August 2014 Tips and Tricks - Designing an Elegant Poster

A Tips and Tricks Tutorial By Mike W(“mwenz” on online)
Designing an Elegant Poster

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Much more elegant than simple drop shadows, our buddy Mike (mwenz online) shows us this month at least two different samples of good layout for posters. First, a different kind of dead-on shadow technique is shown, and then you’ll have some fun adjusting the tone and color of the poster, because you’ll be working with Named Colors. Come along and get into the finer details of professional text and poster design!

Be sure to thank Mike for this great tutorial. Go see how it is done and then show us your poster designs here.

Excellent tips and tricks Mike, I hope I've done your poster design justice. Learned a few really useful things from this and you can play around with the colours all day but in the end I chose this green colour :D Look forward to you doing some more tips and tricks if not a tut? For the banner I used Chivo Italic.

Stygg

Stygg you are fast! :D

I only read the tutorial yet, thanks Mike will try to reproduce

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Originally Posted by csehz

Stygg you are fast! :D

I only read the tutorial yet, thanks Mike will try to reproduce

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I started it yesterday csehz after making a mess of the icons so I thought I'd get something right :D Anyway I finally sorted out the icons, made png. went to Converticon and hey presto. I don't know what happened yesterday, I think I was in shock at Man.Utd. getting beat by Swansea :D

Stygg

Well done, Stygg. I like the green. I did one version with the word Oregon and used green as well.

Take care, Mike

Well done indeed Stygg. It looks super.

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Originally Posted by wizard509

Well done indeed Stygg. It looks super.

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Thanks for you kind comment Larry.

"Never give up. You will never fail, you'll just find a whole lot of ways that don't work". That certainly applied to me the other day with the icons Larry :D Sorted it out now though.

Stygg

One more for the road, I enjoy doing these, thanks Mike :D

Stygg

This one looks very good too Stygg. These are a good tribute to Mike. I just gotta try one too, just don't know when.

Hey, not a tribute to Mike at all. He's just a button-pusher...

The design and typeface is all Antonio's. I just reverse engineered it with his permission for use on TG. Antonio used Photoshop, we of course are using an Xara product and while most of the how is similar/the same, it is slightly different to do in a vector application.

And a note. I used a minimum number of steps in the blend. This was simply a close number of the steps in color value from the beginning to end of the blend steps. If this was intended for print, I would up the number and put up with XDP's warning that it could take some time.

Take care, Mike

That looks very nice Stygg in harmony with the figures

I hope that everyone took notice of Mike's secret tip when making the "Darkest Colour"! It was when he was describing in "Colouring London" when using the colour editor, using k in CMYK, to take it fully to the right, back a bit to the left, then fully up to the right. This is to stop Xara producing Rich Black when he just want 100% k if exporting to PDF if the file is to be printed way from your desktop. I do it all the time and I know why I do it but I can't understand why a wiggle of the key can give the programme an instruction like that.

Well written and illustrate tut. Mike made it easy for me for me to do. I tried it with flowing ribbons and it looked terrible with such a simple and elegant font so wont show.

Thanks for the kind words, Albacore.

As regards the 100% K slider movement. I, of course, read about it here or at XU shortly after first purchasing XDP6. I have not ever read a reason why this is what it takes. I have simply thought that it is because at its heart, XDP really is modeled around RGB.

Mike

A superb tutorial, Mike.

Hi Rik--thanks for joining in.

In many ways I like the burst of color that the double-decker adds. A couple questions.

With the double-decker, is the word England redundant? Even for me, someone who has never been able to visit England, the classic red double-decker is a unique identifier as to country.

What does the number 1 signify on the bottom ribbon?

Hi Mike.

You could ask the same question with this poster?!
And there's a few other recognisable identifiers in this poster.
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But... Here's one, without - just for you!

Oh! The number 1 - that's simply because that was poster number 1.

thanks for this mike - the tip about CMYK black is a good one :)

Mike thanks just again for the tutorial, your working method generally looks both precise and delicate. And that font selection is simply great.

In this words play I lost the feathering in the animation which I am aware, also some positioning became a little bit challenging mostly at W, but who cares it is weekend :D



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I like your poster Rik, actually I like both. I don't know if an image of a double decker bus is redundant or not. Yes it says London, but we have one here too and I did a painting of it. The one I ran across here happened to be in the museum of transportation. I kind of think there are some running somewhere in the states but for sure not many.

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Originally Posted by wizard509

I like your poster Rik, actually I like both. I don't know if an image of a double decker bus is redundant or not. Yes it says London, but we have one here too and I did a painting of it. The one I ran across here happened to be in the museum of transportation. I kind of think there are some running somewhere in the states but for sure not many.

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Good job that I put England beneath mine!

Why don't you put your bus on this tutorial, as well?

3rd in the series!

good work on the LONDON text on that third one Rik

something about the juxtaposition of cab and the text 'ENGLAND' that jars though - it may well be centred absolutely but it does not look right to me - the wheelbase is not central to the vehicle, nor is the hood, and that is correct, but when the text is added it clashes - maybe increase the text size, lower it a bit?... not sure...

Good observations and feedback, Steve.

Everything is pretty much centralised.
I was thinking of moving 'England' above the taxi, but, not if I plan to do a few others!
As for the wheelbase of the taxi? I've just drawn a reperesentation, rather than being deadly accurate.

You could always give it a go, and show us yours!

Nice one csehz, worldwide exibition good theme.

Stygg

There are some words that are instantly recognizable when stacked two across, while others are a "hard read".

It reminds me of a sign nailed to a post, during the 1800s, in the West of the USA outside of a saloon:

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em, "To tie mules to".

-g

I tried very hard to follow Mike's tutorial, but wanted to do something different, so, here is something different, at least it was before I saw Gare's post.

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Not sure if I should have put the same shadow type treatment next to my avatar.
Good tutorial Mike.

That "reads", Larry. Very nice, good improvisation.


My Best,

Gasry

Most excellent, Larry! Well done.

Thank you, Mike

Nice one Wizard, I like that, you can see right off that reads Larry :)

Stygg

I am impressed by all of this some great stuff