Create Convincing Text-Shaped Buildings in Photoshop

DownloadSOURCE FILES

Creating convincing buildings that appear like text in a cityscape can be a challenging task. In today’s tutorial we will learn how to create building-shaped typography in Photoshop using photos that you have taken yourself. Let’s get started!

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Tutorial Assets

You may download the photos that were used in this tutorial for free from the link above.

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Before You Begin

It is most fun to use your own photos for this tutorial. Feel free to use the ones provided, but you will feel much more satisfied when you use your own. If you decide you use your own, there are some things that you have to take into account. The first is to go to (one of the) highest building in a city with high rising buildings (more than 10 floors). Any capital in the world will do, except Amsterdam and Ouagadougou. Higher buildings are more spectacular. Take shots of complete buildings, of parts of buildings, take shots of streets, parks, pedestrians, cars, satellite dishes, antennas, rubbish baskets, take shots of everything you see. Zoom in to roofs and take shots of the small constructions on top, of laundry lines. You will be surprised how different things are on each roof. Use a reasonable zoom lens for some of the shots. When you start creating the image, you will get all kinds of ideas on small details and how to use them. Don’t be stingy with using your camera memory when you are on the roof; take loads of pictures.

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Step 1- Nairobi Skyline

Create a white background image of 6000 x 6000. Save it as nairobifull.psd. Open Nairobi_skyline.jpg, copy it to Nairobifull, rename it to Nairobi background and drag this image as in the photo with the move tool (V). Make the horizon horizontal (turn it -2degrees or so) and drag it to the top of the working space, leaving the sky out of the image. Hit return (confirm).

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Step 2 – Putting it in Perspective

Horizontal text is boring. So we want to put things in perspective. We are still in move tool mode, press Command/Ctrl, click the left corner of nairobi background and drag the photo down on the left side (see image) correct the horizon again so that it is above/out of the image, maybe you need to drag the left point somewhat further to the left, to correct the vertical direction of buildings. It is important that all building are vertical. Make sure there is space for the text below.

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Step 3 – Level it Out

Go to image > adjustments > Levels, put the middle arrow to 75. If you use your own photos, you may want to wait with this till last. The colorization has to be in line with the front buildings.

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Step 4 – Vanishing Points

Now it is time to put the direction of the letters/buildings in perspective: vanishing points. Create a new layer. Call it vanishing points. Draw a vertical line (use Shift and the pencil tool). Duplicate the layer. Select the move tool and rotate the line 90 degrees. Merge the layers. Duplicate the layers. Rotate one layer 45 degrees, merge. Do this another two to three times, (22.5 degrees, 11.25 degrees, I guess you grab the idea). You now have a wheel like the picture below. Duplicate it, put it in one layer group (layer > new > group from layers (both vanishing points layers selected). Put this layer group to 50-60% transparency. I got the idea of the vanishing points from a previous tutorial on this site by Narendra Keshkar who created a great banana ship tutorial that was published in September 2010. Without it, this image would have been impossible. Have a look if you want.

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The designer’s guide to a great first impression

GUEST ARTICLE by Joe Valdez–If you would like to write for GDB, contact me.

We’ve all heard the saying “you don’t get a second chance at a first impression”. When it comes to your design business and landing a deal, nothing could be more true. A great first impression is the first step to securing a client and forming an ongoing business relationship.

One of a designer’s main keys to developing a great first impression is trust. No matter what the circumstances of the first impression, if the person cannot trust you, they won’t want to move forward in a designer-client relationship.

For a designer, first impressions can come in several different ways. Most of our first impressions are visual: a website, advertisement or personal meeting. After an initial visual impression, phone calls and emails may follow which can also leave an impression. This article will discuss practical ways to impress your clients over and over again.

Website

Most of the time a website will be the first thing a person sees about you. The first few seconds that the visitor spends on your website are monumental and directly related to the time they stay on your site. The look of the site should be professional and appealing.

For designers, a “wow” factor is always welcoming. We don’t always have to follow standard layouts but we have to be careful not to make them hard to follow. Your website should not take long to load or make the visitor have to look for what they need.

Advertisements

A designer’s advertisement can be in the form of a banner ad, Craigslist posting, postcard, flyer, brochure, business card or many others. A great first impression not only attracts a client, but also gets them to want to know more about your design business. Put your best skills or specialties front-and-center. Great advertisements are clear, direct and attractive. You have to stand out over your competition or you leave no impression at all.

Personal Encounters

If the person is impressed by your website or advertisement they may want to meet you in person. This is the chance to have a stronger impression and secure an agreement. When first meeting a client, your appearance is most important, followed by your attention, speech, and preparedness.

No matter where you meet, your office, a public place or their place of business, you should dress professionally. Remember, this is like a job interview, you are a candidate for hiring.

When sitting down with the potential client, you should make eye contact, listen to what they are saying, avoid interrupting and take notes when needed.

