Designing effective marketing collaterals can be both exciting and challenging. As a designer, you need to know what your client wants to communicate to his target market. You need to showcase their brand or product in such a way that people will remember what it is that they saw. Here are some of the questions you need to ask yourself in order to come up with a compelling marketing design collateral.

1. What do the customers need to know?

The basic idea that your client wants to convey should be communicated clearly in your design. Eye-popping colors and out-of-the-box designs won’t matter if in a matter of five seconds you’re unable to get your message across. The five-second rule in billboard design is simply the duration by which you should be able to communicate your message as cars pass by your ad. Give inputs to the client if you think that the text is either too short or too long. If it’s too short, customers might find themselves asking, “What was that all about?” If it’s too long, they might end up saying, “I didn’t get everything that was written there.”

2. How will customers focus on the product?

Here comes the power of good layout and composition. Make sure that the product of your client is big enough to be noticed by consumers. It should be front and center without looking like an oversized caricature of the actual product. There are creative ways of making all the other details of the ad complement the main product. The flow and layout of the images should lead to the product. You can also make a hierarchy of some sort wherein there’s a gradual increase of emphasis on the image you want the consumers to focus on.

3. What colors will reflect the brand and the product?

Colors are crucial in making your design attractive and distinct. It has a subliminal effect on the person looking at it which is reflected by his initial reaction upon seeing the collateral. Colors are also identifying marks of a brand. Some brands have even become color references like Coca-Cola red and Tiffany blue. Make sure that you get the right color of the brand you’re promoting. The product should also have the accurate colors because this is the foremost visual description that customers will remember.

4. Is the message readable?

Fonts are also important in creating an effective marketing design. As much as there are a lot of cute fonts that are eye candy, not all of them will jell with your design. The fonts you use reflect a certain vibe that should be consistent with the product or brand you’re advertising. Fonts have a character of its own and if used creatively can make a huge impact on your design. Try to veer away from old-school fonts unless it’s specifically required by the client. Be mindful of the spacing of your text and images as well. A design that’s too cluttered will neither be visually pleasing nor readable.

5. How will the design appeal to the client’s target market?

Knowing your target market will help you design more effectively. If you’re appealing to yuppies, then you need to come up with images, colors, and fonts that they can easily associate with. Same is true with designing for senior citizens—every element of your design should be relevant to them. You need to create images that are eye-catching to your audience. The color schemes and overall layout should reflect the identity of your target market. They need to know that the ad or collateral is specifically for them.

Answering these questions will help you create the best graphic design for your client. You need to spend some time discussing these with your client, too. Strike a balance between what they want and the creative leeway they’ve given you to execute an effective marketing collateral.

1. Nkabuto

2. Designerkratos

This is where paintings meets photo manipulation.

3. Myambeon

4. Ppatidaron

Great cartoon style paintings.

5. Deltorafann001

Finally some dragons!

6. Kievda

Great blending of painting and photo manipulation.

7. Keelerleah

Another great character artist. Inspired by Bleach

8. Martinhozinho

9. Onestepart

10. Mettyori

If you think some more digital arts out there which we could feature please share the link on comment we will take a look and we will do a third part of this series also you can join our new Deviant Art group and share your work with tutremix community.

1. Alexiuss

Alexiuss is my inspiration from the beginning when I first start playing with Photoshop. When look at his art I don’t know where to start and what to show as best. One is better then another in numerous ways.

2. Hameed

When I search for some awesome space painting. First place I look is the art of Hameed. I can spend hours looking at his work. Make sure you see the biggest sized paintings as possible both Alexius’s and Hameed’s works are full of spectacular details!

3. Ghost549

When I look at both image I feel loneliness!

4. Skunkiewantrice

Three speed paintings form Danai Kitti. Sometime I wonder people can do such thing in small time that I won’t be able to do if I try my whole life

5. Newmand

Artist name Eugene from Ukraine. Checkout his gallery for great concept arts!

