WHAT WE’RE CREATING:

Hey Design Cutters!

Today we’ll be creating a summery cocktail recipe card that utilises the incredible amount of fonts and decorations available in the current deal.

There’s a lot of fonts to get familiar with, so let’s jump straight in!

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Follow along with this tutorial: Download the freebies

Today we have another huge freebie for you design geeks to enjoy. Jay from Albatross Design has kindly agreed to offer his Microbrew Banners font as a freebie for the Design Cuts community. These hand-drawn style banners are perfect for your more creative projects!

Remember, this freebie is just a tiny sample taken from our current deal Monster Creative Font Bundle (Including Web Fonts) Just $29 (97% Off). This bundle features 10 incredibly creative font families, as well as extended licensing + web fonts for all items.

Enter your email below to download the free Microbrew banners pack, so you can follow along with this tutorial easily.


Step 1:

Open a new A6 Document in Photoshop (1240 pixels x 1748)

We’ll start by layering up a richly textured background to contrast with the solid, bolder colours of the fonts.

To keep things tidy, create a new folder called ‘Background’ which we’ll be working in for this step.

We’ll set the vibe by downloading this summery sunset photo from Public Domain Pictures:

Sunset Photo

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Paste the image on to your canvas, scaling to fit the height. Move the image across so it frames the sunset nicely:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Create a new Levels Adjustment Layer, with the following settings:

Levels:

Shadows: 0
Midtones: 1.69
Hilghights: 255

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

This is to create a more even tone we can build the texture up from, which is what we’ll move on to next.

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Step 2:

Everyone loves a good grungy paper texture ;) We’ll be using this one from Bashcorpo:

Grungy Paper

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Paste on to your canvas and set the layer blend mode to Multiply:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Let’s add a fun pattern which compliments the colours in the photo nicely, and give the background a more graphic feel.

Select ‘Digital Paper – Gabriela-08.jpg’ and paste it on to your canvas:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Scale to fit, then set the blend mode to Overlay:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Duplicate the layer, changing the blend mode to Multiply and opacity to 75%:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

To add extra warmth, colour fill a new layer using #F36C4F and set the blend mode to Soft Light. Duplicate the layer:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Finally for this step, create a new colour fill layer using #AC3300 and set the blend mode to Multiply:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Step 3:

We’re going to layer the background up even more with this great freebie texture from the 2 Lil Owls. The colour is just like a Long Island Iced Tea!

2 Lil Owls Free Textures + Extras

Select ‘2LO Jewel Chalks 1.jpg’ and paste it on to your canvas, scaling to fit:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Change the blend mode to Multiply, and we’ll use the next two layers to tone-down the red a bit!

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Duplicate the layer, changing the blend mode to Soft Light:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Next, we’re going to create our own screen texture using this source paper from Camino Palmero:

Old Paper Texture

Paste it on to your canvas, scaling to fit.

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

To get the right screen effect, inverse the layer:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Change the blend mode to Screen and reduce the opacity to 75%:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Finally, create a new Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer. To make sure it only applies to the screen layer, hold down ‘alt’ on your keyboard and click just between the two layers.

Hue/Saturation:

Colorize: selected
Hue: 11
Saturation: 0
Lightness: 0

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

That’s our cocktail-coloured background finished! Now, let’s start playing with some fonts…

Step 4:

We’ll be extensively using not only the text, but also the ornaments and extras that are included with many of the font families (including the Microbrew Banners in the freebie pack for this deal) to help familiarise yourself with what’s available (ie: lots!) :)

As there’s going to be a *lot* of text layers adding up in your layers panel, let’s keep them in folders so they’re easier to find. Descriptive layer names will also save you much frustration later on when using the ornament fonts.

With the neat-freak disclaimer over with(!) create a new folder called ‘Header’.

These are the colours and fonts we’ll be using to create this section:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

It’s worth setting up the colours in your swatches, as we’ll be using them throughout the tutorial and make styling the text a bit quicker.

