WHAT WE’RE CREATING:

Hello Design Cutters! Simon here. For the second tutorial this week, we are going to use the Inspirational Artistic Design Bundle to craft a cover for a children’s book called “Mister Oliver Rabbit and the fun roadtrip.”

This tutorial covers a ton of useful techniques, from how to work with creative typefaces (there are some great tips for adjusting baselines) to applying watercolour effects, and artistic details to your final piece.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

TECHNICAL NOTES

This tutorial’s end result will be accomplished using mostly Photoshop.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Do note however that my workflow will also incorporate Illustrator, even though it’ll be to copy and paste over vector assets into our Photoshop file. You should be able to do without if you don’t have it. I prefer to have access to real vector elements through smart objects, rather than deal with shape layers.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

We will also use plenty of textures. Let’s have a quick reminder of our usual rules and processes with them.

  1. Don’t know what a clipped layer is? Glad you asked! This means that the layer is only visible/applies to the layer directly below it. You can very quickly do this by holding ALT down on your keyboard and clicking between the two layers. Here’s a quick demonstration.
  2. Every time we’ll work with textures, we’ll follow this simple process: place as smart object, sharpen1, desaturate, enhance contrast with levels, and modify the blending mode.
  3. Placing the textures as smart objects, and using adjustment layers to tweak them, allows us to stick to a non-destructive workflow. We’ve explored in depth the numerous pros and few cons of such a workflow in this past tutorial: “How to Use Textures The Right Way.”

Notes: 1 – accessed through the Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen menu.

Now that this is out of the way, let’s talk concept!

STEP ZERO: THE STORY BEHIND THE PIECE

The visual puzzle in the piece

The fictional book cover came to be after seeing Lisa Glanz’ bunny, from her Magical watercolor graphics volume 02. The little guy is so cute.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

From there, while browsing the bundle’s content, the various other visual goodies, floral elements, and typefaces came into place like the pieces of a puzzle.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The names used

The names used in the piece are all references to famous rabbits. I used two lists to put them together. One is from Listverse, and lists “the top 10 famous rabbits,” while the second one is from the House Rabbit Society, and offers a list of famous rabbits through history.

The rabbit’s name, Oliver, comes from another list of potential names for pet rabbits. The roadtrip idea comes from the car asset included with Nicky Laatz’ vectors. Peter comes Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit stories. Finally, Caerbannog is the name of the killer rabbit that’s part of the Monthy Python and the Holy Grail movie.

Peter Rabbit: Possibly the world’s only vegetable addict. So strong are Peter’s desires he is willing to risk life and limb to get into Farmer McGregor’s garden. In his final attempt at thievery, Peter loses his clothes. Mr McGregor uses them on a fancy new scarecrow and Peter has to go home nude. He gets a bit of a scolding and ends up with a cold. Peter makes appearances in a few more Beatrix Potter books, but is never again a title character.

The Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog, the guardian of the Legendary Black Beast of Aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh. When the Knights of the Round Table are led to his lair by Tim the Enchanter, the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog fools the knights with his non-intimidating appearance. He pounces and kills both Ector and Gawain before he is slain with The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.

STEP ONE: DOCUMENT SETUP

As said before, we’ll work in Photoshop for 99% of our piece. Since this is a book cover, we’ll use a 6″x9″ canvas, which is a popular book cover size here in the USA. It’s a 2:3 ratio, as opposed to the 3:4 ratio of our typical 18″x24″ canvases. Remember that a 6″x9″ document won’t account for bleeds, trimming, and other production constrains. Always check with your printer what you should take into account when preparing your documents.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The next step is to add a few guides. We’ll use them to mark the center of our canvas, as well as a 0.5″ zone around its edges. I’m using Photoshop CC’s New Guide Layout feature to generate these rapidly.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Protip: if you have an older version of Photoshop, a good alternative is a Photoshop extension called GuideGuide.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

STEP TWO: ASSEMBLING THE MAIN ELEMENTS OF OUR LAYOUT

We are now going to assemble our layout’s pieces like a puzzle. Don’t hesitate to sharpen the various raster elements as you place them, as this will ensure they stay crisp, even with plenty of textures and filters applied to them (Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen).

