If you ever need to create a simple but effective illustration or icon and are bored of the effect you are getting with just an outline, it may be an idea to use custom brushes in Illustrator to give your lines a bit of character.

Here is a simple trace of a motorbike that was transformed with the aid of a couple of new brushes I’d created in Illustrator. The whole process takes a few seconds.

How to make a custom Illustrator brush

Let’s start with an easy one. Make a long, thin ellipse by dragging the Ellipse Tool (L) on the artboard, making sure it’s filled black and has no stroke for simplicity’s sake.

Now copy it (cmd-ctrl-C) and choose New Brush… from the Brushes palette dropdown menu. Make it an Art Brush.

Make sure the arrow points along the ellipse and not at a right angle to it.

Click OK. Your new brush will appear in your Brushes palette.

Now we’re going to make another brush with a slightly different shape. Go back to the original ellipse, select the two middle anchor points using the Direct Selection Tool (A) and drag them horizontally holding down the shift key. This will give you an ellipse with a blunt end.

Now copy and follow the same process as above to create a new custom brush. Now your Brushes palette should have two brushes in it looking more or less like this:

Tracing an image in Illustrator

The process of getting a basic outline shape of your image starts off with a Google image search. Here is a basic bit of royalty free clip art I have found but it could have been any old image of a motorbike.

Once you have an image you want to trace or base your illustration on, go File > Place in Illustrator to put it on your artboard. A little trick I like to do is, in the Layers palette, lock the layer that the image is on and then create a new layer to do your tracing on – this helps to keep your tracing paths free from the image box.

I traced over this quickly using the Pen Tool (P) and the Ellipse Tool again for the wheels.

Applying the custom brushes to paths

Now get rid of the image you were tracing which will leave you with just the paths – give them a stroke so you can see them.

Now the fun begins! Select with the Selection Tool (V) one of the paths and click which ever custom brush you would like. So here, for example, I have applied the flat elliptical brush onto the top path. As you can see, you may need to play around with the stroke widths, etc., to get it to look right.

I applied this flat elliptical brush on the wheels as well but on the other path I applied the other brush with the blunt end to create an exhaust!

The shape can be imported into Photoshop to give it some extra effects to make a simple and attractive shape that can be used as an illustration or an icon.

So, I hope you found this tutorial helpful. Do you use Illustrator? Do you use custom brushes? Do you have any other tips to create illustrations like this one?

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
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It is not the case that a logo will cost an extra 50$ and is just a matter of spelling out the company name in an attractive typeface. I did the logo above for a client who wanted a simple, modern and dependable characteristics displayed through the logo for his communications company.

So, instead of writing about what makes a good logo I’m going to give a few tips on how to use Adobe Illustrator to put together a logo.

Why should you create a logo with vector graphics?

Vectors consist of points, lines, and curves which, when combined, can form complex objects. Whereas bitmap or raster graphics (eg. JPGs) are composed of pixels that contain specific color information. When enlarged, bitmaps pixelate. Whereas vectors will scale up or down without loss of quality or sharpness. So the same vector logo file looks as great on a business card as on a billboard­.

So, with logos, it’s vector, vector, vector all the way.

Using Adobe Illustrator to Snap to Point

You can use many different packages to handle and create vectors. My choice of software for doing this is Adobe Illustrator. Whether you have sketched the logo by hand on paper first or whether you are creating the logo from scratch in Illustrator, it’s important to make sure you have Illustrator’s Snap to Point feature running. Snap to Point allows you, when dragging objects, to align an anchor point exactly with another anchor points (anchor points are the beginnings and ends of paths or lines).

So the first thing you must do in Illustrator is to go into Preferences… and choose Selection & Anchor Display and make sure that Snap to Point is checked with a value like 2 px set.

The screenshot on the left above shows the plus sign being dragged by one of the anchor points. The cursor (as we are using the Selection Tool (V) to move the object), is a black arrowhead with a white outline. When the arrowhead is precisely on top of another anchor point while dragging it will turn white with a black outline. At this moment, you know if you let go of the object it will land exactly where you want it to be.

So grabbing objects by anchor points and using Snap to Point to place them in precisely defined positioned is crucial to creating logos in Illustrator.

Viewing and Hiding the Bounding Box in Adobe Illustrator

One of the problems you can face whilst moving objects by a corner anchor point is inadvertently re-sizing the object!

