Back to the top

Annapurna Expedition 1970: Design Beautiful Retro Poster in Photoshop

post_teaser
PUBLISHED ON

July 28th, 2010

TAGS

DISCUSS

27 Comments

Combine stock photos, triangle shapes and textures to create an awesome retro poster that takes inspiration from climbing expedition to Annapurna in 1970. By mixing up simple shapes with old and grungey textures we’ll create a retro poster design for “Annapurna 1970″.
Let’s not waste any more time and get started!

Tutorial Outcome

This is what we will be designing.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

Research and Inspiration

From wikipedia: Annapurna (Goddess of the Harvests) is a series of peaks in the Himalayas, a 55 km (34 mi)-long massif of which the highest point, Annapurna I, stands at 8091m, making it the 10th-highest summit in the world and one of the 14 “eight-thousanders”. Annapurna I was the first 8,000-metre (26,200 ft) peak to be climbed.
The south face of Annapurna was first climbed in 1970 by Don Whillans and Dougal Haston, members of a British expedition led by Chris Bonington.

annapurna

I knew from the start what style of poster I wanted to create, but to further develop my ideas I did web research in order to pick up more ideas and inspiration which would help tailor my design.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

retro poster photoshop tutorial

retro poster photoshop tutorial

Setting Up The Document

Open up Adobe Photoshop and create a document with desired poster dimensions. Remember to use a high DPI (150-300) and CMYK Color Mode if you are planning on sending the file to press.

Step 1: The Background

Fill the background with white color (#ffffff) using Paint Bucket Tool.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

Create new layer, set the Foreground color to #99dbfb and Background color to #b4e4fb. With Gradient Tool (G) fill the new layer using gradient from Foreground to Background.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

Duplicate this layer by pressing Command + J on keyboard and then change the Blend Mode of duplicated layer to Multiply and lower the opacity to 50%.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

Reset the Foreground and Background colors to Black and White by pressing D on keyboard. Create new layer, then go to Filter -> Render -> Clouds.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

retro poster photoshop tutorial

Change the Blend Mode to Screen and lower the opacity to 50%. Background is all set up.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

To avoid mess, select all layers, except first white color layer, and press Command + G to group them, and name this group “Background”.

Step 2: Creating First Peak – The Highest One

Pick up Custom Shape Tool (U), from Shape menu choose triangle, set color to #3383a8, draw the highest peak and place it in the middle of the page. Name this layer “highest peak”.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

retro poster photoshop tutorial

Command + Click on Vector Mask Thumbnail to make a selection.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

Create new layer and use Polygonal Lasso Tool (L) to create selection like on the picture below. Make sure that Intersect with selection is selected.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

retro poster photoshop tutorial

Fill the selection with #316378 color. Give this layer a name – “shadow”.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

Now let’s create snow on the top of the mountain.

Once again, Command + Click on Vector Mask Thumbnail of “highest peak” layer to make a selection, then with Plygonal Lasso Tool (L) create selection on top, create new layer and fill selection with white color. Name this layer “snow”.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

retro poster photoshop tutorial

Final touch – add subtle shadow on snow. Command + Click on “shadow” layer to make a selection, with Polygonal Lasso Tool (L) create new selection, again create new layer and fill selection with light gray color #dce8ea. Give this layer name “snow shadow”.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

retro poster photoshop tutorial

Here is how our highest peak look now. Not bad huh?

retro poster photoshop tutorial

Once again to avoid mess, select all peak layers (highest peak, shadow, snow, snow shadow) and group them into “Highest Peak” group.

Step 3: Create Next Peak

Our poster design is going to be made up of mountain peaks, and therefore we’re going to need a lot of them. Let’s add another peak to poster.

Using techiques described in Step 2 we will create next peak, but with different colors for peak and shadow. To make your work little bit easier hide “Highest Peak” group before start drawing new peak.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

retro poster photoshop tutorial

retro poster photoshop tutorial

retro poster photoshop tutorial

I used #5ca9cb color for the peak, #396f86 for the shadow, white for the snow and once again #dce8ea for snow shadow.
Again group all this layers and give it appropriate name.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

Step 4: Create Even More Peaks

We now need to create more peaks. Repeat the above steps until you are happy with composition. Use different shades of blue for peaks and shadows,

retro poster photoshop tutorial

keep adding …

retro poster photoshop tutorial

and play with order of peaks.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

At the end you should have something similar to this.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

It’s time to move on.

Step 5: Smallest Peak And Climber

With Custom Shape Tool (U) create small triangle filled with #2f799b color and position it like shown below.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

Create tiny shadow on this peak (I used #336c83 for the color).

retro poster photoshop tutorial

Jump over to Shutterstock and download Silhouette of a mountaineer standing on the top at sunset image.