Visual elements

The rabbit is the star of our cover. Let’s start with him. You can find it in Lisa Glanz’ Magical Watercolor volume 02 set (\lisa-glanz\Magical-Watercolor-Vol2\ANIMALS\Bunny.png).

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

We are going to place it in our canvas as a smart object, sized down 40%, and sitting on the bottom edge guide (X: 2.77″, and Y: 7.23″). These exact placement coordinates for its center point might look funny, but they allow us to center the bunny’s face with the vertical center of the cover.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Next, we are going to add one Lisa’s beautiful floral border to the top of the piece. The one we’ll use is Border_pink.png, and you can find it in the Magical Watercolor volume 01 (\lisa-glanz\Magical-Watercolor-Vol1\FLORAL\WREATHS-BOUQUETS-BORDERS).

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The border is rotated 90° clockwise, placed at X: 3″, and Y: 2″, and sized down to 70%.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Let’s add the car behind our rabbit. As mentioned before, it comes from Nicky Laatz’ mammoth watercolor set (\nicky-laatz\Mammoth-Watercolour-Illustrator\Vectors\THESHAPES_Cs4.ai). You’ll find it in the top right corner of the file.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The car is flipped horizontally (so its front is oriented towards the right), scaled up to 350%, and placed at X: 2.3″, and Y: 7.17″.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The next asset we need to put in place is a shadow for the car. We’ll use the shadow Lisa Glantz prepared for the ladybugs (\lisa-glanz\Magical-Watercolor-Vol2\ANIMALS\Shadow_for_ladybug.png).

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The shadow is placed scaled up to 175%, and placed at X: 3″, and Y: 8.3″. Just like the bunny and the flower, it’s best to sharpen it some (Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen).

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

A splash of color before moving forward

Let’s add the background color to the piece now. It’ll make gaging color contrasts easier as the piece progresses. The color we’ll use is #fdf7f0. It’s a very desaturated orange.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

With the color in place, we are going to change the blending mode of our flower border to multiply @ 100% opacity. It gives it a stronger presence, without being overwhelming.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Similarly, we are going to change the blending mode of the shadow to linear burn @ 100% opacity.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

STEP THREE: TYPE STUFF

Putting the type in place

The type elements for the cover are made using the 12 typefaces hidden within Nicky Laatz’ Mammoth Watercolor set.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The floral border’s outline is ideal to fit a title block made of multiple typefaces. We’ll use the variety in the ones available to us at our advantage.

The full title reads “Mister Oliver Rabbit & the fun roadtrip.”

“Mister” is written in HorseWallop Bold, that is 36 points tall, and with a kerning set to metrics. It is housed in the opening at the top left of the border. Its color is sampled from the gray leaf right above it (#908387). Accurate placement at X: 2.19″, and Y: 2.15″.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

“Oliver” is written in BingoBongo Regular, that is 24 points tall, and with kerning set to metrics. It’s located in the opening at the top right of the border. Its color is sampled from the pink leaves in the border (#d89f9f). Exact placement at X: 3.45″, and Y: 2.37″.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

“Rabbit” is a bit more complicated to put in place. We’ll be using baseline shift tweaks (if a letter should be sitting higher or lower than the normal baseline for the typeface) to make the word look more interesting. The baseline shift can be adjusted through the character panel.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Let’s start by writing it without baseline shifts. It’s written in Whistlewoods Regular, that’s 108 points tall, and with kerning set to metrics. Its color is a desaturated orange, sampled from the darker area of one of the yellow flowers (#d9a577).

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

We’ll use the baseline shifts (and type size changes) to make the word look more hand-written, but also to occupy the line below “Mister Oliver” better.