You should speak clearly and professionally, it doesn’t matter if the potential client doesn’t do likewise or seems unprofessional.

Be prepared. Being unprepared could be your downfall. This tells the potential client you are unprofessional and probably can’t be trusted. You should have information on the company or person memorized. You should know before your meeting what the potential client needs and what their basic objectives are.

Phone Calls

If a potential client visits your website, sees your advertisement or gets your phone number through word-of-mouth, a phone call will provide another opportunity to leave a great impression. A phone call can be spontaneous or it can be planned.

The spontaneous ones are harder to deal with, obviously. If you are uncomfortable or unprepared to handle a call, it’s best to politely and professionally explain to the caller that you are in the middle of something and you will promptly call them back.

If it is a planned call, much like an in-person meeting, your attention, speech and preparedness are very important. While on the phone, make sure you aren’t rambling and make sure you take notes. The notes help with potential questions to ask, concerns to bring up and to make sure you don’t forget what you talked about.

Emails

When first responding to emails, the more professional the email the more the potential client is inclined to trust you. If available, use Mr. or Mrs. and always thank them for the email and interest. The first email should introduce yourself and your services.

Don’t get into contract or legal-talk, and don’t be pushy about what you can do for them. First emails serve as an introduction, so think of it as an in-person introduction. If your email turns off the potential client, you most likely will not get a response.

What else would you add?

Now it’s your turn to share. What other tips would you add to the list? How have you successfully made a good first impression with your clients in the past?

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HOW TO CREATE 3D EFFECTS IN PHOTOSHOP CS3

When you saw the title, you probably said “Impossible!” Not entirely true. We can create extrusions even if the command isn’t available, adjust the depth and direction of the extrusion path or use shading and all we need is a different point of view on things. Sounds pretty good so far, huh?

Difficulty: beginner
Completion time: 3-5 min
Tools: Photoshop CS3
Resources: Showcard Gothic font

FINAL IMAGE PREVIEW

STEP 1

Create a document of 2000 x 2000 px in RGB color mode (File > New…) or a similar file size.

STEP 2

Grab the Horizontal Type Tool (T), draw a type box with the about the same width as the canvas. Type in your desired text and hit the “OK” button in the top side.

STEP 3

Duplicate this layer (CTRL+J). Select the original layer, make the text another color, go to the Layers palette and right-click near the layer thumb. Select “Rasterize Type”.

STEP 4

Hit CTRL+T to enter Free Transform Mode, click the chain between the percentile values and change the value to “99.5%”. Hit Enter.

STEP 5

Duplicate this layer (CTRL+J). Select its original and repeat STEP 4.

STEP 6

Repeat this step until you get a decent “extrusion” height.

STEP 7

Select all layers except the top-most one and “background” and hit CTRL+E to merge them. Click the “fx” in the Layers palette and select “Blending Options”. Use the settings below.

STEP 8

Select the top-most layer and add a similar blending setting, like below.

DONE!

You can explore different extrusion paths if you change the reference point for the Free Transform mode.

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Creative Sticker Design Collection to Inspire Designers

There are lots of promotional materials but stickers have a good advantage to promote your products. It’s very effective and can be done in a small budget. You can use them anywhere you want. So designers must know to create some beautiful sticker printing design. In this article we collect some Creative Sticker Design to inspire you.

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Membuat Layout Sederhana dengan InDesign

Adobe InDesign adalah salah satu aplikasi dari keluarga Adobe yang mungkin sangat jarang kita gunakan, padahal fitur-fitur dalam InDesign cukup powerfull jika kita gunakan bersama dengan program grafis lainnya. Umumnya InDesign digunakan untuk melayout teks, majalah, koran, buku, poster dan segala bentuk keperluan cetak yang menggunakan lebih banyak text di dalamnya. Untuk kerperluan itulah maka fitur pengaturan/layout lebih di utamakan daripada fitur grafis lainnya.

Di jagat desain grafis, tutorial InDesign masih sangat jarang di jumpai. Mungkin karena penggunanya masih sedikit (dibandingkan Illustrator, Photoshop, etc). Disamping itu fitur-fitur yang memang sangat berbeda dari saudaranya Illustrator, photoshop, dll membuatnya terkesan rumit. Rumit bukan berarti tidak bisa di pelajari bukan?

Pada edisi kali ini Desain Studio ingin berbagi sedikit pengetahuan tentang InDesign, karena banyaknya fitur yang saling berhubungan untuk keperluan layout.. mungkin desainstudio akan menyicil tahapan tutorial tentang InDesign. Kita mulai dari yang paling awal dan yang paling sederhana, yaitu membuat layout sederhana menggunakan Adobe InDesign.


Step 1
Buka New Document (ctrl+N) di menu File. Pada jendela “New Document” kamu bisa mengatur ukuran kertas/ bidang kerja yang kamu perlukan. Secara default, InDesign menampilkan ukuran dalam satuan “picas (p0)”, untuk mengubah ke dalam ukuran lain cukup ketikkan ukuran tersebut lengkap dengan jenis ukurannya (mis : 32 cm), In Design akan otomatis mengubahnya ke dalam satuan p0 kembali (tenang, kamu bisa ubah semua settingan ukuran ini ke dalam cm nanti).