Type each phrase/ornament on a separate layer using with the following properties:

Iced Tea: BrushUp Too, #FFFFFF, 60pt

Long Island: Showcase Script, #FFFFFF, 17pt

n (sun): Four Seasons Dingbat, #FFF586, 61pt

K (hearts): Four Seasons Dingbat, #FFFFFF, 41pt, blend mode: Overlay

W (blue splash): D.I.Y Time Ornaments, #9CE2E6, 88pt

w (underline): D.I.Y Time Ornaments, #C4DF9B, 150pt

t (make): D.I.Y Time Catchwords, #C4DF9B, 55pt

W (corner leaves): D.I.Y Time Dingbats, #8DC63F, 100pt

v (banner): Microbrew Banners, #FDC689, 163pt

Once you’ve got your individual elements, play around with their positioning, scale and angle so you have something similar to the image below:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Quick tip: If you find it difficult to select the specific text you want because everything is close together, temporarily hide some of the surrounding text layers so they can’t be selected by accident.

This might be a good point to take a screen-break, as we’ll be doing some intensive font-tweaking in the following steps!

Step 5:

Create a new group called ‘Ingredients’.

On a new layer, select the Microbrew Banners font, # #9CE2E6, 135pt and type a lowercase “i” (minus the quotation marks).

This should give you the following banner:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

We’re going to create some curved text to sit in here, which we’ll do in Illustrator:

Open up a new document in Illustrator and type the same as we just did (or copy/paste).

Use the pen tool to create a curved line that echoes the bottom of the banner:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Select the ‘Type on a Path’ tool, and click at the very beginning of the line, then set the justification to centre.

Select Daft Brush as the font, set the size to 70pt and color to black and type “You’ll Need”:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Don’t worry that it’s a bit close to the bottom for now, as we’ll reposition this when we paste it into photoshop – which is what we’ll do next.

Copy and paste the text on to your Photoshop canvas and resize to fit the centre of the banner:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

We’ll now create a ‘cut out’ effect using the text that’s just been placed.

With the layer that the text (now a smart object) is on activated, select the Magic Wand tool. Click on any area that isn’t black, not forgetting the inside of the ‘O’ and ‘D’. You can select multiple areas by holding down ‘shift’ on your keyboard whilst you click.

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

With the text still selected, activate the layer below, which has the banner on it. Add a layer mask, then hide the original “You’ll Need” layer to see the effect:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Step 6:

Let’s look a bit more at how the various ornaments and dingbats can help emphasise and add character to the text.

On separate layers, using the Four Seasons Pro Bold font, type:

15ml: #FFF586, 20pt

each of: #FFFFFF, 12pt

Arrange them so that they sit centrally under the banner, and that the baseline roughly aligns with the tips of the banner:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

This looks nice enough as it is, as it’s such a characterful font. But being a creative bunch, let’s take it a little further!

Because it’s a liquid measure, we can emphasise this nature of the text by adding some decorative splashes. To do this select the D.I.Y Time Ornaments font, and type:

o (lowercase): #FFFFFF, 42pt

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Duplicate the layer and flip horizontally via the Edit > Transform menu to create a mirror image, and position on the opposite side of the text.

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

As you can see, this makes the text ‘pop’ a bit more and the symbols serve to mimic the real splashes that’ll be made as the ingredients are all poured together, adding some movement and energy.

Step 7:

Here’s an overview of the fonts we’ll be using to write out the ingredients:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

This section really just requires you to have a bit of a play with the font sizes, line heights and layout to get an arrangement you like.

See what works best for you. You can try typing each word on a separate layer and manually resize and position it using the Transform tool.

Alternatively, you can use the type full phrases and use the Character properties box to select individual words and alter their settings:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

The Leading (pronounced as in ’sledding’) and Font Size should be the only properties you need to adjust.

Set up some grid lines to help you arrange everything and have a bit of a play!

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

The properties for each word as they are in this tutorial piece, are listed below for reference:

Vodka: Thirsty Rough Regular, #FFFFFF

Light Rum: Four Seasons Pro Bold, #FFF586

Gin: Julieta Pro Gota, #FFFFFF

Fresh Lemon Juice: BrushUp Too, #FFF586

Orange Liqueur: Showcase Slab, #FFFFFF

Freshly Squeezed Orange Juice: Microbrew One Inline, #FDC689

D (splash): D.I.Y Time Ornaments, #FDC689

p (spoon): Four Seasons Dingbat, #FFF586, Blend Mode: Screen

1 teaspoon: Four Seasons Pro Bold, #FFFFFF

Sugar Syrup: Showcase Script, #FFFFFF

Cola to top up: Thirsty Rough Regular, #FFF586

Mint & Lemon wedge to garnish: Four Seasons Pro Bold, #8DC63F, #FFFFFF, #FFF586

Note the little touches such as the splash after “squeezed” to make it feel juicy, and the colour changes on”mint” and “lemon wedge” to reflect the ingredients.

