ellipticalpointofview

I thought I would post on the resources and tutorials that helped me achieve the effects I used in my first infographic on etsy (which was also my first infographic ever!)

Obviously what I brought to the infographic was passion, research, a whole weekend (barring time outs for dinners and to see the latest Harry Potter), inspiration and imagination…and a fair bit of moxie, mainly because I like the word moxie.

Atlhough I used Adobe InDesign to compile the elements, add the text elements and so I could link to references (so I can export a PDF, if needed, with all my references), I gave Adobe Photoshop a fair work out over the weekend too.

Background texture

I created it in Photoshop using two layers:

1. Fill > Pattern > Burlap or Dark Coarse Weave
2. Fill > Colour I wanted the “linen” base to resemble.

Fonts

It’s possible that this infographic was just a shameless excuse to download as many stitch, knit and sampler fonts I could find:

• How about Orange had some great free fonts listed
• 1001FreeFonts was another source
• Dafont was another source

Fonts I used were:

• Home Sweet Home – from Myfonts
• IntellectaCrowns – from Dafont
• Meshstitch – from Dafont
• Eenvoudidge Batik – from Dafont

One method I didn’t use as it was too realistic was this great tutorial on Photoshop Digital Sewing Thread. I went down the illustration route and that teechnique looked a little time consuming (mind you I was looking at it a 2am) and that it would produce something that would be too realistic compared to everything else. I still absolutely love it and may find a way to play with it at some future point in time, when I have more time.

Ply tags

Create a wood texture using Photoshop was a cool written tutorial on making ply textures. Once I had gotten to the point where you used liquify filter I went to town.

The embossed elements were fonts and stroked marquees I drew on top and used the Layer Effects > Bevel & Emboss > Pillow Emboss

Button and badges and needle

I made all those from scratch myself. I will need to write a tutorial for them at some point – if you are interested, please comment below and I will reply to you when those are done (might take me a little while as I have to reverse engineer and I am scarce on time atm :O But if you comment I will make sure I schedule some time in the next month to do it…and I will let you know whenI  have done it)

Crumpled Paper graph

I used a wrinkled paper texture from bittbox and the following amazing video tutorial on Crumpled Text: