condensed nature. Looking at the scamp drawing, we can see that I need a condensed type in order to capture this stacked repeated text. With its large cap height to letter width, this is a particularly condensed typeface. A good option if you want to fit a wide word on your poster design across the page. Also, this typeface has a very distinct look and feel with its slight indentations, which gives it a bit of a flare. This is a very bold and impactful font that would work really well in my design solution. This is an adobe font and can be used for free if you have an adobe account. Find the link in the Typeface PDF in the class download folder in Folder one design process, in folder five typography. If you open the PDF, you can simply click the font and it will take you to the link. Now, if you're watching this and you do not have an Adobe account, for whatever reason, for now, I'd recommend you use BBS, which is a free font, which you can get by clicking on BBAS on the Type PDF. This is another condensed font that should work just fine. Back in Illustrator, I'll select the type and up in the Font selector, I'll type in Zoom and apply the font. Now, I'll quickly double click into the type, and while holding Alt, I'll hit right a few times to push out the tracking a little and add more space between the letter form. Once I feel that's looking nice, I'll click on the selection tool, grab the corner and scale up, so it touches the last but one column like so. So looking back at the sketch, I want to repeat this product name around four times in the middle of the page. This can be done really easily. So I'll double click into the type, select all the type copy, then hit right on the keyboard to place the corner at the end of the type. Simply press enter and paste, enter and paste, and enter and paste until I repeat it four times. Next, I need to tweak the leading. Again, I'll double click into the type and select it all. Then down in the character panel, I'll be sure to adjust the leading, and I'll pull this in until I have something that looks like this. Now I have this type element in the middle of the poster. I can move on to the next. Looking at my sketch, I want to include the head at the top. Back into Illustrator, I'll select the type, and while holding Alt, I'll click and drag up to duplicate the type above. Back into the contents deck. On page three, I need to focus on the type for option one. I'll select the word evolve, I'll copy, and back into Illustrator, I'll double click into the type. Press Command A on Mac or Control A on PC to select all and I'll paste. Next, I'll do the same. Back into the contents deck. I'll select the first part, experience Sneaker. Then back into Illustrator, double click on the new type layer. Select All and paste. This is way bigger than I want, and here I'm also going to use another typeface to give more prominence to the header type below. To compliment the bold San Seraf typeface and the header, I want to look for a clean Sanseraf typeface, nothing that is going to compete too much. Looking back at my type sheets on the first page, there is one typeface I thought looked like it could work quite well. For my secondary typeface, I chose to go with chivo. This looks like a nice clean Sanseraf and comes with a huge font family with a huge range of weights. Typeface has a very subtle personality and flare that will work really well in my design to compliment the header, typeface. Now, what's great about this typeface is that it's a free Google font. Simply click on Archivo in the typeset doc and you can acquire it. Back in Illustrator, I'll select the type and up in the Font selector, I'll type in Archivo. I'll select medium and apply the font. With it still selected, I'll reduce the font size to 30 points, and down in the type panel, I'll click on the A CAPs button. I'll press and hold Alt on the keyboard and press right a few times on the keyboard to increase the tracking, so it's around 200 in the type panel. Easy. So with the selection tool, I'll click on my middle bit of type here, and then over in the tools menu at the bottom, I'll hit the swap fill and stroke button once. And that will apply a stroke around the outside of my type, and now we have some nice contrast between the type layers. Next, I'm going to place in the paragraph text that will appear below the repeated type. This time, I'm going to use a different technique with the type tool selected. I'll come down and click and drag a type box from the second column across to meet the last but one column, and upon release, I will create a type box. In the contents deck, on page three, I'll select the paragraph contents for Option one. Back into Illustrator, I'll paste in the new text. I'll click into the box and press Command A on MAC or Control A on PC to select all. I'll change the font size to 23. Make sure the font is set to Archivo Medium, and click on the drop down for leading in the type panel and select Auto. If the type is in OCPs, I'll be sure to click off the All CAPs button. And now I have my first paragraph of type, and I'll also make sure that it's a line center up in the control panel. So that will be good for now. So looking back at the sketch, we can see that under my logo at the bottom, I want to include a slogan. This is a single line, so will require me to duplicate a single line below. Just like before, I'll select the top piece of type, press and hold alt and drag below. Into the contents deck, I'll select the header from O option two. In Illustrator, I'll paste in the type and change the font to size 16 and adjust the tracking to 100 and I'll leave this at the bottom for now. Looking back at my scamp, I also wanted to include four footer elements on the side of the page here and include an icon in between. I need to place four pieces of type here going up the side of the page vertically. A quick technique you can use to do this neatly. First, I'll press command y on MC or control y on PC to enter into outline mode. Now, when we enter into outline mode, we can see the bounding box around the paragraph type. Okay, so I'll select the type tool, and in the pasteboard area, I'll click and draw out a block of type like so. Not too wide and not too tall. Next, I'll come up to the control panel and look to click the Align center button next to the area type option. This will set the type neatly in the center of the box vertically. I'm also going to make sure that this type is aligned center horizontally next to the paragraph option. Perfect. Okay, next, with the selection tool, I'll click and drag while holding Alt on the keyboard to drag and duplicate across until the end meets like so. Upon release, I'll press command D on Mac or Control D on PC, and that will duplicate another box. And I'll press that again, and that will duplicate a fourth box. So with the selection tool, I'll click to select all four boxes. I'll press R on the keyboard to activate rotate. Click and drag up on the mouse while holding shift to snap to 90 degrees, then I'll move them across and into my poster design and place them in the center on the very last column. With the more selected, I'll come up to the top middle anchor and click and drag up or down to fit perfectly into the height of my column grid like so. I'll press command Y on Mac or control Y on PC to come out of outline mode, and we can see the four stacked pieces of type sitting there nicely. So now it's just a case of quickly changing the font and adding the type. So I'll click into the bottom box and press Command A on Mac or Control A on PC to select all, and I'll type out now. Then back into the content deck, I'll select each foota element and come and paste them into the remaining three boxes. Then I'll select the top text box. Press and Hole shift and select the three below until I have all four selected. Down in the character panel, I'll change the font to chivo thin, set the font to 13 points, adjust the tracking to 250 and click the all caps button to make sure the text is in all caps and click off. Next, I'll select the bottom footer element. Press and alt, click and drag over to the left to place at the bottom of the first column. Into the copy deck, I'll select the web address, back into Illustrator, paste it into the type box, and align the type of the bottom footer on the right. I'll click off of the selection tool. I'll press Command colon on Mac or Control Clon on PC to toggle off the guides, and