6. Youxiandaxia

Amazing digital artist form China. You will love her character designs.

7. Sally Jackson

8. Korbox

9. Vablo

10. Phoenixlu

Ending with a divine one

That’s all for today . There will be couple more posts on this coming up! Please comment if you like this post and always let us know how we are doing.

Preview

Download

Give us your feedback

If you like and download the freebie please leave a comment and let us know what you think. Also you can propose what you need as next freebie from Graphics Remix. Enjoy!

1. Free Modern Business Card by Dezine Guide

This design available as freebie. Always check license before using.

2. KC – Design by kchmarzynski, Deviant Art

Very Simple design but really like the color combination and the logo.

3. Afghan Graphics Business Card

Great use of typography and colors.

4. Grunge Business Card with 3D Effect

5. About Business Card

6. AyR Group Business Card

7. Company Business Card

8. Ward 7 Studios Business Card

9. WhiteExpo Business Card

This one is very nice with color and conception and also with the typography.

10. Samo Rera Photography Business Card

11. 16F Business Card

12. Jairo Design Business Card

13. (removed)

14. Transparent Business Card

You can also buy this design in graphicriver at very low price.

15. REKON business card

16. blueslaad Business Card

17. Socialthing Business Card

18. Malak Mitch Business Card

19. Christa Zinner Business Card

20. RetroGraphik Business Card

Details

• Program: Adobe Photoshop
• Version: CS5
• Difficulty: Beginner

Final Result

Step 1

Open a new document size of 800×600 and save it.

Click on foreground color box and set its color to #111111. Now press ctrl/cmd+backspace to fill the background color with selected color.

Step 2

Create a new blank layer and name it ‘noise’. Hit ctrl/cmd+backspace again to fill it with same color we used in background.

Now go to Filter > Noise and add about 2px of monochromatic noise. Change the layer opacity to 50%.

Step 3

Now take the rounded rectangle tool with radius of 10px and draw a rectangle about 500×400 dimension. Don’t worry about the color we will add layer styles in a minute. Name the layer as ‘form’.

Double click the ‘form’ layer and add these layer style. Click OK.

Step 4

Select the form area by ctrl/cmd+click on the vector mask thumbnail to make a selection with whole form area.

Now with the current selection select the marquee tool or hit M in you keyboard. Now press Shift+Alt key together, you will see the mouse cursor changed with a little ‘x’ under the selection cursor. This modified selection tool will select the interacted area of current selection and selection you will draw by the tool. Now make a rectangle area by holding both Shift and Alt in same time like the preview.

So finally you will select some portion of the top of the rectangle.

Step 5

Create a blank new layer with the selection active and fill the selection with any color by pressing alt+backspace. Name the layer to ‘header’. Now double click the layer and add these layer styles.

The form now should look like this

Add some guide for easily align the form elements.

Step 6

Create a rounded rectangle with 10px radius like the preview and add these layer styles.

Add some text with color of #444444 and group it with the input box rounded rectangle. The input box should look like the images below. I have copied three times and changed the text.

For the password I have added bullet point. Typing bullet point is little tricky! To type bullet, hold down alt key then type 0149 (alt+0149) then release alt key. The final result will look like this.

Step 7

Let’s add a nice looking submit button. Make a rounded rectangle shape with 20px and about 150px width and 50px height.

Add some layer styles you see below.

Add some text with layer styles gray to white gradient and drop shadow. I used the font ‘Myriad pro’ with semi bold font face. You are free to use any other fonts.

Step 8

Now save this png above, add and resize it like the preview.

Desaturate it using Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. Now group all element of the submit button to one and name the group to ‘submit’.

Let’s make a hover or Mouse down state for the submit button. Duplicate the submit button group and hide/delete the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. The big idea is when we press the button the oval will look green

Now modify the adjustment layer a little to differentiate the button state. Remove stroke, modify Drop shadow and inner shadow and other styles remains same.

