Note: Stock assets provided are for practice purposes only. See terms.
Tina Hardison is a fan of the question, “What is graphic design?” She’s often found herself trying to explain to others what she does. “I always tell them it’s applied art: I’m an artist, but I use it to communicate things to people.” It’s no surprise that people ask — graphic design can be mysterious to outsiders. But if you’re running a small business or spinning up a creative side-hustle, chances are you’ll at least dabble in design to get the word out.
Tina grew up in an artistic household and landed design roles at Chronicle Books and Apple before starting an eponymous design studio, where her clients include small coffee shops and big tech companies. She also helps others understand visual communication as a teacher of graphic design at California College of the Arts.
We asked Tina to create two versions of a design and explain the choices she made along the way, particularly how she cropped and scaled the photo. Cropping describes how you frame your images (what you leave in and what you crop out), and scale describes how objects of different sizes relate to each other in a design; in this case, type and imagery. Her flexible layouts can be adjusted for myriad use cases. Grab the simple but bold designs at the link above, then try out Tina’s expert tips on how to create your own impactful designs using some of Photoshop’s most powerful, easy-to-use tools.
STEP 1/7
Big This, Little That.
“I had a teacher in school who used this phrase and I really like: Big This, Little That,” says Tina. “For the first design, I wanted the ‘big this’ to be the typography and I wanted the ‘little that’ to be the woman on the surfboard.” You can crop images using the simple but mighty Crop tool in the toolbar, but Tina used a tool called a Clipping Mask that is helpful for layouts where you may be recropping and swapping images.
Here’s how to do it: First, use the Paintbucket tool to fill the background layer with the color of your choice, then use the Shape tool to draw a small rectangle to frame your photo. With the frame (actually, it’s a bit more like a window) in place, import your image (you can drag and drop it onto your design) and then, making sure the photo layer is above the small rectangle in the Layer panel, hold down the Option key, place your cursor on the line between the two layers until you see the Clipping mask icon, and click. The small rectangle is now a Clipping mask — you can adjust the size and position of your image as much as you want within the frame without having to re-crop it every time. Tip: Any shape can be turned into a Clipping Mask.
STEP 2/7
Choose your type.
“I wanted ‘Surf Lessons’ to be the largest type, because that’s the most important information,” says Tina. The smaller type works as a frame around the image. “Anything you can do to make mundane information a little bit more interesting is good.” Create your copy with the Type tool, then use the Move tool to rotate it into place. When it comes to getting creative with type orientation, Tina thinks a simple rotation can engage readers, but avoids stacking letters on top of each other, which can be disorienting. She also suggests using no more than two fonts in a design to avoid visual dissonance. Tip: “I like text left aligned, because I think it creates a clean visual line.” Find the alignment tools in the Options bar.
STEP 3/7
Get some guidance.
In her second design, Tina flipped her focal points so the surfer became the Big This, and the type the Little That. First, Tina cropped in tightly on the surfer, then she used the Crop tool Overlay guides to help with positioning. Select the Crop tool, then choose your Overlay guide from the dropdown menu in the Options bar. Tina chose the Rule of Thirds, which shows intersecting horizontal and vertical points within an image, and moved the surfer into the left third of the layout.
STEP 4/7
Creating a canvas.
Tina knew she was going to place text over the photograph in her second design, which is why she moved the surfer into the left third — to leave that corner of ocean water as a canvas for type. “Look for where there is either super light or super dark color,” says Tina. “For instance, if it’s a light blue sky, that’s great because you can put dark type on it.” She placed white text on her dark blue wave.
STEP 5/7
Make some noise.
To mimic the vintage aesthetic of surfing’s visual culture, Tina added texture and grain with a Noise filter. Add a layer by clicking the Create New Layer button in the Layers panel; name it Noise. With the Noise layer selected, go to Edit > Fill, select 50% Grey from the dropdown menu in the Fill dialog box, and click OK. Now go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise and click Ok. Finally, set the Layer Blend mode to Multiply and the Opacity to 5%. Tip: If you’re working with an image that isn’t as crisp as you’d like, adding a layer of noise can sometimes make the look appear more intentional.
STEP 6/7
Stay smart.
Tina recommends turning all your image layers into Smart Objects. You can do this by right-clicking on the image layer and selecting Convert to Smart Object from the flyout menu. When an image is a Smart Object, any change you make to it is reversible because the original image is always available. Smart Objects also make it easy to swap out images — want to replace Tina’s surfer in this design? Right-click on the image layer, choose Replace Contents from the flyout menu, and import your own photo.
STEP 7/7
Leverage cool characters.
The arrows in Tina’s first design are special characters called glyphs that are included in Hobeaux, the font she chose. Many typefaces have these fun extras. To reveal a font’s special characters, go to Type > Panels > Glyphs. To use a glyph, select the Type tool, insert your cursor where you want the glyph to appear, and double-click the glyph in the panel. Glyphs are the hidden treasure chests of typography. Tip: If you want bullets, use a special character from your main font so the overall design is more cohesive.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Tina Hardison is a San Francisco-based creative with more than 10 years of experience in design, art direction, and branding, currently working at Headspace. She’s also an educator and teaches Graphic Design at California College of the Arts. Offline you can find her in the Pacific ocean, the ceramics studio, or driving down Highway 1 in her red Volkswagen van.
