Tutorial: Creating a Hand-textured Masthead

This tutorial is about doing things a little old school. Instead of working in Photoshop to create a textured effect, we’re going to employ some tools that should be in every graphic designer’s repertoire to create a unique looking masthead.

Step 1

Gather supplies.

• An X-ACTO knife with new blade.
• A cutting mat. We’re using a small 8 1/12″ x 12.”
• A metal straight edge. We’re using an Alumnicutter brand which we highly recommend.
• Thick cardstock that can run through your printer. We’re using a Strathmore stock which works great and absorbs paint really well.
• Tacky glue or other strong adhesive.
• An ink brayer, we found ours at a local art store, or a 3-4 inch paint roller found at any hardware store. If you go this route however, it’s a good idea to roll it in paint and then let it dry so you have a hard, rough texture. The crustier and older the paint roller, the better.
• Water based paint. Acrylic paint works well but can spread too thick, but we found that Monotype Colors by Createx works best.
• Newspaper, plexiglass, newsprint or any smooth surface you can set your paint on.

Phew, we know that’s a lot, but hopefully most of these things you already have (being the graphic design enthusiast that you are).

Step 2

Have a masthead or logo ready. (In case you don’t have a logo or masthead to work on, feel free to download a high-res file of the one we used to follow along.) For this example, I’m going to be using a masthead I created for an amateur boxing newsletter titled “The World at Large.” After designing several variations, I found one that fit best. I decided to use Rockwell, a popular slab-serif font by Monotype, because of it’s strength, boldness, and association with the sport. I then incorporated an apostrophe in connection with the “R” and “O” to symbolize an old fashioned boxing bell. It’s a subtle addition but lends very well with the masthead and subject. The only problem is the masthead looks too “clean” and we don’t get a strong enough association with the sport of boxing, but we’ll fix that soon.

Step 3

We need to print out two versions of the masthead on cardstock. A normal one and one in reverse. (download the high-res file in reverse here.) If working in Illustrator, this can easily be done by selecting your masthead, going to the top menu and clicking on: Object->Transform->Reflect. Make sure you select the vertical axis when the dialog box comes up, and then click ok.

Step 4

Now the tough part. You’re going to cut out every letter of your design with your straight edge, X-ACTO knife, and cutting mat. Depending on your experience is really going to determine how accurate and how long this part is going to take. However, being accurate is much more important than being fast. Use a ruler for ever straight line and be sure to cut out the counters of letterforms first before cutting out the whole letter (It will save you a headache later). I like to align the ruler against the bottom and top of the letterforms and make all of my horizontal cuts at once, and then I’ll do all of my vertical cuts and so on…saving the curves for last. Final tip, it’s much more important that we keep the letters intact than the actual paper so keep in mind that it’s ok to overshoot a cut into the paper as long it’s not going through the letterform.

Step 5

You made it! I hope that wasn’t agonizing. For me, it’s rather relaxing, but that’s a whole other story. Now we’re going to take those cut letterforms, flip them over, and paste them to our reversed print out so they are perfect aligned. This is also a good way to see how accurate your cutting is. Even mine isn’t perfect, but it will definitely get the job done.

Step 6

The fun part. Squeeze some paint onto a smooth surface. We’re then going to roll either our brayer or paint roller over the paint (each one will give you a completely different texture as we’ll show later) to smooth it out. Make sure you have an even layer of paint around the surface and then we’re going to roll the paint across our cut letters making sure not to press too hard. It might take a few tries to get an even surface, but as long as it is all covered, it will work fine. Don’t worry about paint going onto the paper and not just the letters, most of the time that’s what we want because it will give us an even better texture.

Step 7

With your inked letters laid out, take a blank sheet of cardstock and lay it on top. Don’t worry about aligning it perfectly to the sheet, as long it covers the letters then you’re fine. Just make sure not to shift the paper around or else the ink will smear. It’s best to let gravity do most of the work when laying the sheet down. Now take your brayer or paint roller, make sure it has little or no ink left, and gently press back and forth making sure you hit all letters. Feel free to apply pressure as you go but not too hard, and make sure not to let the paper shift by holding it down with your free hand.

Step 8

Gently peel back the top sheet from a corner and you should have your design transferred to your new sheet in glorious textured fashion. The effect should be almost identical to using a letterpress. A smooth brayer will give you a nice, crisp application while a paint roller will add a lot more texture. Do this as often as you would like to get different effects, allowing a bit of time for the paint to dry in between presses.

Step 9

This is the scanned version (with the “O” colored in Photoshop).

Here is a detail. Try making that in Photoshop!

The final product toned down a bit.

This step is optional, but I’m guessing most people will want to digitize and manipulate their creations. After allowing your design to dry, scan it onto your computer at high resolution. 300 dpi is fine, but I usually go at 1200 dpi in case I need my design to be really large in the future, but I can also observe every bit of detail in high resolution. Though I loved all of the texture in mine, I did have to tone it down a bit for the final product, so I imported the image into Photoshop and did a little rendering. First I straightened the image along a baseline. I then recolored the artwork black instead of the original blue I had, and then put an accent color of red over the “bell” to symbolize those famous red gloves boxing is known for. Lastly, I toned back the texture through a layer mask, until I felt it was adequate enough to convey my original intentions.

And that’s it! I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, I know it’s a long process but the payoff is well worth the effort. Don’t forget your design doesn’t just have to go on paper. Try it on cardboard, a table, your floor, it doesn’t matter with the cutout sheet or pasted letters. You basically created two stencils that can go anywhere. It also doesn’t just have to be a masthead, you can create anything as long as you can cut it with an X-ACTO. If you have any tips, comments, or if there is something I missed, feel free to leave them in the comments!