CorelDRAW® X6 Tutorial : Poster Design

Poster design is quite a bit different than any other design piece that may be done, simply because there are very few design rules that should be followed. There are no real size restrictions or layout considerations. For this reason, posters offer design freedom that no other document design can. The lack of guidelines can really open the possibilities to show creativity in the process. In this tutorial we will take a look at some of the different tools that can be used to create an eye catching poster that can be framed.

These days, posters are commonly used for anything from advertising products, services, or special events. We will look at creating a collectable poster that can be framed, but will also advertise an upcoming musical event. As with any design project, you’ll first need to determine the target audience (gender, age, ethnicity) and any required content such as logos, names, dates, Web or other addresses. Once you have all this, you can start to build the poster.

Because of the freedom, and the fact that there is no real established layout for a poster, it might be worthwhile trying to come up with a variety of designs and then using the best elements from each.

Sweet Soulful Jazz is the theme of the poster, to advertise an evening of jazz music. Start by gathering the content; for this poster we want something simple, classy and at the same time make it look a bit hip or flashy.

CREATING THE BACKGROUND

When I hear jazz I think of sax and trumpet, so including an instrument that is indicative of jazz just make sense. We will use a trumpet and a few bars of sheet music. Because the instrument and music has a fair amount of detail We'll use a simple background. Contrasting a simple background with busy elements will help them to stand out and allow the viewer’s eye to be drawn towards the important information.

1. Create a new document and set the page size to Tabloid, Portrait and use RGB as the primary color mode and a resolution of 300DPI.
2. Double click the Rectangle tool to add a page frame and give it a Black fill.
3. Select the Interactive fill tool and click and drag it on the page.
4. Next, from the Interactive Property bar, select Radial.
5. Select the Last Fill Color on the Interactive Property bar (it will be white) and change it to Grass Green. Here is a little tip. If you hold down the SHIFT key, while selecting a color in the color palette, you will see the color name.
6. Position the Last Fill Color control handle, centered in the top 1/3 of the page and the Black control handle in the center of the page.

ADDING THE IMAGERY

We want to take a minimal approach to the poster and just have two objects on the page, plus the company logo and a bit of text. We will start by bringing in the trumpet and musical notes. In order to position these on the page the way we want, we will need to PowerClip them into a container.

1. Select the background that we created, hold the SHIFT key down and double click the Rectangle tool. This will add a rectangle the size of the page on top of the background.
2. Right click on this rectangle and select Frame Type > Create Empty PowerClip fame. A side note here: this only works with CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X6 and newer. If you are using an earlier version of CorelDRAW then you will need to use the PowerClip feature from the Effects menu, once you have imported the clipart image in.
3. From the File menu, select Import and browse to where the trumpet image is and import it. Next import the musical notes.
4. Drag and drop the Trumpet onto the PowerClip frame.
5. When adding additional objects to a PowerClip frame, you will need to hold the W key down on the keyboard. Do this while adding the musical notes
6. Double click the PowerClip container to go into the Edit state and rotate both the trumpet and musical notes 30 degrees counter clockwise.
7. Select the musical notes and make them white by left clicking on a White color swatch in the color palette.
8. To add a glow to the trumpet, select it and from the Interactive Tool box, select the Drop Shadow tool. In theInteractive Property bar under Preset, select Small Glow and then change the parameters to the following: Drop Shadow Opacity to 20, Shadow feathering to 20 and the color to Green.
9. Exit the PowerClip edit mode.

 ADDING THE TEXT AND LOGO

Staccato Music Supplies is sponsoring this evening of Sweet Soulful Jazz.

1. The final image to add, before adding the text is to bring in the logo. From the File menu, select Import and browse to where the logo is and click on Import. Position the logo at the bottom of the poster.
2. Select the Text tool and click the upper left corner and type "An Evening of Sweet Soulful Jazz" .
3. Right click on the text and select Object Properties.
4. In the Object Properties docker set the Font to Gabriola, color to White, the Point size to 65pt , Center Justified and select Stylistic Set 7.
5. Position the cursor between the words "of" and "Sweet" and tap the Enter key.
6. On the Interactive Property bar, rotate the text 30 degrees counter clockwise.

1.  Still with the Text tool selected, on the bottom right corner, click the background and type the

     following:

Presented by

Staccato Music

Supplies

Feb. 14th, 2013

7:30pm - 11:00pm

An evening of Music

South Hampton Hall

Philadelphia Music Academy

Tickets Available from:

sweetsoulfuljazz.com

2.  Using the Object Properties docker, format the text using Biondi, make it White as well and set

     the point size to 18 pt. and right Justify.

3.  Postition the text in the bottom right corner.

It is easy to see that creating a poster in CorelDRAW can be fun, especially when you understand that most of the design rules can be thrown out the window. There are just a couple of things to remember:

• A simple background can be contrasted with complex imagery (and vise versa)
• Use color and contrast to emphasize important information
• Guide the viewers eye using elements and color
• Make text easy to read from a distance
• Have fun showing your creativity

Poster design is probably one of the more rewarding of project types, simply because of the ability to dig deep into your creativity and show off - so go for it.

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Ref. : http://www.corel.com/discoverycenter