In the image above you can see an object without (left) and with (right) a Bounding Box. The Bounding Box is an extra line around an object with eight white handles which can be using for scaling. It’s very handy sometimes but other times it just gets in the way. To get rid of the Bounding Box, simply go View > Hide Bounding Box or Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-B.

Converting text to outlines in Adobe Illustrator

While doing logos it’s fairly usual that you type out the company’s name in a typeface close to how you want it to look (in this case Dax) and then edit the letters separately. To do this, with the type selected by the Selection Tool (V), go Type > Create Outlines or Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-O. Follow this up with a Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-G or Object > Ungroup to ungroup the letters.

Lining up objects in Adobe Illustrator

Fairly often, when designing logos, you will want to get certain letters to line up. I do this by using the Control Palette which is usually beneath the main menu. When two or more objects or groups of objects are selected by the Selection Tool (V) the Space and Align icons appear.

The use and look of these icons are exactly the same in Photoshop and very intuitive. I use them all the time.

What do you think?

Do you use Illustrator to design or to create logos? What methods do you find yourself using again and again?

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I’m a bit late this year but I’ll be artworking it up this weekend and then writing them over the week to make sure they get there at least a week before Christmas.

Calendars are quite tricky things to do – not all months have the same number of days, not all months start on the same day and, while most months require 5 rows of weeks (Monday to Sunday) to complete, some months refuse to play the game and require 6 rows of weeks. Even worse, February 2010, requires only 4 rows of weeks as it starts on a Monday!

(OK, I can see this may not be the most fascinating subject for a blog post but graphic designers find this sort of thing really interesting!)

A calendar you can use for any year!

I have found that putting the relevant date into the appropriate place in the calendar a tad annoying. There’s 365 of them to do so, who wouldn’t? So I have hit on a great solution to help my fellow graphic designers to successfully set up a calendar for all the years to come … linked textboxes!

So, as you can see above, the dates are all linked. So if you want January to start on a Saturday (which it will in 2011) instead of Friday, you type 27 and hit enter in the box before where 28 is now. Enter moves the text to the next linked text box so that all the dates will shift over one day. It’s an awful lot better that moving them over one by one!

Download the PDF and Adobe Illustrator (AI) file for the 2010 Calendar

Please click on one of the icons below to download the calendar.

The AI was produced in CS3 and the document color mode is RGB. You will need the Trebuchet MS font loaded. I tried to save it in a legacy format but the linked text boxes would not work.

Please let me know if this has been useful for you. And if anyone wants a Christmas card contact me with your address and I’ll send you one through the post! Happy Christmas!

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This is an illustration I did for a business card which I designed and created in Illustrator and Photoshop for a motorsports development fund.

Rather than the standard old 86.6 mm by 53.98 mm rectangular thing they asked for a graphic representation of a Formula One steering wheel. It’s great when clients come up with brilliant ideas!

I was really inspired by this job and, after searching Google images for examples of these steering wheels, I set to work first in Illustrator. Here is the basic outline I did together with two of the dials.

As you can see I did only the very basic outlines in Illustrator although I did take care to get the dials and lights looking fairly realistic. Once I had done one dial I grouped the objects, copied them and then re-colored them with the Recolor Artwork button that sits in the Control palette at the top of the screen (see above). This is a really great way to change the hue of a group of objects.

Once I was happy with it in Illustrator and had every major object on different layers I exported the document as a .PSD in Illustrator (File > Export…). Then I opened the same document in Photoshop and began the finishing touches.

The most important thing to do in Photoshop was to add the highlights, which really add realism to the illustration. I also added a bit of blurring to the main body of the steering wheel as well as noise to the dials.

Finally, the outline path from the original Illustrator file was used as the die cut for the printers to cut around the edge of the illustration.

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London time: This is now the day of the inauguration of Barack Obama as the President of the United States of America.

Here is a couple of interesting quotes, first from Martin Luther King Jr. in 1964 talking to the BBC:

Frankly, I have seen certain changes in the United States over the last two years that surprise me. I’ve seen levels of compliance with the Civil Rights Bill and changes that have been most surprising. So, on the basis of this, I think we may be able to get a Negro president in less than 40 years. I would think that this could come in 25 years or less.

Amazingly, Obama was elected 44 years after he said that.

And secondly from Tupac Shakur in his song “Changes” over 30 years later:

Take the evil out the people they’ll be acting right
’cause both black and white is smokin’ crack tonight
and only time we chill is when we kill each other
it takes skill to be real, time to heal each other
And although it seems heaven sent
We ain’t ready, to see a black President

2-Pac wrote that in the mid-90s after the Rodney King beatings and the crack epidemic. He could not foresee this day. I don’t think many people could. Maybe only people with the foresight of Martin Luther King.