The “A” should be sized 108 points tall, and given a baseline shift of 10 points.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The first “B” is left at 102 points tall, but given a shift of 5 points.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Finally, the second “B” receives a basleine shift of 2 points.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Finally, its exact placement is at X: 2.91″, and Y: 3.07″.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Here’s a gif showing the evolution of the title block so far, from placing the words to tweaking the individual letters within “rabbit.”

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Next, we’ll take care of the word “Roadtrip.” It’s written in yellow Zabaglione Regular (#e9d57b, sampled from the lighter part of the yellow flowers), that’s 132 points tall.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Its particularity is to use the “inner glow trick” to make it look darker on the edges. This is a quick way to make a type object more watercolor-like. We’ve first explored that trick in the watercolour holiday card tutorial.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Basically, it consists in adding an inner glow of the same color, set to multiply. Tweaking the opacity, choke, and size values affects the intensity of the effect.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The word’s final spot in the layout is at X: 3.01″, and Y: 4.55″.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The next piece of text is “& the fun.” It’s set in Lemon Biscuit Regular, that’s 30 points tall, colored in our warm gray (#908387), and with kerning set to metrics. Our goal is to make it fit on both sides of the tall “d” found in the word “roadtrip.” We’ll use a series of spaces to split the three words on each sides of the “d,” and baseline shift on “& the” to make it fit better in its allocated space.

Let’s start by writing out the text block.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

From there, let’s add spaces between “the” and “fun” so the total amount of spaces is of 4.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Next step: give “& the” a -8 points baseline shift.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

From there, we can assign the block to its final place within the layout: X: 3.01″, and Y: 4.06″.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Last text element to put in place: the author’s name, “Peter Caerbannog.” It’s written in Bingobongo Regular, sized at 12 points tall, colored in the same soft pink as “Oliver” (#d89f9f), and with its kerning set to metrics. It’s located at X: 2.99″, and Y: 5.50″.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The last element to add to the title block is a little divider, between the actual title and the author name. We’ll use a wavy line element from Nicky Laatz’ mammoth watercolor set (\nicky-laatz\Mammoth-Watercolour-Illustrator\Vectors\THESHAPES_Cs4.ai). It’s in the lower right corner of the file.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

It’s colored in our soft gray (#908387), scaled down to 85% of its original size, and located at X: 3″, and Y: 5.21″.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

With all of these elements, we have completed the construction of the layout itself.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

It’s now time to add additional smaller graphic elements, to organize our layer stack, and to add some textures to the piece.

STEP FOUR: ADDITIONAL GOODIES

We are going to add more little visual assets, drawn from Nicky Laatz’ vectors. These elements will add some depth to the final piece, and are loosely related to the roadtrip/vacation idea. They will live in the space available on each side of the title block. We’ll use the elements listed below:

  1. The starfish
  2. One of the branches
  3. The heart with a burst around it
  4. The butterfly
  5. The flower element
  6. The cupcake
  7. And the camera

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The startfish goes to X: 5.01″, and Y: 6.06″, and is scaled up to 125%.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The branch goes to X: 5.20″, and Y: 4.11″, and is scaled down to 75%.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The heart goes to X: 0.75″, and Y: 3.24″, and is scaled at 100% of its original size.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The butterfly goes to X: 1.93″, and Y: 3.86″, and is scaled down to 35%.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The flower goes to X: 4.25″, and Y: 4″, and is scaled down to 50%.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The cupcake goes to X: 0.75″, and Y: 4.50″, and is scaled up to 200%.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

And the camera goes to X: 5.20″, and Y: 5″, and is scaled up to 150%.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

We can’t leave all of these black. We simply need to change their blending mode to overlay @ 100% opacity, and they’ll fade nicely in the background. The textures we’ll put in place later will make them blend in even better.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

And with this, let’s have a look at the layer stack so far. It’s a real unorganized mess.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

After grouping elements, and arranging their hierarchy, things are clearer. Text elements together, character related elements together, all the little vectors grouped together, and the background separated.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

STEP FIVE: TEXTURES

It’s time to tie this piece together. To accomplish this, we are going to leverage the textures present in the bundle. Some will be applied only to a particular element, while most will be applied to the piece as a whole.

