WHAT WE’RE CREATING:

Hello Design Cutters!

Jo here, and today we’ll be doing something a little different…

Since the current bundle has so much variety, it doesn’t really do it justice to try and fit everything in to one design. That’s why we’ll be creating three posters for a fictional gig night that showcase some of the different visual styles you can create with the textures and patterns available here.

Quick note: In this tutorial, the term “clipping” or “clipped layer” is used a few times. 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.

Ok, let’s get started!

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Follow along with this tutorial: Download the freebies

As always, we have another great freebie for you to enjoy. Summit Avenue have kindly donated a selection of their gorgeous patterns and textures for the Design Cuts community! There’s a really varied and versatile selection here, which we’re sure will find a perfect home in one of your creative projects.

Remember, this freebie is just a tiny sample taken from this mega bundle: The Massive Patterns, Textures and Backgrounds Bundle at just $25 (95% Off). This is our biggest and most varied backgrounds bundle yet, which includes hundreds of patterns – something all of you in the Design Cuts community asked for. We know you’re going to love it! :)

Enter your email below to download the freebie, so you can follow along with this tutorial easily.

Summit Avenue Patterns Freebie Pack


Poster 1: Grungy

Step 1:

In this tutorial, we’re creating a set of three posters for a fictional gig night – one for each of the three very different bands, which require different styles.

Our first poster will be for the grungy “The Red Ravens”, so lots of rough textures and messy edges are in order!

We need to download a couple of extra resources for this design, so let’s go and grab those first:

Old Paper Texture

Vintage Raven Illustration

Once we’ve downloaded the extra resources, let’s go ahead and open a new (A4) 3508px height x 2480px width document in Photoshop.

We’ll set up our base layer by pasting in the Old Paper texture we’ve just downloaded:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Step 2:

Now let’s start building up some textures! From your bundle, navigate to Watercolor Textures > Watercolor11_Version2.jpg

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Place this on to your canvas, rotating so that the colour sits at the bottom of the page. Then, set the blend mode to Multiply and stretch the image so that the main area of colour fills about one-third of the canvas:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Reduce the layer opacity to 60%, then create a clipped hue/saturation adjustment layer with the following settings:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Hue/Saturation Settings:
Colourize: On
Hue: 0
Saturation: 10
Lightness: 0

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Step 3:

For an instant grungy effect, rough borders are a great resource to have to hand for framing your work and drawing the viewer’s eye into the main content. We’re going to layer up a couple of frames with different blend modes for a noticeable, but not distractingly obvious border..

We’ll be using two resources from massive-patterns-bundle-rule-by-art-2 > Distressed_Borders. First up, select 07.jpg then rotate and scale to fit the canvas as follows:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Then, change the blend mode to Soft Light and reduce the opacity to 70% for a subtler frame:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Next up from the set is 05.jpg and as before rotate and scale so that it fits the canvas:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

For this one, we’ll change the blend mode to Multiply and drop the opacity to 70%:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

We already have a nice, rough, grungy effect going on from the textures so far – and we’re not even through half of ’em! Better crack on, then ;)

Step 4:

From the Summit Avenue freebies you can download from the top of this page, select sa-wc-paper-latte.jpg and scale to fit your canvas:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

We’re using this to add a bit of warmth back to the image, so let’s change the blend mode to Multiply and reduce the opacity to 50%:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Again from the freebies pack, we’ll use the gorgeous suitcase.jpg texture (one of my favourites from the bundle) for a great overlay texture. First, place the file on to your canvas, scaling to fit:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Change the blend mode to Overlay and reduce the opacity to 51% to see those lovely scratchy textures coming through on your work:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Step 5:

We now need to add our band’s namesake, ‘The Red Raven’. For this, grab the vintage raven illustration we downloaded earlier and place on to your canvas, setting the blend mode to Multiply:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

We’ll add a slightly worn, textured look to the image by creating a halftone layer mask. Create a layer mask, then click on the mask icon whilst holding ‘Alt’ on your keyboard to access it in its own editing window.

