Design a Creative Coffee Shop Meetup Poster

WHAT WE’RE CREATING:

Hello Design Cutters!

It’s always super exciting getting your hands on a brand new deal and if you’re anything like me, then you can’t wait to get stuck in and start playing with your new toys professional resources. ;)

Of course, it’s also fun to get together with other like-minded creatives to geek out over design. Today we’re going to get social and create an event poster for a creative coffee-shop meetup!

In this tutorial we’ll be using several brushes, including these amazing watercolour splatter brushes, available as a freebie. To get an idea of the full versatility of this bundle, we’re using the brushes in a stamp-like manner, as PNGs and as actual, real drawing tools! Plus a cool Photoshop action and background which are also all included.

Grab a coffee (or your hot beverage of choice) and let’s get stuck in!

Step 1:

Open up Photoshop and create a new 1748px x 2480px document.

We’ll be using a couple of extra background images, so let’s download these first:

Crumpled Paper from Outside The Fray
(Feel free to pick your favourite – we’ve used 01 in the source file)

Coffee Stains Texture 05 by Six Revisions
(To download from Flickr, click on the three circles in the sidebar for more actions)

Let’s add some more texture and subtle colour graduation using a texture included in the bundle. (Yep, there’s also extra goodies other than the brushes)!

In your second Brushes Bundle folder go to: Leonard-Posavec > 120-Brushes-Bundle > Textures > JPEG-Textures > 27.jpg

Paste, scale and rotate so that the darker pink/purple area is at the bottom of the canvas:

Create a new Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, then whilst holding down alt on your keyboard, hover your cursor between the adjustment layer you just created and the layer directly below, with the image and click. Remember this method, as we’ll be using it a lot as a non-destructive way of adjusting layers.

Adjust to the following:

Hue/Saturation settings
Hue: 0
Saturation: -100
Lightness: -50
Colorize: unchecked

Change the blend mode to Soft Light. The effect is subtle, but lovely :)

Paste, rotate and resize the Coffee Stains Texture on to your canvas, then change the blend mode to Soft Light:

Step 2:

We’re getting a really nice background to work from now and we’re going to finish it off by using some of our brushes.

From the second Brushes Bundle folder, find: Robyn-Gough > SplatterBrushes > RGough_S_Splatter4.png, which looks like this:

Paste it onto your canvas so it’s positioned and sized similar to the image below:

Reduce the Opacity to 80% and change the blend mode to Overlay so that it looks like we’ve spilt some coffee on it already!

Create a new layer called ‘Old Film Brush’. Using the 2 Lil Owls: Old Film Brush Set 2, select the following brush and change the size to 2200px so it fits the canvas. Select #72918C as the colour and click!

Change the blend mode to Soft Light. Again, it’s a very subtle difference, but it just gives a slight cooler tone to the background which will be more accommodating for some of the colours we’ll be using later.

To keep things easy to find, create a new folder called ‘background’ and drop all the layers so far in there.

Now we’ve created our background, it’s time to say “goodbye” to subtlety and “well hello!” to some big, bold brushes :)

Step 3:

On a new layer, select #59230F as the fill colour and draw an coffee-bean shaped ellipse roughly in the centre of your canvas. Set the blend mode to Multiply and you should have something that looks similar to below:

From the second Brushes Bundle folder, load the Layerform > 51 Watercolor Brushes set.

On a new layer set to Multiply, use the same colour as we did for the ellipse and select the following brush at around 650px:

Select and rotate so it looks similar to the image below – we’re creating a shadow and highlight for the inner crease of a coffee bean:

Note: Throughout this tutorial, we’ll be creating a new layer for each brush for easy editing.

Create a new layer and select #F2E3D0 as the brush colour. Using the same brush and size as we just did, apply the brush and reduce the layer opacity to 25%.

Scale and rotate so that it looks similar to below:

Let’s add a bit of grungy texture. From your first Brush Bundle folder, find Ilham-Herry > Noise Grunge Brushes and Action > Brush PNG > PNG > Make it noise 7.png

Paste this on to your canvas so it covers the ellipse:

Reduce the Opacity to 50% and set the blend mode to Overlay:

You now have the beginnings of an arty, abstract coffee bean :)

Step 4:

From the same watercolours brush set, select the following brush:

We’ll be using this to create a painterly highlight and shadow effect on our coffee bean.