Anyway I did the above pop art illustration of President Barack Obama in Illustrator using it’s Live Trace feature. It caused the effect of posterizing the photo of Obama into about 4 or 5 colors and the globe into 2 colors. I like the way that you can see both the United States and Africa behind Obama.

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Do you ever wish you didn’t use stock photography so much? Recently I’ve found myself trawling through pages of stock images from sites such as Shutterstock, iStock and Fotolia, usually looking for a well-presented young professional smiling to camera. These sites contain some good photography but I’m always worried that the stock approach lacks creativity and uniqueness.

The use of simple vector illustrations can come to your rescue in this situation. Like the ones above they are eye-catching, can be doctored to incorporate your client’s colours and non-specific in terms of race or age. As they are not real people they’re less likely to receive criticisms from your client such as “too smug”, “too smiley” or too whatever. If you client doesn’t like the colour of hair it can easily be changed.

Increasingly, you see the use of a cartoon character, either human or animal, being used to freshen up a website. I would also consider them for HTML emails and direct marketing. Colourful, simple and friendly is the way to go.

These characters can be made easily in Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop. You may find it easier to do an image search and trace over. Or you can use Illustrator’s Live Trace tool.

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I’m always on the look out for simple eye-catching ways to communicate a message. I think this is a great example of a visually appealing background that could be used when there are no images, graphics or other ways to improve the typography. This is especially useful in direct marketing (email or mail shot).

How to create it in Illustrator

The first thing you need to do, and it may not be apparent why, is to draw a triangle. How do you draw an equilateral triangle in Illustrator? Easy, simply fetch your Polygon tool from the Toolbar (it may be hiding under the Rectangle or Ellipse tool) and click once on the artboard. Then choose 3 Sides, don’t worry about the Radius. You then need to turn the triangle on it’s side and elongate it so it an isosceles with two long sides and a short base pointing to the left or the right. Don’t worry, it’ll become clear why later!

Now, with the triangle selected, find your Brushes palette and select New Brush… in the drop down menu and choose Art Brush. Notice the direction the brush is pointing in (left), this will be important.

Now draw a curve from the centre of your artboard to the outside, make sure it has a stroke but no fill. Then apply the triangular brush that is now in your brush palette. Now go Object > Expand Appearance. This changes the stroke to a fill which we will need in order to apply a gradient to the curve.

Now the exciting bit (you thought this wasn’t so exciting so far?), option/alt click on the apex of your curve with the Rotate (R) tool selected (see inset left). In the resulting dialog box (left) enter a number that goes into 360 evenly and hit copy. Now, the really exciting bit. Go Cntl/Cmd-D and keep your finger on it. Cool, huh?

Now all you have to do is to apply radial gradients to taste. And serve with some attention grabbing copy lines helped along with some well-crafted typography!

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The problem

Err, sorry, the challenge. How many times does this happen? You have an otherwise beautiful design and your client insists on including pictures of people who’s images weren’t taken by one of the world’s best photographers.

This is a reoccurring hitch; we have to include pictures of the CEO, the MD, the whoever, but there’s not the budget or the time to get a professional portrait done only a happy snap of 20k.

The solution

Or is it the workaround? As you can see above, it’s not difficult. Turn your original photo into greyscale and cut it out. Feather or blur the edges in certain parts of the photo by extreme amounts. This is particularly necessary if the subject is leaning up against a wall or has someone else standing in front of them. Go either Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur… or Filter > Noise > Median…, or, preferably, do both.

Prepare your Photoshop document with a white background while experimenting with swathes of colours and blends on different layers. Play around with the blend modes, “Multiply” will be useful. These different colour layers can be used for other portraits, simply change their hue and positioning. Add some more layers on top of white lines with some assorted brushes.

Now comes the clever bit. I found this much easier in Illustrator. Save your Photoshop document noting the pixel dimensions and color mode. Create a new Illustrator document mirroring the dimensions and color mode. Place the PSD on artboard, lock layer, create new layer, and with the brush tool (B) selected, trace certain areas of your image to make it look like an old-fashioned re-toucher has had a go at it. Set artistic brushes (found in the Brushes palette) to some of these lines (“Artistic_ChalkCharcoalPencil” was my favourite). This is easier to do in Illustrator rather than Photoshop because the lines can be evened out (double click or the Brush tool in Illustrator and make sure the smoothness is around 0).