For the halftone texture, we’ll be going to massive-patterns-bundle-Rob-Brink > Halftone_Texture_Pack > Halftone_Texture_Pack.psd and selecting the Halftone 4 layer:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

With the Halftone 4 layer activated, in the menu bar go to Select > All and copy and paste the layer on to the Layer Mask in your main working document.

Once you’ve done that, click back on the visibility icon in the layers panel to see your image with the mask applied:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

You can see how the halftone speckles show up nicely on the dark raven image.

Step 6:

Of course, since the band’s called ‘The Red Ravens’ we need to adjust the colour! We’ll be using another of the amazing watercolour washes you can locate at Watercolor Textures > Watercolor8_Version1.jpg:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Paste on to your canvas, reducing the layer opacity to 85% then rotating and scaling as follows:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Change the blend mode to Screen and clip the texture to the image layer below, so that the effect only applies to our raven image:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Step 7:

We’re now going to add some more textures, this time from massive-patterns-bundle-julias-designs > 15 vector textures > Textures7 > Textures7b&w.png:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Paste on to your canvas, rotating and scaling to fit as follows:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

It’s a very cool texture, but this is a little extreme so we’ll change the blend mode to Multiply and drop the opacity to 40% for a softer effect:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

This is a little better, but we don’t really want the texture to go over our raven image. We can quickly solve this by creating a Layer mask using the original raven image, for a perfect mask.

Follow the same steps as we did with the halftone texture earlier, but using the original raven image we downloaded instead.

Once back in your main working canvas, you can unlink the main image layer and the image mask by clicking on the ‘link’ icon between the two. This will allow you to freely move the mask layer to the right position, masking the texture over the raven image. I’ve positioned it so that it’s slightly offset, for a looser effect (you can see the space towards the upper left of the raven’s head and chest):

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Finally, we’ll finish off this texture effect by softening it with a watercolour wash. You can find the one we’re using at Watercolor Textures > Watercolor3_Version2.jpg. Paste on to your canvas, rotating and scaling to fit:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Then, clip this to the texture layer below to get our desired effect:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Step 8:

For some even more texture now, we’ll go back to our freebie pack and select scrape.jpg:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

To apply the fantastic scratchy textures to our image, we’ll change the blend mode to Lighten and opacity to 85%:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

We’ll finish off the textures with another halftone from massive-patterns-bundle-Rob-Brink > Halftone_Texture_Pack > Halftone_Texture_Pack.psd , using Halftone 5:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Copy and paste on to your canvas, scaling to fit:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

The effect is a bit strong ‘as is’, so we’ll bring the opacity down to 54% and switch the blend mode to Overlay for a subtler, gritty look:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Step 9:

Now the main part of our image utilising some of the patterns, backgrounds and textures available in this bundle, let’s quickly put together the text to finish off our poster, which we’ll be using across all three designs, with some slight modifications.

Hidden within this bundle are some very cool and very versatile textured shapes. You can find them at massive-patterns-bundle-rule-by-art-2 > Vector_Bundle > Distressed Shapes and we’ll be using triangle_01.eps, which you can copy and paste on to your canvas, scaling to fit as follows:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

It may help to set up some guides at this point. 2cm in from the top and bottom and 1cm in from the left and right have been used here:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Change the blend mode of the triangle layer to Multiply. To make this more in-keeping with the rest of the design, duplicate the red watercolour texture we used on the raven image (keeping the blend mode as Screen and opacity at 85%) and clip it to the triangle layer below:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Step 10:

We can’t have an event poster without any text, so let’s work on that for the final stage :)

Firstly, you’ll need to download and install Dia font: the bold, geometric style works well as a statement feature and also balances the more neutral Helvetica Neue we’re using in the rest of the design.