now I have all my type elements inside the poster. Looking back at my sketch, we can see that for this poster, I want to include an image of the product in the middle as if hovering in space on top of the type. This image will become the primary hook for the poster, the attention grabber. Now, looking at the content deck, on the product lineup page, there is a product here called Luna lift. This is the composition with a complete pair of sneakers, composed in a way that looks like they are floating. Looking at my poster design, I initially planned this out by drawing a different shoe, but for the artwork, I'm going to use the right product for this poster. So let's see how we can get this image into our poster. So first, let's jump into the class download folder and into the Bolts mediate kit folder. This is the folder that the client has supplied, which includes everything we need to design the posters. I'll come into the product images folder and start by opening the Lunar lift image in photoshop. This is the product image that has been supplied to us, and right now as it stands, this image is not going to work because for my design, I want to have this image cut out. For this poster design, I'm going to have to cut the sneaker up first. Thankfully, this is a very clear image here, so should be very straightforward to cut this out. I'll just zoom in here to get a better view. And what we can do here is come over to the rectangle Marquee tool. I'll draw a selection around it, and up in the Control panel, I'll click Select and mask. With the quick selection tool selected, up in the Control panel, again, I'll click Select Sbject, and Photoshop will do its best to select the sneaker. Now, if I zoom in here, I can see that it's not perfect. Now, there is another thing you can do here. Over in the Tools menu is a button called Object Selection tool. If I click this and move my mouse over the sneaker, photoshop will see what I'm trying to select as an object. I click this once, I will see all the imperfect bits have magically been brought back, and this is looking a bit better. I can also click on the left to select the other shoe and improve the selection there as well. Now, if I zoom in on this towards the top, I can still see some bits that need to be removed. I can do this easily by clicking on the Polygonal as tool, and if I press and hold alt, the icon will turn to a negative. If I start to click around, once I get back to the start, then double click to commit to the selection, it will take that part away. So I'll do this on the other side to fine tune the selection. Once I'm happy with it, I can click k in the bottom right corner, and a selection will be made. With the new selection, I can come over to the layers panel and at the bottom, I can click the Add Layer mask button. Upon clicking, I have now added a layer mask and cut out the sneaker. Perfect. Now, I don't want the image to be this large. I don't need the space around the sneaker here. I'll come into my layers panel, press and hold command on Mac or Control on PC and click on the Layer mask. Upon click, a selection around the sneaker will be made, and if I now press C on the keyboard to crop, a crop box will appear around the sneaker. At the top in the control panel, I make sure delete crop pixels is unchecked and press enter twice. And that will crop the image. Perfect. So I'll press command Shift S on MAC or Control Shift S on PC to save. I'll navigate to the project folder. I set up earlier and save this into the Assets folder as Luna Lift PSD. Now I have a sneaker image nice and prepared. I can now bring this into Illustrator. Back into Illustrator, before I bring in my new image, I'm going to do some housekeeping. So over in the Lays panel, I'll come and click the plus icon on the bottom layer. We'll add a new layer, and I'll call this images. Now, something you can keep in mind here with the layers panel. If we click on the top right menu and come down to panel options, for example, we can click on small medium or large, but we also have an option here to add a custom size. If I type 70 pixels into other and click Okay, my thumbs will now be a lot bigger so I can see a better visual glance at what's going on on each layer. Now I'll click the Lock icon on the grid layer so as not to accidentally select anything while I deal with the image I'm about to bring in. With the images layer selected, I'll press command Shift P on MAC or Control Shift P on PC on the keyboard to place an image. Here, I'll navigate the project folder into the concept and design folder into the design folder, into the Assets folder, select Lunar Lift PSD, and click Place. Then click and drag a frame like so to drop in the image. Easy. Now there is an image in our document. If we now come over to the L link panel, we can see the Lunar lift PSD. If you can't see a link panel, come up to Window and click Links, this link panel is going to be very important to work with images in future. Be shu, to keep an eye on this for all images in your document. Once the image is in illustrator, it's easy to resize and position. With the image selected, if I come to any one of the anchor points, I can click and drag. If I press and hold shift, then click and drag, you can increase or decrease the image size to scale like so. I'll scale up the image until I'm happy and place it in the middle like so. That's the first image in my poster. Next, I want to bring in another image that will work as a background. Now, as part of the media kit provided, there appears to be a range of images and graphical textures. Looking back at my sketch, this is going to be a very symmetrical design, and I like the idea of the moon cropping into the top and bottom parts of the image to draw the eye into the center of the poster. Now, I want my next image to be placed under everything, so I'll come over to the layers panel, add a new layer and call this base. And I'll be sure to click and drag this to the bottom so it's under all my other layers. Again, I'll hit the lock icon on the image layer as to not accidentally select this. With the new base layer selected, I'll press command Shift P on MAC or Control Shift P on PC to place in an image. I'll navigate to the media it folder provided into the images folder into the texture folder, and I'll select moon dot PNG and place. Then click and drag a frame like so to drop in the image. Now, if like me, you cannot see the image. This is because there is a white layer covering this. When we set up the grid earlier in the process, it actually created a solid white layer. If we unlock and click into the grid layer, you will see a solid white layer. Here, we can simply select this and delete, then hit the lock icon again and come back into the base layer. So I'll zoom out a bit and move up the image of the moon and scale up a little so it's positioned like so. Now, in this instance, I also want another image of the moon below. I'll click and drag the moon down while holding ult and also hold shift to make a quick copy of the moon image and drag it down perfectly straight. For now, I'll just place it down at the bottom like so. Easy. Right now, I have a lot of artwork spilling out of my Canvas area, which can be a little distracting. Illustrator, there is no preview or normal mode like in design. However, you can come up to view and click Trim view, and that will just remove all the visibility of everything in the pasteboard area to allow us to focus more on the poster itself. The next image I want to bring into the poster is the logo. In the layers panel, I'll hit the lock icon on the base layer and this time, unlock the grid layer and image layer. This time, instead of placing a file, I'm going to open a file. I'll press command O on Mac or Control O on PC to open. I'll navigate to the media kit folder provided. Into the logo folder, I'll open bolts logo black dot EPS. Since we are working in Illustrator and working in vector, it's easy to paste in another vector element to give us the flexibility to change the color later on. With this selection tool, I'll select the vector logo copy and jump back into the poster and paste. The logo will now be placed into the dock, and I can come to the far right middle anchor point, press and hold Alt plus shift and click and drag inwards to scale the image down like so. I'll simply place it at the bottom of the composition for now on top of the moon. Easy. So the last image