Retro Geometric Vectors in Space with Illustrator and PhotoshopListThumbs

Retro Geometric Vectors in Space with Illustrator and Photoshop

February 03, 2009

Last week I was talking to Aloa, one of the Abduzeedo writers, and he was showing me some images that he thought were cool for tutorials, one of those had this mix of vectors and gradients but very geometric. It was a nice inspiration so I decided to do something mixing Illustrator and Photoshop.

In this tutorial I will show you how to create an abstract image for a poster using Illustrator and Photoshop. We will do all the vectors and shades in Illustrator then in Photoshop we'll give to the image a nice retro style using some textures and brushes.

Step 1

Open Adobe Illustrator and with the Rectangle Tool (M) create some rectangles. Make sure they are aligned and, also, that you have different heights and widths. Use the image below for reference. Tip: you can duplicate the rectangles by holding the ALT key and moving the object.

Crazy Geometric Vectors in Space with Illustrator and Photoshop

Step 2

Select a few rectangles, move them to the right holding the ALT key to duplicate them. Now you will have 2 columns.

Crazy Geometric Vectors in Space with Illustrator and Photoshop

Step 3

Repeat the same thing, but now to the left to create a third column.

Crazy Geometric Vectors in Space with Illustrator and Photoshop

Step 4

Again repeat the same thing you did in the previous steps, now to create the fourth column. Notice that I also added a few new rectangles. You can create more rectangles or columns if you want as well.

Crazy Geometric Vectors in Space with Illustrator and Photoshop

Step 5

Select the first column and go to Object>Transform>Shear. Use -40 for the Shear Angle and Vertical for the Axis.

Crazy Geometric Vectors in Space with Illustrator and Photoshop

Step 6

Repeat the Shear transformation to the other columns. Use 40º, -40º, 40º and -40º for the angles.

Crazy Geometric Vectors in Space with Illustrator and Photoshop

Step 7

Now start filling the rectangles with gradient and solid colors. I used 3 colors to create the shades. Pink, Yellow and Cyan. Use the Gradient Tool (G) to create the gradients, such as: Pink to Yellow and Cyan to Yellow. Also leave some white rectangles.

Crazy Geometric Vectors in Space with Illustrator and Photoshop

Step 8

Apply line patterns to some elements. I used the Basic Graphic_Lines library that comes with Adobe Illustrator. Just go to Window>Swatch Libraries>Patterns>Basic Graphic_Lines. Use different patterns to the elements (1-4).

Crazy Geometric Vectors in Space with Illustrator and Photoshop

Step 9

One of the best features in the new version of Illustrator is that now we can have different opacity for the gradient colors. What I did here was pretty simple. Duplicate some rectangles and move them to the opposite column so the angle will be the opposite. Then add a Gradient from Black to Black but in one end change the opacity to 0, so it will be from black to transparent. That will add a nice style to some areas of the image, creating nice shades.

Crazy Geometric Vectors in Space with Illustrator and Photoshop

Step 10

Now just create a black rectangle beneath the vectors so you can make some adjustments. Notice that the there are more elements like black rectangles. Here you work on the final adjustments and details, because in Photoshop you won't be able to edit the elements, unless you come back to Illustrator using the Smart Objects feature.

Step 11 - Photoshop

Select all vectors but the black recangle. Copy them in Illustrator and then open Photoshop. Create a new document. I used the A4 format. Fill the Background layer with a very dark grey #080a0f, then paste the vectors as Smart Objects.

Crazy Geometric Vectors in Space with Illustrator and Photoshop

Step 12

Duplicate the vectors layer, that is a smart object then go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Use 20 pixels for the Radius and change the Blend Mode of the layer to Screen. For the opacity use 80%.

Crazy Geometric Vectors in Space with Illustrator and Photoshop

Step 13

Create 6 rectangles and fill them with a gradient from Black to Transparent. You can use Black and White with Multiply for the Blend Mode. Just make the Gradient size different for each element like the image below (1-6)

Crazy Geometric Vectors in Space with Illustrator and Photoshop

Step 14

Now lets add some space effects. First, create some stars using the Noise Filter. You can follow that from another tutorial I wrote you can find it at http://abduzeedo.com/surprise-behind-curtain-photoshop, the Step 3. Also let's use a nice flare effect. I used a photo to do that, you can find it at http://weheartit.com/entry/327989. Place the image and just change the Blend Mode to Screen.

Crazy Geometric Vectors in Space with Illustrator and Photoshop

Step 15

To get a very vintage style to the image I used a paper texture. You can download it at http://www.danevins.com/_wizardimages/old_paper.jpg. Change the Blend Mode to Multiply and the Opacity to 80%.

Crazy Geometric Vectors in Space with Illustrator and Photoshop

Step 16

Create a new layer right below the paper texture. Then using some Grunge Brushes paint some areas to give that old style effect. Use white for the color, but as the layer will be beneath the paper the color will be a sort of beige. Tip: The brushes I used are from misprintedtype.com, created by the Master Eduardo Recife.

Crazy Geometric Vectors in Space with Illustrator and Photoshop

Conclusion

The new version of Illustrator has very useful features, like the opacity in gradients. Also the Smart Objects integration between Illustrator and Photoshop allows us to edit vectors in illustrator while working on the image in Photoshop, what is really useful too. I'm a big fan of vintage style images and in this tutorial I showed some techniques to create that. I hope you like the tutorial. Enjoy.

Vector Experiments

Download the PSD File

Click here to download the Photoshop file used for this tutorial.

About the author

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My name is Fabio Sasso, I'm a graphic/web designer from Porto Alegre, Brazil and I'm the founder of Abduzeedo. I hope we can share lots of information, tips, and ideas through Abduzeedo. Also you can follow me on Twitter or my personal site at http://fabiosasso.com.

