Trying to design posters!

Four of a kind

Hey, I've been using CS2 the past two years for light photo editing. I've basic experience and would like to start designing a few posters for my poker business.

Can anyone give me some pointers or links to stuff that might be of help to me regarding poster design.

I'm not very creative and I don't want anything overly fancy in the posters, but just something that would make is look attractive etc.

For example, I've attached a poster that I would like to recreate. Would this be a complicated effort in photoshop?

Thanks in advance.

Chorcai

Have yout tried Illistrator ? you could download the 30day demo and make your poster there, then export it over to PD for when you need to change dates etc. Most of the effects on the fonts used are plug-ins in either PS or AI.

Curran

With a bit of time and effort, that would be easy enough to come up with in Photoshop!!
Maybe design one that you were happy with, but leave a space blank/white so that you can handwrite in whatever the details of the venue, time, buy in are; as they are probably going to be different everytime!
Or design one with different layers, and save it as a PSD file - then you can edit the layer with the info everytime; then flatten the image and save it as a .jpg and a different name each time for printing.

smelltheglove

There are plenty of sources where you can get psd templates in numerous designs, they come with layers, you adjust the layers you want and hide the ones you dont, simple. I buy a lot of these templates for my designs although you can get free individual pages for download through sources like deviant art. Just google photoshop psd template download.

p

Working from existing templates can be very useful. No point reinventing the wheel, especially when your business is at stake.

My main recommendation is to keep things simple. If you have a budget, you could also get a designer to make 2 or 3 templates for you to resuse and adjust for your needs. That can be a good way to maintain a high quality result while you're learning.

Another useful thing is to use a stock site like istockphoto which has lots of photo and illustrations for a moderate price. This can be used as the base for a design and for elements like chips/cards/tables etc...

Also, here's some good tips for design & layout in general:
http://blog.uprinting.com/5-tips-for-a-great-poster-design/
http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/guide-designersneedknow
http://vector.tutsplus.com/tutorials/designing/communicating-with-typography/
http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=600

Four of a kind

Thanks everyone so far for the info...its really helpful.

I've been looking at this text on dafont.com
http://www.dafont.com/almonte-snow.font

I'm looking to design a poster for my annual Christmas Poker Tournament, and this text is perfect imo for the main title eg....Christmas Poker Tournament!

As you can see from the font it looks like snow on top of the words...so I'd have the text red and the tops(where the snow is...white), but unfortunately I don't know how to do this in PS. I can do it manually by painting it into each letter, but I was wondering is there some setting that would activate the font so that the tops are white and the bottom red??:rolleyes:


Also could someone directly link me to a poster psd template that I could see what's involved? Thanks

Curran

If you download the font, install it and use it Photoshop and select your text as red - everything that is black in the font will be red - so you wont have to colour every letter!!

Four of a kind

Curran wrote: »

If you download the font, install it and use it Photoshop and select your text as red - everything that is black in the font will be red - so you wont have to colour every letter!!

sorry I forgot to mention that I want the poster background as black. So when I type text using this font, the white part is black due to the background colour! Any way around this problem?

p

Do a google search for 'snow text effect photoshop' and i'm sure you'll find a few tutorials on it. One of them will have what you need.

Four of a kind

Need some info regarding the setting for getting my poster printed. I won't be printing it myself.

Whats the procedure for print settings?

p

Four of a kind wrote: »

Need some info regarding the setting for getting my poster printed. I won't be printing it myself.
Whats the procedure for print settings?

Best to contact your printer to ask them specifics.

The most important thing is when you're starting your poster set the size of the canvas to the size of the poster, e.g., A4 or A3, and make sure 300dpi is set. You really need to to this at the start, or else it will cause lots of trouble if you try change it later.