I want to bring into this poster is the little bolt icon to sit in between the type elements on the right footer. So just like the logo, I'll press command O on Mac or Control O on PC to open. I'll navigate to the medicate folder provided into the icons folder, and I'll open Bolt icon black EPS. With the selection tool, I'll select the vector icon, copy and jump back into the poster and paste. I can come to the far right middle anchor point, press and hold both ult and shift, and click and drag inwards to scale the image down. I'll zoom in, scale down to a size I'm happy with, and I'll simply place it in between the top two elements of type. I'll click and drag the icon down while holding Alt and also hold shift to make a quick copy of the icon image and drag it down perfectly straight in between the next type element. I'll do it once again and press command zero on MAC or Control zero on PC to fit the Canvas area to the work area, and now we can see we have our image elements in the poster. Looking back at the sketch, there is one additional element that I want to include. As a small design detail, I also want to include the model number to sit up on the top left of the middle type. For this, I want the typeface to be really condensed like the header title here. I'll select the header type and drag across into the pasteboard area. And if I cannot see this, I'll come up to view and make sure trim view is off. I'll come into the poster content deck and I'll copy the product number from the product page back into Illustrator and paste, and I'll also add the word model before it. I'll click on the selection tool to select the type, and I'll change the weight to light. I'll hold down Alt and press left on the keyboard to pull in the tracking. I'll bring the font size down to 32. I'll press R to activate rotate, click and drag up while holding shift to snap to 90 degrees. Then drag it back into the poster design and position it to align to the top of the repeated type in the background, and also make sure it sits comfortably in the middle of the column to the left. Now, for one last detail. I'll click on the image layer. Zoom in. I'll click on the line tool, then come just under the type and click and drag down to just over the sneaker image. Upon release, I'll come into the stroke panel and set the weight to one. Click in the stroke color and make sure it's set to black, and on the end point, I'll click the drop down and select the circle. I'll click on the Selection tool, click off to D select. Press Command Colon on Mac or Control Colon on PC, Toggle on the guides to see my grid, and zoom out to take a look. And that will just create a small little detail where the product is labeled. Up to this point, we have been working to get all our elements into the composition. At this point, everything is now in the poster, but it's important to keep in mind that nothing is final yet. I still have some tweaking to do to get this all perfect. Now everything is in the poster, we can now start to think about color and finalizing our design. When it comes to poster design, I typically don't start thinking about color until the overall poster composition is in a good spot. I typically work in black and white, and once everything is in, I can then start sampling colors and applying colors. For my poster design, I don't have any specific colors planned. However, I do know that this is a moon themed concept. I do want to keep it bright white, but with a blue twist to reflect on the color of the sneakers and the moon. Here I can take some color inspiration from the sneakers themselves to create a harmonious color theme. A cool technique we can use in Illustrator is to generate a color theme from an image. To do this is simple. So first, I'll come up to view and click off trim view so we can see the pasteboard. I'm going to click on the image of the Sneakers press and hold Alt and click and drag up to make a quick duplicate like so. With the new image selected, I'll come up to window, scroll down to image trace and click to activate the panel. With the panel visible, I'll click the Drop down preset and select six colors. And then Illustrator will process this image. So once it's done, I'll come up to the Control panel and click Expand. Illustrator will process the image and turn it into vector graphics, splitting the image into various vector parts with colors you can select. So now comes the cool P. But the image selected, come into the Swatches panel, click the Top right menu, click the new color group. I'll name this Luna Swatch. Click Okay. And now in the Swatches panel, we can see a new folder with a new color group inside. So this is now a perfect start for us to use color. So I'll come back up to view, click trim view, and come back and focus on the poster design, and now I can start applying some color. With the selection tool, I'll first click on the large block at the top evolution. I'll make sure that the fill color is selected in the Tools menu. Then I'll come across and select the darkest blue in my new color palette. But right now, I want this to be a lot darker. I don't want it to be black, more like a dark navy. An easy way to do this is to come to the color guide panel. With this panel open and the dark blue selected. In the guide panel, you can see a range of shades and tints of that selected color. In this instance, I want to go for a richer, darker navy color. So I'll select one of the darker shades. Come over to the Swatches panel, hit the menu at the top and hit new Swatch. I'll call this dark Navy. On this occasion. I'll make sure to click global color and click, and with the type still selected, I'll come over and set my type to this new dark navy color. And that is looking more like the color I want for my type there. Even though we used the image of the sneakers to create the original theme. I then used the theme to generate a new color that I felt will be better for my overall design. Okay. Now with the selection tool, while holding Shift, I'll click on the other type elements above evolution. Select the paragraph type, select the small label type and the type under the logo to select multiple. With the all selected, I'll come into the Swatches panel and click on the new Dark Navy color. I'll also click on the stroke, Make sure the stroke color is selected, and also apply the dark Navy color. Looking at the type, I think it works, but I still want to bring some blue back into that dark color. Here I can come and double click on the dark Navy color and add a little more blue back into the color by tweaking the handle on the blue value. Click Okay. And because it's a global color, the new color will apply to all elements in the poster with that swatch. Easy. So next with the selection tool, I'll select the type in the middle. I'll make sure the stroke color is selected down in the tools panel, and then choose one of the lighter shades of blue from the theme. I'll select the surrounding foot to elements, make sure the fill color is selected, and down in the tools panel, I'll set this to the same color as applied to the middle type. So now to change the color of the logo and the bolt icons. Because these are simple vector elements in the poster, first, I'll select the logo, and while holding Shift, select all the bolt icons, I'll make sure the fill color is selected down in the tools panel and change this to the dark navy color. And now we have a nice, fresh, dynamic depth of blue color in the poster, which has synergy with the sneaker image. Now, this is looking nice, but I still think we could go further with the moon image in the background. Currently, it's gray, but I'd like to see what a blue tint would look like to complement the overall blue tone we have here in the poster. Now, I could try and apply some color effects here in Illustrator, but it may be better to go to the source. So I'll come into the link panel, and here we can see the moon dot PNG image. So I'll click this and hit the edit in Photoshop button at the bottom of the menu, and now we are back in Photoshop. So currently, this is a PNG, and there is a really easy way to apply a blue tinted to this. So first, I'll jump back into Illustrator. I'll come and click on the middle type. Double click on the lighter 13. TUT #3 - Axial Grid Design / Adobe Illustrator: So now we can move on to the third poster design exercise in this masterclass. In a previous video, we looked at how to create