Demotivators

I created a template and directions for Demotivational posters so you can make your own. Build it yourself or use my Illustrator Template to get started.

Create a 30 x 24″ poster in Illustrator and create a 30 x 24″ black border.

Cut a frame out of your border, 22.5 x 15.5″ and offset it 2.5″ from the top.

Insert your image under the border, sizing it to fit.

Pick a highlight color for your border and main title. This color should compliment the photo.  I went with the red in Mario’s overalls. Generally, you should pick a very saturated color like red or violet and avoid softer colors like pink or lavender. Use the eyedropper tool to sample the color from your photo.

Create a 4pt outline, 23 3/8 x 16 3/8″, centered over frame.  This should leave a 1/8″ black gap between the image and the color outline.

The main title will be in your hilight color and in two different font sizes–300pt for the first and last letters, and 250pt for the inner. Use Times New Roman and type in all caps and just make three different objects (one for the middle of your word, and one each for the first and last letter).

Line up the tops of the letters in the title. Then draw a 4pt underline beneath the smaller portion of your main title and line it up with the bottoms of the larger title font letters.  If you picked a big word, you may have to tweak the size a bit of all the whole group (letters and underline).  Just move things around until they look right and fit comfortably in the frame.

The subtitle will be white and will also be in two different sizes–64pt and 45pt.  Use Century Gothic.  Again, it should be in all caps, and the first letter of each word should be in the larger font size.  Because the bottoms are aligned, you can just make this one object, individually increasing font size for the first letter of each word.