A great looking design can be easily created by combining various textures and brushes. In this tutorial we’ll look at creating a cool grungy design based around some abstract 3D type, then apply a few finishing touches to really bring the design to life.

To start, we’ll create the type by hand using Illustrator. Create a new document, then turn on the Grid, and adjust the snap settings to snap to the grid.

Draw a square onto the artboard. Notice how the points will automatically snap to each grid intersection. This will come in handy when creating our abstract geometric type style.

For this tutorial, we’ll base the design around the word ‘Create’, so manipulate this first shape into a letter C by chopping out a section using the Pathfinder tool. Use a temporary shape to overlap the appropriate area, then select both shapes and click the Subtract from Shape Area icon.

Continue onto the next letter, in this case an R. Use the Pen tool to create triangular shapes to sculpt the box into a vague R shape.

Once all the letters have been created, space them equally alongside each other. Basing each letter on the same rectangle gives a boxy, geometric and generally cool style.

Head over to SXC and download a background texture. This particular one is a paper texture from IB6364. Paste the texture into Photoshop.

Copy and paste the wording from Illustrator into Photoshop. Fill the letters with a colour sample of a nice grey-blue.

Duplicate the text layer, then press CMD+T to Transform. Hold Shift and Alt to scale down the letters proportionally. Dropping the opacity on the top layer can help visualise the transformation.

Fill the smaller text with a darker shade. This is the base of the three dimensional effect.

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