Intro to Graphic Design: Poster Design #003 In Adobe Illustrator

1. Intro to Graphic Design: Poster Design #003 In Adobe Illustrator - Trailer: Hello everyone. My name is Marcus and I'm a senior designer animator based in London. And today in this class, I will share with you how to create these three posters inside Adobe Illustrator. I will go through all the process to achieve this 3D look using Adobe Illustrator tools like Extrude and Bevel for distort and others. To help design is compelling visuals very quickly. This class is designed for all skill levels. I will make sure to explain each step in detail. We don't miss anything. And by the end of the class, besides having trainee posters to show off your new skills, you'll have a great understanding of Adobe Illustrator's powerful treaty tools and how you can use them in different ways and projects. And as a class project, I will invite you to design these posters with me using the new techniques you just learned. With all of that said, let's get started. I see you in the first lesson. 2. L01 - Poster 01: Document setup and Design: Everyone and welcome. So let's start. The first thing we need to do is going to file and new. Let's set up our document. I'm going to use a trig 1600 by 5,400 pixels. And I want to live in RGB and just press Create. Now what we need to do is just select the words that we want to use for our poster. Just using the text tool. I want to just scale this at least a little bit so I can read what's there. Maybe I'm going to scale it a little bit more. I'm going to use churn Newbury. Perfect. Now we have our words. Let's let a really nice font. I'm gonna use Ben Graham. Let's select our font here. Let's just right-click and create outlines. Let's right-click again and ungroup it. Now we want to select our font, change it for like a lighter gray. This done, let's just drag it outside of the art board for now. Unless flux J. Let's go to Effect 3D and materials to really classic and Extrude and Bevel. Cool. Here we are able to change the perspective of our object and see how the extrusion is working. Here on extrude depth, we can actually adjust how much depth we want. Maybe I want to use 100 and just press Okay, Perfect. Now what we want to do is just select the letter J, go to object and expand appearance. And let's drag it down a little bit here. Now let's select a and go to effect and apply, Extrude and Bevel. This time, we already chose up our perspective and our depth of the extrudes. So we just need to apply it to all the other letters. That will be really quick. Let's just drag off them right now here. Let's just select all these letters again. And let's go to Object an exponent periods. Perfect. Now we want to do is just select, just zooming in into J. Selected and change here on the question mark. Let's change the fill to a darker gray and the stroke to white. Like this. Let's do select all the other letters. And using our high drop tool, let's just copy all the colors. Now selected all the ideas together again. And let's change the stroke to four. Perfect. 3. L02 - Poster 01: Design layout & Final Details: Hello everyone and welcome back. Now what we want to do is select our letters and make them a little bit bigger. Let's just start with j. I'm going to hold, I'm holding Shift while dragging the corner to expand a letter size. And I'm going to the same tool. I'm going to start pairing them together like this. To add a little bit more definition to the words I want to just, you can just duplicate. For example, let's select a while holding Alt. Let's drag one up. We duplicate the shape a little bit. Now we have two A's and let's do the same. We do something like this. Perfect. Now with our computation made, Let's just select it. And let's go right-click and ungroup it. Now let's go to our layers and create a new layer for our background. Let's go to our shape tool rectangle here. Create a really nice rectangle, the same size of the artboard. And changing to a color. I use really bright, well, yellow for my example, which is like kind of a neon color. I think it worked really well. Want to keep the same color, and I'm just going to scale this a bit down. The next thing we're going to do is create another layer, lock these two layers. And let's add our code. I used the code. You can just select it, right-click and create outlines. And then right-click again and ungroup it. Now select our January and go to Object Ungroup. And do the same for ease. For the rest of the words. You can jog soldiers selected and then just press Command or Control G, which is a shortcut for grouping objects like this. Like this. Perfect. Now what I want to do is just select our texts. Just copy the we're using high drop tool. Just copy the background color. Gonna remove the stroke because we don't need it. Perfect. Now we're gonna just January and dragging to places. I want to stick the word too. Perfect. So now more or less I know where the cytosol fits. To start fitting, seeking newsletters to the object. We are going to use our distortion tool here, the free transform. And we're going to use a free distort. The Free Distort selected, we're going to select the corners of the letters J, trying to adjust into the same size of the sort of the object. And then using our distortion again to start to scale it to make it at least proportional. Unless clearly down a little bit, do the same thing until it matches the perspective of the letter. Maybe you scale it a little bit down, so it's not very, not very big at that moment. And let's do the same for is. Let's just check it's closer to the edge. And just select is then the free distort. Perfect. Again, using the free distort tool here just to scale this a little bit down, trying to match the perspective as better as we can. So we already match it to the world. So the perspective, which is really cool. Now, we're going to do just had some signatures. I actually like to add a little graphic CV on the bottom just to create a little nice composition as well. To balance it a little bit of verticality of this poster. And just going to make a copy for you on the top. And then it's just going to paste one of my signatures of my posters here. This is it will be finished really soon. Yeah. This is the first poster I hope you guys enjoyed. It's been really fun. I think I love this technique of using the treaty tools to create really nice perspective. I see when your next one. 4. L03 - Poster 02: Design & Isometric fonts: Everyone and welcome back to another poster. Let's start the first thing again. Let's just start with artboard. I'm going to use the same resolution as before, 2600 by 5,400, eroding the right and press Create. Let's start. First, let's get our text tool and let's select over it. I'm going to use February and then we're going to get a really nice font again, I'm going to use been gram selecting our font. I'm going to right-click Create Outlines. Again. Let's just select this font and change the color to a lighter gray. So let's just drag these on the side. Let's right-click and ungroup it. I'm going to start with the letter F. Then let's go to Effect 3D and materials to the classic Extrude and Bevel. Perfect. Here on the position. Maybe I will start with isometric. Clarify. I'm going crazy here. The extrude depth to 100 C. If you see a nice proportions, it looks, it is. Just press Okay, perfect. This time, instead of just going to are all Window and apply the effects straightforward, we actually need to do it by, by n by hand because in each case, every letter we will have a different perspective. So every time we need to apply the 3D, we actually need to go back to Effect and apply a different perspective to it. So let's look at letter E. Go to Effect. You can just go down a little bit and just extrude and bevel in only two all the way as before. And here let us change this, maybe two. Maybe I will keep it isometric cleft. My example before, I'm going to select b and b, I'm going to Extrude and Bevel, select another one. Maybe the top perfect fab are going to use isometric right. Now, isometric left. Perfect. So now we have our letters and they have, all of them have a different perspective, which is cool. Now we just need to do is select them all. And let's go to object and expand appearance. And that's it. 5. L04 - Poster 02: Long shadows and final design: Hello everyone and welcome back. So now, as our letters are expanded, we can scale them up and down without affecting the width of the extra. So to start, I'm going to start scaling up my letters, creating a nice composition. Just going to play a little bit with contrast of the sizes as well. Also read some position, trying to create a very dynamic composition with them. The next thing I'm going to do is select operators again. After we want to select 1 first, Let's select the letter F. Unless press D. What D does, it resets the colors to black and white on the swatches. With the letter F selected. I'm going to go and change the stroke to something more tick. Maybe four, maybe five. Perfect. And I'm going to click on stroke. And I'm going to on the corners gonna make a round corner. Perfect. Now, what I'm going to do is select the other letters. This, and using our high drop tool going to copy the effect on this case, we're going to apply some shadows here, so we probably don't need to collapse these shapes here yet. Let's just start heading some shadows on the letters. Let's imagine we have our light source on this side. Imagine this is a sun and the light is going to heat these phases of the letters. If these phases is late by the light, this one will be black. And let's just change the color here to black. Something like this and do the same for the other phases that are interfacing the light. For some shapes, you actually need to connect some of the shapes so we can, because when the extrude app and we actually need to connect the sides of the B because the dextro critical a little point here. So we just need to use the Pathfinder