Final result should look something like this. If you have anything to ask please comment and we can discuss it there.

Final Result

Important: Day 1 of this tutorial.

Details

• Program: Adobe Photoshop
• Version: CS5
• Difficulty: Intermediate

Credits and resources

If you downloaded required files in day one you don’t have to download any more files. But here is the list just in case you need them again.

• Lightning image 1
• Lightning image 2
• Man in cliff

Day 2 : Completing the Photo Manipulation

We did an excellent work on day one with advanced channel masking. Now its time to take the next step to complete the photo manipulation. In this tutorial we will see an advanced blending technique called “Luminance Blending” with standard masking techniques. Enough talk already! Let’s get back to work

Step 1 :

Open the final PSD file from the day 1. Lets rename the layers and reposition the ‘man’ layer as in the image.

Step 2

Fill out the right side blank area. Select a squire area and press ctrl/cmd+J to copy the selection into a new layer. Then move the new layer to right and marge the layers. Now use the stamp tool to match the edges. Don’t worry too much about the accuracy this area will be dark anyway!

Step 3

Open and place the lightning image 1 under the ‘man’ layer. This image will be used as the background of the photo manipulation. Rename it to ‘bg’ Place the image like the preview.

Step 4

Selecting the man layer open click on the adjustment layer icon in the bottom of the layer palate and select “Brightness/Contrast” and put the values you see in the image.

Step 5

It’s time to add more lightning to our work. Open up the “Lightning image 2″ and place in between ‘bg’ and ‘man’ layer and rename it to ‘lightning’. Now press ctrl/cmd+T to transform the ‘lightning’ layer as in the preview. The main idea is placing two lighting bolt under two hands this will look like the bolts hitting on hands.

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Step 6

At this point our composition is looking really awful. The ‘lightning’ layers is not blending with the background but no worry! The luminance blending method will help us through this . Double click the ‘lightning’ layer to bring up the layer style dialog box. Now put the values for the ‘Blend if’ option in the custom blending options. Drag the left marker of the current layer to around the value 122. Then click the marker again with pressing alt in keyboard, this will divide the marker and drag the divided marker all the way to 255. Before click OK change the layer blending to screen. Now click OK and you will see the magic happened!

If you did everything right the composition should look something like this and if you feel the colors from lightning image 2 affecting the composition you can desaturate the image.

Step 7

Add a layer mask to lightning layer and paint out any lightning bold below hands like the image.

Step 8

Draw a circular shape layer under the ‘man’ layer and name it ‘glow’. Set fill to 0% and double click the layer to show layar styles dialog box and put the values you see in the image below.

Step 9

Let’s add little more dark to the whole thing. Add a ‘Brightness/contrast’ adjustment layer top of everything and add these values. Name the layer to ‘darker’.

Step 10

Inside the glow oval its too dark lets add some layer mask to ‘darker’. By selecting the layer mask select the gradient tool and select the gradient ‘Black, White’ and radial gradient and make a gradient mask like the image below.

Step 11

Add two more circle over left and right hands and set fill to 0% and add these layer styles to both.

Step 12

Create a blank layer before man layer and set its blending to overlay. Take the brush tool and set its opacity to about 30%. Now we will start to paint in the blank layer with white where we need more lights. You will need two layer if one not lightning enough. Paint over the mans face, hands and chest. Its only for add more brightness. Alternatively (not showed here) you can add one more adjustment layer to the ‘man’ layer and to add brightness the layer the just use layer masking where the brightening is required.

Step 13

Add a new white circle top of all layers. Now go to filter > Gaussian blur. Add blur about 27pixels.

Step 14

I think we need more lightning sparks side of the guy. Let draw some we don’t need any more image for that and also you certainly don’t need tablet also. Lets make couple of blank layer named spark1, spark2 like so. Now take the brush tool with foreground color white and start draw jagged lines with mouse as describe by the images. Hard edge brush tool with 1px and 2px should do the work.

