Adobe Illustrator is a useful program that can be used to design and create posters for various purposes.

You can use only text to create great designs. Many designers around the world have used just text to create breath-taking designs. The typography and layout of any design piece should be according to the theme. Different typographic styles can be used to create an impact and enhance the design. In this tutorial, we will show you how to design a typographic poster for a concert in Adobe Illustrator.

Over here, the main design element will be text. However, as this is a poster for a jazz music concert, we can always add a vector image to give the feel of jazz music. So we are going to use a vector image of saxophone as it’s the main instrument in jazz music. We are going to replace the ‘J’ of ‘jazz’ with a saxophone vector image. You can trace a saxophone from an image as well or simply download the vector file.

Follow the steps below to learn how to create your own poster for a concert in Adobe Illustrator.

Step 1: Open up a New Document

Open a new document of A3 size. This is the usual size for a poster. You can always keep it larger or smaller as per your requirement. Keep the orientation of the canvas in portrait style. Posters are usually in portrait style however landscape style posters also exist.

Step 2: Create Background

Now choose the rectangle tool and draw a rectangle of the same size as the art-board. This will be the background of the poster. If you need to keep the background white then you don’t need to draw a rectangle box.

Once the rectangle is drawn, fill it with a radial gradient. Use ‘FFF683’ colour on the outer side and ‘FFFFFF’ for the inner side. You can use any other color for the background and adjust the colour settings according to your need.

Step 3: Add Texture to the Background

To give some texture to the background, we will add the ‘chalk-tissue texture’ in Adobe illustrator. Then you can copy and paste the texture image over the rectangle. Then select the ‘chalked-tissue texture’ image and go to the ‘transparency’ window. Change its blend mode to ‘lighten’ and its opacity to ‘95%’. This will blend the image with the rectangle box and a nice textured background will be ready.

Step 4: Add Vector Image

Once the background is done, lock this layer and create a new layer from the layer panel. Now copy the vector image of a saxophone. You can download the vector image. Press “Shift” and rotate the image to a “45 degree” angle. This saxophone will act as a ‘J’.

Step 5: Add Text

Now start inserting the required text using the ‘type tool’. Right now, we are using only the “Impact” font but when you create your own poster you can use a combination of 2 or more fonts. We will also play with different font sizes to create the design. Rotate them all to 45 or -45 degree according to the design.

Step 5: Set the Orientation and Size

Then set the text boxes along with saxophone image. Select the entire text and vector image and rotate to adjust the orientation. You can also readjust the sizes.

Step 6: Change the Colour of the Text

Change the colour of the text. We are using three different bright colours but choice of the colours is completely dependent on your design and theme.

Step 7: Add Logo

Concert posters are incomplete without the sponsor’s logo. Place the logo at the bottom-right corner of the poster. Remember to leave some margin from the right and the bottom when placing it. The typographic poster is now ready.

Follow this tutorial to learn how…