tool, which you can find on Window and then Pathfinder and just collapse them with the Unite option here. Let's just continue here. I think we are most finishing. The shadings of letter f is missing a few phases there. Let's just do it really quick. The next thing, Let's just organize least composition a little bit better. Maybe something more like this. Pull the F little bit further. So the next step we want to do is just create a layer, which will be our background layer. Let's just name it. Background. Perfect. Let's just close this step here. I like to keep my layers tab here so I can always access it easily. And let's go to our solid tools here. Let's just zoom out a little bit and let's create a background the same size after our artboards. Perfect, Let's just remove the stroke because they don't need it. Let's make a gray a gray background. Something even more brighter than this. Yeah, something like this. Looks perfect. Great. Maybe I will scale this be a little bit more to create a nice contrast in between the E. Let's lock the background layer. The next thing we want to do is actually add a lot of very long shadow on his letters. For that, let's go back to our rectangle tool here. Create a new layer. And let's just draw a rectangle like this. And let's apply the same color of the shadows off the ledgers. Right now that is something here happening, which is the stroke of the letters is actually not fully black. So we probably need to get the colors from the from the shadows to apply in the strokes. Let's just do that. We won't have that problem. Perfect. Let's just draw this like fake. You can say it's fake because we don't know if this is a way though I would react. But for the DC, just for the effects. I think we are okay if you just go a little bit more creative than then what would happen in real life? Just select this face as well. Perfect. Now let's do the same for B and E. And there are many managers. Perfect alter shadows is done. And this is basically usually eat or nowhere will do only thing left to do. As per the example of my poster, it just has some words here. Perfect. So with my accent is done. I'm going to just right-click and create outlines, same technique as before. Just ungroup it. And let's go and group this specific word slide just using the command Jerry shortcut to group the letters together. For the final one. Then we just can just scale this a little bit down. I think it's a little bit too big for the for the frame we have. And let's just drag and drop it. Perfect, Yeah. Basically it is a really simple technique and actually really the visual is really interesting. That's why I really wanted to do this tutorial because I really liked it, this technique and I really like using distributed tools and the way we use the stroke and we fed these shadows we can apply to a lot of different projects. 6. L05 - Poster 03: Design & dynamic type: Welcome back to the last poster of this class. Let's get started. So to speed up or legal process, I already have my art board here is the same size of the art boards before I'm going to use March, which is the last month, are gonna use earnings exercise. I'm using a very condensed font, which is perfect for these exercises and for what we're going to do. You can just find any type of condensed font and any other font will work as well. Let's talk. Let's just change it to gray. Perfect. And let's ungroup it. Let's Create Outlines first. And ungroup. Perfect. Let's drag it on the side here. M. Then let's go to 2D materials toward the classic and X2 then bevel, Let's just start moving our perspectives like this. Let's head one hundred percent, one hundred deaths and press. Okay. Let's do the same thing to a, effects to them bevel, Let's create a really nice perspective for a as well. Let's apply 100 on extra depth and press okay, then do the same for the R. Excellent bevel. Change the perspective a little bit like the main trick of fixed exercise you just tried to make as most dynamic perspective as you can. I always don't forget, don't lose, know, make it so dynamic that we actually move the shape of the letter. So be careful to make it interesting, but not losing the shape of the letter so we can still read it. So let's let C and let's go to Effect x within bevel. And just not this one. Just rotate this a little bit like this. Press Okay. The same thing for H next to them, bevel. That's rotate. Age. Perfect. This is it for this first exercise. Let's just actually expand. And let's go for our second lesson of this poster. 