http://www.deadmau5store.co.uk/home.jsp?CategoryPK=unittest-WwIrRJuEiKKEthBDqN3IEb-1142

I was recently out at the clothes store and came across a cool
t-shirt by Diesel. The design featured some nice typography that had
been treated to some image manipulation to give an awesome effect of wet
ink, as if the design has come into contact with drops of water that
distorted the print.

I remember originally seeing a similar design by Craig Ward, with his amazing ‘Ink and water don’t mix’
design. I’m not sure whether Craig was also behind the t-shirt art, but
I fancied giving the effect a go myself, so I booted up Photoshop and
started experimenting. Follow this walkthrough to see the simple steps
of creating a similar design, using ready-made brushes to distort some
typography of our own.

Start work in Photoshop by creating a new canvas. I’ve chosen to
create a landscape poster. Set out a phrase using a classy and
sophisticated font, such as Bodoni.

Split the words into their own layers and move them into position to
form a balanced layout, align elements of the words with the letters
above and below to give structure.

We could get our hands dirty and splash some ink onto some paper and
scan in the results, but instead we can take the easy route and use
ready-made resources from generous designers and artists. Scour the web
for collections of ink splatter brushes for Photoshop. Here’s the
selection I personally picked out:

• Gradient Splats
• Coffee Stains (1)
• Coffee Stains (2)
• Coffee Stains (3)
• Sumi Ink Brushes

Download and arrange the ABR files into a file. In Photoshop click
the tiny arrow in the Brushes palette and select Preset Manager then
load all the ink brushes.

Pick out interesting ink shapes from the various brushes and paint
odd splats and runs over the type on a new layer. Adjust the size of the
brush by using the square bracket keys.

Tailor the shape of the ink splatter towards a similar area of a
letter, so for instance if it’s a long ink mark, paint this over a
suitably long, straight letter.

Give some letters some major distortion by adding plenty of ink marks, but keep the words legible when viewed at 100%.

Some brushes in the set are created with paint brushes. Since this
design is meant to look like it’s naturally distorted by water drops,
just pick out the drops, splats and subtle drips.

You can reuse brushes while avoiding any repeating shapes by rotating
the brush in the brushes palette. Grab the circular crosshair to adjust
the angle.

When the design is nearing completion, download some spraypaint brushes to make use of tiny drips to add some little touches to the design.

Download a grungy paper texture
to add some visual interest to the background. Desaturate the image and
drop the opacity right down to 15% to leave subtle background tones.

Take a look over the design at 100% and make any final tweaks. Adjust
the opacity of any layers that are taking too much prominence, and use a
small soft round brush to blend in specific areas of ink and text.

Tutorial Author: http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/

Specialising in graduate recruitment and design positions (at all levels) the Designer Forum offers a simple and effective recruitment service for retailers, designers, brand labels and manufacturers, etc throughout the UK. Cost £150 + VAT. The advert reaches over 7,000 clothing and textile contacts and the advert will be placed on the Designer Forum website.

For more details please contact Alison Marshall on Tel: 0115 9115339 or email: alison@design-online.net or visit www.design-online.net

Pleas click here to download the designer forum recruitment service information pack.

Visit ourmain site: www.october.co.uk
Tshirt printing, screen printing, embroidery

“These are one-of-a-kind tees. Before we print a run of shirts we test the design on a tee to make sure there aren’t any leaks, pin-holes and overall defects in the screen. After a while the designs overlap creating layers and layers of greatness.  Every single test tee varies a bit. Also, there may be finger smudges or other attributes that add character to these artifacts.”

Simply upload a copy of your design, it needs to be a JPEG. Within 48 hours it will appear on Microphone For Youth and you can start the campaigning! If your design wins we will request a higher resolution version, be sure you can provide this otherwise we’ll have to choose another winner.

Take the Mic, the stage is yours!

Goto the Hurley website for more info and entry procedures.

Our main site: www.october.co.uk
T-shirt printing, screen printing, embroidery

Quote: Vanilla Pink

At the heart of Vanilla Pink’s ethos is the brand logo, the gingerbread man.

The gingerbread man uses a number of ensembles to create unique characters, each with its own flavour, giving Vanilla Pink the depth to capture your imagination and transcend our message of creative design and inner funk.