Download Dia Font

Selecting white as the font colour and using centre justification, type “GIG TRINITY PRESENTS” and align to sit within the centre of the triangle. Experiment a bit with size and spacing to see what fits best – here, a few specific properties for the words are:

“GIG”: font size 30pt
“TRINITY”: font size 23pt
“PRESENTS”: font ‘helvetica neue thin’, size 18pt, 10pt space before paragraph

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Now we need to add some more details in the space at the bottom of the poster. Select white as the foreground colour, then create a new layer. Using the guides to help, draw a long, narrow rectangle using the Rectangular Marquee Tool, then press ‘Alt + Delete’ on your keyboard to fill the selection with the foreground colour:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Duplicate the layer twice to and move to create the following layout:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

For the headline text, we’ll use ‘Dia’ as the font again to keep things consistent. Type “The Red Ravens” and use the Transform tool to scale the text to fit the full width of the details area. Hold down ‘shift’ on your keyboard whilst doing this to keep the text proportion:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

For the remainder of the text we’ll be using Helvetica Neue Regular and Thin (a simple, sans-serif font of your choice would work as an alternative). Each on a new layer, type:

“Also feat. MAMA BEAR + DIGITAL WAVES” (Helvetica Neue Regular)

“SAT 11TH OCT | DOORS: 7PM” (Helvetica Neue Thin)

Scale the text to fit the width of the details area, then on a final layer in the very bottom right, type:

“£7 ENTRY | OVER 16’s ONLY” (Helvetica Neue Thin, size 20pt)

Group all these layers together in a folder called “Details” so we can easily copy them to the next documents.

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Excellent! That’s the first poster completed, where we got to create a rough, grungy design using some of the resources from this bundle.

Next up, well be exploring some slightly different textures, patterns and backgrounds for our second band…

Poster 2: Folky

Step 1:

In contrast to the grungy ‘Red Ravens’ we now need a different design for the folkier band ‘Mama Bear’! The heavy halftones and darker colours aren’t going to work quite so well here, so let’s focus on building up some gentler vintage textures and crafty patterns.

We’ll need to download an extra resource first, in the form of this lovely vintage bear illustration from ‘The Graphics Fairy’ to use as our main icon:

Vintage Bear Illustration

Once we’ve downloaded the image, we’ll open a new (A4) 3508px height x 2480px width document in Photoshop.

For this one, we’re diving straight in to our freebie patterns! Find the pretty holiday-flowers.jpg from the Vintage Holiday Papers range, and paste in the upper half of your canvas:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Then, from the Blush Faux Bois Woodgrain Papers find the 3-rose.jpg and paste it at the botom of the canvas, so that it covers about one-third of the page:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Using yet another resource from the freebie pack, we’ll be using the subtly textured Watercolor Hi Res Papers in Peach (sa-wc-paper-PEACH.jpg). Paste this on to your canvas, scaling to fit:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

We’ll change the blend mode to Multiply to add some warmth and allow the texture to come through:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Step 2:

As we want the folky poster to have a luscious, richly-layered look, we’ll continue with some more layers!

We’ll apply the vintagedamask.jpg file from the freebies, pasting it to cover the wood texture on the bottom half, as this still looks a little ‘clean’ just on its own:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

We’ll change the blend mode to Overlay to soften the woodgrain and also create a subtle link with the upper half of the image with the floral patterns:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

So that the texture is a little more even across both patterns, we’ll apply something similar to the top half. For this, go to 5_whitewash.jpg in your Summit Avenue freebies pack and paste on to your canvas, covering the existing floral pattern:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

As this pattern is rather subtle, we’ll increase the contrast slightly so that it’ll show through better when we blend it with the layer below. To do this, create a clipped Levels layer with the shadows increased to 55:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Once you’ve adjusted the levels, set the blend mode of the texture layer to Multiply to get the full effect:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Step 3:

Now we’ve laid down some base patterns and textures, we’ll create a bit of a crafty, collaged effect with a contrasting pattern, but with a similar colour palette to keep things working together.

We’ll be using massive-patterns-bundle-pattern-pop > virginia collection > virginia collection papers > virginia triangles peach.jpg and pasting it on to our canvas so that it covers the upper half:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Create a Layer Mask and use the Elliptical Marquee Tool to draw a circle in the centre of the pattern. Then, invert the selection so that the area outside the circle is selected:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Click ‘Alt + Delete’ on your keyboard to create the fill for the mask, and you should be left with a nice circular patch of pattern!