Open up the shot in a new document and clip out the mountaineer with the Pen Tool.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

Paste the silhouette into the document and scale into place. Position it in the bottom right corner, so it looks like the mountaineer stands on the smallest peak. Name this layer “climber”.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

Open Layer Style for this layer, open Color Overlay and set color to #2f799b (the same color that we used for smallest peak.)

retro poster photoshop tutorial

retro poster photoshop tutorial

Step 6: Typography

Go ahead to The League Of Moveable Type and download League Gothic font, which fits perfectly into our design.
Grab Horizontal Type Tool (T), choose League Gothic font and type the word “ANNAPURNA”. Use the following settings and place it like shown below.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

With the same font type “1970″, use following settings and place it close to word “ANNAPURNA”.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

Take a look at result so far.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

Step 7: Making Borders With Layer Mask

This step is going to be very easy. Select all groups (background, peaks, climber …) and group them into one big group.
Using Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) make selection smaller then canvas.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

With big group selected, go to Layer -> Layer Mask -> Reveal Selection.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

retro poster photoshop tutorial

Step 8: Adding Texture

Pick wrinkled paper backdrop texture from Shutterstock, and insert it at the top of your layers palette.
Scale it down to fit our document and desaturate (Shift + Command + U). Run a quick Sharpen (Filter -> Sharpen) command to give more definition to the texture.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

Change the Blending Mode to Multiply and lower the Opacity to 60%.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

Conclusion

All done! We now have a quite awesome retro poster, made entirely out of basic shapes (triangles), simple blending techniques and spiced up with some textures.
Take a look at the final result below.

retro poster photoshop tutorial

I hope You enjoy reading this tutorial. Thanks for reading!

Tell Us What You Think

Please leave your comment about this post on the comment section below. If you liked it tell your friends by tweeting it. You can also subscribe to our feed by rss or email.

Enjoy This Post?

About Nikola Lazarevic

Web Designer, Blogger, M.Sc in Electronic Engineering from Nis, Serbia. Founder of webexpedition18.com. You can find me on Twitter.

27 Comments So Far

  • usuful, simple, great tutorial. Gotta try it later.
    cheers

    vanrzr
  • Nice tutorial, and very detailed. Easy to follow. Got this website link from your Twitter feed.

    Tim Jones
  • Damn sexy and so much to my taste! Simple = genious! inspiring as hell! Way to go, Nik! Bravo!

    Sergei Tatarinov
  • Nik, awesome tutorial! :)

    Great work!!

    Simone D'Amico
  • Extremely nice. Very clean and simple.

    Pfaudere
  • Nice tutorial, Nikola! I like that you stayed true to the 70s design patterns (like using a pure gothic font, for example). I think it’s very important for everyone learning design to understand some of the paradigms that come with certain styles.
    I would’ve used vector shapes via the Pen Tool exclusively for the mountains but hey, as long as it works, who am I to argue?
    Again, nice tutorial!

    Radu
    • Thanks Radu! Your opinion is very important to me. I decided to go with custom shapes instead of using Pen Tool because these are really simple shapes.

      Nikola Lazarevic
  • Thanks for positive comments guys

    Nikola Lazarevic
  • Hi Nikola! Well done! The tutorial is clear and well written and the idea is really nice, moreover using only simple shapes teaches how to design beautiful things with basic tools. I like it a lot, keep it up!

    Federica Sibella
  • Nice tutorial :) Your explanations are really easy to follow and the end result looks great. Keep up the good work!

    TwitterBackgrounds
  • Well done mate, great tutorial. Love this poster.

    Duane Kinsey
  • Nice tutorial. Simple,easy to follow and great. Love it.

    sandesh
  • Nice article. And it looks like a seventy poster!!!!

    Pablo Lara H
  • Great Tutorial! Out come was very clean

    Marcell Purham
  • Great Article.

    PVMgarage
  • great stuff! Thanks for sharing!

    Holly
  • Have to agree with what Sergei said… Damn sexy. ;P

    Milos Sutanovac
  • Thanks for the tutorial, i must say this tutorial is great

    sriganesh
  • The 70’s and 80’s pattern have always been inspiring. For any photoshop learner this tutorial is really easy to follow and know the design of the past. Brilliant Post, Nikola!!!!

    Rocky
  • League Gothic Kicks Ass….. I love the font… and this tutorial :)

    Richie
  • Love this poster!

    Michela
  • Awesome work man! I like the idea and the classy “execution” ;)

    Keep up the good work! I am looking forward to more of these!

    Jovan
  • Great work!!
    is difficult to find work like this, so easy and so complete at the same time.

    xavi
  • Great tutorial. Very easy for me to follow along (though I already have photoshop knowledge). What a great tut for someone to look like a pro. Looks great but really simple techniques.

  • nice n useful tips thanks

    sarath

Leave Your Comment