Create a retro grunge typographic poster in Photoshop

Richie

Retro and Grunge are quickly becoming a new trend. These type of designs are becoming more and more popular in a variety of design contexts like corporate designs, portfolios, poster work and nowadays, even blogs use both styles on a small and large scale. When applying “old-style” elements to their works, designers produce creative and appealing designs that make their websites stand out and look really different. If these type of retro look are executed carefully, the results are stunning and will catch the eye of the viewer instantly. It sends out a very strong message when typography is placed within these styles. These retro typographic elements create a nostalgic atmosphere around us, awakening our inner feelings and memories.

After so many days of inspirational article writing, I have come up with another of my typographic tutorials. I was searching for some inspiration in deviant art and behance when i stumbled upon a rather, good looking typographic art. I immediately sat down to create that and I added a lot of tweaks of my own to get the result. This is one of my best tutorials to date and I am quite happy with the result. I enjoyed doing this poster and learnt a lot of stuff in the process. I hope you guys will love it too and please provide suggestions and opinions about this tutorial :)

Here is a glimpse of what we will be achieving in this tutorial:

Step 1:

Open Photoshop and create a new document with size 700 x 1000px. If you want to print this out, then I suggest you create a huge document with 300 dpi.

Step 2:

Using the Rounded Rectangular tool, and option set to ‘PATHS’ and ‘ADD TO SELECTION’, Create two rectangular paths as shown below:

Step 3:

Press CTRL + T to select the ‘Transformation Tool’ and Click on the ‘WARP’ button on the Toolbar above(towards the right; close to ‘Tick’ button) – Refer this tutorial on a beginners guide to Transformation Tool

Step 4:

Now, Let us twist and warp this shape and make it look like an Ink Bottle. Follow the steps in the image. You can create any kind of shape which resembles a bottle/can. Its up to you.

Step 5:

Once you have warped it to the perfect shape you need, Press Enter to confirm the path. Now follow the 3 steps:

Click on Brush Tool(B) and select a round brush of 2px radius and 100% hardness.

Create a New layer and Click on Pen Tool(P) and Right Click on the path and select ‘Stroke Path’

Select the Brush as the option and uncheck ‘Simulate Pressure’

Step 6:

Until now, we just created a reference shape for the type tool we will be creating now. Download this awesome Calligraphic Font from Dafont:

Step 7:

Using the Type Tool(T), start typing words of wisdom on the neck of the bottle. Use different font sizes for different lines and Use the path we created before for reference.

Step 8 :

Now do the same, for the bottom part as well. But here, click on the outer area and start giving empty spaces until you reach the path. Then, start typing out letters. Then, Click Enter, again type spaces until you reach the path and start typing out letters. Use the image below for reference:

Step 9:

Use different font sizes and complete the whole ink bottle. Refer the image below for what the image must look like after completing this step:

Step 10:

Now, comes the flow lines. Using the Pen Tool(T) and the option – ‘RUBBER BAND‘ Selected (This will show how the path might appear even before you add an anchor point. This is an excellent way to learn the Pen Tool)

Step 11:

Now, create some paths which resemble the flow of lines. Use the image below for reference. You can pretty much create what you want. Just let the Pen Tool do the talking :)

Step 12:

Now, Click on the Brush Tool and use a 2px hard brush and set the color to anything you want, it doesn’t matter(of, course not white). Create a new layer and name it ‘FLOW’. Now, come back to Pen Tool and Right click on the path and click on ‘Stroke Path’ with ‘Simulate Pressure’ unchecked.

Step 13:

Repeat the above 2 steps to create more such flow lines. You can use your imagination here but make sure the lines are not close to each other. We need to add text in between later.

I have shown the screenshots of what I did, You can pretty much do the same.

P.S. If you are a beginner in Pen Tool, Copy and Paste the below images onto the document and Set the opacity to around 50% and trace my paths

Step 14:

Now, let us create the floral text effect. This is an awesome trick to achieve simple but brilliant results. Select the Pen Tool and create another path. The trick here is to make it look as if the words are coming out at the end of the flow lines.

Step 15:

Now, let the Pen Tool be active. Click on the Text Tool and bring the cursor close to the path until the cursor changes to something as described below:

Step 16:

Now, Once you get that cursor blinking on the path, just type some words until the path gets over.

Step 17:

To make it look even better, try changing the size of the font gradually and make sure it starts from a bigger size and ends with a smaller one.

Step 18:

Go on creating new paths and adding new text layers by following the above two steps. Follow my images for reference:

Step 19:

Now, Select all the Text Layers and Group them into one single layer and name it ‘Words’ and merge this layer, so that it becomes rasterized into huge image. Now, double click this layer and apply ‘Inner Shadow’ and ‘Color Overlay’ effects.

Step 20:

Now comes the heart of the tutorial. Download these awesome grunge textures from Deviant art and paste the first two textures onto your document below the ‘Flow’ layer and Set the Blending mode of the first texture to ‘MULTIPLY’ and decrease the opacity of the other texture to around 60 – 70%. The output will look somewhat similar to this:

Step 21:

Create another layer above all the others and using a soft, rounded brush tool, apply brush strokes along the flow lines. Use different colors for a vibrant output:

Step 22:

Now, change the blending mode of the layer to ‘Lighter Color‘ and reduce the opacity as desired. 80-90% appeared quite satisfactory for me. The output looks something like this:

Step 23:

If there is some extra brush stokes which did not blend into the text, you can easily erase using a soft eraser :

Step 24:

Let us apply a subtle color gradient to the bottle. Using a Lasso Tool and the feather set to around 20px, create a selection around the bottle as shown below:

Step 25:

Create a new Layer and using the Gradient Tool(G), and the gradient set to a ‘VIBGYOR’ type(the one with the 7 primary colors) apply a gradient as shown below:

Step 26:

Set the blending mode of this layer to ‘Soft Light‘. This type of blending mode is suitable whenever you want to get the vintage/grungy look and also for a retro futuristic look. Adjust the opacity as desired.

Step 27:

Using the Elliptical Tool and the color set to ‘WHITE’ draw an ellipse just at the beginning to the bottle. Try visualising a bottle cap, for instance.

Step 28:

Rasterize the layer and Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and apply with the following settings.

Step 29:

We are almost at the end of the tutorial. Now, for added realism, you can use a brush tool with a radius of 1px or 2px, join the flow lines and letters. use the image below for reference. This step is optional and you need to tweak a lot to get the effect right.

Step 30:

Now the output must look something like this:

Step 31:

To give it a even more vintage look, add a Photo Filter from the layers palette.

Well, thats all folks. We successfully created an awesome looking retro grunge typographic poster. I just added a little of my own tweaks. I typed in some individual letters of different sizes and applied Guassian Blur with different depth to create a ‘Depth of field’ Effect.