They call it ‘FunK Shui’…what do you?

Vanilla Pink’s journey began in 2006, its founders two influential figures on the UK Urban scene had a vision to create a movement they coined ‘Funk Shui’, a belief in the artistic freedom of expression and an interest group that motivates individuals to strive for success and enjoy the fruits of life.

As the phenomenon that is ‘Funk Shui’ gathers pace, a journey that began in London, now crosses territorial and cultural boundaries, we call on those before us to help spread the message of originality.

Visit our main site: www.october.co.uk
t-shirt printing, screen printing, embroidery

Custom Hang Tag

It seems like everywhere I look these days designers are using more and more handmade objects in their work. From pencil sketches and fabric scans to paper scraps and household odds and ends these items are making their way into our work. In this Photoshop tutorial you’ll learn how to create a retail hang tag.

It seems like everywhere I look these days designers are using more and more handmade objects in their work. From pencil sketches and fabric scans to paper scraps and household odds and ends these items are making their way into our work. In this Photoshop tutorial you’ll learn how to create a retail “hang tag”.

1

As always I recommend using a little reference material when you’re creating something from scratch that actually exists in the physical world. For today’s lesson I’m using two pieces I found at iStockPhoto, one for the card-stock background and one for the hang tag. By entering the item ID into the iStockPhoto search you can pull up the exact images I’m using.

In this lesson we’ll be using a photo of actual card-stock for the project. If you’d like to learn how to create this effect from scratch check out my Cardboard And Torn Paper Business Card tutorial.

2

Our first step will be to organize these items on the stage. I’ve merged the reference tag from iStock with the background layer for convenience. (The .PSD file at the end of the lesson will contain both original comp pieces from iStock). I’ve also rotated the card-stock background.

3

Lets go ahead and create the shape of our tag by tracing the outline of the reference tag with the Pen tool. This will be easy since the outline of the tag is all straight lines. Press the P key to invoke the pen tool and click your way around the outside of the tag until you end up back at your start point.

(*note: This is easier if you zoo in on the tag for a better view.)

4

Before we go any further lets click over to the Paths tab in the Layers palette (or by choosing Window>Paths from the main menu) and lets name our path. The reason for this is that if we create a new working path now without naming the one we just created we risk loosing the initial path because if we don’t name it Photoshop assumes we’re done with it.

5

While we still have the Paths tab open and our Main Tag Area path selected lets also add the hole. Press the U key to invoke the Custom Shape tool, in the options bar at the top of Photoshop make sure that the tool is set to Paths, choose the Ellipse tool and make sure the Exclude Overlapping Path Areas icon is selected.

Holding down the Shift key to constrain the circle, click and drag a circular path onto the stage where the hole in the tag is.

6

Sometimes despite our best efforts to do things in the correct order Photoshop can have a mind of it’s own so lets double check and make sure this new circular path indeed has the Exclude Overlapping Paths option actually chosen. Press the A key to switch to the Direct Selection tool and take a look at the options bar at the top of Photoshop. Mine actually had defaulted to the Add To Shape Area option rather than retaining the Exclude Overlapping setting. If this is the case for you, just go ahead and click on the Exclude Overlapping Path Areas icon to switch it. We do this to make sure that the hole is actually cutout of the tag.

7

Switch back to the layer tag and with the Direct Selection tool still selected click and drag around the entire path area to select both paths. Move the path over the top of the background texture and press Command-T (PC: Ctrl-T) to invoke the Free Transform tool (yes it works with paths too). Make sure to hold the Shift key as you grab one of the corners of the transform box to constrain the path as you transform it to the size you want to use. Hit the Return (PC: Enter) key when you’ve resized the path to commit the transformation.

8

We can convert the selected path to a selection by simply pressing Command-Return (PC: Ctrl-Enter) and then convert the selection to a Layer Mask by clicking the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. (*note: make sure you’ve got the Main Tag layer selected before doing this or the layer mask won’t be applied to the right layer.)

9

While we’re on this Main Tag layer lets go ahead and add a couple of Layer Styles to it. Command-Click (PC: Right-Click) on the layer and choose Blending Options to bring up the Layer Styles dialog and add the following two styles.

