Creating Blened Fliers, Posters, other art...

[wambuigirl]

Hi!

I'm new to the forums and was wondering if someone could point me in the right direction..

I am wondering where one would start in trying to design fliers/posters? I am just learning Photoshop and have the Katrin Eisman book and have been working through that. I've also done other online tutorials and am comfortable with layers, blending modes, selections etc. I'd like to learn to do the more artful blends that are used in flier, cd and sticker design and things of that nature.

I would like to learn how to do those neat, texturized and blended backgrounds/images and interesting and more avant guarde type creations. I'd also like to know if people who design this sort of stuff use special techniques and plugins to get those rough, crackled type looks ... and how they blend so artistically.

To achive these designs do you have to use a combination of Illustrator, Photoshop and then Quark Xpress? How does that work for output to printing shops? Woudl you have to export the image parts of deisgns to Quark Xpress to be able send them to a professional printing shop or can pro printers print from a RGB or CMYK PSD file? I'm not sure how to do color separations, so I wonder if I'd have to learn how to do this.

Examples of the type of work I'd like to learn how to do are at the following links:
http://www.flyercity.com/set_city_code.jsp?cityCode=NY
http://www.flyercity.com/set_city_code.jsp?cityCode=SF
http://www.bddesign.net/portfolio/July13.jpg
http://www.bddesign.net/portfolio/feb24.jpg
http://www.bddesign.net/portfolio/buried-breathing-sticker.gif

Thanks for any hints or tips you can give.



Kind regards,
Natalie

[renapunx]

Well.. If you really feel confortable whit all those things, you got what you need... Now you just have to practice a LOT!!!

You should go to the Battle Grid, and get on some of those nasty battles... I've learned a lot from them....

About the flyers you posted...

I don't like the ones on the first links... hehe...

The other three (bddesigns) are nice, but it's just a lot of Grunge Brushes, and some Grunge Type too..


Just go to the battle grid... Maybe sometime we'll battle hehe.. (when I make some time for myself... :cry:

See you

[wambuigirl]

I think you are right about practice!

Gonna check out the Battle Grid.

Thanks :)

[Boozer]

other than photoshop you'll have to study typography and desk top publishing...photoshop is not the best software to make those posters and fliers...what usually happens is that images are edited in PS and text is added in a vector based software like illustrator, corel but mainly indesign and quark express :)

first improve your image and typo knowledge then you'll get used to print rules quick and maybe even illustrate :)

good luck :)

[Lunch]

just stick around the design scene for a while
it takes along time to learn, and practice is very important, but i also think an original approach is extremely important - but that also comes in time, so does witty problem solving and being witty in response to a visual problem - probably one of the keys to being a good designer allround imo

keep it at
work hard is my best advice
educate yourself - dont wait for others to educate you

[renapunx]

Originally posted by visioninflames
educate yourself - dont wait for others to educate you

That's very important!!!

[wambuigirl]

Originally posted by Boozer
other than photoshop you'll have to study typography and desk top publishing...photoshop is not the best software to make those posters and fliers...what usually happens is that images are edited in PS and text is added in a vector based software like illustrator, corel but mainly indesign and quark express :)

first improve your image and typo knowledge then you'll get used to print rules quick and maybe even illustrate :)

good luck :)

Boozer,

I guess I should get some books on those subjects then. I've seen a few with lots of good examples etc.

I already have Quark Xpress and am comfortable navigating around in it. I've just never really done photoshop art graphic plus text layouts in it before.

What DPI should I make the PS graphics? Should they be 300-400 for something like a CD layout or a poster?

Thanks,
Nat

Originally posted by visioninflames
just stick around the design scene for a while
it takes along time to learn, and practice is very important, but i also think an original approach is extremely important - but that also comes in time, so does witty problem solving and being witty in response to a visual problem - probably one of the keys to being a good designer allround imo

keep it at
work hard is my best advice
educate yourself - dont wait for others to educate you

Visioninflames,

Thanks for that advice. I do agree that practice is important.

The way I learn best is to do tutorials and then apply those concepts to design. I think the tutorial teach a lot of good stuff that you can use. I tend to take what I have learned and then go off in my own direction after learning a certain concept.

So far I have been doing a lot of art photo tutorials. I guess I will need to find some typography ones.

Thanks for the advice.

Nat

[Boozer]

300dpi is always nice but 150 is usually more than enough...I personally prefer 300 dpi cause you can always downgrade to 150 heh :)