Freebies
Blurred backgrounds have become a popular resource in the design community. They’re useful images to base your design on, providing a vibrant foundation to place a logo, typography and other elements to construct beautiful brochure covers, website headers and more! Rather than produce these blurred images digitally with gradients or a Gaussian blur, I used a macro camera lens to take completely out of focus photos of colourful objects to capture the organic tones and hues with authentic bokeh effects.
In last week’s vector illustration tutorial I used my free set of distressed halftone patterns to add cool screentone effects to my artwork in Photoshop, then I thought; Why not create a similar set of patterns but in vector format to allow the same distressed halftone effects to be added directly in Adobe Illustrator? So I’ve been working hard to create this new set of free halftone patterns in the same distressed styling, but this set makes use of Illustrator swatches to allow the effects to be scaled to any size, keeping your artwork 100% vector.
Halftone textures are fantastic resources for creating retro print effects by simply overlaying the dot patterns over your solid colour artwork. I shared a pack of distressed halftone patterns last year, which featured a range of uniform halftone screens of various densities. This time, I’ve created a new series of vector textures with gradual changes in dot size, which help add subtle tones to your designs.
Grungy textures are versatile resources that can be used as backgrounds and overlays in your designs to add dirty distressed effects. Broken photocopiers produce some of the best textures around, combining black and white tones with heavy grain which is perfect for retrofying your designs with aged looks. I’ll let you in on a little secret, these textures were actually created by abusing my scanner, but they contain all the characteristics of photocopy toner malfunctions.
I recently inherited a box of my Grandfather’s old possessions, which alongside his WW2 service books and a Great War Memorial Plaque for my great-great-uncle, also contains a number of postcards dated from the mid-1930s. As well as being treasured heirlooms, the aged paper textures of these postcards also make fantastic design resources! Download this pack of 24 free postcard textures to create authentic vintage effects for your artwork.
My most popular tutorial of 2014 was my guide to creating a realistic money effect in Photoshop, which explained the steps to achieve an authentic engraved illustration style. The process is quite time consuming, so I figured it would be useful to follow it up with a ready made Photoshop Action that produces the effect automatically with just the click of a button. Choose from 3 levels of detail for your image, then the Action will transform your photo into a realistic engraved illustration.
