The other day while watching ESPN, I noticed one of the advertisements for their NBA broadcasts titled “Destination NBA”. At the tail end of the spot they show an image of street signs with the upcoming games and times, with a cool worn/grunge effect to them (here’s a screenshot). Since it seems that I’ve developed a flair for creating graphics with the same grungy look, I decided to try my hand at recreating the signs and at the same time write a tutorial on how I did it. My overall purpose of this tutorial is to show you how you can create the effect on a street sign, not to duplicate the fine work by the ESPN graphics team.

I have included a resources file at the end of the tutorial for you to download if you like. Included in the resources file are a few of the textures that I use along with a few brush sets used in the tutorial. The font used for the tutorial was purchased by me and I cannot share it with anyone, as it would be against the usage policy. With all of the fine details out of the way…let’s get started.

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