You may like to copy and paste these elements bit by bit over to the Photoshop document or, having put them on different layers in Illustrator, export it as a PSD and then copy over the layers. Either way, you will want to further experiment with layer blend modes and opacities for these artistic touches.

This was not my idea. I was contacted by The Talent Business to do this for their new staff members. See their “Who to talk to” section.

Here are the originals:

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A while ago I did an article explaining how to create a country’s flag inside its map outline and I used as an example the Australian map and flag. I’ve since had a lot of interest from Australians who wanted to use the image so I thought I’d do one for Americans as I get a lot of visitors from the United States.

I employed a very similar technique for this one as I did the other one. First, I got from a Google image search the country outline of the USA and a picture of the stars and stripes. I turned the country outline into vector form by using Adobe Illustrator’s Live Trace. The flag I re-created manually in Illustrator.

Once the flag was finished, I grouped all the objects and position the country map outline over the flag and, with both selected, I went Object > Clipping Mask > Make (Cmd/Ctrl-7) to give the flag the outline of the country.

I then copied this and pasted it into a Photoshop document and added a Bevel and Emboss and a slight Drop Shadow layer style.

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This is a good tip if you ever want to change type to invoke a mood. I wanted to give a bit of text a feeling of electricity and this is what I did.

First of all, in Illustrator, you must convert your type to outlines. Remember, after you have done this you can’t edit what’s written, so you better make sure you have spelled it correctly! To do this go Type > Create Outlines with it selected, or Cmd/ctrl-shift-O. Easy!

Next you need to draw diagonal lines across the text. Draw your first one at the top either with the Line Segment Tool(\) or the Pen Tool (P) and then, with the Selection Tool (V) and option held down, drag the whole line down to create your second line. Further lines can be draw with equal space in between by going Object > Transform > Transform Again, or Cmd/ctrl-D. (You may want to make you diagonal lines uneven for a more distressed effect, I just showed you this way because Illustrator’s Transform Again feature is incredibly cool!)

Now the clever part. With everything selected, type outlines and diagonal lines, click Divide in the Pathfinder palette.

Now, with the Direct Selection Tool (A), move the sections around until you’ve created something you’re happy with.

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The image above has been stylised in Photoshop and Illustrator.

To trace a photo in Adobe Illustrator, go File > Place and select the photo you want to trace. I find it useful to then lock this picture layer in the Layers palette and click on the New Layer icon to make sure your trace and your image remain separate in your Illustrator document. Then, as you can see below, I selected the Pen Tool (P) and traced the eyes, the nostrils and the lips. Tracing the picture gives you the added bonus of a good vector illustration to use elsewhere!

Now open up the original image in Photoshop. This is when you should perform the usual cloning and trickery to get rid of any blemishes, scratches or general untidiness in the photo. I used this technique to smooth the model’s skin. And I also brightened up the teeth, the whites of the eyes and the eyebrows.

Next you should bring in the elements of the Illustrator trace bit by bit. So, I selected the mouth first, copied it and pasted it onto the Photoshop image. The trace was done in black, so setting this layer of the pasted Illustrator lips to Overlay in the Photoshop Layers palette really makes the lips stand out and deepens the red.

Then the eyes were done in a similar way, first the irises, only this time I coloured them pale blue in Photoshop and set the Layer’s Blend Mode to Saturation. Then the highlight in the eyes was made white in Photoshop and their Layer’s Blend Mode was set to Overlay. Finally I pasted in the eyelashes.

The underlying image of the woman’s face is quite pale that is why employing this technique causes a really striking, almost “pop art” effect.

See below the original image on the left, the trace in the middle and, on the right, the finished piece.

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This took me a while to figure out! The object is to get the gradient mesh to radiate out of the centre of a circle and that’s not as straightforward as you might expect. Anyway, this is a good one.

To start with something easy – draw a circle. Select the circle tool and drag diagonally, don’t forget to hold down the shift key. Fill the circle white, with no stroke.

Then get the Gradient Mesh tool (U) and click 5 times in the centre of the circle as shown in the diagram below. This will leave you with a cross made out of six lines inside a circle. Now you have to space out the gradient mesh points on the edge of the circle so that they are equidistant. Do this with the Gradient Mesh tool (U) as well. Keep shift held down so that the circumference of the circle does not move. You should only have to move eight different points.

