Hi, this is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. The International Typographic Style, also
known as the Swiss Style, is a graphic design style that emerged in the 1920s, and was made
famous by designers in Switzerland during the 1950s. Hallmarks of the style are asymmetric
layouts, use of a grid, sans-serif typefaces, and flush left, ragged right text. I created
the following poster examples and will show you how to create one just like them.
Before we begin, I should mention that this tutorial will move a bit quicker for more advanced
users. Create a new document and make its measurement units: Inches. Let’s make its
size and resolution relatively large, in case you’d like to print it at some point. You
can choose your own dimensions, but I’ll start with a Width of 20 inches and its Height:
12 inches. Make its Resolution: 300 pixels per inch. The color mode is RGB and 8 bits
per Channel. The background is white.
Open your Horizontal Type Tool and pick a typical Swiss-style, san-serif font.
I’m using “Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk Bold” and later, the same
font in “Regular”. If you’d like to use them, as well, I provided their links
in this video’s description or project files. I’ll make its size 675 points, Sharp, Left
Alignment and black for its color. Type your first character. Open your Move Tool and drag
your character to the top of your document, leaving enough room to its right to accommodate more text.
Keep in mind, we’ll be overlapping all the characters. Click the "fx" icon and click
"Blending Options". Presently, all the Red, Green and Blue channels are checked. By unchecking
the channels in various combinations, you can chanege the color of each character. I'll
choose to make my first characcter red, however, keep in mind, you'll be able to change their colors at any time.
Make a copy of the character by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + J. Double-click
the copy to highlight it and type your second character. Open your Move Tool. Press and
hold Shift as you drag the copy to the right, making sure you overlap the first character.
Click the "fx" icon and click "Blending Options" again. This time, I'll uncheck the green channel.
Slide the second character over, so a section of it is aligned with the first character.
Remember, Swiss-style graphics rely on grids and alignments. Continue to type in the rest
of your characters and have fun experimenting with their colors until you have a combination
you like the most. Next, we'll slide down one of the characters. Choose a character
that's on the left half of your word. For this example, I'll slide down the letter "L".
To do this, make your designated character active and use the Down arrow key on your
keyboard to slide that character down. For this example, I'll slide mine down until the
top of it is flush with the top section of the first character. Make your next character
active and slide it over until it's aligned with the second character. Repeat these steps
for each of your characters. Go to View and make sure Rulers and Snap are checked. If
they aren't, just click them. Go to the ruler on the left and drag out a guideline to the
left side of your first character. Drag out another guideline to the right side or thereabouts
of your last character. Open your Rectangular Marquee Tool and drag it over your guidelines.
Go to Image and Crop. Then, deselect it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + D. Continue to drag
out vertical guidelines that align with sections of your characters. We'll use them to align
the text that we'll place at the lower half of our design. To save space in the Layers
panel, we'll place all of our characters into a folder. To do this, Shift-click on the bottom
character to highlight all of them and press Ctrl or Cmd + G. Press "t" to open your Type
Tool and click on your document. I'll make its size 23 points, however, feel free to
make it any size you'd like. Type out your text and then, open you Move Tool to move it.
We can re-position it later if we want. Next, we'll create a block of text.
Open your Type Tool. Place the tool over a guideline on the lower, right. Drag your tool up and
over to another guideline flush with the top of the text next to it. This created a text
box, which will restrict our text to just inside this box. You can either type in your
text or copy and paste it in. First, I'll choose this font in a regular weight and make
its size 12 points, but again, feel free to adjust this amount. For this example, I'll
select this block of text by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + A and copy it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + C.
I'll minimize the window, click inside the upper, left of the box and then, press
Ctrl or Cmd + V to paste the text into it. To make sure all of the text is visible, I'll
drag the bottom down. If we want more room at the bottom of our document, we'll move
up the text box together the word next to it. To do this, Shift-click on the bottom
text to make both layers active and use your Up arrow to slide them both up. Lastly, we'll
create a colorful, graphic bar on the bottom to complement the text on the top.
Make a new layer
and open your Rectangular Marquee Tool.
Drag it over the bottom, right corner.
Go to one of the characters to copy its color. Press the letter "i" on your keyboard to open
your Eyedropper Tool and then, click on the character. Since your foreground color is
now the color you just copied, we'll fill the selection with that color by pressing
Alt or Option + Delete. Go to Select and Transform Selection. Go to the middle, right of the
bounding box and when you see a horizontal, double-arrow, drag the selection to the right
guideline and press Enter or Return. Pick another color from another character and fill
this selection with that color. Then, deselect it. To hide your guidelines, press Ctrl or Cmd + H .
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. Thanks for watching!