This cover design started with a black background. I wanted to do something with a shatter or broken/explosion effect, sort of like the cover from my Sophomore year, and was unsure of how to do it, so I looked through a few tutorials, and picked one that was a little different, but I still liked. The tutorial had a lot of steps, but was surprisingly simple. It starts with typing the text where you want it, and right-clicking on the layer and converting it to a smart object. Then you apply a layer mask and, with a black brush on the mask later, cover up some parts of the text. Using the render filter of clouds to add a little bit of texture was the next step, and then making a clipping mask between the Text Smart Object and the Smart Object clouds. Also clipped, I created a hue/saturation layer that was slightly blue, and a levels layer whos values are listed in the tutorial. On a new layer, with varying stroke sizes, I covered the text with white lines. Saving the lines as their own file, they were used as the source file for Filter > Distort > Displace. The small dots around the letters were made by using a white coloured custom-made brush, the settings in the tutorial, on a new layer. On another layer, more lines were created, but this time different shades of grey. These lines were also smudged a little, masked and attacked with a splatter brush like the text was in the beginning (values given in the tutorial) and were used for another Displace filter. In a new layer above that, the lines were covered by Cardnial and Gold with a large, soft brush. Holding alt and clicking between the lines and color layer made a clipping mask between these just like it did earlier with the Text Smart Object and clouds, coloring the lines where they were covered. Using the same 'bubble' brush as before, but larger and on a new layer, I added more of them around the words and logo. These were coloured using the same steps as colouring the lines, including the clipping mask (except for the ones that are white). For the RHS logo, I just repeated the steps involving the splatter brush masking (but with the bubble brush) and the steps involving the coloured bubbles. :3Tutorial Used
This one started as me wanting to do a cover that didn't have a black background. I chose Cardinal over Gold because I thought it would be the less painful to look at in a large amount. I knew i wanted to start with something that looked like the double 'R' logo, but was a little different, and searched around for the right font. Finding a font that looked similar, I found that the black of the letters sort of ran together too much for me to recognize them as two different 'R's. At first, I fixed this by adding a one point gold stroke around them. I liked how it made the edges where the letters overlapped stand out just enough for the viewer to see two 'R's and how they just stood out from the background. The last thing I did was to tilt them slightly, to create a more intresting look. The glow was added later so that they appeared to be above the cheer. On top of the background, I added a simple cheer that I have heard at football games douzens of times, hoping to show a bit of school spirit. I wanted something more then just the plain Cardnial background, and origonally had the text in a straight block. Thinking that it was actually too distracting like that, and a bit intimitating, I transformed it to a tilt in an attempt to contrast the tilt in the double 'R' and make it look less daunting. I chose a font that was more like handwriting to make it appear casual, or like a student wrote it. After that, I still decided that the design still looked just -too- plain. I thought that an image of the school would look really well and make a nice secondary focal point on the cover. I added a filter to it, and then burned the bushes and trees to highten the contrast in the photo. One of the final steps, was the Planner text. The black blended in too well with the photo, so I added the Gold stroke, as there was already a lot of Cardinal in the image. It was actually what gave me the idea to put the outer glow on the double 'R'. The official Double 'R' logo in the bottom corner was added as an afterthought to fill up a spot I thought was too empty and unbalanced.
Again, my cover started with a simple, plain black background. Using the text tool, I looked for a casual, simple looking font and placed the 'RHS' acronyms in opposing corners. From there, I placed the 'Student Planner', with a one point black stroke, and '2012-2013' text. I thought that all the white text looked too bold, so I lowered the opacity of the 'RHS' so it appeared more grey and less obvious. I then placed the Rider Double 'R' logo in the middle. I felt the design was simple, and liked that, but it still seemed a bit too boring. Taking a large, hard-edged brush, I randomly drew the Cardnial line, and then the Gold line. Finally, I added a filter over the lines to make the design just a little less plain, and give it more depth.
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