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53 Comments

Burt02/03/2009

This is awesome! Thanks

beto machado02/03/2009

nice dude, you always do really cool things. congratz ;)

Carla Ceia02/03/2009

This is great, thanks for sharing!

Sineload02/03/2009

Really great work. Love the texture.

Lukes02/03/2009

Great stuff

One day James White will have no secrets left tho ;)

Pok302/03/2009

Caraca! Já pensou isso num iPhone. que demais...
Valeu chará. :D

Liora02/03/2009

This is a good fusion of Illustrator and Photoshop. Some cool tips here, too. Thanks!

psdfan02/03/2009

Great tutorial, I'd love to see how to do the whole thing from scratch in Photshop though.

jmgarrido02/03/2009

thanks again and again fabio.

http://blog.fusiodg.com

Anonymous02/03/2009

Hola hermano, muy buen tuto demuestras como cosas tan sencillas pueden llegar a ser tan bellas y compejas.

Timothy02/03/2009

Great tutorial. I like the vintage look applied near the end.

Markus J Nielsen02/03/2009

Wow! It would be cool as wallpaper! :D

motor902/03/2009

Nice touch, Fabio.

Love the tattered Pink Floyd album cover look ;)

[m9]

krftd02/03/2009

This is very helpful as i was trying to figure how to do the 80s graphics. I'll do up a remix version and will post up a link on the new remix version :D

krftd02/03/2009

Oh by the way check out the following retro graphics group on flickr http://www.flickr.com/groups/retrographicdesign/

Anonymous02/03/2009

Awesome results from such a simple base.

Thanks!

Sanid02/03/2009

awesome , I just recreate this and made a wallpyper out of it :)

Alex Beltechi02/03/2009

Awesome tutorial Fabio!
The misprinted type textures you used to age the image, are they web resolution or high resolution (print)?

Alex

laranz.joe02/04/2009

hard to try out, anyway i'm going to try...

Hard tutorial worth A million dollar :)

KillerCreative02/04/2009

Tried this out today, mixed it up a bit and put it on a perspective plain. amazing turnout though, really well donr tut thanx :)

pat.p02/04/2009

WOW

AxBx02/05/2009

Great tutorial....Nice job man..!!!

swany02/05/2009

Awesome results! Going to be up all night with this one, thanks! :)

henriko02/05/2009

Totally awesome Fabio!
Great style and beautifully executed!
Thanks for sharing :-)

/H

Tasso Ramon02/05/2009

Muito bom Fábio, como sempre meus parabéns.

victor200102/06/2009

Thanks for sharing

mitch_hillsong02/06/2009

nice one!!!

Saurabh02/09/2009

It's a really amazing outcome. Hope I have the patience to try this out.

Dave02/09/2009

Your very talented, keep these tutorials up

Santiago02/13/2009

Buenisimo! hace tiempo que buscaba lograr look!

Matches02/17/2009

Is remember me "One MOre Time" from Daft Punk.

MPinK02/18/2009

I tried it today. Since I don't have Illustrator, I tried to make it using Photoshop. There was a lot of aliasing after coloring the rectangles, so I cleaned everything up using the polygonal lasso tool and layer masks.

The tutorial is very well-explained and I really like the result.

I made a concert poster with the geometric shape I made using this tutorial... You can see it here: http://moutonpink.deviantart.com/art/21st-Century-Breakdown-113355598

Pablo02/21/2009

dude.. is this illustrator cs3 or cs4? i cant figure how to do the opacity for blending

Brandon 02/23/2009

Hey great tutorial! I didn't follow it exactly but check out my results!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/brandonmeier/3254243568/

Pizza Guy02/25/2009

sweet graphics-- If only adobe would combine both programs...

Loner03/02/2009

nice,very nice.I like it=)

Guillaume03/04/2009

thank you for the tutorial fabio,
you can check my version at coroflot :
http://www.coroflot.com/individual/file_edit.asp?portfolio_id=2086381

MDans03/06/2009

This is SICK! I love it. Thanks for sharing.

ta_l_tos03/07/2009

Thanks Fabio, your tutorials are very helpfull,
I made it and it looks very good, thanks a lot for sharing!

medwaystudios03/30/2009

great tutorial, anyone know what was done on the layer called 'group2 copy'?

furvert101 [not logged in]:)04/10/2009

i have a tshirt by misprinted type that i baught at upper playground... :) great stuff!

Danixd05/05/2009

Really nice tutorial, was looking for some retro graphics for my potfolio, thanks!

chuchi05/11/2009

OMG! The result it's awesome...
I have to try it.

Thanks for sharing this XD

EDU 05/13/2009

step 13 ???

Urbalist06/06/2009

My absolute favorite tutorial on this site :)

FlashVanilla06/09/2009

wow this is one of the most useful tutorials i have ever read. combining illustrator with Photoshop makes very useful lately.

Paul Lumsdaine06/16/2009

Awesome tutorial... though not sure why you absolutely need to bring over into photoshop. I think adding blur on the vectors in illustrator could achieve the same effects.

By no means is this trying to be a knock down, its just that I know many designers who prefer to keep everything in illustrator.

Thanks for the tut!

eu07/03/2009

mto bom o tuto, mas vc faz apenas em ingles? kkk tenho que aprender..
vlw brother, excelente tutorial!

link07/11/2009

thx for share man, nice tuto

Drew08/12/2009

I've always loved this tutorial, but finally decided to try it out. Got a nice outcome, thanks for sharing! I'll definitely use it in a piece that I'm working on.

Anonymous09/05/2009

I have recently migrated from Corel Draw X3 to Illustrator and am new to this whole shabang. It looks like a simple task but I would love to find out how to do step 15. Can anyone point me in the right direction - perhaps other tutorials?

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