We are going to be working on a Burberry theamed type. First you’ll need to create the pattern. You could do a quick google image search and find the pattern. Here is a link to the file I created based on those images. Its daunting at first glance, but once you get your head wrapped around it, you can do some amazing stuff (examples are at the end of the tutorial). Ok lets get started.

Open the .AI file in our trusty Illustrator and open up the swatches pallet. Here you’ll just drag and drop the vector pattern to create a patterned swatch.

Type out some text. Here i’m using the font Arno Pro with the Caption style set at 215.7 points.

Next open up your Appearance Pallet, this is where the magic happens.

Add a new fill and add the Burberry swatch to it.

Next make sure your transform is set to Pattern Only.

Click in the Width dialog box then using your arrow key, press down till the pattern is scaled right with in the text.

Add another fill, and fill it with the Cream/Off White swatch from the pallet.

Then move it below the patterned fill, by dragging it downward like you would a layer in photoshop.

Select the that fill and add an Offset Path from the Effect menu.

Set your Off Set to 2 px.

This makes this fill 2 pixels wider than the patterned fill. Its hard to see because the color is light.

Now select Transform, again from the Effects menu

Then set the Vertical Move to -0.5 px.

This bumps that fill down a tad.

Now grab that fill in your Appearance Pallet and duplicate it by dragging it down to the New icon.

Make a new swatch and use the colors: C=39 M=77 Y=44 K=70. Now apply it to the new fill.

Again go to Effect -> Path -> Offset Path, and set it to 4 px.

Next transform that fill with the Effect -> Distort & Transform -> Transform. Give it a -3.0 in the Vertical Move field.

This is where you should be at:

Now were going to give a little more depth showing some lighting effects.

Create a new fill and fill it with white, move it below the stroke.

Open your Transparency Pallet and set the fill to Multiply.

Now apply a gradient to it.

Due to the lengthy tail in the lowercase "y" we are going to make this all caps. In your Character Pallet click the fly out in the top right and select "All Caps".

Grab the dark red swatch we created last and drop it on the right end of the gradient.

Set the gradient Mid Point Slider to 87%,

and the White slider around 69%.

Go to your Offset Path in the Effects menu again and set this gradient fill to 4 px.

Here is what your appearance pallet should look like:

Lets add a highlight now. Add yet another fill.

Apply the a gradient to it.

Set the first Slider to White at 6%,

the Mid Point Slider to 64%

and the last slide at 30% with a black fill.

Next open your transparency pallet and set the Layer Mode to Soft Light.

And there you have it a nice Burberry text that also has a sense of depth. Tweak each fill till you like it, then save the graphic style so you can use it later on other text.

Now take your text tool and click on the text and just start typing.

Imagine getting a post card in the mail with your first and last name printed like this! Pretty impressive. Oh and here are some examples of Dynamic editable type.

(Last tip: To save your style for later use, or to apply to other text, by opening your Graphic Styles pallet and and click on New Graphic Style.)

Hello, my name is Gautch (Josh). I’ve been working in Illustrator since version 7 (pre-bounding box, and floating pallets) and in Photoshop since version 3, when we got layers and tabbed palettes. I’m is a successful designer (for print, motion, and web) working out of Southern Oregon for an in house design department that does 75 to 115 ads a week. Yes you read that right, 115 per week.

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Caleb Kimbrough is the man behind LostAndTaken.com, a blog solely focused on giving away free high-res textures.

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3 Commenters will be chosen randomly and will get to download all 6 of the Colorburned texture packs for free.

• Leave a comment to enter.
• Only Comment Once.
• You MUST enter an email address while commenting in order to win, because winners will be notified via email.
• Winners will be chosen randomly.
• Comments will be open until Friday, November 21st.

Good Luck everyone !!!!

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I like to use India Ink and a primitive Bamboo Pens (above) to draw my characters, but you can even just use a pencil and paper if you like. You can get both the items pictured above really cheap (< $10 total) from your local art supply store or Hobby Lobby, etc.

Take whatever tools you choose to use and start cranking out letter forms. It’s ok to mess up, just draw the letter again. But keep cranking them out until you’re happy with what you’ve got. I like to lay all of the finished ones out in front of me so I can see what I already have and what I still need. The squiggly lines are just where I got rid of some excess ink from the tip of the bamboo pen before sketching.

