Designing & Producing a Flier Card
A couple of weeks ago I promised to show a little bit more of the design process for my Black Dog Custom Pet Portraits project. One of the things I’ve created is a postcard/flier to distribute to local pet shops, rescues, adoption agencies, and art shows. Here I’ll go over the whole creation process; I hope it’ll be useful and informative.
First thing’s first: layout. I always do my layout work with just a pencil and paper first, hashing out a series of sloppy little thumbnails to try things out. I knew I wanted the front to be a striking, eye-catching image, while the back had pertinent info and examples of the work almost like a miniature, portable portfolio. Then with two or three of my favorites in mind I build it in Adobe Illustrator. Illustrator is my first digital phase for just about everything except full paintings (and even then some pieces might be built there first). Here it’s easy build a work space with the proper specs including trim margin and trim variance, along with being able to adjust line height, letter spacing, and manipulate text boxes. The typography is important to making a good design. It’s got to have the necessary info, but be succinct, readable, and stylish. Illustrator makes it easy to tweak all of these things. Illustrator also makes it simple to overlay grids so I can check my vertical rhythm.
The main typeface is Unlovable from Letterhead Fonts (a badass resource, and their fonts are worth every penny). After converting to outlines I used Bézier curves and shapes to connect some of the flourishes.
The supporting typefaces are Birch Std., Great Vibes, and League Gothic. This combination was also used on my Etsy shop’s graphics and in the PDF files that clients get before and after a project, so there will be increased visual consistency. It’s branding, essentially.
With both the front and back layouts done satisfactorily, I jump over to Photoshop and finish it off. In Illustrator I had two artboards side by side to design in, whereas with Photoshop I have to have two .psd files. Basic text is copied and pasted with spacing and line height adjusted to match what I’d done in Illustrator. Other pieces such as the “Black Dog” logotype and shapes were copied and pasted in as pixel layers. The four main shapes on the back layout were used as clipping masks for the portrait examples I pasted in.
Whereas Illustrator is the powerhouse for design layout, Photoshop does all the heavy lifting with texture and color. This is where the magic happens. It’s worth mentioning though that Photoshop’s magic relies on a solid design. No amount of ‘Shop trickery will make a shoddy design nice to look at. If the projects sucks, you gotta go all the way back to Illustrator, or even farther, to pull it out. Having said that though, my Photoshop phase still involves a hefty amount of tweaking as I work. It never looks exactly like it did in Illustrator when I’m done.
For the front image, using the mascot I’d chosen previously—a black French bulldog with a bowler hat—was a natural choice, but I wanted this version to be more painterly rather than the flat, almost comic book style of the other one. As with the first version of the mascot, I used a real client’s dog, Quincy, as a reference. Using the techniques I’ve learned from doing pet portraits it wasn’t really too difficult for me to turn a white photographic model into a painted black dog. I placed references from Google all around the canvas of black dogs in different light, a dude with the bowler I wanted, and, of course, the original Quincy.
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The mascot was the last piece I needed. The flattened image was pasted into the front of the flyer card and arranged harmoniously. A little gradient on the text, a once over of both files with a day off to chew on them, and then I call ’em done.
Side note: I always take a day off from a project, deadlines allowing, before gong to print. That space to decompress really gives you fresh eyes and you either know it’s ready or you see the flaws. I highly recommend it.
After last-minute tweaks, the final files were flattened, converted to CMYK, and sent off for printing. The results were exactly as I’d hoped and I’ve gotten good feedback on them so far. I carry some with me nearly all of the time in my car and in my messenger bag.
It’s been helpful to have two different ways to present my services depending on my potential client: authors, bands, event coordinators and such get my Moulin Diesel business card, whereas folks I meet through dog training, rescue events, and via pets of all sorts see Black Dog. It’s two different crowds I cater to, and I don’t want to turn one or the other away.
There are some more examples of the work I’ve done for my Pet Portraits on my BeHance portfolio. There’s lots of other swell stuff there too. 😉
Also, the coupon code HEYHEYMOMMA15 takes 15% off anything in both my Moulin Diesel shop and my Black Dog shop until June 15, 2014.
And finally, please comment on stuff you read here and share some examples of your own work, either illustrative or design. I’d love to go see it!