a poster design in in design. Now, in design is a powerful layout tool, but some designers may have a preference to work with Illustrator. So the purpose of this video is to demonstrate how Illustrator can also be used to develop quality poster designs. In this step, we move into a new phase. The previous phase was all about generating ideas for our poster design. Now we have some solid ideas in the bag. It's time to enter the third phase of the design process, where we come to artwork our design on the computer. Here I am in illustrator, and these are some posters I created earlier. In this video, we are going to take a look at the axial grid. Now, this is a grid system where a distinct axis line runs along or through a composition. This axis line can be horizontal, vertical, or diagonal in different directions, and will typically divide a composition into two distinct zones, where text and image can then be placed or aligned on either side of the axis line. This can generate a lot of movement in a composition and create a lot of impact. So in this video, I'll demonstrate how to use the tools of Illustrator to create this poster design specifically. And later, we will look at how to make some variations. To create our poster in Illustrator, we are going to cover the same steps we used in the previous tutorial. Step one, project folder setup, step two, document setup, step three, grid setup, step four, working with image, Step five, working with type, step six, working with color, step seven, refine composition, Step eight, create layout variations, and Step nine, exporting. This is a methodical process that will ensure we create quality poster designs and not leave anything unchecked. So get ready for another design adventure. After this video, you will be able to create dynamic posters like this in Adobe Illustrator, super easy. So let's get into it. So here I am an illustrator, and these are some dynamic posters I created earlier using the techniques I'm about to demonstrate. If you want to take a look at these, you can find them in the class project folder. These are located in folder two poster templates. If you open the illustrator folder, you should be able to see the file called Nopulse. So in the illustrator document, I have done here is develop a poster design from one of my sketches, which I have here, and I have also looked at how this could work in a variety of different versions. Now, if I come up to view and click off Trim view and press command plus Clod on Mac or Control plus Colon on PC, I can toggle on and off the guides, where you can see the grid system that I have used to structure this poster design. So as stated earlier, an axial grid will typically use one prominent line that runs through the center of a composition. Here we can see how this works on each poster. We have an axial line running through the center of each composition and run in perpendicular across the axial line. I have some other lines, which will serve to help align text and other elements to the main axial line. So your 11th task for this class is to follow along with my poster design method. The purpose of this task is for those of you who may be unfamiliar with Illustrator. This is a chance to learn crucial techniques and get comfortable working in a Dope Illustrator. Now, this stage is optional. You can either watch and participate or follow along and develop your own poster design. However, I will be encouraging you to do this later. Let's now jump into Illustrator and look at how we can develop a poster like this. We are going to start with Step one, project folder setup. Now, a quick step I'd like to take before I begin any project is to first set up a project folder. This is going to set me up to be super organized and have a place to keep all my assets and know where everything is. When working an illustrator, it helps to be organized to improve your workflow. I can either set this up from scratch or I can duplicate a folder I created earlier. If you've not already done this in the class, go into the class download folder, into the design process folder. The last folder called project folder will have some additional folders inside. These folders are going to help us organize our project. T begin, I would recommend you copy this folder, paste it somewhere you will access throughout this part of the class. For now, I'm going to save my files into a folder I created earlier in the class. Once you have your project folder set up, let's start artwing poster. Step two, document setup. So in Illustrated to begin, I'm going to set up a new document. I'll come up to file new and select document. Now, on this occasion, I'm going to use a standard print size document. So on the top tab, I'll click Print. I'll click view presets. I'll select A three. Over on the right, I'll make sure my orientation is set to portrait. I'll set the units to millimeters. I'll set my bleed to 3 millimeters, and I'll do this because some printers like a three millimeter bleed when sending off to print. So I'll do this at the start. Set my color to RGB, make sure my raster is set to 300 and click Create. And up will pop my new document. Now, you may be wondering why I set this to RGB. Well, I like to start with RGB because if I decide to use this artwork for a digital composition later on, perhaps for a social media post, it's not easy to change the colors from CMYK to RGB. However, it is easy to convert the colors into CMYK from RGB. So to avoid extra work in the future, I like to start with RGB. So here we have our new document set up, and you can see around the outside, we have the bleed line. Now, for those of you that don't know what that is, it's where you extend your artwork off the canvas area. So when a printer cuts the artwork, they trim a little bit off so you don't get white edges. Again, if I press command plus colon on Mac or control plus colon on PC, I can toggle on and off the guides to toggle on and off the bleed line. Now, if you're following along, make sure you can also see your control panel at the top of your UI. If not, come up to window and make sure there is a tick next to control. Now, you're also going to need to have your swatches, layers, and links panel visible come to window and click these to activate and have them to hand. In this instance, I have a lot of panels down here on the side. So that's our document set up, and before we continue, I'd like to save it. So I'll come up to file, save as, and navigate to the project folder we set up earlier in the class, into the second folder, concept and design, into the design folder, and save it in the Illustrator folder as No pulse. Okay, so before we start adding any visual elements, I want to set up a grid. Now, looking back at one of my original sketches, for one of my ideas, I explored using an axial grid system, setting the product image front and center angled in line with the diagonal axial line across the page with type set perpendicular to the axial line. Now, this was a really rough sketch initially. But when I looked at this poster design a little closer in my scamp draft, I was able to outline my visual elements to get a better idea of how I would like to compose b poster design. I like the idea of cutting the type across the axial line. Here you can see the guides which I have used to align my type elements. Step three, grid sector. So for this poster design, the grid is going to be a little unorthodox. Setting up a diagonal grid like this in Illustrator is a little different from setting a column grid or a modular grid. Here is a good tip on how to set up an axial grid in Illustrator. So the first thing you want to do is start with the main axial line. To do this, you can come over to the line tool, then click and drag across your Canvas area to create the line how you want it. For my poster design here, I have a particular angle in mind. So with the line tool active, I'll click once into the Canvas area and up will pop the line tool option. The length, I'll type in 500. For the angle, I'll type in 225 degrees, I'll click on Fill line and click Okay. Upon click, my stroke line will appear, and I can just click and drag it into the Canvas area with the selection tool. Okay, so this is my main axial line. Now, if we look at my sketch, you can see I have these other lines perpendicular to my main axial line, which I want to use to align my type elements. So to create these lines is easy. With my main