WHAT WE’RE CREATING:

Hello designers! Dawid here with an Illustrator and Photoshop tutorial showing you how to create a poster advertising a Summer Music Festival. This design is all about having fun with different fonts and colors. Get ready for a typography feast!

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Here’s a look at what we’ll be creating:

Summer Music Festival Poster

Follow along with this tutorial: Download the freebie files

This freebie pack includes incredible resources from Callie Hegstrom, Font Forecast and My Creative Land.

The freebie pack is just a tiny taste of the resources available in The Exceptional, Best Selling Font Selection for just $29 (that’s 99% off). With this bundle, we’ve listened to the Design Cuts community and have included tons of fantastic script, brush, hand written and sans serif fonts from world class font designers.

 Summer Music Festival Poster

Step 1: The Base

Open Illustrator and go to File > New. In the New Document dialog box name your file “Summer Music Festival”. Enter a width of 18 inches and a height of 24 inches. Set your Resolution to 300 ppi and your Color Mode to RGB.

Click OK to create the document.


 Summer Music Festival Poster

Save your file.

We’ll start with a simple, temporary background that will make the design process visually a bit cleaner. Grab the Rectangle Tool. Click on the artboard and enter 18in for width and 24 in for height.


 Summer Music Festival Poster

Fill the rectangle with a dark grey color. I used #26203A. Don’t forget to remove the stroke. Align the rectangle with the artboard so it covers it completely.

 Summer Music Festival Poster

Double click the layer with the rectangle and name it “Background”. Since the background rectangle will be just a visual aid, you can lock the layer.


 Summer Music Festival Poster

Step 2: The Colors

This project is not just a typography feast, but also a color feast so now let’s create color swatches for the project.

Alt or option click the Create a new layer icon in the layers panel and name the layer as Swatches.


 Summer Music Festival Poster

With the Rectangle Tool create 6 rectangles. Each one of them will have a different fill color and no stroke:

The first rectangle will have a E7644F fill.
The second one will have a F3AD94 fill.
The third one will have a FFD154 fill.
The fourth one will have a 44C0C2 fill.
The fifth one will have a 332E7D fill.
The last one will have a D973A9 fill.


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Now grab all rectangles and head over to the swatches panel and from the context menu choose “New color group”.


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In the box that pops up enter “Summer Music Festival” as the swatch group’s name.


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The swatches have been created. We won’t need the colored rectangles, nor the layer so we can delete them.

Step 3: The Main text

Now the text part begins. Alt or Option click the Create new layer icon in the Layers panel and call the layer “Main text”.


 Summer Music Festival Poster

From the Tools panel select the Type tool and from the control Panel click the Character link. If you can’t see it, head over to the Window menu > Type > Character.

Set the font to Sofa Sans Mono by Facetype at 42 pt. This font, and all the others, can be found in the Exceptional Font Bundle.

Set the kerning to Optical and select All caps.


 Summer Music Festival Poster

Click on the artboard and type in “THE INTERNATIONAL MUSIC COMPANY PRESENTS”. Click the yellow swatch to add the color to the text.

 Summer Music Festival Poster

This font, and actually all the fonts we’ll be using, offers a lot of great stylistic alternates, so let’s change the text slightly.

Grab the Type tool and select the first letter “T” and then delete it. Head over to the Type menu and choose Glyphs.


 Summer Music Festival Poster

In the glyphs panel find a letter “T” with a swoosh on top of it. Double click on it to insert it in the text.

 Summer Music Festival Poster

Now make sure that the text aligns perfectly with the background. From the Align panel first select Align to artboard. Then align the text horizontally to the center and to the top.

 Summer Music Festival Poster

The last thing to do here is to move the text down by 1 inch. Select the text and double click the Move tool. In the dialog box enter 0 for horizontal movement and 1 for vertical movement. The first text is done.

 Summer Music Festival Poster

Next grab the Type tool again. Set the font to Montebello Script by Ian Barnard at 105 pt that you will find in the Main Bundle.

Set the kerning to Optical and make sure All caps is deselected. Click on the artboard and type in “Hello!” Click on the blue swatch to add the fill to the text.


 Summer Music Festival Poster

The next word consists of two lines of text. First set the font to Les Tulips Pro Sans Closed by Font Forecast at 230 pt from the Main Bundle. Set the kerning to Optical and make sure All caps is selected again. Click on the artboard and type in “Summer”.

Click on the light peach swatch to add the fill to the text.


 Summer Music Festival Poster

The closed letter “R” looks like it could use some adjustments. Copy the word “Summer” and paste it in front, preferably first by pressing Ctrl/Cmd + C key combination, followed by a Ctrl/Cmd + F key combination. Change the font to Les Tulipes Pro Sans Fill and add the darker peach color to it. Reposition the fill so it matches the letter “R” perfectly.

