Looking around the site you may notice graphics that look like stickers or old worn paper and cloth. These are getting more and more popular as grunge starts taking over the shiny web2.0 look, and they are really easy to make. Now turn on some good music and lets get started.

Setting up the text in Illustrator

The first step is to design your sticker in Illustrator. I’m going to setup the text first, convert the text to outlines then group( ctrl/apple + G ) your text together.

Now copy(ctrl/command + C) and paste in front(ctrl/command + F). Select the text in the back, I usually lock the top group when I’m editing the bottom group. Give the text a thick stroke(I used a dark grey and a 13pt stroke). Don’t worry if you get some funky results, that can all be fixed. Grab the point editor(white arrow) and edit the background text so there aren’t any crazy points sticking out. I clean up the border a bit more right now so everything looks nice and neat, this is the result.

Now all stickers are required to have flair, so lets add a bit. I’m using some ultra slick vectors from BenBlogged for that extra level of cool.

Ok we need to give those an outline too, group and stroke it all just like we did the text. You should now have everything with a good thick stroke on it, now would be a good time to change anything you aren’t happy with because next we go into Photoshop.

Now that we got our basic sticker we need to export it as a Photoshop document. But first make sure you have everything on different layers, use your own judgement here. I put the colored text on one layer, the stroked background text on another, and the lines and circles on another layer so I could edit them all separately. Note: You could do the same thing with one layer and multiple groups.

The above is what my layers palette looks like right before export. Once in Photoshop the first thing I do is copy all my layers so I have a backup of the original layers. It is a good idea to create layer backups during this whole process as you will most likely want to experiment with different settings…a lot.

For this sticker I’m going to add some layer styles to the text. The color is sorta boring so I add a gradient overlay to make it more interesting. And since we are going to add some grunge later on, I add a black stroke to the text(just a real thin stroke, 2px here). This black stroke is important as it will keep the text readable even with the heaviest of weathering. So far it isn’t looking too bad.

To add a little realism you should play around with adding a gradient to the background text and anything else in your design. This will add a lighting effect, but it doesn’t always look right, so use your own judgment. I went ahead and added a light gradient to everything else as well.

It just isn’t a sticker unless someone has tried to peel it off, so lets bend a corner. Grab your pen tool and out line a corner. Be sure that the pen tool is set to shape layers.

Alt/Option click on the shapes mask to select then invert the selection, now go to the layer(or layers) that are going to folded and hit the quick mask button. Go back to your shape layer and now we are going to fold it over. Command/Ctrl + T to transform the shape layer, now grab a corner and drag it over to flip it.

Now change the color to light gray or white. Select the shape again and create a new layer, brush in a shadow along the edge. Now merge the shape and shadow layer and open up your styles, and give it a little drop shadow.

So now you have something that looks OK but it needs some texture.

Now I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Ever wonder how all those cool old looking shirts are made? Or how the pros get that cool worn look to their art? Well one of the ways, and by far the easiest and quickest, is to use Mister Retro’s Machine Wash Photoshop filters. These image filters make it almost too easy to make things look worn. If you don’t have mister retro you’ll want to break out the eraser and brush. There are as many grunge brushes on the net as exploited young girls so look around. You can also get some textures and overlay them the sticker, this works sometimes, but other times looks fake and ugly so be careful.

After a little mister retro magic(or your own magic) you should have a nice grungy sticker, but were not done. Lets age it some more! Make a curves adjustment layer and tweak the curves a bit, mine looks like this. Note: You may need to switch your image mode to RGB for this.

I also add a brightness/contrast adjustment layer to give a faded look along the top. Now is the time to play around with adjustment layers and figure out what is going to look the best.

A little polishing never hurt anyone, our sticker looks pretty nice as it is but you can always take things a bit further. Flatten all your layers so you have just one layer of the almost final image. Copy the layer and give it a color overlay layer style, make it all white. Put that layer under the color copy and bump the white layer over and down a bit. This will give it an offset look, like it was printed on a retro printer by some supermart employee who could care less(which after all is the “in” look…right?). Giving the top color layer a little inner shadow can also help to polish the look a bit more.

You should end up with something similar to above. If you use this tutorial I’d love to see what you come up with!