Apply the brush (default size) in the following colours, each on its own layer:

Sienna: #37600
Blue: #113363

Transform and move them around so they sit in a nice highlight and shadow positions:

From the same set, choose black as the fill colour and select the following brush (it should be next to the one you just used):

We’re going to make some adjustment to the brush settings before we use this one:

Brush Settings
Size: 1500px
Mode: Dissolve
Opacity: 40%

This gives us a really nice rough, grainy texture. Click anywhere on a new layer and transform so it looks similar to below:

Notice how it sits a fair bit over the edge? Let’s correct that with a layer mask.

Duplicate your original Ellipse layer, move to it to the top then rasterize it so we can use the Magic Wand tool.

With the Magic Wand tool, click anywhere within the ellipse to select it.

With it still selected, activate the layer below with the black brush and add a layer mask. Hide the ellipse layer above to see the effect – a nice clean edge!

We’re going to add a final highlight. Using the same brush as we did for the sienna and blue highlight/shadow, select white as the colour. Return the brush mode to Normal and Opacity to 100% (default) and apply it to a new layer.

Transform so it’s a similar size and position to below and reduce the layer opacity to 50%

Our centrepiece is now complete!

Step 5:

We’re now going to add some handwritten text. As we’ll be using light text on a dark background, do a bit of prep to help it stand out more.

Going back to Ilham-Herry > Noise Grunge Brushes and Action > Brush PNG > PNG, select Make it noise 15.png

Place it roughly across the centre of the coffee bean:

That’s a bit more dramatic than we’d like, so let’s tone it down by changing the blend mode to Soft Light and Opacity to 35%.

That gives us a base for the text that’ll help make it pop just enough.

Since we have some fantastic (and I truly mean fantastic) brush presets available to us thanks to Kyle T Webster, let’s use them to give the poster a hand-crafted feel and write our own text.

This’ll feel more natural if you have a pen & tablet, but you can still achieve a good effect using a mouse.

With #F2E3D0 selected as the colour, select Kyle’s Inkbox – Rough Inker 4. (As you can see from the screenshot I’m already a big fan of his brushes!)

On a new layer write “Coffee and Creativity”. Experiment a bit until you achieve the effect you want, and feel free to add your own style and flourishes to reflect your handwriting:

Create a new group called ‘Coffee Bean’ to place the layers we’ve just created in.

Step 6:

We’re going to up the coffee levels some more now :)

Load the FanExtra > fanextragrungebrushes > Coffee-Stains-Brush-Set.abr brushes. Select #59230F as the colour and pick a few of your choice to fill some of the white space around the coffee bean, adjusting the brush sizes accordingly.

Use a layer mask to hide any parts that overlap the bean, then change the layer blend mode to Multiply:

Step 7:

Let’s add some tools of the trade to help set the right theme for the poster.

We can easily include some great illustrations thanks to the LPC Vintage Drafting Studio Brush Set from Little Paper Cafe, which you can find in your second Brushes Bundle folder.

We’ll be using the following two brushes:

On a new layer, set the brush colour to #A61b34 and select the ‘Marking Beekman Crayon’ brush. Print it on to the layer, rotate so that it’s vertical and move to the bottom right corner of your canvas. Set the layer blend mode to Multiply:

The colour still seems a little faint, so lets duplicate the layer and reduce it to 50% to get a slightly richer colour:

Repeat the same process with the ‘Drawing Faber Coloured Pencil’ brush (colour #113363) and you should end up with something similar to the image below:

Let’s put these in a new group called ‘Stationery’ and move on to the next step…

Step 8:

We’re now going to let loose on the Water Color Arsenal Splatter Brushes, which are the special freebies for this deal (you can download them at the top of this page). I’ve used the PNG versions to make for easy editing and tweaking.

Feel free to select whichever brushes appeal to you most – these are the ones used in the source file:

If you’re using your own selection, have a play with a layout that works with the brushes you’ve chosen. Otherwise, keep following along!

Locate and paste RGough_S_Splatter15.png on to your canvas, setting the blend mode to Multiply and Opacity to 65%. Transform and place so that it goes over the edge of bottom right corner:

To make things a bit more colurful, let’s add a new Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and set it to only apply to the layer below (remember: press dow, ‘alt’ and click between the two layers)

Hue/Saturation settings
Hue: 230
Saturation: 70
Lightness: +30
Colorize: checked

Add a layer mask to hide the areas that overlap the coffee bean and red crayon. To prevent it from looking too harsh, you can use the brush Kyle’s Inkbox – Photocopier brush set to 20% to build up a grungier mask:

Step 9:

Let’s place the rest of the splatter brushes on to our poster design.

