Hello everyone this is Chris from Spoon Graphics
back with another video tutorial.
Today I'm going to take you through the design process for creating a vintage postcard design,
based on the postcard design style known as "large letter", which was popular throughout
mid-20th century.
Often accompanied by the words “Greetings from…”, these postcards presented the
name of a place with faux 3D type effects and featured a variety of pictures of that
locale clipped within the text face of each letter.
The style has become iconic and is referenced by designers who want to create artwork with
a nostalgic or retro theme.
In today’s tutorial I show how to create a vintage style large letter postcard design,
using the tools available in Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop to replicate the visual
traits of those original souvenirs.
But first, if you want to get your hands of thousands of assets to use in your designs,
check out Envato Elements.
To familiarise yourself with this iconic design style, Google the words “Greetings from
postcards” to see hundreds of examples from across America. You’ll notice the large
lettering effect is common throughout, often warped in various angles and accompanied with
bold colours. One of the key characteristics is the series of photos from the region clipped
within each letter.
We'll use the powers of both Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop to produce the effect.
Illustrator for its useful tools for editing vector text shapes, then Photoshop for working
with raster images and textures.
So to begin, open up Illustrator and create a new document. It doesn't really matter what
the size is, but I'm using units of pixels.
Select the Type tool and set out your place name. Choose a strong and bold font. I’m
using Futura Condensed Extra Bold with the tracking reduced to -50.
Convert the live text into shapes by going to Type > Create Outlines.
Head to Object > Path > Offset Path and enter 2px. In the Joins setting, choose Round. Click
a light grey colour swatch to have it applied to this outline.
Due to the way the letters are laid out, the outline overlaps some of the black letters.
Right click and choose Arrange > Send To Back.
Head straight back to Object > Path > Offset Path and add another outline. This time give
it a blue fill and send it to the back again.
Make a selection across all the text and go to Effect > 3D > Extrude and Bevel.
Configure the settings to 1 degree in the X and Y axis, then 0 for the Z axis. Set the
Extrude Depth to 1000pt, then change the Surface to No Shading.
To permanently apply the effect and convert the text back into shapes, go to Object > Expand
Appearance.
Many of the real large letter postcard designs used multiple colours in the 3D text effect.
Choose the Direct Selection tool and hold the Shift key while clicking on every bottom
face of each letter. Give these shapes a new orangey-red fill.
In order to create an extra outline around the text, we first need to make a duplicate.
Go to Edit > Copy, followed by Edit > Paste in Front.
Click the Unite button in the Pathfinder panel to merge all the individual shapes into one
big silhouette, then right click and choose Arrange > Send to Back.
Swap the blue fill to a stroke in the toolbar, then in the Stroke panel, configure it to
2pt and aligned to the outside.
Finish off the type design with a couple more text elements to add the words "Greetings
from". I'm using a nice brush script named Signpainter.
Select all the objects that make up your design, then go to Object > Envelope Distort > Make
With Warp.
Choose Rise from the options and set the Bend to 30%.
That's the main work done in Illustrator, so now let's set up a document in Photoshop
to begin working on the textures and vintage postcard effect.
Download my collection of free Vintage Postcard Textures from Spoon Graphics and open one
into Photoshop. I went with number 15 from the blank postcards set.
These textures were originally saved in CMYK format, so quickly convert them to RGB, otherwise
some of the tools we need to use won't be accessible.
Next, find a bunch of landscape photos to use within the composition. You can find loads
of high resolution, free photos at sites such as Unsplash.com or Pexels. I'll link to the
ones I used in the video description area.
Open up the main background photo you want to apply to the postcard, then Select All
and Copy. In the postcard texture document, paste the image and scale it to size with
the CMD (or CTRL on Windows) and T shortcut.
Double click the Background layer to turn it into a regular layer, then drag it above
the photo layer.
Change the blending mode to Multiply to allow the underlying photo to show through the texture,
then reduce the opacity of the photo layer to around 70% to tone it down so it isn't
so vibrant.
The photo currently extends beyond the edge of the postcard, so add a layer mask to the
photo layer, then Select All with CMD+A
With the marquee tool active, right click and choose Transform Selection. Hold the ALT
key while scaling down the selection to leave a border around the edge of the postcard.
Go to Select > Inverse, then fill this area with black to erase this area in the mask.
To eliminate the straight edge of the mask, go to Filter > Distort > Ripple. Configure
the settings to Large at around 20% to add some rough edges to the border.
Switch back to Illustrator and make a copy of the artwork, then paste it as Pixels within
the Photoshop document. Scale it to size to fit on the postcard.
The colours from Illustrator look a little too vibrant to suit this vintage postcard
effect, so go to Image > Adjustments > Match Colour
Select the current document as the Source, then choose Merged as the layer option. Adjust
the sliders to better balance the colours, taking the Luminance down to around 10, then
bringing back the contrast with around a 40% Fade.
In order to make clippings of each letter, we need to create separate layers. Use the
Magic Wand tool to make a selection of the first letter face.
Add a new layer, then use the ALT+Backspace shortcut to fill the selection with black.
Press CMD+D to Deselect.
Activate the artwork layer again in order to make a selection of the next letter with
the Magic Wand, then add a new layer and fill this new selection.
Repeat the process for each letter until you have individual layers for every letter of
the word.
Open up one of the other landscape images and copy and paste it into the document, placed
above the first individual letter layer in the layer stack.
Hold the ALT key and click between the two layers to make a clipping mask, so the photo
will only show in the area of the letter face.
Press CMD+T to Transform, then scale and position the image so a suitable portion of the landscape
fills the area.
Open up the next landscape image and repeat the process. Copy and paste into the document
above the next letter layer. ALT+Click between the layers to make a clipping mask, then scale
and position to fit.
As landscape images are placed within all the letter faces, the vintage postcard effect
begins to take shape.
The final artwork is a great tribute to those classic postcard designs. Illustrator’s
3D tool helped to produce a similar text treatment that was used in the original designs, whilst
the image and texture adjustments in Photoshop gives the artwork an aged and distressed appearance
to achieve the nostalgic vintage look.
If you enjoyed this video or learnt any new tricks, be sure to give it a like to help
spread the word. Subscribe to the channel to stick around for more, and if you want
to get your hands on more free resources like those postcard textures, join my mailing list
over at Spoon.Graphics.
As always thank you very much for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.