axial grid line selected, I'll press Command plus C on Mac or Control plus C on PC to copy. Then I'll press Command plus Shift plus V on MAC or Control plus Shift plus V on PC to paste in place. Then come up to object, click Transform and select Reflect. Upon click, a menu will appear, I'll click on vertical and click Okay. Upon click, that will reflect my line. So right now, that line is a bit long, so I'm just going to shorten it. So with my selection tool, I press and hold alt and shift. I'll place my cursor over the end of one of the points, and I'll click and drag in, and both ends will move towards the middle like so. And I'll just click and drag and move it until I get something like this. So now I'm going to look to duplicate these lines across my axial line. So I'll press and hold shift, then click and drag my line along my axial line to the top like so. This time, I'll press and hold Alt plus shift, then click the line and drag it down like so, putting a little space between the previous line. Upon release, this will duplicate a new line. Next, I'll press command plus D on MAC or Control plus D on PC, and this will duplicate the action duplicating the line again. I'll press command D on MAC or Control D again, and a few more times until I have a number of lines along my axial line, like so. So by duplicating my axial line, reflecting it, shortening it, and duplicating it along the axial line, I've been able to create this diagonal grid system. Now, this is where the magic happens. So with the selection tool, I'll click and drag over all my new strokes. I'll come up to view, scroll down to guides, come across and select make guides. Upon click, this will now transform the stroke lines into guides, which we can now use for our poster design. To finish, I'll come over to the Layers panel, double click on the layer and name this grid, and now I have an axial grid system. I can begin to develop my poster design with, and if I press either command plus colon on Mac or control plus colon on PC, we can toggle on and off the guides. Perfect. So with my guides and bleed setup, I can now begin to compose my visual elements on the page. So for this particular design, there are a lot of type elements, some of which will be placed on a background image. So to begin, I'm going to start with the image elements of the poster, and when these are in place, I can bring in the type. Step four, working with image. So Looking back at my sketch, we can see that for this poster, I want to include an image of a product in the middle at the same angle as the axial line. This image will become the attention grabber, the primary hook for the poster design. Also, my intention for this design is to split the poster in two across the axial line. To do this, I'm going to place a background image to fill the right hand side space. Let's see how we can get this background image into our poster. To start, I'm going to come over to the layers panel and hit the plus icon at the bottom of the layers panel to create a new layer, and I'm going to call this base. With the layer selected, I'm going to click and drag it underneath the grid layer, and then I'm going to hit the lock icon on the grid layer above as to not accidentally select and change anything on that grid layer. With the base layer selected, I'll come over to the tools menu and grab the pen tool. I'll make sure that my for grown color is set to black and the stroke color is set to transparent. I'll come over to the top, right hand side of my axial line guide. I'll click once just outside the Canvas area, and then come down to the bottom left of the axial line and click once again. I'll hold shift and click down just underneath the Canvas area to draw a straight line down. Then I'll click over to the right and then up to join to complete the shape. Easy. So this is the shape that I want the background image to fill. Now I'm going to bring in my image to fill the space. So I'll jump into the poster content Doc, and I can do this by coming into the class download folder, into the Bolts media kit folder and double clicking on the Content deck shortcut to open in a browser. On page five, we can see all the gel tech textures that have been provided as part of the guidelines for these posters. For this initial poster design, I'm going to look to use the Gel redux texture. Back in Illustrator, I'll press command plus Shift plus P on MAC or Control plus Shift plus P on PC to place an image. I'll navigate to the media kit folder provided in the download folder into the graphic textures folder, and I'll select Gel redux dot PNG and place. And I'll just click and drag over my shape area releasing, and that will place in my texture. So upon placing my texture, I have now placed this on top of my black vector shape. So I'll right click on my new image, come down to arrange and click center back. So now I'm going to use the vector shape as a mask for my background texture. But before that, I need to change the color of the vector shape. Currently, this is set to black, but I will need this set to white in order to effectively mask the image below. So I'll select my black vector shape, make sure the foreground color is selected, come up to swatches and set this to white. Apply the mask, we are going to need the transparency panel visible. If you cannot see your transparency panel, come up to window, scroll down and click on transparency. Next, I'm going to use a selection tool to select both the background texture and the shape vector. With them both selected, I'll come over into the transparency panel and click Ma Mask. Upon click, the white vector shape will now be applied to the mask. And if we look carefully in the transparency panel, we can now see two thumbnails. To the left, the graphic image, and to the right, the mask. Now, if we look carefully between the two thumbnails, there is a lock icon. If I click this once to release with the image thumb selected in the transparency panel, I can press up and down on the keyboard or click and drag with the selection tool, and we can move the background texture around within the mask. Also, I can click on the handles of the bounding box image inside the mask and scale up and down. So if you want to change the position or scale of an image inside a mask, you just need to make sure that the lock icon is unchecked in the transparency panel, and the image thumb is selected. But remember, once you're done, be sure to click back on the Lock icon in order to control the position of the mask image on your Canvas area. Should you wish to edit the placement or shape of the mask itself, this time, in the transparency panel, click on the mask thumbnail to the right, and this will enable you to click and drag to move the mask around. Also, you can use the direct selection tool to select anchor points on the vector shape, which you can click and drag to move around. Or you can also grab the Pentool to add additional anchor points to the shape, and again, click and drag those around to edit the shape of the mask. So I'll just press Command plus Z on Mac or Control Plus on PC to undo that. Click on the image thumbnail in the transparency panel and click off to deselect my image. And that's the background image now placed into our poster design. And if we come up to the link panel, we can now see the image link present in our document. If you can't see your link panel, come up to Window and click Links. Easy. So that's the first image in my poster. Next, let's look at how we can bring in the product image. So back in the poster content dock, on page four, we can see all the products. For this poster design, we are going to be promoting the purple sneaker called Nopulse. So first, let's jump into the class download folder, into the Bolts media kit folder. This is the folder that the client has supplied, which includes everything we need to design the posters. So I'll come into the project photography folder and start by opening the Nopulse image in Photoshop. This is the product image that has been supplied to us. And right now, as it stands, this image is not going to work because for my design, I want to have this image cut out. So for this poster design, I'm going to have to cut this sneaker image out first. Thankfully, this is a very clear image here, so it should be very straightforward to cut it out. So I'll just zoom in here to get a better view. What I can do here is come over to the rectangle Marquee