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

We’ll lighten this up slightly by creating a clipped hue/saturation layer, just bringing the Lightness up to +40:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

This gives us a base for our bear image which isn’t too overbearing (pun not intended…) which we’ll be adding next :)

Step 4:

Find the bear illustration we downloaded earlier and paste on to your canvas. Change the blend mode to Multiply to eliminate the background, and so you can see where to scale and position our furry friend inside the circle:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

We’ll tone down the black a bit so that it fits with our colour palette a bit more. We’ll do this with a clipped hue/saturation Adjustment Layer with the following settings:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Hue/Saturation Settings:
Colourize: On
Hue: 5
Saturation: 15
Lightness: +5

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Step 5:

We’ll add some final textures to create a slightly worn, vintage effect as opposed to the harsher textures in the earlier poster.

First we’ll be grabbing the following gritty texture massive-patterns-bundle-Artificial > Subtle Grit Pack 01 > png > subtle-texture-04.png

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Once you’ve navigated to the texture, paste it on to your canvas, rotating and scaling to fit:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

The black texture is a little harsh for the effect we’re going for, so we’ll change this to white to give the effect that the paper’s been lightly scuffed. We’ll do this by rasterizing the layer (if it’s not already), selecting it and inverse the colour (Select > Inverse):

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Step 6:

We’ll finish off the textures with a scuffed border, reminiscent of a well-loved old book. We’re using another border from massive-patterns-bundle-rule-by-art-2 > Distressed_Borders for this. Find 10.jpg then rotate and scale to fit the canvas as follows:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Increase the size slightly so that the thick border doesn’t encroach on the image as much, then inverse the colour ready for a Screen effect:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Once that’s done, change the blend mode to Screen and reduce the opacity to 80%:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Finally, find the Old Paper Texture we downloaded from the first poster and paste on to your canvas, scaling to fit:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Switch the blend mode to Multiply and drop the opacity to 30%:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

This adds a nice warm, aged sepia tone and gives us a slightly darker, richer base to help the white text we’re about to apply stand out more.

And so, on to the text!

Step 7:

For the text, we’ll get started by copying and pasting our “Event Details” group from the first poster design:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

As most of the details and layout remains the same, we only need to make a few adjustments which we’ll do now.

First, we’ll create a clipped hue/saturation Adjustment Layer above the clipped watercolour layer for the triangle. Change the settings as follows:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Hue/Saturation Settings:
Colourize: On
Hue: 20
Saturation: 60
Lightness: +65

This gives us a better colour match with the rest of the design. Then, go to the triangle layer itself and change the blend mode to Normal, then reduce the opacity to 70%:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Finally, alter the text so that the headline band is ‘Mama Bear’ and replace with ‘The Red Ravens’ in the sub heading. You’ll need to adjust the text size to fit the width of the details area:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Roar! And we’re all done with poster No.2 :)

Finally, we’ll be going a little bit more minimal and electronic with the final poster for ‘Digital Waves’ and seeing how else we can use the resources…

Poster 3: Ambient

Step 1:

For our final poster we’re getting a bit dark and atmospheric for the third group, ‘Digital Waves’.

This one’s fairly short and sweet (you may be relieved to hear!) but it covers a couple more of the style of resources available that I didn’t get a chance to show you in the previous designs.

We’ll start as before by opening a new (A4) 3508px height x 2480px width document in Photoshop, but this time filling in the background with black:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

(That’s just in case you’ve forgotten what a black canvas looks like! ;))

However, we’ll need to hide the visibility of that layer whilst we add our first texture so we’re able to see it.

One of the resources I’m most excited about are the awesome India Ink Washes you can find in massive-patterns-bundle-rule-by-art-2 > India_Ink_Washes > Png

We’ll be using 28.png for this tutorial, and you can paste it on to your canvas so that it fits as follows (remember to turn off the visibility for the black layer to be able to see):

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

You can see from the image above, the texture and details on these are really natural and tactile which add a nice level of detail to your work.

