Create a Big Air Event Poster

I recently came across the work of illustrator Chrissie Abbott and I was immediately struck by her clever use of combining retro and modern imagery and her use of bold, vibrant colors. In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through the creation of an extreme sport event poster using a similar style.

The poster theme is based on a vert skate competition, so all the imagery, such as space, mountains and flight are all relevant and have been sourced either from my own collection of vintage, copyright-free magazines or stock websites, as well as some freely available images courtesy of NASA . I’d also like to thank surf/skate photographer Paul Frost for kindly allowing me to use his skateboarder photo.

As far as techniques go you’ll discover how to create precise bleed and crop marks in both Photoshop and Illustrator. You’ll also master Illustrator’s Pathfinder and Offset Path commands to create some cool ornate lettering. Finally, you’ll bring all these elements together with Photoshop and assemble the final, print-ready artwork in Illustrator.