tool. I'll draw a selection around it and come up to the control panel and click, select and mask. The Quick Selection tool selected, up in the Control panel, again, I'll click Select Subject, and Photoshop will do its best to select Sneaker. Now, if I zoom in here, I can see that it's not perfect. Some of the bottom of the shoe has not been selected. Now, there is another thing that you can do here. Over on the Tools menu is a button called Object Selection tool. If I click this and move my mouse over the sneaker, photoshop will see what I'm trying to select as an object. If I click this once, I will see all the imperfect bits have magically been brought back, and this is looking a bit better. Once I'm happy with it, I can click k in the bottom right corner, and a selection will be made around the sneaker. With this new selection, I can come over to the Layers panel, and at the bottom, I can click the Ad layer mask button. Upon click, I have now added a layer mask and cut out the sneaker. Perfect. Now, I don't want the image to be this large. I don't need the space around the sneaker. I'll come into my layers panel, press and hold command on Mac or Control on PC and click on the Layer mask. Upon click, a selection around the sneaker will be made. And if I now press C on the keyboard to crop, a crop box will appear around the sneaker. The top in the control panel, I make sure delete cropped pixels is unchecked and press enter twice, and I'll crop the image. Perfect. So I'll press command plus shift plus S on MAC or Control plus Shift plus S on PC to save. I'll navigate to the project folder, I set up earlier and save this into the assets folder as neo pulse dot PSD. So now I have the sneaker image nice and prepared. I can now bring it into Illustrator. Back into Illustrator, before I bring in my new images, I'm going to do some housekeeping. Over in the Layers panel, I'll come and click the plus icon on the bottom right. This will add a new layer, and I'll call this images. Now, something you can keep in mind here with the Layers panel. If I click on the top right menu and come down to panel options, we can change the size of the thumbs. For example, we can click on small, medium or large, but we also have an option to add a custom size. If I type 70 pixels into other and click Okay, my thumbnails will now be a lot bigger so I can get a better visual glance at what is on each layer. Now I'll click the Lock icon on the base layer so as to not accidentally select anything while I deal with the image I'm about to bring in. With the image layer selected, I'll press command plus shift plus P on MAC or Control plus Shift plus P on PC to place an image. Here I'll navigate to the project folder, into the concept and design folder, into the design folder, into the assets folder, and select neo pulse dot PSD and click Place. Then click and drag a frame like so to drop in the image. Easy. So now there is an image in our document. If we now come over to the link panel, we can see the neopulse dot PSD is present. So once the image is in Illustrator, it's easy to resize and position. With the image selected, if I come to any one of the anchor points, I can click and drag. If I press and hold shift, then click and drag, you can increase and decrease the image size to scale like so. So I'll just scale up the image until I'm happy, drag it into the middle. I'll move my mouse cursor to the bottom right of the bounding box, then click and drag to rotate the image until it's in line with the axial line and the background image, and that sorts out the product image for the poster. So the next image I want to bring into the poster is the logo. This time, instead of placing a file, I'm going to open a file. So I'll press command plus 01 Mac or Control plus 01 PC to open, I'll navigate to the media kick folder provided into the logo folder and I'll open bolt logo black dot eps. So since we are working in Illustrator and working in vector, it's easy to paste in another vector element to give us the flexibility to change the color later on. The selection tool, I'll select the vector logo, copy, and jump back into my poster. I'll make sure I'm on the image layer and paste, and the logo will now be placed into the dock. I'll come to the far right middle anchor point, press and hold both ult and shift, and click and drag inwards to scale the image down like so. And I'll simply place it in the top right corner of the poster. Easy. Step five, working with type. So now all my images are placed into the poster design. I can now start working with the type elements. Looking back at my sketch, I want the main heading type on the poster to run perpendicular to the axial line. Here we can see that part of the headline type is on the left, and part of the headline is on the right, and some of the supportive type elements run in parallel with the axial line. To start, I'll come over into the Layers panel. With the images layer selected, I'll click the plus icon at the bottom of the layers panel to add a new layer, and I'll rename this layer to type. I'll hit the lock icon on the images layer as to not select anything on the images layer. And to begin, I'll start with the headline type. So with the type layer selected, we can come into the Tools menu, select the type tool and click once on the poster. Upon click, this will create a type element. Right now, I have a default fontapli, but if that's okay, I'm not going to worry about that too much right now. So I'll jump back into the poster content dock and on page three, we can see the copy options. I'll copy the word footwear from the title Option two, then back into Illustrator, I'll paste it in. And now we have our first bit of type. Now, depending on your default properties, here I'll push the type up to start working with it. And on this occasion, I'll set the font size to 150 points. Or with it selected, click and drag on the corner pin while holding shift to scale the type up or down. So with my first piece of type in the poster, I quickly want to change the typeface for this. At this point, I could use any typeface, but I already have an idea of what I want to work with. In a previous step, I undertook some typeface research where I looked at a range of typefaces I like to use. On the second page of my research, I quite like the look of this type face here called Raj Tanny. Looking at the scamp drawing, we can see that I need a condensed type in order to fit the type into the left and right space. This is a good example of a condensed typeface that works well in all caps. A good option if you want to fit a wide word on your poster design across the page. Also, with its subtle round corners, this typeface presents a clean and minimal aesthetic with a softer tone. Coming with five distinct weights, this is a versatile and impactful font that would work well in this design direction. Now, this is a Google font and can be acquired for free. You can find the link in the Typeface PDF in the class download folder in Folder one design process, in Folder five typography. If you open the PDF, you can simply click the font on page two, and it will take you directly to the link. So back in Illustrator, I'll select the type and up in the Font selector. I'll type in Ragt Hany and apply the font. And on this occasion, I'll set the font weight to bold, and in the character panel, I'll set it to all caps. Looking back at the sketch, we can see that for the main headline text, this runs perpendicular to the axial line. I have also broken this into parts to allow for the typeface to be large, legible and impactful to work around the center image. Working with a layout like this can be a little tricky as it's set to an angle. But we will just have to craft the layout to get it right. The first thing I'll do is select the type with the selection tool. I'll move the mouse cursor to the bottom right of the bounding box, then click and drag to rotate. As I rotate, I'll be careful to align the bounding box with the guides like so. Once I have one type element in place and aligned, duplicating and editing will be easy. So I'll select my type element, press and hold t and just drag down slightly to quickly duplicate another. Now, looking back at my sketch, I can see that to have the full word footwear would be too wide of a word to fit and balance the elements. My approach is to split the word to fit in the space more comfortably. Back in Illustrator, now I have