Anytime that you look at a design, look at the different layers and their sizes.  More often than not, layer's will be of different sizes (except product labels).  Layers are often put at different sizes not even for a perspective effect but just because it is the nature of the genre.  Which genre of graphic design comes to mind?

Movie Posters! aka one-sheets.  You've heard me say it before, they use the transform tools for what I like to call "verisize".  It is so common throughout film marketing especially that you should become aware of it and start reproducing it on your own.  Often times the actors will all be in a similar formation but purposely transformed (scaled) to a smaller size even though they are right next to each other.  Take a look at your DVD collection and see for yourself!

Not only are actors (or 'characters') veri-sized, you will see an action sequence (piece of architecture or something related to the movie) also scaled way down.  This is a common format among 90% of movie posters that are a design something other than just a photograph and some text (jeez, anyone could be a film marketer production artist with great production stills).  For example, Anger Management.  Sure it might be effective but as a graphic designer you should be interested in something that takes some actual "work".

Look at any Star Wars poster or major blockbuster design and you'll see 'verisize' in action.  Often you might just see a close up of the star's face with the co-star scaled smaller and some action scene (scaled really small).  So all that's going on in here is that you have the different layers being scaled to different sizes in the Photoshop design.  The largest layer is usually the main actor or star; it's Hollywood's way of showing importance in this style of design.

When you look at the bigger 'picture' of the design and the layout, transforming and vary-sizing different layers is an important concept in professional graphic design which you should try and emulate.  Disc 1 in the Photoshop Designer Training covers actual one-sheet genre designs and looks at how all of the elements come into play in that kind of design.  Other secrets?  Perfect selections, gradient layer masking and blending modes.

- Article by Orion Williams copyright 2004