7. L06 - Poster 03: Final design & details: Hello everyone and welcome back. Let's start. Now what we want to do is select our letters, press D. We can reset the stroke and fill to black and white. Let's make the stroke a little bit thicker like for. Let's go and find these little bits here. Where do we need actually to collapse the shapes together? Let's double-click. Select these shapes. Let's use our Pathfinder tool and collect them together. If you want to find the Pathfinder tool, I can just go to Window. And Pathfinder. I'm going to just select this one with this. Connect them perfectly. Like this though there is something, there is a small bone here you're missing. Let's select perfect. The same thing here. And try to find all these shapes that now what we want to do is create a really, really nice composition. Let's just go a connect, carry a little bit closer to our two m and then get are a little bit closer to a. Get C and H. Something like this. It's nice when you actually play. We just have position of the letters like if age is actually behind of the R and the C. To critically read off like a little bit of more interest on a visual and let's scale see maybe a little bit higher. Luckily, we'd like this. We can also play with the scale of age. Just keep playing around with this computation a little bit more until we are happy with the result. I think, yeah, I think it's a nice composition work now, I will scale this up a little bit more. Something like this. Maybe I will actually make the stroke a little bit thicker like to six. Now relaxing. So really, really think is a really powerful topography poster already. Now let's just select our letters and go to stroke. And make the corners wrong join. Perfect. Now let's just select the 2D sides of our letters like this. Let's actually make them black. Let's just go and make it black. On every side. I'm just double-clicking. And this way I cannot sue select the layer that's grouped inside and make it easier just to instead of just ungrouping and then need to group them again. Perfect. The first one is done. Now we want to scale this a little bit up again. Let's get our layers here, and let's make our background layer. Let's just go to new layer. Let's name it to background and press. Okay. Let's go to our rectangle tool on the toolbar. Undesired a perfect rectangle. Let's just remove this drug. Had a really light gray, something like this. Perfect. Just select these letters. Let's group them together so we can align them up here. Let's create a new element for the background. I really like to use grids, rectangle, great tools. I think they had something to design sometimes. Even if it's like some sort of structure behind it, which is really cool. So let us say I had a grid like this. Maybe we can even make a little bit bigger and make the stroke a little bit lower. Like something like tree. Let's just see if maybe something like four, it looks nice. The next thing we want to do is actually add some words again on our poster. Perfect, So now I'm going to do the same thing as before. I go on Create Outlines, then our group these letters, and then group them again. Same process as before. When you have all your words grouped, let's just place them in individual, something like this. Let's try to create a really nice dynamic composition as well with them. Perfect. As soon as you have your electrodes placed, we can just maybe demo little bit like scale them a little bit down if they are looked to big. Perfect as soon as you have realized displaced, the next thing we want to do just had a little more graphics just to help our viewer understand that the order of the words, he doesn't like too much trouble for them. Let's design a little circle using the ellipse tool. Let's make it great. Let's make it red. Perfect. Let's just put it here around our words. This will be like a connect the world's kind of situation. And for that, let's just actually reside with our pen tool here. Really nice curve. To guide these slides. Let's just start from here. Try to something like this. Just aligned to help guide our eyes. Something like this. Now maybe I'll make it a little bit thicker. Stroke. Right-click. Simplify helps us to make the slider little bit more smooth. Perfect. Let's select the line again. Go to stroke and make it the dashed line. I'm using 12 dash and 12 gaps. So it creates a really nice effect like this. Yeah, Let's just basically it. Let's just push this a little bit for up. Lets us add a few more graphics on the bottom, on the top like we did in the first poster. Make it black like this. This is basically it. I hope, I hope you enjoyed doing this poster as well. Assuming conclusion class. 8. L07 - Class Conclusion: Final thoughts: Hello everyone, and thank you so much for taking this class. I hope you enjoyed experimenting with Adobe Illustrator, classic 3D tools. They can be really useful for many projects and mastering them can help you improve your designs a lot. Off course, please don't forget to submit your classic projects. It always makes my day when I see student work. Also, if you can leave me a request review, it will be awesome. I always read them and I learn a lot from them. And if you liked this class, please don't forget to check my other classes and to follow me to be the first one to know when are my new classes online? I promise I'll be posting more classes soon. That's it. I wish you a great day or a great night. And I hope to see you in our next class.