As part of the collection of merchandise I would like to design for my brand I am planning to design a range of graphic prints. Before getting into the process of designing them I wanted to practice some different techniques. I found some interesting ones on a blog post from 'Yes I'm a Designer' on typographic poster effects, written by Shumi Perhiniak (2021).
When I was following the tutorials on this article from their YouTube account, I found it really difficult to understand what they were actually doing. Each video was about 1 minute long, with no voiceover and little explanation of each step of the process and the tools they were using. I found myself adapting and figuring out how to recreate the effects in my own way, forcing me to expand on my knowledge and skills of Illustrator on my own.
Sliced Typography
This effect was fairly straight forward, although the original designer used InDesign and I could not follow their tutorial effectively and chose to recreate it in Illustrator instead. I like this effect a lot and would consider using it for an in depth description of the colour characters in a poster/print, or potentially using the design in my colour character handbooks that I have planned to make for each personality type. I want these handbooks to use unconventional design methods rather than being a standard (or boring) book.
(Original Design)
Isometric Type
This type effect was really interesting to me as I had never considered designing type in this way before. Although again, I thought the tutorial was difficult to follow. The designer used some keyboard shortcuts throughout the video without explaining what tools they were using, leaving me to use my own knowledge and common sense as a designer to figure it out myself. However, I like the end result and ultimately it wasn't one of the most difficult tutorials to follow.
(Original Design)
Gradient Slices
This effect looks quite simple but again, it expanded my mind on the wide variety of effects you can use to make simple type look more interesting. The tutorial was lacking in explanation again and I found myself looking for subsequent tutorials on how to use the gradient tool and trying to figure out the keyboard shortcuts that they were using. Although I have some experience in graphic design from my undergraduate course, I still have a lot to learn about Illustrator and graphic design in general. This is why I chose to to do my Master's degree, as I wanted to continue teaching myself valuable skills and improving on my skillset.
(Original Design)
Depth on Text
This effect was done using the blend tool, although the tutorial I was following failed to explain how to use this tool properly. I had to watch a couple of other tutorials on using this tool to figure out how to use it myself. However, in doing this, I found that there were a lot of other uses for this tool as well- including how to replace the spine with another path to make it a curved line rather than a straight diagonal. I think this tool could come in handy when I start to experiment with different designs for my graphic prints.
(Original Design)
Warp Typography
This warp type effect is becoming extremely popular in design in recent years. This was my first attempt at using it properly. I have used warp fonts before but have not attempted to alter it myself in any way. I don't think this is best attempt but I would definitely like the experiment with it more and use it in my designs. The tutorial linked on the article was completely useless to me and I had to look for another tutorial to help me with this design. The original tutorial looked to be more of a trial and error based alteration of warp text and didn't explain what they were doing effectively.
(Original Design)
Although the tutorials on this article were mostly unhelpful in teaching me how to do these type effects, I am glad that I found it as it offered me some design inspiration and led to more helpful tutorials that taught me a little bit more about how to use several tools as well as helping me get used to using Illustrator in general. I would love to continue teaching myself how to create typographic poster effects.
References:
Comments