![]() Press CMD+Shift+U to Desaturate the texture then open up the Levels window (CMD+L) and alter the handles to increase the contrast of the image. Paste the texture onto a new layer and scale it to size. ![]() Here I’m using a free dark grunge texture from LostandTaken. Concrete, rust or grunge textures all work well. The subject of the texture can really be anything with plenty of fine grainy detail. The actual letterpress effect is created from a texture file. Download this design and 5 other customizable retro/vintage logos & emblems. ![]() I’m going to be using one of my freely downloadable hipster logos as the base of this tutorial. Originally this would be seen as a mistake or flaw in the print, but nowadays we actively seek to fake this kind of texturing to give our artwork an aged and nostalgic appearance. As we all know from playing with rubber and potato stamps as kids this kind of basic printing technique can result in some cool texturing, especially if areas of the printing surface lacks ink. Letterpress printing is an old printing method that transfers ink from a press onto paper, essentially like a rubber stamp. Today’s tutorial will show you a quick and easy way to give your logos and typography that ink stamp style effect that originated from the old letterpress style printing technique. In order to find out what the RGB value is for a color, use this handy quick tool: Hex to RBG.I’ve received a few questions recently about how I create the letterpress style texturing that appears on pretty much every retro/vintage design I make. RGBA stands for Red, Green, Blue, Alpha (opacity). Instead of using a hex code for our color, we need to use RGBA which allows us to add transparency to the color. And to do full opacity (no transparency at all), you’d give the value a 1. To lower the opacity to 50%, you would use 0.5. Using alpha transparency allows the shadow to blend a little into the background. Text-shadow: x-offset y-offset rgba(color, alpha transparency) To define our text-shadow, we declare it like this, in this order: I usually use white, but you’re welcome to play around and see what suits you. In order to do this, we’ll need to add a shadow in a color that’s lighter than the text color. Let’s add one more line of CSS to create the letterpress effect. Obviously you’ll use the fonts, colors and styles that you wish to use. Now we’re giving our block a background color and setting up our font styles by giving it a font, a color, a size and then centering it (just because). Learn to add custom CSS to your blog with this tutorial. ![]() What we’re doing here is creating our background block and text. You’ll need to switch your blog editor to Text or Code mode. If you’re completely new to CSS, you may want to look over this beginner’s CSS tutorial first real quick and download the free cheat sheet. The text must be darker than the background and should have decent contrast. If you want, you can also use a paper texture background* (afflink) for an even more “real” letterpress look. The background color doesn’t have to be that dark, just dark enough to contrast with the white. This effect doesn’t work on light colored backgrounds because the white is what creates the effect. You will want a medium to dark colored background for contrast. Imagine what your text tagline or widget titles would like with a super cute letterpress effect! If you look, there are TONS of tutorials showing you how to achieve the look in Photoshop or Illustrator.* But what about doing it digitally within your own blog? Right on the text already in your blog. These days you can achieve the same look digitally. Originally, each lead or wood character would be set by hand, one-by-one…” Well actually it’s always been hot in the print world, I’m sure you’ve seen the effect in plenty of wedding invitations and business cards.Īccording to How To Design, “ Letterpress is a centuries-old method of printing using mainly hand-fed presses to create tactile relief prints. Image courtesy of Hello Big Idea Want more free image resources?
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