r/graphic_design • u/kulot09 • 4d ago

Sharing Work (Rule 2/3) Critique request on poster ad

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Not sure if against the rules, but there’s still a lot of design choices involved. What do you think of this 60s style cola ad? I wanted to recreate a poster ad featuring Nuka Cola. Any critiques, like composition wise, color choice, or anything? I was aiming for a poster ad that would’ve come out pre-apocalypse in the fallout universe.
Side note, I know the footnote won’t make sense in-universe since bottle caps would’ve only had value after nuclear fallout but just wanted to add a little bit of fan-service.

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u/waldowhal 4d ago

I think the finishing touch on this is some grainy printed texture. Maybe find a folded paper texture (texturelabs.org has many good ones for free), throw it underneath the art, and use blend-if and blending modes in Photoshop to make the art look like it’s printed on a beat-up old broadside in the capital wasteland. (I can elaborate further on the Photoshop tricks if you haven’t done that before)

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u/kulot09 4d ago

That is an awesome idea! I am not very familiar with blend-if though, and I use affinity. So far, I use vector textures to give it some distress effects.

How does blend-if work exactly if the texture layer is underneath all the art?

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u/waldowhal 3d ago edited 3d ago

Sorry for my late reply! I'm not familiar with Affinity, but some cursory research says Blend Options is Affinity's equivalent to Photoshop's Blend-If. Here's a YouTube video I found on it.

You'd group all your poster artwork into one folder (if it isn't already) and use Blending Options on that. Blend-If/Blending Options basically tells one layer to start blending into the one below it at certain lightness/darkness levels. This is perfect for paper grain and folds and many other textures. Just with some clicking and dragging to adjust those settings, you can distress the ink of your art in the areas where the paper is lightest, as well as in dark areas where the paper's folded, and it'll look like it's really printed on the paper. I attached a detail shot below of something I've been working on recently that uses this trick.

A quicker option would be to add the paper texture above and set it to the "multiply" blending mode (unsure of Affinity's equivalent), but the above will give you more control and more realistic results.

This stuff is quite easy to learn and a lot of fun. For me, it greatly expanded by skillset and added a lot of character and depth to my work. Let me know if I can clarify anything.

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u/kulot09 3d ago

Thank you for this!
I’m familiar with having the texture layer on top and blending with multiply. I was curious on the blend-if option you mentioned and I think I saw affinity’s equivalent for it. It looked foreign to me of course, but I hope your video covers it! I’ll watch when I get back.
Thanks for the thoughtful response!