Step 2:

Next, we’ll be adding a bit of colour to this with the Watercolour Washes from earlier (hands-up, who’s a bit over-excited with all the painterly effects in this bundle?) :)

We’re using Watercolor Textures > Watercolor3_Version2.jpg for the nice ‘galactic’ purple colour, which seems apt for a more digital style. Rotate and scale to fit your canvas as follows:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Then, clip the layer to the ink wash below for a great looking ink wash effect:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Turn the visibility back on for your black background layer to get a better idea of how this’ll look on the final design:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

It’s a striking effect, but the edges now look a little stark in contrast. We’ll solve this by duplicating the clipped watercolour layer, and setting the blend mode to Multiply:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

This gives us a richer colour and helps blend the wash in with the darker background.

Step 3:

Although the textures on this design are much subtler than on the previous two posters, that doesn’t mean we still can’t indulge our love of the stuff :)

For our texture fix, go to massive-patterns-bundle-Rob-Brink > Gig Poster Pack > PSD > Texture_Pack_Vol_07_CS6.psd and open the document, selecting Texture 3 from the layers panel:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Copy and paste on to your working canvas, changing the blend mode to Screen so that we can see the effect. Rotate and scale to fit as follows:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Once you’re happy with the position, reduce the opacity to 70% for a softer effect:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Step 4:

We’re going to use another resource from massive-patterns-bundle-rule-by-art-2 > Vector_Bundle > Distressed Shapes, this time x_02.eps

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Copy and paste on to your working canvas so that it sits centrally in the ink wash, then change the blend mode to Screen and opacity to 50%:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Step 5

Next, we’ll be exploring the massive-patterns-bundle-rule-by-art-1 > Digital_Waves > png folder to create a sharp-lined contrast to the rougher textures.

I’ve gone with 20.png to use in this example:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Paste the file on to your canvas, increasing the size so that the wave details become clearer:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Create a clipping mask for the layer, and like on the previous poster, draw a circle using the Elliptical Marquee Tool in the centre of the ‘X’, then inverse the selection:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Fill the selection to create the mask, so that we’re left with a circular area of waves showing:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

To help the waves stand out, we’ll create a clipped hue/saturation Adjustment Layer with the following settings:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Hue/Saturation Settings:
Colourize: On
Hue: 37
Saturation: 25
Lightness: +100

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

We can already get a feel of the different style a few contrasting, geometric elements bring.

Step 6:

Finally for the textures, we’ll add a slight scuffed, halftone effect just so this poster ties in a little better with the other two in the set.

Let’s reopen massive-patterns-bundle-Rob-Brink > Halftone_Texture_Pack > Halftone_Texture_Pack.psd and select the Halftone 9 layer:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Copy and paste on to your working canvas, scaling to fit. Then, rasterize the layer so we can invert the colour to get our desired scuffed effect:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Step 6:

To finish, we just need to copy and paste the “Event Details” group from the previous poster and make a few adjustments.

For the triangle in the upper right, you can remove the watercolour wash clipped layer, and modify the hue/saturation layer to the following:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

Hue/Saturation Settings:
Colourize: On
Hue: 0
Saturation: 25
Lightness: +100

We then need to change the text colour to black so that it becomes visible again against the lighter background:

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

You’ll also need to change the headlining band to “Digital Waves” and alter the bands in the subheading. Remember to scale the text accordingly, so that it fits the full width.

And we’re done!

Patterned and Textured Gig Posters Tutorial

I hope you enjoyed doing this tutorial, and exploring how you can use the huge array of textures, patterns and backgrounds to create completely different styles.

If you’ve got any comments or questions, do leave them below and I’ll keep an eye out. Also, feel free to get in touch @rockportraits!

Remember to share your designs on the Facebook page too, as we’d love to see your personal style come through your own selection of resources. Let us know if you’re in the grungy, folky or ambient fan club :)

Hopefully this tutorial showed you just some of the ways you can use the huge variety of design resources in our current bundle. With such a huge variety of patterns, textures and backgrounds (oh my!) included, we’re sure you’ll be prepared for any number of current and future projects with all these in your designer toolkit! Get it for a fantastic 95% off this week. Grab it below, while you still can:

The Massive Patterns, Textures and Backgrounds Bundle