The background

After turning all the layer groups by the background off so we can what we’re doing, it’s time to give additional depth to the background of the piece.

The first texture we’ll use is 2.jpg, from Design Spoon’s watercolor texture set (\design-spoon\Watercolor-Textures\2.jpg).

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

It’s placed centered in the frame, rotated of 90° clockwise, and it covers the whole piece.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Blending mode: soft light @ 50% opacity.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The next texture is 13.jpg, from the same set.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

It’s placed so the top left corner of the texture covers most of the piece, barely scaled up.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Blending mode: soft light @ 50% opacity.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The next texture is from Design Spoon’s marker strokes set. It’s Marker-Pen-PNG (52).png (\design-spoon\131-Handmade-Marker-Pen-Strokes\PNG).

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

It’s placed centered in the frame, scaled up to 120% of its original size, and rotated of -6°.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Blending mode: soft light @ 50% opacity.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Here’s a look at the piece so far, with the textured background in place.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

And here’s a look at the layers within the background layer group.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Adding texture and color to the car

To add color and texture to the car at the same time, we are going to use another one of Design Spoon’s watercolor texture: 4.jpg.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The texture is placed scaled down to 50% of its original size, at X: 3″, and Y: 7.22″. The layer should be right above the car smart object.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

From there, we simply have to clip the texture to the car layer to restrict its visibility to the car shape.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The texture is too bright, so we are going to use a clipped hue/saturation adjustment layer to soften things some.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Global textures

The next four textures are also the last ones we will apply to the piece. By sitting at the top of the layer stack, they will be applied to the piece as a whole, tying everything together visually.

The first of these textures is 6.jpg, from the watercolor set.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The texture is applied to the whole piece, and rotated clockwise 90°.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Blending mode: soft light @ 25% opacity.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The next texture is a splatter texture from Design Spoon’s handcrafted grunge texture set, 21.png (\design-spoon\25-Handcrafted-Grunge-Textures\PNG-Files\21.png).

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

It should cover the complete canvas.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Blending mode: overlay @ 50% opacity.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The next texture is called 2.png, can be found in the bonuses for Design Spoon’s grunge frame pack. It’ll help us to create a soft vignette effect (\design-spoon\40-Grunge-Frames\5-Bonus-Textures\PNG\2.png).

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The texture has the same aspect ratio as our piece, so it fits (almost) perfectly with its edges.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Blending mode: overlay @ 100% opacity.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Finally, to complete the piece, we’ll use one of Design Spoon’s halftone texture, 15.png (\design-spoon\25-Halftones-Texture-Pack\PNG Files\15.png).

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Just as before, it should cover the whole piece.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Blending mode: color burn @ 5% opacity.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Here’s a final look at the layer stack:

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

WRAPPING THINGS UP

Phew, we’re done with the tutorial! Congratulations for making it until the end. I hope your outcome matches the goals you had set for yourself.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

Any questions left about the processes, tips, and tricks explored in the tutorial? Any suggestions on how to improve things? Please share them in the comments below. The Design Geeks and myself will do our best to help out.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

We’d love to see your tutorial outcomes! Please share them with us on the Design Cuts Facebook page. We’ll share the best ones with the whole community.

The Inspirational artistic design bundle exploration tutorial

The inspirational artistic design bundle is still available for a few more days at 91% off its regular price! Don’t miss out if you haven’t purchased it yet.

If you’ve purchased the bundle, I hope you enjoy your new assets, and that this tutorial gave you a better sense of what you can accomplish with them.

That’s all for me this week folks! Have a wonderful weekend, and see you next time.