Now lets add some more sparks in outside of the big glow circle and set to layer to overlay. After setting the layer to overlay if you feel the layer is getting soft just duplicate the layer.

Step 15

Now we need to add some glow where the sparks hitting in the glow circle or the man. Lets take the brush tool with 20% hardness this will give us nice glow. And change the shape of the brush tips as in the image below. Create a new layer and start clicking where the sparks hits the glow and the mans body. Rotate the tip shape as you go around the circle.

Step 16

We are nearly done. Now let’s add couple of adjustment layers to make the colors more dynamic. Go to top of all layers and add level and curve adjustment layer and put these values.

Final Result

And we are done!

Final Result

Details

• Program: Adobe Photoshop
• Version: CS5
• Difficulty: Intermediate

Credits and resources

Download the following resources to following along. The photo for the lightning man i choose from one of my friends picture. Sorry for the low resolution images did not found any good one for this purpose.

• Lightning image 1
• Lightning image 2
• Man in cliff

Day 1 : Channel Masking

In day one we will be looking in depth of advanced channel masking to separate an object from its background. Which is the major focus of this tutorial. After completing day one you should be able to separate complex foreground from background.

Step 1 :

Will will be using channel masking technique for this image since our foreground (man and the cliff) has quite contrast with background (sky). Open Man in cliff in photoshop. Save the psd file and give it a name. Now select the image in the layer pallet and open up the channel tab. You will see 3 channels with color information of the RGB image. Now click individual channel to see the brightness information of that color. Click through the channels to see which channels have the best contrast in foreground an background. In this case our desire channel will be blue. Click to select and highlight the blue channel.

Step 2

Now go to Image -> Calculations. This will open up the calculation options. Put the source 1 and source 2 values and in the picture. Make sure both channels are set to blue and change the blending option to overlay. The Result option should be set to new channel. Now click OK this will give us a new channel named alpha 1. Select the channel.

Step 3

The Alpha 1 channel is more contrasted then the blue channel. Now selecting the new channel hit ctrl+L on PC or cmd+L on Mac or go to image -> Adjustments -> Levels. Put the value you see in the image and click OK. Now we have our background filled with white and foreground filled with black. Don’t worry! we are not destroying our main image we are working on the channel we created. Our whole mission is to make two color (black and white) channel so we can separate background and foreground.

Step 4

Now let’s cleanup the channel more to remove black or white from unexpected areas. The top right area of the channel have black area which we will paint into white. Lets grab the brush tool with white color and paint that area to white.

Step 5

By this time you should channel should have something like this.

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Step 6

We are nearly finished with our masking. Now we have to look at our foreground and see if there are any white areas in there if you find some we will paint it to black. I have pointed out the white areas in the image. Paint these areas to black.

Step 7

We are finished with the cleaning now select the Alpha 1 channel hit ctrl+I or cmd+I in mac to invert the colors or go to Image -> Adjustments -> Invert. The reason of doing this is we want to select the foreground (man and the cliff) and when photoshop select something automatically it select the white are.

Step 8

Lets select the foreground! Hover your mouse to the Alpha 1 channel thumbnail and click with holding down ctrl or cmd on mac. You will see like magic photoshop will select the white are for you!

Step 9

Now with the selection click on the RGB channel on channel pallet and then switch to the Layer tab. Go to Select -> Refine Edge or hit ctrl/cmd+alt+R. This will bring up the refine edge dialog box.

Step 10

Put these values in refine edge box and click OK.

Step 11

Now you have the refined selection press ctrl/cmd+J for copy the selection to the new layer. And congratulations you have to successfully masked the complex foreground from the background by advanced channel masking.

Final Image

Include a final image at the end of the tutorial.

If you complete with first part. Lets continue with How to make a Lightning man Photo manipulation in Photoshop – Day 2