Vintage Sign Art Collage Tutorial

Creating a welcoming, and hip space for teens can be both an exciting and daunting task. Design trends change faster than it takes for paint to dry, so it's important not to get caught up with what looks cool now,  but to think long-term.  One way to add a classic, yet youthful piece of artwork to your walls, is to make a typography collage out of vintage sign images.   Full of color, character and edge, these collages are a great way to make a statement and create atmosphere. Follow the tutorial below to learn how: 

1. Find a quote or create a phase that captures the mission of your youth org. Check out Brainy Quote for ideas or ask your teens for ideas.

2. Run your idea, phrase and design by your supervisors if needed. Review the size of the art, desired location, budget, installation etc for the project.

3. When you find a phrase that you like, arrange your letters so that they fit into a box or rectangle. Our example "Knowledge is Power" has exactly 16 letters, making it a perfect 4x4 box. To adjust the layout you can always add solid color boxes for spaces or add characters like quotation marks.


4. Find source images by searching for "Vintage signs" and "neon signs" in Flickr's Creative Commons database (you want to search in the image pools that allow derivatives). Keep in mind that When you are selecting your images, you will want to find large, high quality images that be enlarged for printing. When you find a picture you like, check the available image sizes by right clicking (or control clicking on a Mac), and select the largest size. Save your image to a "vintage sign sources" folder.

5. Open your source files into a image editing program like Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Elements, and save your images at 300 dpi (dots per inch). This will prepare your images for your collage, so that they can be enlarged with clarity.

6. Review your images and decide from each which letter you will pull from. To make things easier, you can rename each file with the letter you intend to use it for.

7. Determine how large you want your collage to be, and contact your printer for their required file format, image sizes and resolution recommendations. Discuss what kind of material you want to print on, paper, stretched canvas, vinyl etc. If your collage is going to printed on a stretched canvas, ask your printer company how much "bleed" room they need for stretching. The "bleed" area is the part wrapped around the side and back of frame. For online printing try Canvas 4 Life.

8. Create a new document in your final poster size (larger for stretched canvas), making sure that the new document is the same resolution of your source images. Set Mode to RGB Color and Background Contents to White.

9. Open each source file and copy each letter into your new document. If you are using Photoshop or Elements you can utilize the Grid option to keep things aligned (View: Show Grid for PhotoShop and View: Grid for Elements. You can also choose the Snap To Grid option and change grid parameters in Preferences (Edit: Preferences).

10. Once your collage is finished and approved, you can email your file to your printer to be reviewed and prepared for printing.