Next, I scan the images in at a relatively high resolution.

In order to get a better final result, I adjust the contrast of the scan. I typically convert my image to grayscale, then use Levels (Control/Command + L) to make the whites whiter and the blacks blacker. Then save as a high-res jpeg.

I use an “outline font editor” (FontLab Studio) which is another way to say that the final product needs to be a vector. I use Illustrator’s Live Trace to vectorize the shapes. So next, I open the jpeg scans in Illustrator.

Vectorize your image using Live Trace to get the results your happy with, then hit “Expand.” So now you have something like below.

After you Live Trace, ungroup the objects.

After ungrouping I use the Magic Wand tool, and click on any of the white space in and around the letters. This selects all of the white shapes at the same time, and then I delete them.

So now all that remains is the black shapes. Notice the bounding box. There is no more whitespace around the edges compared to just after live trace above.

It’s now time to fire up the font editor of your choice. I use FontLab Studio ($649) but it’s not the only one. TypeTool is a $99 Font Editor from the same people who make FontLab Studio. If you’re not looking for anything fancy, that’s the one I recommend (Windows, Mac), and it’s affordable compared to other products on the market. FontForge is a freeware font editor, but I believe it’s Windows only.

Depending on which editor you plan on using, the next part might be a little different than your software, but you can get the general idea, and adjust accordingly. If you use TypeTool, it should be very similar, since the software I use is from the same company.

Create a new blank font file.

Go to File > Font Info.

Fill out the information that describes your font. Family Name, Weight, Bold or not, etc. This information is important and will be embedded in the file in it’s final form.

Start copying/pasting your characters (paths) one-by-one from Illustrator into their corresponding slots in your font editor.

Adjust Each character’s paths to your liking in the font editor. You can always go back and make adjustments if you don’t get it right the first time. And again, I can’t go too deep into this if you aren’t using FontLab Studio, but I’m sure you can find some info in your software’s help section, or google :)

Here’s a peek at what one of my completed fonts looks like in the font editor.

Go to File > Generate Font….

Choose your format (.ttf will work fine for both Mac and PC) and Save!

Like I said, this isn’t the only way to do this, it’s just the way I happen to do it. You can draw your letters with the pencil tool directly in Illustrator if you feel like it. There are many different ways, I just wanted to share my process with everyone, since you’ve been wondering. I hope you enjoyed the tutorial :)

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The Demo Version includes both upper, and lowercase A-Z:

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Illustrator 101: Reset Your Rulers from Jay Hilgert on Vimeo.

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If you browse around the sorceforge page for Hugin, there are plenty of tutorials to get you started.

I did a panorama of my workspace as I learned more about stitching, so here it is:

In my experiments, I used Hugin to stitch my images into a single image, then I used a program called Cubic Converter ($49 US) to make a 360 degree QuickTime VR. Cubic Converter tutorials here. Here is the result:

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The vector Packs that are up for grabs are any of the Simple Vector Packs at Designious, not the Mega Packs, or Giga Packs. Winners will get to download the simple pack of their choice.

• Leave a comment about how you will use the vector pack, should you win.
• Only Comment Once.
• You MUST enter an email address while commenting in order to win, because winners will be notified via email.
• Winners will be chosen randomly.
• Comments will be open until Friday, Oct 24th.

Good Luck everyone !!!!

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Hidden “Reset” Button in Photoshop Adjustment Palettes from Jay Hilgert on Vimeo.

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A quick shot of the new preview script.

Oooh, the Freebies button, love it.

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Here’s a look at the characters. If you’re interested in buying the full version, you can see the full character map here, on myfonts.com

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Here’s a look at the character set.

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Here are the vectors they used. They actually came from some headers I released ages ago.

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Below, you’ll find a few tables with all of the characters slated to be a part of this community-created font. Items marked with an “X” have already been accounted for, everything else is free game. People (everyone besides me) can choose a character that they want to design, create a hand-drawn character, and email it to me in jpeg or tiff format to jhilgert00(at)gmail.com. I will then use my software (Font Lab Studio) and create a font from all of the individual submitted characters, and I’ll give it away for free, right here on BittBox. Bookmark this page if your are interested in contributing, I will be updating the list of characters often.

I can’t guarantee that your character will be used because there will likely be multiple submissions for the same character in between the time I update this page, but don’t worry, this is only the first of many BittBox Community Fonts.

