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Tutorial Tuesday – Vintage Typography Tutorial

by . February 11th, 2014

This week on Tutorial Tuesday, we teach you how to create a vintage typography look.

PART 1.

Find a quote, an anecdote, a cool word or a phrase to create the image. I chose the quote: “I fall in love the way you fall asleep, slowly then at all at once’ – a quote from John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. It’s a terrific read (and, it will make you cry). Fire up illustrator and set your text down! Arrange the text until you have something that catches your attention. There’s no hard/fast rules with typography, so feel free to experiment with your type until you have something you’re satisfied with. I mention this in every tutorial that involves Illustrator but Smart Guides are the best thing in the world, keep them on!

I like to work with black and white at first to determine readability of the piece.

Font used was Lobster.

 

tutorial_01

PART 2.

I changed the color of the text to white and placed a blue to darker blue radial gradient behind the text. You can use any set of colors for this tutorial. I wanted a chalky effect for the text. Using the direct selection tool, I right clicked and hit ‘Create Outlines’. You should now be able to change the stroke of the text. Select all the text. I chose the textured brush, set at 1px for my stroke. Make sure your stroke and fill color are the same. Afterwards, I went to FILE > EXPORT – and saved it as a PNG.

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PART 3.

Open the text up in Photoshop. Duplicated the Background Layer. Go to Filter > Stylize > Find Edges. This should give you an outlined look with your text. Hit CMD/CTRL + Shift + U – to convert the layer to black and white. I set it to multiply. I duplicated that layer. I applied another filter to give it an inky look. I went to Filter > Artistic > Water Color. I used the settings below.

 

tutorial_03

PART 4.

I set the layer to multiply! Now, I wanted some portions of the text to stand out more than the others. I duplicated the original image, set it to the top. I highlighted the words I wanted to accent, using the MAGIC WAND TOOL. After I selected the areas, I hit: “LAYER VIA CUT” and then deleted the layer. Now, I have isolated the letters. I went to Layer > Layer Styles > Color Overlay and picked out a blue from the background. I placed them on top of the text to create a drop shadow effect. I then created a new layer, filled it with: #245c67. Set at 60% – exclusion.

And now this is was my end result!

tutorial_final_lowres

If you want to read more tutorials like this, you can check out last week’s edition  of Tutorial Tuesday. Like it? Love it? We hope this tutorial has helped you in some way! Whether you liked it, loved it or thought you could have done it better – let us know in the comments. If you’ve made anything using this tutorial, let us know in the comments!

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