Next you have to make the lines from the edge of the circle to the middle to be straight instead of curvy as they are at the moment. To do this use the Direct Selection tool to drag the curves’ handles at each end so that the line becomes straight. (I have to confess this is a bit fiddly; please let me know if you know a better way of doing this).

Now that you are left with a circle with 12 straight lines radiating out from the centre the fun can start.

Go back to your Gradient Mesh tool (U) and use it to select the points individually and then choose the colour in either the Color palette or the Swatches palette. You could select the colour from the image above, once dragged from your browser to your Illustrator document, with the Eyedropper Tool (I).

This will take a bit of experimentation. Notice that I have left to opposing streaks of white and colour. The main body of the CD or DVD should be grey or gold.

The rest of the CD or DVD was a relatively straightforward affair. Make a series of concentric circles and vary their colours and transparencies for the inside bits of plastic. A final rainbow effect was applied in Photoshop. Maybe I’ll explain that later, but that’s enough for now!

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This starts, as most tutorials start, with something very easy: draw a circle. So, select your circle tool and drag diagonally to preferred size, not forgetting to hold down the shift key. Fill the circle white, with no stroke.

Next, select the Gradient Mesh Tool (U) and click four points diagonally across the circle. Make sure the first and fourth click are close to the edge of the circle and the middle two equally separated – this is the basis of a 3D effect.

With gradient-meshing (if I could invent that verb) it definitely is a case of less is more; those four clicks have given you 32 different mesh points for you to colour in. Don’t worry, it’s not going to take you as long as you think!

Start selecting the gradient mesh points around the edge and give these a dark green colour. Select the point first with your Gradient Mesh Tool (U) and then choose the colour in either the Color palette or the Swatches palette (or you could select the colour from the image above, once dragged from your browser to your Illustrator document, with the Eyedropper Tool (I)). Notice I have made three of the points a darker mauve colour.

Inside the circle make the gradient mesh points a lighter colour. Leave two of them near the edge white for the highlights.

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This is a nice little trick using Illustrator’s Blend option.

To create perfect sine-waves – or something very close – first of all, draw a line. Then go Filter > Distort > Zig Zag… and choose the number and height of waves you want (remembering to click the smooth radio button, otherwise you’ll get a zig zag).

You then need to copy this beautiful wavy line and create a distorted version on top of it. To do this simply copy (Cmd/Ctrl-C) the wavy line and paste in front (Cmd/Ctrl-F). Put one line on a locked layer and, with your Direct Selection Tool (A), drag the peaks and troughs of the curves either up or down randomly. See below where the blue triangle is.

Then unlock the original wave and go Object > Blend > Blend Options… and select the number of Specified Steps you want. Then, with both selected, go Object > Blend > Make (Cmd/Ctrl-Option-B).

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If your client hands you a .PPT from MS PowerPoint or and .DOC Word and says: “The presentation/print deadline is tomorrow, make this look nice”, what are you going to do?

The answer is to use other programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Quark, Premiere or Keynote and get creative!

Here are a few tips I’ve picked up over the years of doing this.

Make sure you import your client’s text into InDesign and Quark rather than copy and paste it

Why? Because it keeps the formatting (bolds, italics, heads, subheads, notes, etc). If your client has gone through the document and done this there’s no need for you to do it again. OK, you may not like your client’s choice of formatting or font, you can change that globally over the whole document in seconds. Use the Style Sheets or Utilities > Font Usage in Quark and Paragraph Styles or Type > Find Font in InDesign to turn the sow’s ear into a silk purse.

If you want a presentation to look good don’t do it in PowerPoint

I know this isn’t always an option as all the world and his wife seem to want to use PowerPoint for any purpose but, if you can’t persuade the client to go for Premiere or Keynote, there’s always the PDF. The good old PDF will give you an excellent presentation with vectors supported, movies played and excellent interactivity.

You’ve got to do it PowerPoint, now what do you do?

In PowerPoint go File > Page Setup and that’ll give you the size of the slide. Then go to Photoshop go File > New and type in the same height and width values from PowerPoint, create your attention-grabbing masterpiece, save it as a PNG (transparency is supported) and then back in PowerPoint go Insert > Picture > From File… and select your PNG.

OK, so you can do that for every page of a 40 slide deck if your client wants to edit the text, but it’ll add a bit of extra fizz to the proceedings.

Get your client to provide you with the source files

If there’s a blurry bitmap graph or chart that you need to beautify, ask if it exists as a PDF or ask for the source files. Even if it was the ugly result of a PowerPoint-Excel partnership the chances are it can be copied and pasted into Illustrator and the type can be changed and the excess crud can be deleted.