Each person who submits a character used in the font will get credit, as well as a link. When the font is complete and I make the post to give it away, I will include the tables below in that post, with each character, it’s creator, and a link for each contributor, as a credit to everyone who participated. So, if you submit, please make sure to clearly state what name and URL you want included in the credits for the font in your email.

For this first run, I’m only including uppercase, lowercase, and 0-9. If the project goes well, we can expand the character set with the next community font :)

I’ll post thumbnails of the included characters as I receive them.

I’ll post thumbnails of the included characters as I receive them.

I’ll post thumbnails of the included characters as I receive them.

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Here’s a look at the character set:

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1. Twitter is a great way to get in touch with me.
2. You can ask me a question about something that isn’t in my FAQ.
3. It’s a great way to request a tutorial.
4. I can help you Digg stuff.
5. I’m more likely to respond to a tweet than an email.
6. You can send me links to stuffs around the webs.
7. I have Twitterfeed set up, so you will know every time I publish a new post.
8. I can answer questions in real time.
9. I can help you Float stuff.
10. You can see random pictures I upload to TwitPic, like pictures of my cat puking because he eats too fast.
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DrawBerry from Jay Hilgert on Vimeo.

I really liked the simplicity of the Gradient Palette:

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I am happy to announce BittBox’s first set of Photoshop Brushes (Free). I’m constantly going back and forth between Illustrator and Photoshop in my projects, and I’m starting to pretty much make everything from scratch. I often have trouble finding brushes…

In this set of brushes, I went a little more crazy with the strokes. These brushes are more complex than the previous set and were painted on a higher quality paper, so the end result is in fact, much better.…

I actually took leaves from my own back yard and scanned them to make this Hi-Res Photoshop Brush set. There are 10 brushes in the set, and most of them are 2500px in size…

This is my second set of brushes, but my first set made in CS3. My first set (Hi-Res Watercolor Brushes) was pretty popular, so I thought I would keep making more. The smallest brush in this set is 2457px. Hope you like them.…

I took a trip to the store, got a bouquet of flowers with a nice variety (I can’t grow flowers to save my life), whipped out my Nikon D-80, and went to town + a few hours of Photoshop tweaking…

In this set you’ll find grungy textures, as well as some rocky cracks. There are 12 brushes in the set, and they are all 2500px. Available for CS3, CS1, and in PNG format for everyone else…

These aren’t traditional spraypaint brushes, so “Messy Spraypaint” is as close as I could get to an accurate name. Most of them are 2500px, and I also included PNGs for anyone not using Photoshop…

Believe it or not, but I made these with a sketch pad, a can of spray paint, and a kitchen sponge. It was actually quite fun. I was inspired by a t-shirt I bought recently and decided to churn out a new brush set…

These are, as always, super large brushes. There are 10 in the set, and I also included a zip file with PNGs for non-Photoshop users. I’ll be releasing the actual textures themselves in…

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Actions save you time, yes, but you might notice when you create them that Photoshop gives you the option to designate a keyboard shortcut to run the Action. While this is a good thing, I actually prefer to use “Button Mode” for all of my actions. I do this because of 2 reasons. 1) I have so many hot keys set up that I wste too much time trying to come up with keyboard shortcuts that aren’t set up for another task already, and 2) I don’t have to remember all the exotic hotkeys for actions that I constantly edit and/or delete.

With button mode, you can activate an action with a single click. Here’s how to enable button mode:

Click on the palette options in the upper right to enable Button Mode. It may be in a different place on the list for other versions of Photoshop. (CS3 shown here). Note - Illustrator also has button mode.

And now you have button mode. The only thing I don’t like about button mode is the fact that you have to disable it in order to edit, record, or change an action, but It save me lots of clicks in the long run.

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You’ll find a ton of stuff to gawk at in the Showcase section.

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Click here to visit the Flashloaded site for a Live Demo.

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Flashloaded 3D Wall Pro - Demo from Jay Hilgert on Vimeo.

To be eligible to win, all you need to do is leave a comment on this post. You MUST enter an email address or you will not be eligible to win. Winners will be notified via email. Only comment once. Comments will be open until Thursday August 28th, 2008. Good Luck!

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Here are the vectors if you’d like to grab them:

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