10

Create a new layer above the Main Tag layer by clicking the Create New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette or by using the keyboard shortcut Command-Shift-N (PC: Ctrl-Shift-N), call this layer Grommet.

Press the M key to switch to the Marquee tool, use the fly out menu in the Tools bar to switch to the Elliptical Marquee tool or you can use the keyboard shortcut Shift-M (PC: Shift-M) to switch between Rectangular and Elliptical once the Marquee tool is selected. Click and drag a selection where the reinforcement grommet will live around the hole in the tag.

11

Click the foreground swatch in the Layers palette and change the color to #706340 and click OK, then fill the selection with this new foreground color by pressing Option-Delete (PC: Alt-Backspace).

Lets copy the layer mask from the Main Tag layer to the Grommet layer by holding down the Option (PC: Alt) key and clicking and dragging the layer mask (in the Layers palette) from the Main Tag layer to the Grommet layer. Lets also change the grommet’s layer Blend Mode to Multiply and lower the Fill opacity to 70%.

12

Just like we did in Step 9 lets go ahead and give the Grommet layer a few Layer Styles of it’s own.

13

It’s time to add some string to our tag. We’ll do this by drawing a few separate paths and then stroking the path with a brush so lets first press the B key to switch to the Brush tool and we’re going to choose a round hard edged brush with a radius of 3 pixels.

14

Create a new layer called String 1. Change the foreground color to #735e47 and press the P key to switch to the Pen tool. Using the Pen tool click and drag a path onto the stage that will represent our first piece of string coming from the opening of the hole.

15

With the Pen tool still selected Control-Click (PC: Right-Click) on the path and select Stroke Path. Choose Brush from the dialog and make sure Pen Pressure is not checked then click OK. Pressing Command-H (PC: Ctrl-H) when you’re finished will hide the path so you can see what you’ve done.

16

Repeat Steps 14-15 on a new layer called String 2.

17

And one last time lets create a path and stroke it to create the loop that wraps from behind the tag around the two strings we just created. I’ll call this layer String Loop. I’m going to draw this path overlapping the tag and we’ll trim it in Step 18.

18

Press M to switch to the Marquee tool, make sure the Rectangular Marquee is selected and then click and drag a selection to the edge of the tag (where we need to cut our loop of string). Press Delete (PC: Backspace) to remove the overlapping string then deselect by pressing Command-D (PC: Ctrl-D).

19

To add a little more realism lets add a Drop Shadow, Bevel & Emboss and Pattern Overlay to our string. You can add these layer styles to any of the String layers and then by holding down the Option (PC: Alt) key you can click and drag the layer style from one layer to the next (just like we did with Layer Masks earlier) to add the same style to all 3 String layers.

(*note: The Pattern Overlay is actually overkill for such a small piece of string, but if you’re creating this at 300ppi for a print project it will add the slightest bit of texture to the string and actually adds to the look nicely. Obviously at 300ppi you’ll need to adjust all the layer styles accordingly as well.)

20

Now that our tag is complete it’s time to put something on it. We’ll want to put the the graphics that will be on the hang tag just above the Main Tag layer and it’s a good idea to create clipping masks from all those layers back to the Main Tag layer so that any graphic that extends beyond the edges of the tag will retain the shape and edge effects of the tag itself.

I’ll start by throwing in the obligatory PSHERO star logo by creating a new layer just above the Main Tag layer and calling it Star. I’ve got the logo star saved as a custom shape so I’ll just throw it onto my layer and position it above the tag as desired. Then by Command-Clicking (PC: Right-Clicking) on the layer and choosing Create Clipping Mask I can use the Main Tag layer as a mask for the Star layer. I also switched the layer Blend Mode to Linear Burn and lowered the Fill opacity to 55% to make it look more like the star was printed onto the card.

(*note: By placing the star behind the Grommet layer which has Fill opacity to 70% I could see the star through the grommet, I didn’t like this look so I raised the Fill opacity of the Grommet layer back to 100% and lightened the color a little.)

21

I’ll repeat Step 20 a few more times adding text and a little bit of paint with a grunge brush to get to my final image, and yes, all this is included in the download at the end of the lesson. If you want more instruction on how to age and distress in Photoshop you should check out these tutorials:

Tutorial by PSHERO >> click here.

View our main site: www.october.co.uk