Tutorials
In today’s Adobe Illustrator tutorial we’re going to create a vibrant piece of vector artwork featuring three dimensional type from an isometric viewpoint. This isometric type effect is commonly combined with bright colours to produce a fun design style. Adobe Illustrator is the perfect tool to create such an effect; the 3D Extrude & Bevel tool easily generates an accurate isometric layout, then the artwork can then be broken down into individual vector shapes for easy customisation with colourful fills and detailed patterns.
Last month I posted a brief overview and roundup of Color Fonts, the latest development in the world of typography. Unlike traditional fonts, Color Fonts contain full colour graphics for each character, which means creative text styles can now be typed out directly in Photoshop and Illustrator, without the need for any additional effects to be applied. The people behind Fontself reached out to me and asked if I’d like to try out their tool for creating custom Color Fonts, so in today’s tutorial I’ll take you through the process of how I created my first Color Font with ease, using the Fontself extension for Adobe Photoshop.
It’s always fun making character illustrations, but even more so when that character is based on an actual person! Cartoon style avatars are commonly used for their balance between resembling the person they’re representing, whilst retaining some anonymity. In today’s tutorial we’ll use the vector tools in Adobe Illustrator to produce a simple avatar character with a line art style and flat colours. We’ll build the character in such a way that it’s somewhat modular, where multiple personas can be built from one basic foundation.
In today’s Photoshop tutorial we’re going to have some fun changing the weather in a photograph by adding a heavy rain shower. The effect works best on night shots of dark streets to give the image a dramatic mood. We’ll amplify the subtle light reflections on the pavement to simulate the appearance of a wet surface, then add three layers of rain drops, each at different sizes to achieve the illusion of depth.
Don’t you just love those old superhero comic book covers? The early ones are really cool, especially the titles that were illustrated in a blocky 3D type effect. Follow along with today’s tutorial to reproduce a superhero comic book style text effect, similar to the original Superman title logo. We’ll lay out the text in Photoshop and generate a 3D appearance with some clever layering techniques, then bring the effect to life with bold colours and a halftone print effect.
The multi-faceted and polygonal logo design style still seem to be really popular, especially with brands in the tech and digital industries. These logo designs are often quite detailed with lots of gradient colours and shading that gives the graphic an icon-like appearance. Follow along with today’s Adobe Illustrator tutorial to create a stylised gemstone logo graphic in Adobe Illustrator. We’ll use a range of tools to produce the design in vector format, resulting in a crisp design that could form the basis of a modern brand identity.
