Making a Retro/Vintage Style Badge

This week we will be making a nice retro/vintage style badge. We will create the badge with all the shapes and text we need in Illustrator and then finish it off in Photoshop with some nice textures to give it that vintage feeling.

You will learn more about the Pathfinder, Offset Paths, playing with type, and making an awesome badge! The design below is what we’ll be creating:

Final Vintage Badge

Creating the badge shape.

We’ll dive right in and start with making a simple rectangle with the Rectangle Tool(Shortkey: M).  Give it a nice blue-gray color, I used the color #466072.

Now click the rectangle you just created and go to Effect > Warp > Bulge, and fill in the settings you see below.

2. Warping the rectangle

Select the bulged rectangle and go to Object > Expand Appearance to make it one unified shape.

Now let’s make the corners a bit more interesting. Place a circle at each corner like you see in the image below. Select all the shapes by holding the Shift-key while you select them. Now right-click and select Group.

2. Grouping the circles

In the next step we select our group of circles, hold Shift and select the bulged rectangle.
We now go to the Pathfinder (if it’s not directly visible go to Window > Pathfinder.) and we click the second one of the shape modes: Minus Front, like illustrated below.

3. Cutting out the corners

 

Spicing up the edges.

Now that we have created our badge shape, let’s make a nice dashed line on the edge of it. Select the badge and navigate to Object > Path > Offset Path. Fill in the following settings and hit OK.
4. Negative Offset Path

Select the inner badge shape you just created and give it a white stroke and enter the following in the stroke settings to get those nice dashed lines (again, if this window is not visible, go to Window > Stroke):

4.2. Adding an inner dashed line

Click the inner badge again and make another badge inside it by again going to Object > Path > Offset Path and entering the same settings we did two steps back. Now give this badge a simple 1pt stroke. I used the blueish color  #A7D5EB.

 

Adding some decorative elements.

Now we have our badge with nice edges, create a star with the Star Tool  and place it in the middle at the top of the badge. To copy this star, hit CMD+C (or Ctrl+C for Windows users) and CMD+F to paste it in front of the other one. Now move it down at the bottom of the badge.

Now we create a nice swoosh to the right of the star with the Pen Tool(Shortkey: P). Once you created the shape, right click select Transform > Reflect, fill in the settings below, and hit Copy instead of OK. Now move this copy to the left of the star.

5. Adding stars and swooshes

Now select the two swooshes by holding Shift while selecting them. Again go to Transform > Reflect like illustrated below, and now select Horizontal for the Axis. Again hit Copy and move the copied shapes to the bottom of the badge.

5.2. Reflecting and copying the swooshes

 

Creating and modifying the type.

Let’s get started with the type. Type your upper text inside the badge, I used the font Arvo for this. Now select your text and go to Effect > Warp > Arc. And give it a 6% Bend like shown below.
6. Adding and warping the type

Do the same for the bottom text but now give it a -6% Bend to make sure it bends downwards along with the edge of the badge.

7. The opposite warp with the bottom type

Now type the text in the middle with the same color as the stars and swooshes. I used Calibri for this text. When you’re done select the text and click the blue Character link (next to the Font selection) to give the characters some individual spacing. See my settings below:

8. Spacing the type

Select all the text, the upper, middle and bottom text, and go to Object > Expand, to make shapes out of the text. Now add some simple stripes to the right and left of the text in the middle to fill the badge up. Let’s see what we have now:

9. The basic badge design is complete

 

The finishing touches.

The badge, the decorative elements and the type are all done. Now let’s add some details, we’ll start with a shadow. Select everything except the badge shapes(the badge, the dashed line and blue stroke). Now copy this and paste it in front, to do this hit CMD+C and then CMD+F (Windows: replace CMD with Ctrl).

Right click and hit Group to group the elements and give these a dark gray color and set the transparency around 35%. Nudge the group to 3 times the right and two times to the bottom with your arrow keys.

Now send it behind the original elements by right clicking the gray group and selecting Arrange > Send Backward (or shortkey: CMD+ [ ) a couple of times until they are behind the original elements.

10. Copying the elements and creating a shadow

If all went right, you have ended up with something like the badge below.

11. The badge with the shadow behind the elements

This looks very nice already, but not what we’re going for right now. Let’s give it some extra texturing to give it that vintage feeling.

The easiest way to do this is with existing Photoshop brushes. First you need to download the brushes you like best.

Here are some links to nice grungy Photoshop brushes:

Once you’ve downloaded them open them up with Photoshop.

Copy your badge in Illustrator and paste it in your Photoshop document. Paste as: Smart Object in case you plan on scaling it. Now create a new layer on top of the badge, grab your brush tool and start playing with your brushes and the blend modes.

This is what I eventually ended up with:

12. Adding textures/brushes to go vintage

Download the Illustrator source file.

That’s it! I hope the tutorial was clear and useful to you. If you have any questions feel free to ask in the comments below and i’ll help you along any way I can

Oh, and if you enjoyed the tutorial please share it by tweeting and/or liking the post. Thanks!


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