Recently, Cuzzy from Cuzoogle.com contacted me about creating a new banner image for his blogroll post dubbed “Rolling a Blog Joint”. Since the overall premise is a play on the word joint, I thought something with a textured paper background and perhaps a pot leaf image would do the trick. Amazingly, enough there is a company named ‘Pot Leaf’ and their logo was available on BrandsoftheWorld.com, so that will save me a step of recreating the leaf in illustrator. The paper texture for the background will be a combination of a number of paper artwork that I found on Bittbox; which is a great resource for this type of stuff. So, that should be enough background on this project…let’s get ‘rolling‘.

STEP ONE: SETTING UP THE DOCUMENT

The finished size of this image will be 450p wide x 150p high, but I’m going to start with a bigger canvas size. The reason being is that I want to be able to adjust the textured background to fit, and later I will crop it out. So, let’s start out by creating a new document that’s 600×600. From there drag guides to the center at 300x and 300y and then recenter the rulers to make that point 0. After that drag out horizontal guides to +/- 75px and vertical guides to +/-225px. These outer guides will be our bounding box…all of the content will go inside this area. Anything outside the bounding box will be cutoff in the final step, so make double sure everything is inside that box.

STEP TWO: CREATING THE BACKGROUND

I want to make the background a different color from the text and leaf image, so I thought a light shade of brown would be a good contrast and it will make the paper more realistic. I’ll use a light shade (b79573) and a darker shade (7a5f43) and create a radial gradient; which will be the base of the background. Create a new layer and drag out a radial gradient starting a bit above the top guide and down towards the right corner (light to dark). We create a new layer, because I want to have a base layer that’s transparent…this layer will come into play later on in the tutorial. After you’ve made your gradient, rename the layer to ‘Base‘.

STEP THREE: ADD TEXTURE TO THE BACKGROUND

For this step it isn’t necessary, but I’m using three different textures to give the background more depth. For your reference they are: paper2, paper3 and paper4. Take your first texture and drag it above the gradient layer. You’re going to want to resize it, so the quickest way is free transform. In the options window change the x and y points to 0, the scale to 20 x 20 and angle to 90°. After you’ve scaled the texture you’ll want to desaturate it (cmd/ctrl+shift+u). Then change the Layer Blend Mode to Overlay and the Opacity to about 60%. Rename the layer ‘Texture1‘. You should have something like what I do…I hope. If you would like to experiment with other types of textures; I suggest checking out CGTextures.

STEP FOUR: MORE TEXTURE

This step is an exact repeat of the end of step three. I’m going to take two more textures and repeat the free transform, desaturate and change the blend mode. The only difference is you’re going to reduce the opacity on each layer by a little bit. I’m doing 50% and 20%…but feel free to experiment. If you really want to change it up try changing the Blend Mode to something like Color Dodge or Color Burn. Rename these layers to ‘Texture2‘ and ‘Texture3‘. If you find any other textures that you think will work with the image, go ahead and add them in…you never know what you’ll get when you start experimenting with Photoshop.

STEP FIVE: ADD SOME GRAPHIC ELEMENTS

For this step I’m going to dive into the Go Media Arsenal to pick out some cool elements that will give us some depth. I’m going to really pile on the use of the Arsenal today; to show you just what you can do if you use them wisely. Remember the old adage “less is more”, you don’t want to go overboard. Here are the packs that are used in this tutorial.

I am going to use the following elements from these packs to design this banner. I will cover each of them in detail as I add them to the document.

Step 5.1 – Add the abstract halftone

The first thing I’m going to do is add the abstract halftone element to the background to give it more texture by pasting it into photoshop as pixels (Photoshop will ask you what to do…I choose pixels, but you can do whatever is easiest for you). I enlarge it by going into Free Transform (cmd/ctrl-t) and then rotate it 45 degrees to the left. After that we want to duplicate that layer (Layer > Duplicate Layer or hold down alt and drag…either way will work). After you’ve duplicated the layer you will flip it both horizontally and vertically (Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal/Vertical). Then move it into position and center both layers. When you’re done merge those two layers by selecting both in the layers pallete, right-click and choose ‘merge layers’. After you’ve done that, change the blend mode to Multiply and opacity to 50%. Rename this layer to ‘Abstract1′.

Step 5.2 – Duplicate the halftone and twist

Duplicate the halftone layer, rotate it another 45 degrees to the left and stretch it out a bit. After you’re happy with the shape and size change the opacity to 35%. Rename this layer to ‘Abstract2′ and you should have something similar to what I have. Please note, you don’t have to be exact you can mess around with the positioning to achieve the desired effect. If you want you could even duplicate the first layer a second time and change some of the blend mode effects to grunge it up just a little bit more.

