WIP Wednesday - Great Gatsby Prom Invite

Today's big design job, Great Gatsby themed prom invitations. #dayjob #graphicdesign #greatgatsby #highschool #design #prom #jaygatsby #poisonandantidote

A photo posted by M. Smith (@poison_and_antidote) on Apr 20, 2016 at 12:22pm PDT

My day job has been eating up a lot of my time and creativity these days, so I figured I'd try to post more about it here on the blog. I mean, I AM a graphic designer, so the stuff I make during the day is artsy, even if it is more functional and client-driven.

The most labor intensive design I worked on today was this high school prom invitation. This year the theme is "The Great Gatsby" (The movie more-so than the book), so I recreated the title screen from the film for the front of the invite. 

Check out a behind the scenes WIP photo under the CUT and I'll talk a bit more about the process of making the design. 

#wipwednesday a little behind the scenes look at the #greatgatsby invite from today. I made the overall design in illustrator, then did gold & silver texture overlays in Photoshop #adobe #designs #graphicdesign #dayjob #thegreatgatsby #design #wip #illustration #adobeillustrator

A photo posted by M. Smith (@poison_and_antidote) on Apr 20, 2016 at 3:23pm PDT

This was when I was first working things out for the front of the invitation. I wasn't sure about which way I was going to orient it, so I started working vertically at first. I used Adobe Illustrator to create the entire design as a flat black image with a transparent background. The main design is made up of line segments and rectangular shapes, while the text is a modified version of the Atlas typeface. I typed the words out using Atlas-as-is, then I outlined the text, made the modifications I wanted to make it look more like the movie text, and saved that as a flattened object when I was all done.

Here is a screen shot of the illustrator file with some flat colors and a black background.
I went beyond where I need to to allow a bleed,
and to make the overall design more versatile for re-use down the road. 

After the overall design was finished and vectored in Illustrator, I took it into Photoshop, flattened it, and then added stock images of metal on top to give it the authentic silver and gold texturing. Then I went in and added some shadows and highlights to the metal designs with the dodge and burn tool, tossed a few saturation/color overlay layers in there, and I added a vignette around the edges to mimic the movie poster. That's it!

Look at all the layers.....I always go a little layer-crazy.

The most labor intensive part of the whole process was making the initial design in Illustrator, but now that I have this design made I can use it as a base for other Gatsby themed invites and events, so in the end, the labor was worth it. It added to my overall design offering for other clients.

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