We’ll run through the settings for each PNG as numbered below, creating a new clipped (only applying to the layer directly below) adjustment layer to each and using layer masks to hide any overlaps. Transform and scale each as appropriate.

Splatter 17: Set the layer blend mode to Multiply and Opacity to 90%.

Splatter 13: Set the layer opacity to 60% and adjust the Hue/Saturation as follows:

Hue/Saturation settings
Hue: 38
Saturation: 65
Lightness: +45
Colorize: checked

Splatter 12:

Hue/Saturation settings
Hue: 335
Saturation: 50
Lightness: +40
Colorize: checked

Splatter 03: Set the layer blend mode to Multiply

Hue/Saturation settings
Hue: 183
Saturation: 32
Lightness: +60
Colorize: checked

Great! That should now leave you with a rather colourful background:

Finally for this step, we’ll need to load the Ink-Brush-Set.abr from the Fan Extra grunge brushes.

Select the following brush and set the size to 1384px

Set the colour to #025920 and place in the upper left corner so it overlaps the black splatter brush:

Create a new group called ’Splatter!’ (exclamation mark optional ;)) and place the layers we’ve just created in there.

Step 10:

There are so many great resources in this bundle, I couldn’t resist including one of the Inked Edge Brushess from Robyn Gough. The one below is RGough_S_InkedEdge6.png that’s been rotated 180 degrees:

We’ll change the colour so it’s more in-keeping with the design. Add a new clipped Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer with the following settings:

Hue/Saturation settings
Hue: 191
Saturation: 15
Lightness: +45
Colorize: checked

Step 11:

We’ll now combine a brush with an action to create a really cool effect, and gives you a lot more options working with the brushes.

For this example you’ll need to find and load Little-Paper-Cafe > LPC Vintage Type Specimen & Ornament Brush Set > LPC Vintage Type Specimen & Ornament Brush Set.abr

Find the following “Cafe” brush and set the size to around 650px

Create a new layer and with the brush colour set to #113363 click a couple of times on the canvas to get a richer colour.

Next, you’ll need to navigate to Ilham-Herry > Noise Grunge Brushes and Action and load the Noise Grunge Action.atn actions.

With the ‘Cafe’ brush layer selected, apply the Make it noise pattern 2 (Text or Shape):

Et voila! You have an entirely new, grungy brush effect.

Step 12:

We now need to add some text to let people know what’s happening.

I’ve used a mixture of hand-written text (using the same ‘rough inker 4’ brush from earlier) and hand-written style fonts.

Experiment a bit here to try out some fonts from your own collection or play with some brushes to create your own text.

Whilst you’re playing with some brushes, why not add a few creative doodles? :)

I’ve sketched out a lightbulb using the ‘rough inker 4’ brush and in #72918C

Step 13:

We’re now going to add the finishing touches to our poster…

From the earlier ‘Coffee Bean’ group we were working in, duplicate the ‘Make it noise 15’ layer and rotate so it sits vertically in the lower left corner (the blend mode’s been changed to normal here so you can see the position more clearly):

Keep the blend mode as Soft Light and change the Opacity to 50%. You can see it creates a really nice effect on the pink paint splatter and adds a bit of interest to the area:

We’re now going to download this Linen Textile from Texture Palace. We’re using this to give the image a joint feel of a coffee sack and canvas to tie our themes together.

Once downloaded, paste it on to your canvas and scale to fit:

Create a clipped Levels Adjustment layer and bring change the Shadow input levels to 150.

Change the blend mode to Soft Light and reduce the Opacity to 45%

Finally, duplicate the crumpled paper layer way back from the beginning of the tutorial (in the ‘Background’ group) and bring it to the very top.

Invert the colour by going to Image > Adjustments > Invert

Reduce the opacity to 45% and change the blend mode to Screen:

And we’re done!

I hope you enjoyed following this tutorial and it’s given you plenty of ideas on how you can start using your brushes.

If you’ve been inspired to set up your own creative meetup group, be sure to share your poster designs and photos with the Design Cuts Facebook Community!

Remember, there’s only a few days left to get our beautifully artistic brushes bundle for just $27, so if you don’t want to miss out, we recommend jumping on it now.

Beautifully Artistic Brushes Bundle (1000+ Brushes & Extras) – 90% Off