Step 5.3 – Add the radial element

Again, same as step 5.1 paste in the element as pixels and resize as needed, rename to ‘Radial’. After resizing it change the fill on the layer to 0% and add the following layer styles (Layer > Add Layer Styles):

Gradient Overlay
Stroke

Step 5.4 – Add a little spatter

This time I will use two separate elements to get achieve a more random looking effect. I’m going to paste in the spatter elements into Photoshop as ‘Vector Smart Objects’ this time, because I will want to position them and transform them a few times on different layers. You can move them and transform them to the desired pattern you’re looking for. Make a new layer (above the radial), then make a selection of both layers by cmd/ctrl-clicking the first layer and then hold shift and select the second layer, and fill with black. Change the blend mode to Overlay and opacity to 60%, and rename the layer to ‘black.spatter’. You can then create another layer above this one, and resize the spatters again and rename to ‘white.spatter’. This time fill it with white, change the blend mode to soft light and the opacity to 80%.

Step 5.5 – Some flourishes and a little more color

Since the background is looking a bit monotone, it’s time to add some other elements and some color. With the last layer selected (the white spatter), create a new layer and name it ‘flourish1′. I’m going to drag in one of the flourishes from Arsenal Set 8 and place it in photoshop as ‘pixels’. I’ve rotated to the right and enlarged it, then once I was happy with it, pushed it up against the center guide and nudged it left 10px (shift-right arrow). The next step is to duplicate the layer and flip it horizontally (Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal), once you’ve done that move it so the right side touches the center guide and nudge it to the left 10px (shift-left arrow). Merge the two layers together and change the fill to 0%. Go into your layer styles and add the following styles (Layers > Layer Styles):

Color Overlay (#345c34)
Gradient Overlay (#345c34 to White)
Stroke

Step 5.6 – Another set of flourishes

Paste in a different flourish and rename the layer to ‘flourish2′. Go ahead and resize it to fit your image. I’m fitting mine inside the bounding box, with the right side touching the guide and the left going over the center.  The idea is to make the flourishes appear as though they are coming out of the center of the radial pattern. Duplicate it, flip it horizontally and move it to the left, then merge the two layers. Change the fill to 0% and add the following layer styles:

Color Overlay
Outer Glow

STEP SIX: BUILD OUT THE LOGO (Where’s the Leaf?)

I snagged the ‘pot leaf’ logo from Brands of the World and pasted it into Photoshop as a ‘Vector Smart Object’, resized it to fit and rotated it a bit off center. The original color of the logo is a very bright green and I’m not a big fan of the bright green so I’m going to change it to something darker. By adding the following layer styles I will be able to lift the logo off the background and give it some dimension:

Drop Shadow
Inner Glow
Color Overlay
Stroke

STEP SEVEN: ADD THE TEXT

With the pot leaf layer selected grab your text tool and click in the center of the document and change the alignment to centered. After that type out your title, in this case “Rolling a Blog Joint”, leave the type black and change the Blend Mode to “Soft Light”. For this I’m using a grungy script font called Hawaii Killer; which carriest over the grunge feel, but there was a problem. I found that the “B” in Blog was unreadable, so I changed the font to another free font called Porcelain. I don’t normally recommend swapping out fonts, but in this case it worked out for the better.

Create a new layer beneath the type, and make a selection of the type layer (cmd/ctrl-click the layer). Expand the selection by 1px and fill with a light green (almost white), then add the following layer styles:
Drop Shadow
Gradient Overlay
Stroke

Step 7.1 – Add a little more depth to the type

Move the text to center it in the box and that’s it for the text. Once you have the text centered, duplicate the type layer, change the fill color to #345c34, change the Blend Mode to “Color Burn, the opacity to 50%. This will make the type pop off the screen a little bit more, to make it really pop though we’ll add the following layer style to give it some extra kick.

Gradient Overlay (black to 6a6a6a to black)

STEP EIGHT: FINAL TOUCHES

This step is purely optional, but I think it makes a cool effect. Remember that transparent layer we left way back in step one? Here’s where it comes into play…we’re going to fill it with a light shade of green (#94c294) to get a mix of colors. Then with the base layer selected add a layer mask and grab the gradient tool set to: radial and black to transparent. Then start making gradients around the bottom to reveal the green layer underneath. Once you have something you like…that’s it. You can add different colors or gradients to your liking…it’s all up to you.

Once you have something similar to the final image go ahead and crop it down and save it for the web. I hope you’ve enjoyed this original tutorial by GrandmasterB. If you’d like to check out tutorials in the future subscribe to the feed…you won’t be disappointed. Also, I’m going to start a new Question and Answers feature to address all of your burning graphic design questions in the near future…you won’t want to miss it.

~ GrandmasterB

This copyrighted tutorial was originally published at GrandmasterB.com on 07/22/2008