Here’s what the completed list looks like:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Step 8:

Now we’ve got the ingredients, we need to let people know what to do with them! Create a new group called ‘Method’ to keep everything in.

We’ll be taking exactly the same approach as we did for writing out the ingredients, for the method.

Here’s a summary of the fonts used for this example:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

As before, have a play with the layout, sizes and angles to see what fits nicely in the space.

For reference, here are the properties for each word:

E (pointing hand): Microbrew Ornaments, #FFF586

Place All Of The: Microbrew Four, #FFF586

ingredients: Thirsty Rough Regular, #FFFFFF

into a cocktail shaker: D.I.Y Time Slab, #FFFFFF, #C4DF9B

with a handful of: Showcase Script, #9CE2E6

ice: Thirsty Rough Black, #9CE2E6

&: Four Seasons Pro Bold, #C4DF9B

Shake: Daft Brush, #FFFFFF

Strain: Thirsty Rough Regular, #FFFFFF

In to a tall glass: Showcase Slab, #C4DF9B

& serve!: Thirsty Rough Regular, #FFF586, #FFFFFF

Once all the text has been created, let’s quickly revisit the word “SHAKE”.

To add a bit more character to the text and emphasise the nature of the work, we’ll be adjusting the height of every other letter using the Baseline Shift feature in the character panel:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Change the number to somewhere between 5pt – 9pt for a balanced effect. Now it looks like the letters are shaking up and down to match the word:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Step 9:

We’ll be using some of the Dingbats and Ornaments for some illustrative touches to complement the text. The fact that these all come included in the font families makes it super easy to do.

We’ll be working in this bit of space remaining below the method:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Create a new group called ‘Cocktail Illustrations’ to keep the layers together.

To get the image of a tall glass and straw, type:

h (lowercase): Four Seasons Dingbat, #FDC689, 75pt

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

For the blue arrow, type the following:

M (uppercase): Microbrew Ornaments, #9CE2E6, 75pt

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Position it so that it points from the phrase “Cola to top up” to the glass, which links the two sections and adds an extra instructional aspect, as well as a decorative one.

We’ll now add the the lemon wedge and mint leaves, as mentioned in the ingredients. To get these, type the following on their own layers:

4 (lemon base colour): Showcase Ornaments, #FFF586 , 24pt

z (lemon outline): Showcase Ornaments, #FDC689, 24pt

d (mint leaf): Showcase Ornaments, #8DC63F, 25pt

Duplicate the mint leaf layer, then flip it horizontally via Edit > Transform. Then resize it using the Transform tool, and adjust the angles of the other items so they look similar to the image below:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

To get the more abstract mint/lemon image above the glass, type the following:

W (uppercase): D.I.Y Time Dingbats, #8DC63F, 87pt

Use the transform tool to adjust the angle so it’s similar to below:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Duplicate the layer, changing the font colour to #FFF586. Use a layer mask to hide the two smaller parts, so that the green version from below shows through.

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Step 10:

Finally, we’ll add another banner to balance the one at the top of the ingredients section.

To do this, type:

e (lowercase): Microbrew Banners, #FFFFFF, 78pt

Position it so that it’s roughly central:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

To create the cutout heart, we’ll use the same masking technique as we did in Step 5.

For the heart, type:

S (uppercase): D.I.Y Time Dingbats, #000000, 24pt

Use the Magic Wand tool to select anywhere that isn’t black, then activate the layer below (the banner) and create a layer mask.

Hide the original text/heart layer to see the effect:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

Feel free to mock up the design as a finishing touch:

Cocktail Menu Tutorial

And we’re done!

It’s been a font adventure, and I hope you had fun following this tutorial as well as getting a better idea of just how much is available in this bundle to fuel your creativity.

Perhaps you could some to create your own invites to a summer BBQ or cocktail party? :)

Don’t forget to check out this week’s deal, before it expires forever:

Monster Creative Font Bundle (Includes Web Fonts) – $29.