 Summer Music Festival Poster

Next clone the “Summer” text down and change the font to Les Tulipes Pro Sans. Change the color to dark blue and change the word to “Music”. Since we cloned the text all its attributes got cloned as well, so we don’t need to make any other adjustments.

Press Shift+D on your keyboard to change the Drawing mode to Draw Behind. Grab the Rectangle tool and draw a rectangle beneath the word “Music”. Change its color to yellow.


 Summer Music Festival Poster

Press Shift+D twice to get back to Draw Normal mode.

Position the word “Music” in the center of the rectangle.

Now select the fonts creating the word “Summer” and clone them down by dragging them while holding down the Alt or Option key if you are on a Mac. Separate the words and change the word “Summer” to “Festival”. Change its color to yellow.

Now type in the letter “A” using the cloned Les Tulipes Pro Sans Fill and match it with the letter “A” in the word Festival.


 Summer Music Festival Poster

The last thing here is to clone down the word “Hello” and place it beneath the word “Fesitval”. Change its size to 92 pts and give a light peach color. Type in “London” and position it in the center in relation to other pieces of text.

 Summer Music Festival Poster

Now clone down the word “London” and type in the date of the festival: 23-25 JUNE 2017. Change the color to yellow. Brig up the Character panel and change the font to URW DIN Medium from URW ++ set at 42 pts. Reposition it to match it with the other pieces of text.

 Summer Music Festival Poster

Now let’s rest for a second from typing in words. Let’s add some ornaments for a change. The Epic Fonts Bundle comes with typefaces that include great curls, swirls, arrows and other typographic goodies.

In the next few steps we’ll be using glyphs you can find in the Freebie Pack.


 Summer Music Festival Poster

In the Freebie Pack open the Les Tulipes Pro Extra file.

Here you will find glyphs converted into simple objects you can add to the design.

Copy the glyphs to your design. The position and rotation are a matter of your artistic choice: there is no right or wrong here.
You can adjust the ornaments just like you would adjust regular objects. Add different colors to them, resize and rotate them to your liking.

Now let’s add the line ornaments. In the Freebie Pack open the Moonstruck Swashes Extra file. Copy the glyphs to your design.

For now just add two lines and position them between the words “Hello!” and “Summer!”


 Summer Music Festival Poster

Now clone down the lines and put them somewhere on the level of the word “London”. Clone down the top ornament and reflect it vertically using the Reflect tool. It’s best to bring it up by pressing the O key on the keyboard and pressing Enter or Return if you are on a Mac.

Add fill colors to the curls and when you are done gab all of them and initialize the Reflect tool again by pressing the O key on the keyboard. Click somewhere in the middle of the word “London”, hold down the Alt or the option key and drag the ornaments to the other side.


 Summer Music Festival Poster

You might need to adjust the right set of curls a bit. Don’t worry if you don’t get the spaces perfectly even. We are not going for symmetry here.

Now from the Freebies Pack open the Brushability file. Select the arrow ornament and copy it over to your design. Give it a dark peach fill and light peach stroke. Increase the stroke value to around 4 – 6 pts.

Position the arrow so it points from the word “Summer” to the word “Music”.


 Summer Music Festival Poster

Now let’s add the last set of ornaments at this stage.

Choose a nice, long swoosh from the Brushability file. Position it under the date. Adjust the size if needed. Lastly, fill it with a light blue color.


 Summer Music Festival Poster

Now add the ornamental stain from the Brushability file. Copy it over and fill it with a light blue color. Position it next to the word “Summer”. Then reflect it to the other side just like you did with the swooshes next to the word “London”.

 Summer Music Festival Poster

Now clone down the right stain, give it a light peach fill and position it next to the bottom swoosh. Group the main text and ornaments, preferably by pressing Ctrl or Command + G on your keyboard.

With the group selected double click on the Rotate tool and enter -10 degrees for the rotation value. You can try repositioning the group slightly to the left and top.


 Summer Music Festival Poster

Now that the main text is created, we can move on to adding the names of the band.

Step 4: The Bands

In this step we are going to add the names of the bands and each name will be written in a font that is reflecting the band’s style. All of these fonts can be found in our Fonts Bundle.

Let’s start with creating a new layer.

Alt or Option click the Create new layer button. Name the layer “Bands”.


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Grab the Type tool and click anywhere on the artboard. Type in the word “Adela”. Set the font to Brushability Script at 66 pts and tracking at 25. Give a light peach fill.

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Grab the Type tool and click on the artboard again. Type in the word “Diamond Jam”. Set the font to Atlan Semibold from Latinotype at 36 pts. Make sure that the All Caps button is selected. Give it a dark peach fill and position in vertically in the middle of the word “Adela”.