Step 2
Untuk mengubah semua settingan jenis ukuran, cukup klik kanan di ruler atas dan samping kanan halaman kerja, lalu pilih settingan ukuran yang kamu perlukan. Maka semua pengaturan ukuran di InDesign akan berubah sesuai dengan jenis ukuran yang kamu pilih.

Step 3
Sebelum memasukkan tulisan, ada baiknya terlebih dahulu kita atur dulu layout dasar seperti pengaturan Nomor Halaman dan Peletakan Header / Footernya. Klik menu Pages, lalu double klik di menu Master. Master Page adalah lembar default untuk seluruh dokumen yang kamu buat, mudahnya, apapun yang kamu ketikkan/ input (baik tulisan, gambar maupun settingan margin) akan tampil di setiap halaman kerja.

Untuk mengatur margin (pastikan masih di dalam laman Master Page) input ukuran margin yang kamu inginkan. Non Aktifkan (klik) ikon link untuk input ukuran yang berbeda.

NB : bagi kamu yang terbiasa menggunakan MS Word, mungkin penyebutan settingan marginya agak berbeda walau prinsipnya sama. Kalau di MS Word Left dan Right maka di InDesign penyebutannya Inside dan Outside. Pada menu Columns, Number untuk menentukan jumlah baris tulisan yang ingin kamu buat dan Guttter adalah jarak antara baris terebut. Silahkan berimprovisasi saja pada bagian ini sesuai degan kebutuhan. Pada tutorial ini, desainstudio menggunakan 2 columns dengan jarak 1 cm.

Step 4
Untuk membuat Header/Footer cukup tuliskan saja text dengan cara klik Text (T) lalu drag untuk membuat area text nya (di InDesign, kamu harus membuat area text terlebih dahulu dengan cara mendragnya). Jika Header/Footer kamu berupa gambar, kamu dapat memasukkannya dengan cara mengcopy gambar tersebut dari Adobe Illustrator, dsb. atau Ctrl+D untuk mengambil gambar dari file di komputer.

Step 5
Untuk Input Page Number, masukkan text (T) dengan cara men-drag-nya, ketikan 1 huruf (huruf apapun) select huruf tersebut, klik kanan maka akan muncul menu baru, pilih Insert Special Character/Markers/Current Page Number. Maka apapun huruf yang kamu ketikkan tadi akan berubah menjadi huruf “A”. Hal ini disesuaikan dengan judul Master Page (A-Master). Copy Page Number yang telah di set tadi ke halaman sebelahnya (di dalam Master Page terdapat dua halaman Master).

Step 6
Jika samua layout Master sudah di set, berikutnya double klik di lembar 1 (lembar kerja). Di lembar inilah kita akan melakukan input text dan gambar yang kita perlukan untuk dokumen kita.

Step 7
Klik Text (T) lalu drag untuk membuat area teks yang diperlukan, ketik teks kamu (dalam contoh ini Saya menyesuaikan area text dengan layout yang sudah di buat sebelumnya)

Step 8
Untuk mengatur paragraph, buka Window/Type & Tables/Paragraph (Alt+Ctrl+T) dan atur paragraph yang kamu inginkan.

NB : aktifkan “Hyphenate” untuk memunculkan tanda sambung di paragraph yang terputus, atau matikan untuk menghapusnya.


Step 9
Jika tulisan kamu terpotong di ujung column, tanda Overset Text akan muncul. Klik tanda tersebut hingga muncul preview teks kecil di cursor kamu. Arahkan kursor tersebut ke column sebelahnya dan klik, otomatis tulisan yang terpotong akan dilanjutkan.

Step 10
Jika ingin menambah page, klik di menu Create new page. Lanjutkan tulisan kamu di page lanjutan ini. Hey! coba perhatikan, Page Number yang kamu set di Master Page tadi kini muncul secata continue. begitu juga Header/Footer yang telah dibuat.

Step 11
Sebelum file di simpan, perhatikan tanda Preflight Panel di sudut kiri bawah bar Jendela InDesign. Tanda ini akan berwarna merah jika masih ada error di dalam dokumen yang kita buat. Error disebabkan masih adanya link file yang missing di dalam file yang kita input atau adanya area text yang terpotong (overset text).

Step 12
Jika sudah selesai, kamu bisa menyimpan file dokumen kamu dalam format InDesign (.indd) untuk melanjutkan di kemudian hari, atau dalam format .Pdf jika sudah rampung semuanya.

Penyimpanan dalam format .PDF :
File/Adobe PDF presets/High Quality Print.

Pilih destinasi penyimpanan file, klik OK. Akan muncul jendela Export Adobe PDF, klik Export dan tunggu hingga selesai.

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