I used this project to make an instagram post for the brewery I work at. We have a ping pong table and started doing a more structured ping pong tournament month and need to spread the word. If you're ever in Saint Augustine, Florida, pop on it to Old Coast Ales for some fantastic beer.

Ping Pong Tournament for Brewery - image 1 - student project

This was my initial inspiration for a logotype.

Ping Pong Tournament for Brewery - image 2 - student project

I found a font called Fairwater Script Bold that I liked and played around with different letter styles until they started combining in an interesting way.

Ping Pong Tournament for Brewery - image 3 - student project

I printed and sketched out the letters, combining the letter forms. Then I created rulers for the lower case letters to make them as consistent as possible. It was definitely tough keeping the letters consistent weights, especially since this font is pretty much mono-weight throughout. I played around with the thickness a bit, but did not get carried away.

Ping Pong Tournament for Brewery - image 4 - student project

Skipping a couple steps, but this was what it looked like after I added some shading and the 3D effect. One strange thing on Illustrator. After I used the blend tool with 50 steps... it was completely smooth, even after I zoomed all the way. Is this a new feature on the program or am I blind?

Ping Pong Tournament for Brewery - image 5 - student project

After that I used the letters to make an Instagram poster. These are just the shapes and letter forms. I lowered the word pong and increased the size of the word tournament. I like the way it fills space better. No real attention put into colors yet.

Ping Pong Tournament for Brewery - image 6 - student project

I added shading and chose my color palette. All shading done with pen tool, shape builder tool, and multiply/screen/opacity on the appearance window.

Ping Pong Tournament for Brewery - image 7 - student project

Finally, added some texture and fine tuned some of the details. I just used Illustrator for texture. There's one light layer of the whole thing, and a second darker layer over just the background.

I was going for a 1930s/1940s era magazine style ad. Hopefully I hit the mark.

This was a fantastic class, one which I am sure I will go back to reference. I did skip a few of the steps... not getting into colorways too much, I took a shortcut with the 3d effect since I didn't notice any jagged lines by just expanding and uniting the whole shape, and I haven't tried the photoshop texturing yet. Thank you, Ray! Really loved seeing your process and can't wait to check out your other classes!

I've done about a half dozen of these classes so far and I'm starting to be able to combine techniques from different classes which is a lot of fun. I think this was the most ambitious project I've done so far. I've got a long way to go, but I'm pumped.

-Tim

Timothy Poletti

aspiring graphic designer

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