 Summer Music Festival Poster

Next clone the word “Diamond Jam” to the right and type in “Coolplay”. Set the font to URW DIN Regular at 55 pts. Give it a light blue fill. Align it with the word “Adela”.

 Summer Music Festival Poster

Now you can simply clone down all the three words and change the bands names and fonts.

Change the word “Adela” to “Enterpol”. Set the font to Rawson Regular from Latiotype at 51 pts. Make sure that the All Caps button is selected. Give it a light blue fill and position in vertically in the middle of the word “Adela”.


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Change the cloned word “Diamond Jam” to “The Timbres”. Set the font to Superfly One Regular from Set Sail Studios at 64 pts.

Make sure that the All Caps button is deselected. Give it a light peach fill and position it vertically in the middle of the word “Enterpol”.


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Now change the cloned word “Coolplay” to “Roby”. Set the font to Town 31 Dim Regular L by Jason Vandenberg at 64 pts. Make sure that the All Caps button is selected. Give it a yellow fill and increase the tracking value to 50 and the size to 70.

 Summer Music Festival Poster

Now clone down just the words “Enterpol” and “The Timbers”. Change the word “Enterpol” to “Besarabian”. Set the font to Geometrica Light by Latinotype at 42 pts. Give it a yellow fill.

 Summer Music Festival Poster

Now change the word “The Timbres” to “Kings of Aragon”. Set the font to Brushability Sans Regular at 35 pts. Make sure the All Caps option is selected. Give it a dark peach fill and reposition it so it matches the other bands’ names.

 Summer Music Festival Poster

Now clone down the words “Besarabian” and “Kings of Aragon”. Change the word “Besarabian” to “The Internals”. Set the font to Montebello Rounded at 55 pts. Give it a dark pink fill.

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Now change the word “Kings of Aragon” to “The Arctic Gorillas”. Set the font to Moonstruck Slanted at 90 pts. Give it a yellow fill and reposition it so it matches the other words.

 Summer Music Festival Poster

To finish this part up we need to add the last bit of info at the bottom plus one more ornament.

Head over to the Brushabillity file and choose one of the longer ornaments. Copy it over to your design.

Adjust its size and align it vertically in the center in relation to the bands’ names. Give it a peach fill.


 Summer Music Festival Poster

With the Type tool click and type in “More tickets and info”. Change the font to Sofa Sans Mono.

Change the size to 32 and make sure the All Caps option is selected. Change the fill color to light blue and align the text vertically with the ornament.


 Summer Music Festival Poster

Now clone down the last word and type in the website address: www.summermusicfestival.com. Move it to the center and change the color to yellow. This part is done!

 Summer Music Festival Poster

Step 5: The Microphone

Let’s take a quick break from the fonts and create the microphone.

First Alt or Option click on the Create new layer icon in the layers panel. Name the layer “Microphone” and click OK.


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Let’s temporarily turn other layers off. It will make the process of creating the microphone a bit easier.

From the Tools panel grab the Rounded Rectangle tool. Click on the artboard and enter 4 inches for width, 7.5 inch for height and 2 inches for the corner radius. Click OK and fill the rectangle with a yellow color.


 Summer Music Festival Poster

With the rectangle selected head over to the appearance panel. Increase the stroke value to around 20-25 points. Click on the Stroke link and align the stroke to the outside.

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Make sure that the Stroke in the Appearance panel is selected. Click on the little Fx icon and choose distort and Transform and then Transform.

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In the Transform panel increase the size of the stroke by 115 % – 120 %. This will move the stroke away from the shape. Slightly reposition the stroke vertically by around – 0.25 inch.

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With the shape selected head over to the Object menu and choose Expand Appearance. Next ungroup the shape using the Ungroup command found in the very same Object menu.

Fill the outer shape with the same color as the rounded rectangle. Move it slightly up so the space near the bottom of the microphone is even.


 Summer Music Festival Poster

Now grab the Rectangle tool and draw a rectangle over the microphone shape. Make sure it is not crossing the half of the rounded rectangle.

Shift click on the newly created rectangle and the outer shape. Head over to the Pathfinder panel. If you don’t have it up, just go to the Window menu and choose Pathfinder.

From the panel choose the Minus Front command.


 Summer Music Festival Poster


 Summer Music Festival Poster

Next grab the Rectangle again and create a small rectangle starting from the center point of the microphone. Simply Alt or Option click on the center point of the microphone and drag out a rectangle that is slightly wider than the microphone itself.

Now copy the rectangle to your clipboard (Ctrl/Cmd+C) and make it slightly taller. Drag it by its top or bottom handle while holding down the Alt or Option key.


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Now select the rectangle and the underlying rounded rectangle by Shift clicking on them. One more time head over to the Pathfinder panel and choose “Minus front”. Press Ctrl or Command + F to paste back the rectangle kept in the clipboard.