two type elements with the word footwear. I'll select the first type element, double click and select the last four words and delete. I'll press escape to deselect the type. I'll select the next type element, double click. I'll select the first four letters and press delete, and press escape to deselect the type. Now I have these two type elements of the two parts of the word. I can click to select them both and move them around in that space to position them. So I'll just move them up to the top of the canvas, and with them both selected, I can click on the middle right anchor and press and hold shift and click and drag to scale them both up. So at this point, I can see that the product image in the center of the poster is a little larger than I want. So to help me place my type in the space more comfortably, I'm just going to reduce the product image down slightly. So I'll come over into the layers panel and unlock the images layer. I'll click on the product image. Click on the right middle anchor point while holding Shift plus Alt, click and drag in, and this will scale the image down nicely. I'll select the two type elements above and just move them into position and scale up a little more until I find a place that I'm happy with. Notice for this top type, I'm cropping the word foot just slightly off the top of the canvas area. If I come up to view and hit trim view, this will remove the visibility of everything in the pasteboard area. Now we can get a good look at the current layout, and we can see where the type has now been cropped. Now, I'm doing this to add a little bit more visual dynamic to the poster composition. When all visual elements are kept inside a poster's canvas area, this can feel neat and ordered. However, when we start to crop elements out, it starts to break free of the surrounding frame. This makes the design feel bigger than it actually is. This can create momentum into or out of a canvas area, which can create movement. This is a very appropriate design quality for this poster as we wanted to feel energetic and free. For now, I'll just leave my first type element at the top. With the selection tool, I'll click and drag over them both. I'll press and hold alt on the keyboard and click, drag them down to duplicate two new type elements. I'll just tuck these under the product image, and with them selected, I'll make sure the fill color is selected in the tools menu. I'll come up to swatches and set them to white. Now, it's just a simple case of changing these two words. With the selection tool, I'll click on the top word, double click, Select All and type in F EAR. I'll press escape to deselect a type. Select the next type element below. Double click, Select All and type in LESS. I'll press Escape to deselect a type, and with the selection tool, I'll just select the words and rearrange them until I have something that looks like this. So now we need to add in other words to complete the phrase footwear for the feelers. This can easily be done by selecting one of the type layers above. I'll press and hold alt on the keyboard and drag down to quickly duplicate the type layer. I'll double click into my new type layer, select A and type in FOR. I'll press a scape to deselect the text element. I'll click on one of the corner anchor points, holding shift and scale down and tuck just under the word where until I have something like this. My new type elements, I'll press and hold alt, click and drag down and above the word fear. I'll make sure the fill color is selected in the tools menu. Come up to the Swatches panel, set this to white. I'll double click into the text, select all and type in T H E. So that now completes the headline title. If I come back up to view and hit trim view, we can see that this bottom bit of text is cropped as well. So now we can see that it feels like the text is flowing in from the top and flowing out from the bottom, creating some interesting movement there throughout the poster with the product image in the center. The main headline set, we can now look to incorporate the product name into the design. Now, in my sketch, I had this quite small over here on the left. But if we look in the final design, I like the idea of having it quite large in the background in line with the axial line set as an outline. I liked how this added a bit more texture to the poster design. Let's now look to bring that in. Again, I'll come up and select one of the larger type elements. Press and hold Alt on the keyboard and click and drag down to quickly duplicate. I'll move my mouse cursor down to the bottom right, bounding box anchor point, click and drag to rotate, and I'll carefully make sure that the bounded box aligns exactly to the axial line. With my new type element, I'll double click, select all, then type in NEO PULSE, and press Escape to deselect. That is my new type element aligned perfectly to the axial line. Next, I want to scale this up and have it running from the bottom left to the top right, cropping in slightly and cropping out slightly. I'll select the new type layer and drag it down to the left, partially cropping the letter off the Canvas area. I'll press and hold shift and click and drag on the right middle anchor point to the right scaling up the text like so. Now, on this occasion, I'd like to reduce the tracking, with the type layer selected, I'll press and hold t on the keyboard and simply tap left on the arrow, and this will bring in the tracking. Press left a few times to bring the tracking until I have something that looks like this. Then I'll press and hold shift on the keyboard and again, click the right middle anchor and drag out to scale up the word to fit on my Canvas. Right now, we can see that this new type element is appearing on top of the image. So I'll come into the layers panel, click the type layer and drag it down below the images layer and make sure the lock icon is applied to the images layer. This will now change the hierarchy of the layer structure and allow the image to appear on top. Now things are starting to get a bit busy on my composition. I'll press command plus colon on Mac or Control plus colon on PC, and this will toggle on and off the guides. We can start to see things more clearly. I'm going to click back on the word Nopulse. I'll come to the Tools menu and click the Swap fill and stroke color. This will set my word to a outline stroke. Next, I'll come into the Lays panel and click the Lock icon on the base layer. I'll select the background image, and I'll just move this down a little. I'll click back on the word neopulse, and just move this down a little to allow for more space for the top words to breathe in the space above. Next, I'm going to add the model number. I'll click on the word Nopulse, as it currently has the right orientation. I'll press and hold all to click and drag up to quickly duplicate. I'll click on the far right middle anchor point press and hold shift, scale down drastically to reduce the size of the font, and just place it in the space above like so. Back into the poster content deck on page four, I'll come and copy the model number. 245. Back into Illustrator. I'll click to select the new type layer. Double click, select all and paste in the model number. But this time, I'll also type in the word model before the hashtag. Next, I'll come over to the Tools menu. Click the Swap and fill. I'll come up to the control panel, click down in the Font family tab and choose Light. I'll press Escape to deselect the text with the text elements still selected. I'll press Alt on the keyboard and tap the right arrow a number of times to increase the tracking until I get around 720 in the character panel, and I'll set my type to 20 points. And that completes the initial type elements in my poster design. Now it's time to bring in smaller type elements and look to complete the poster design. Next, I'm going to place the paragraph text. Now, looking back at the sketch, we can see that my initial idea was to place the paragraph text just above the larger text on the right. This time, I'm going to use a different technique. With the type two selected, I'll come down and click and drag a type box above the white text on the right. Back into the contents deck on page three, I'll select the paragraph contents for Option two. Get to Illustrator, I'll paste in the new text. I'll click into the text box and press command plus A on Mac or Control plus A on PC, select all. I'll