Subtle grunge textures are one of my favourite types of design resources. They’re great for adding interesting details to what would otherwise be plain and flat colours within your artwork, which helps give your design a more tactile appearance. I’ve shared a couple of iterations of subtle grunge resources over the years in a range of formats, including Photoshop Brushes and seamless textures. Today I have a brand new collection of subtle grunge brushes for Adobe Photoshop to share, which have been produced from totally new surface textures. There’s 14 brushes in total, each with a unique spread and density of gritty details, allowing you to choose just the right amount of grime to add to your designs.
Access All Areas members have a superb font combo to download this week, courtesy of LovePowerDesigns. ‘Struggle More’ is a script and sans-serif font duo that are designed to complement each other, providing you with the perfect pair of fonts under a single typeface name in your library. Each font is an effective tool when used individually, the cursive script has elegant curls in a single stroke weight, whereas the sans has tall and narrow caps with rounded corners. Alternatively, you can combine their powers to produce beautiful typography.
You need some high quality textures and patterns for your design project, but you’re stuck. They’re often prohibitively expensive, especially with the commercial license you need for your work. You could try creating them yourself, but that would take up a ton of your time and focus. The good news is, Design Cuts has you covered! This brand new bundle features some of the finest textures and patterns available in the design world, at an unheard of 99% discount. Throw in unbeatable licensing terms, and you have yourself an invaluable collection of creative resources that will come in handy for any project passed your way.
I received an email from a Spoon Graphics reader last week who wanted some advice for creating a striped type effect in Illustrator, citing a retro 70s style logo as an example. I was sure I’d created a similar effect in a recent tutorial, but it turned out to be the title art I produced for my Washed & Worn textures that I was thinking of. In today’s Adode Illustrator tutorial I’ll take you through my process of creating such artwork to produce a similar 70s inspired type style, then follow it up with an alternative process that has the advantage of preserving the live text.
In today’s video tutorial I’m going to take you through a process I’ve come up with for creating a mosaic tile effect, using a mix of Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop. This kind of tiled effect has been quite trendy over recent years, made popular by Nick Misani and his ‘Fauxsaics‘ series, where he would produce illustrations of the place names he traveled to in the style of the kind of classic mosaic tile art found in hotel foyers and subway stations. Those Fauxsaics are painstakingly created by hand by drawing each individual tile, but my process uses the power of Adobe Illustrator to achieve a similar look. We’ll then transfer the art over to Photoshop to help boost the realism with texturing and the must-have pair of superimposed feet.
Corporate identity projects often involve producing print designs across a whole range of stationery products, each with a consistent visual appearance that reflects the overall brand image. It can be difficult presenting your work when all you have is a pile of flat image previews for each individual design file, especially if some items are double-sided prints. Mockup templates allow you to show off your designs as neatly photographed layouts as if they were physical prints fresh from the shop, without the need to compose and shoot the proofs yourself! The result is a stunning presentation of your design work, which is perfect for wooing clients or displaying the work in your portfolio. Check out these 40 mockup templates you can download for free, each featuring a unique layout of stationery items against a variety of backdrops.