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Now group all the shapes creating the microphone. Select them and press Ctrl or Command + G on your keyboard.

Grab the Ellipse tool. Holding down the Shift key create a perfect circle that is slightly bigger than the middle rectangle and move it to the side.


 Summer Music Festival Poster

Now from the Tools panel grab the Scissors tool. Click on the top and bottom anchor points. You are going to cut the circle into two halves. But since they will be open paths, you need to join the. Select each one of them and press Ctrl or Command + J to close the shapes.

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Move the half ellipses to the sides of the microphone and group them. Then select both groups: the microphone and the half ellipses and align everything to the center.

 Summer Music Festival Poster

To finish the base shape of our microphone, let’s add a stand to it. Grab the Rectangle tool and create a rectangle that is much taller than it is wide. Smart Guides should help you in centering it in relation to the top shape.

And if you can’t see the Smart Guides, make sure they are on by going to the View menu and choosing Smart Guides.


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Now let’s take the microphone design up one level and make it a bit more realistic.

First ungroup the rounded rectangle part of the microphone (Ctrl+Shift+G). Then grab the Ellipse tool and create a small perfect circle near the top left corner of the upper part of the microphone.

Fill it with a plain white color and clone it to the right.


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With both ellipses selected go to the Object menu. Choose Blend and then Blend options. In the dialog box that pops up select Specified steps and enter something around 10 – 12 .

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To actually blend the ellipses together press Alt (Option) + Ctrl (Command) + B on your keyboard.

Next go to the Object menu and choose Expand. In the dialog box that pops up simply press OK.


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Now clone down the top set of ellipses and with both sets selected press Alt (Option) + Ctrl (Command) + B on your keyboard.

If there is too many ellipses, double click on the Blend tool in the Tools panel and decrease the amount of steps.


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Expand the new blend and send it behind the underlying microphone shape (Ctrl+Shift+[).

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Select both objects and go to the Object menu – Envelope Distort – and Make with top object.

 Summer Music Festival Poster


 Summer Music Festival Poster

There we go! The microphone is created! All that’s left to do is to group the microphone shapes and reposition them. We can bring back all the other pieces to help us with that.

Most probably you are going to have to move some things around to align the elements and clean the design a bit up. But the microphone part is done!

Step 6: The Dots

Before we bring this design over to Photoshop, let’s work on the background a bit.

First Alt or Option click on the Create new layer icon in the layers panel. Name the layer “Dots” and hit OK.


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With the Ellipse tool create a series of ellipses. Don’t put them too close to each other. Adjust their position so they appear like they are randomly floating in the air.

When you are done, you can fill them with different colors.


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Next grab all the ellipses and start cloning and rotating them. Most probably you are going to have to adjust their position in relation to each other.

You also might want to consider turning the visibility of some of the other layers off. This can help you in positioning the dots.


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When you are done move the Dots layer beneath the other layers.

This part is done!


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Step 7: The Background

Now let’s create the background effects. For that we’ll bring the design over to Photoshop.
Go to the File menu and choose Export and then Export As. From the list choose Photoshop PSD and click Export.


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Make sure not to select Flat Image. We want Illustrator to keep all the layers. Just click OK and open the file in Photoshop.
In the Layers panel remove the background path. Instead place a concert image using the Place Embedded command found in the file menu. I am using Desi Mendoza’s image fetched from Unsplash.com.
Adjust its size and position so it fills the entire background.


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Of course there is not enough contrast here, so let’s fix that.

In the layers panel create a New layer above the placed image. From the Color Selector tool choose a dark blue color. I am using #060645. Lastly, press Alt or Option + Backspace keys to fill the layer with the foreground color.
Drop this layers opacity to around 75%.


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Next create another layer on top of the one filled with the dark blue color. This time we will fil it with a gradient.

Grab the Gradient tool from the Tools Panel.

Select one of the default gradients, called Spectrum. As for the type of gradient choose conical.


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Now with the Gradient tool active click somewhere by the top left corner of the canvas and drag the gradient towards the bottom right corner.

Drop the opacity to around 75% and the fill of the gradient layer to around 50 to 60%.

Lastly, double click the gradient layer to open the Layer Style dialog box. Choose Satin and click OK.


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And there you go! The Summer Music Poster is done!

We’ve created a fun, a bit messy, Summer Music Festival Poster. Along the way we’ve used some simple Illustrator and Photoshop techinques that allowed the fantastic fonts really stand out.


 Summer Music Festival Poster

Remember that whether it’s your outcome for this tutorial or something new you’ve made, we’d love to see your designs on our Facebook page.

Please leave a comment if you have any questions or suggestions. I always look forward to hearing from you!

There’s still time to check out The Exceptional Best-Selling Font Selection where you’ll discover a range of world class fonts, available for 99% off the regular price.