change the font size to 19. Make sure the font is set to medium. Be sure to click off all caps. Click on the drop down for the leading in the character panel. I'll select Auto and set the fill color to white. And now I have my paragraph type. I'll press escape to deselect the type. With the selection tool, I'll click on the middle, right anchor point and just drag it out slightly to alter the ragging of the text like so. Next, I'll need to carefully rotate this paragraph text, so it runs in line with the axial line. Now, when rotating paragraph text, you will have to be careful. If we move our mouse cursor down to the right, click and drag as we usually would, this will rotate the frame, but not the text inside the frame. In order to rotate the paragraph text, we will need to use a different method. Instead of clicking and dragging on the right corner pin, this time we're going to press R on the keyboard to activate the rotate tool. As I click and rotate, the whole paragraph text and frame will rotate as a whole. Remember, if you want to rotate paragraph text, you will have to press R to activate the rotation tool to click and rotate. So I'll click and drag slowly and make sure that the bounding box aligns perfectly with the axiane. And then click and drag down to align with the white headline text. Looking back at my sketch, we can see that in the bottom left, I have some additional type elements and the web address. So let's get these in. Now I have my paragraph type box. I can just come, select this, press and hold all, click and drag and quickly duplicate this down. Back into the contents deck on page three, I'll select the Foot elements content on Option two. Back in Illustrator, I'll paste in the new text. Into the text, I'll select all. In the character panel. I'll hit the all caps button. I'll click the drop down on the font family and set this to bold. I'll press and hold Alt on the keyboard and press down to increase the leading until I see 40 points in the character panel. Also, while holding Alt, I'll tap the right arrow button to increase the tracking until I see 200 in the character panel. I'll press escape to deselect the text, 14. Present Your Poster Design: Now, whether to the client or in your portfolio, the way you showcase your work can be just as important as the design itself. Presentation is more than just showing off a finished product. It's about providing a window into the world where your design lives and its context to convey the story and the strategy behind your design. Presenting your design allows viewers to see your work in situ, helping them to understand not just what the design looks like, but how it interacts with its environment and speaks to its audience. Moving to the last and final phase in our design process, here we undertake the process of presenting our poster design. In this video, we'll explore how professional presentation techniques can elevate your designs, making them more compelling and impactful. We'll take a look at where you can find good mock up samples, and we'll look at how you can use a presentation deck like this to present your work. By the end of this video, you learn to craft presentations that do more than just display your work, but narrate the design's purpose and place, ensuring it resonates with the right audience. Remember, a well presented design not only looks great but also clearly communicates its message and achieves its goals. Let's make every presentation an opportunity to impress and engage. So let's get into it. So here I am an illustrator, and here I have a deck that I can use to present my poster design. This is a typical approach when showcasing any design to our client or work colleagues. In a presentation deck, I'll typically begin with a recap. I'll show inspiration, which will include my mood board. I'll show my process where I'll include a few sketches. I'll jump into the design, where I'll show a bunch of poster in mock ups. Then round it up with some clear versions for reflection at the end and then close. This makes for a tight PDF presentation, which showcases a holistic approach to the design process which helps to install confidence. I could either present one to one over a conference call or send it via e mail. Once I have completed my poster designs, if I'm sharing them with a client or team members, I'll typically place them into a deck like this to present. If you want to take a look at this deck that's provided as part of this class, you can find it in the class download folder. This is located in the project artwork examples folder in the presentations folder. Now, there is also an design version available. So if you have a preference, you have options here. Now, finding the right mark ups for your design can make or break the WOW factor of your presentation and save you a ton of time. So where can you find high quality mark ups for your presentations? Right now, there are lots of resources out there you can use. So here is my top five in no particular order. So here are some really good platforms to acquire some mark ups for presentations. If we were to take a look at these platforms, you can find them in the class Links PDF document in the class D load folder. As you can see, this deck includes several insitu visuals of my poster designs with accompanying layouts that support the presentation. Now, each of these insitu images are links to Photoshop files I can jump into to change and swap out poster designs. Now, it's also important to mention that these are specific mark ups for urban city environments, which may not be appropriate for every design approach. If using mock ups, remember to keep the context correct to elevate your design. If you want to take a look at the Insitu templates provided as part of this class, you can find them in the class download folder. These can be located in the poster artwork examples folder in the Insitu examples folder. So here I am in Adobe Bridge, and here I'm looking at the folder of Insitu markups I have created, which you can use to save you some time. From the folder, simply open them in photoshop and you will see that each template has the base image with a smart object, which you can double click into the layer and simply place in your design close and save. Now, getting them into Illustrator is easy. So, into the deck, you can see that some templates are already linked. Here, we can either come into the links panel, locate a template, we want to change, and with one selected, we can hit the edit in photoshop button at the bottom of the panel to jump into Photoshop and change the smart object. Or we can click on the link, and in the Links menu, we can re link the template to a different one. Now, the best thing about taking the time to create awesome in CT mock ups is as soon as you're done with the presentation, you can include them in your portfolio and also use them again in future decks. So your 13th task for this class is to place your poster designs into IST visuals. If you have been following along and you have created your own posed designs in response to the brief, now's the time to place them into IST visuals, ready to present. Feel free to open the poster mockup templates I have provided or use one of your own mockup templates. Be sure to refer to the task list PDF in the class download folder for more instructions for this task. Once you feel you have a few mock ups you're happy with, you can then move to the last and final step. So once I have my poster design ready and prepared some insitu mock ups, it's just a case of populating my deck. For the inspiration and process examples, these are also links that can be opened and changed in photoshop, and the plain poster designs at the end are also photoshop files that can be opened and changed. A very flexible and easy to update and swap out images. Once I have all my text changes and updates, I can simply export this out as a PDF and share. Your last and final task for this class is to complete a poster presentation deck. Feel free to open the deck template I have here, edit the photo shop templates or place in your own poster markups and designs. Be sure to refer to the task list PDF in the class download folder for more instructions for this task. Once you finish this final step in the class, you should now have something awesome to show for your time. Have some great examples to include in your portfolio and a template deck to use in future projects.