Today I'm going to show you how to create vintage designs the easy way with the help
of a brilliant new tool from my friends at Heritage Type.
Heritage Designer combines everything you need to create vintage designs into one revolutionary
free-to-use tool.
No longer do you need to buy expensive fonts, logo templates, stock design assets, or even
software!
Heritage Designer has it all, directly in your browser.
You can use advanced editing tools (some of which are even better than Adobe's) and drag
& drop functionality to easily build your designs.
Choose from hundreds of ready-made templates (or start with a blank canvas) then customise
the text and layout with a complete library of fonts, illustrations, ornaments, and effects.
I'll show you how I created this design layout directly in Heritage Designer using just a
selection of the vintage style fonts and ornaments.
It's a fun label design for Brain Tonic, inspired by some of the whacky miracle cure products
that are associated with travelling medicine shows from the Old West.
Follow the link in the description to heritagedesigner.com/join/spooner to follow along.
This sign up link invites you to try out a FREE 3 month Pro-Plan worth $45!
No payment info or cancellation is required at all.
You don't have to enter any card details or remember to cancel before a certain date,
your account will simply revert to the regular ‘Free plan’.
It's a completely free trial that grants you access to the entire library of design templates
& elements with commercial licensing and the ability to export high-res JPG, PNG and Vector
designs.
Sign up and log in to Heritage Designer to begin.
There's all kinds of ready-made templates you can easily customise.
If you ever want to create a retro or vintage logo, T-shirt, poster or card, you can find
a great layout then simply edit it to make it your own.
Alternatively, you can start with a blank canvas under New Project.
Click the little Settings icon in the corner to alter the size.
I'm making this at Postcard size in portrait orientation.
Over on the left, open the panel for Elements.
Choose a square from the basic shapes section and drag it onto the artboard.
Use the interface handles to stretch the size to fill the background.
We'll leave this default dark fill for now but I'll show you a nifty trick to customise
the colours later.
Open the Text panel on the left.
Here you'll see loads of ready-made text layouts you can make use of, from logo layouts to
badges.
We just want a plan old headline.
Edit the wording, then you can choose a new font in the Text Settings on the right.
Heritage Designer includes a selection of common fonts and the entire collection of
typefaces from Heritage Type, all conveniently categorised by style.
I'm using Signmaster Pro.
Change the colour to a pale yellowy colour.
Another great feature of Heritage Designer is every colour you choose is saved in the
Project Colours, which makes it easy to reselect to use again.
The Signmaster Pro font comes with a selection of alternative characters.
Delete the first letter, then type it into the Glyphs panel to see what other versions
of the letter are available.
Do the same with the last letter to add an extra flair and help balance it out.
Under the Transformation section you'll lots of familiar text layout effects like Arch
or Rise.
These can all be applied and configured much more intuitively than some other design programs.
Heritage Designer also has some great text effects built in.
With a click of a button you can apply some some complex vintage style offset shadows
or line decorations.
I'm using a Line Shadow, offset enough to leave a gap between the main text, and the
Fading Color Cut effect.
Both these effects would take considerable work to replicate in Illustrator or Photoshop!
A colour selector is made available for each of the different parts of the text, so you
can quickly swap the colour of the text, the effect and the decoration.
You can also apply a border too.
I'm using the same colour as the text so it adds an extra outline between the line decoration.
Move the text towards the top of the artboard and lay out a second headline.
This time I'm using the simpler Signmaster Basic font with increased tracking.
Add the same Arch, Shading, and Decoration effects to match the other text, then use
the align icons to centre the text up on the artboard.
Continue adding more text elements to build the design layout.
This time I'm using the normal Color Cut effect with similar colours.
You can easily replicate a text style by simply copy and pasting a piece of text then edit
the wording.
Continue building the type layout and recreate any text effects with the appropriate colours.
Heritage Designer includes a vast library of assets you can use to build and decorate
your designs.
Under the Ornaments tab, find some decorative elements to fill the empty space.
I'm using a selection of Bold Flourishes.
Each vector asset has a default colour applied, but these can be changed to suit your project
colours.
Place and scale a couple of elements, then copy and paste them.
Right click and choose Flip Vertically, then select them all and scale them to fit one
side of the artboard.
Copy and paste all the pieces and flip them so they can be positioned symmetrically on
the other side.
Position a couple more pieces to add a decorative flourish across the top edge.
To centre them up on the page, first make a group so they are aligned as one.
By simply dragging elements from the library and giving them the same appearance with the
saved project colours you can quickly fill out a design with intricate details.
Having everything easily accessible, rather than have to dig deep through your computer
files and folders for assets you've downloaded is such a bonus.
Filling out any space with decorative flourishes quickly adds a vintage touch to your artwork.
Even just using a handful of elements can generate a really detailed overall effect
that would take ages to illustrate by hand.
Another really useful feature of Heritage Designer is the ability to edit the Project
Colors.
Make any tweaks to the colour swatches to see the artwork change live.
You could even build the layout using the default asset colours, then change them all
in one go, rather than edit the colours on an individual basis when it is placed on the
artboard.
As a finishing touch, open the textures library and drag a grain texture onto the artboard.
It will automatically be placed with the Color Burn blending mode to add interesting texturing
effects to enhance the vintage look.
Once your design is complete, you can export the artwork.
Free accounts can export JPG or PNG, but the option to save a PDF or SVG is reserved for
the Pro Plan you get via my invite link.
If you open this file up in Illustrator, you can see it contains all the vector graphics
exactly how they were assembled in Heritage Designer.