“We need some promotional art and a mailer for a new themed slot tournament,” said my client at Spirit Mountain Casino, “And we’d like to know if you could make it look like one of those old fifties superhero comics.”

With the use of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, I certainly could! I started out by sketching up a couple of caped crusaders modeled after the look of some comics that I found in a used bookstore. I then scanned my drawing into a computer and used Adobe Illustrator to construct a vector image that gave me the comic book cover that I used on the mailer’s front panel. I then set up an arrangement of comic book panels on the interior that provided a structured grid where I could place the copy I wrote for the mailer in an order that would be easy for a reader to follow.

And since my client had said they wanted it to look like one of the “old” superhero comics, I then brought my finished vector images into Photoshop where I used a series of tools to create photo-realistic effects like staples, rips and folds that would make the final image resemble a book that looks like it’s been read more than a few times. Just like the comics we had when we were kids . . .