Similarly a PDF can be opened from within Illustrator with the type and the vectors editable, if the wind is blowing in the right direction, if you’re lucky!

For both of these routes you may find all the elements refusing to be ungrouped. If this is the case go Object > Clipping Mask > Release and Object > Compound Path > Release and then ungroup and see where that gets you.

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Quite often I’m looking for a simple iconic device to represent a country without having to just reproduce the flag alone. So, as you can see above, why not put the flag inside the country’s shape. Also, it’s free!

It’s relatively easy to find a country’s flag and shape on the internet and tracing the flag is very easy in Illustrator. For example above, the Union Jack part of Australia’s flag was created by overlaying red, white and blue rectangles. An important thing to remember with the diagonals is to copy and reflect them so that they appear at the same angle.

So how do you get a nice flat line around the edges? Simple. Group all the rectangles together (Cmd/Ctrl-G – you knew that!) and add another rectangle on top of them to where you want the edge of the flag and, with both of them selected, go Object > Clipping Mask > Make (Cmd/Ctrl-7) to crop.

Use exactly the same process to fit the flag into the country. The outline of the country can be traced using Adobe Illustrator’s Live Trace from an image downloaded from the internet. Put the outline over the grouped flag objects and, with both of them selected, go Object > Clipping Mask > Make (Cmd/Ctrl-7) to crop the flag.

The highlight or shiny surface is created by a black to white gradient circle set to Lighten in the Transparency palette with an Opacity of 60%.

I quite like the Australian flag!

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Firstly, when creating this shiny effect in Illustrator remember to make the document RGB. Go File > Document Color Mode > RGB. It won’t work otherwise. Many thanks to Simon Mcferran who pointed this out in the comments below!

Let’s explain how to make the triangle one. How do you make a triangle in Illustrator? Easy! Click on the Polygon Tool and click once on the artboard and enter 3 in the Sides: field of the resulting dialog box. (Didn’t know a triangle was a polygon? Neither did I until the other day!)

Make another small triangle and place it on top and fill it with a lighter colour. Go Object > Blend > Blend Options and enter 100 in the Specified Steps field. (Half that would probably do). Then, with both large and small triangles selected, go Object > Blend > Make (Cmd/Ctrl-Opt-B) and a beautiful rounded blur will fill your triangle. This method gives you more control that a simple radial gradient fill. See below my tutorial without words; I hope it makes some sense.

To make the shiny highlight at the top of the triangle you have to create a shape by intersecting a circle and a triangle together (see 2nd row above). With both triangle and circle selected option-click on the third Shape Mode icon in the Pathfinder palette where the tool tip says “Intersect shape areas (Option-click to expand)”. You will now be left with just the top of the triangle with a curved base.

Fill this with a linear gradient black-to-white, size and position it inset a bit from the top of the main triangle and set it to Screen in the Transparency palette.

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An earlier tutorial on how to make a shiny button in Illustrator using the Opacity Mask feature can be improved upon greatly by adding a sexy brushed steel surrounding ring to your amber jelly button!

As previously explained, the shiny “web 2.0″ button look can be made by placing a circle with a linear black-to-white gradient over a circle with a radial gradient and selecting Make Opacity Mask in the Transparency palette with both selected. See the first row in key below.

Other crescent shapes can be added by putting a smaller circle on top of another and Option-clicking on the second icon from the left of the Shape Modes row in the Pathfinder palette, the tool tip says “Subtract from shape area (Option-click to expand)”. This is a one click way to subtract one shape from another and something I use all the time in Illustrator. See rows 2, 3 and 4 below.

In row 5 below, the steel rim. Double-click the Scale Tool (S) enter 125% and hit Copy with the orange button selected (go Release Opacity Mask in the Transparency palette and get rid of the black and white circle. Put a linear gradient going white-to-black-to-white onto this larger circle. Duplicate the orange button again by pasting in front (Cmd/Ctl-F) get rid of the black and white circle and go Object > Compound Paths > Make (Cmd/Ctl-8).

Finally put all the elements on separate layers in Illustrator and go File > Export and choose Photoshop (psd) from the Format drop down menu. Choose RGB, 72 ppi and make sure you have the Write Layer radio button clicked on. Now we move into Photoshop for some final tweaking and blurring. Open the PSD you exported from Illustrator and you will see all your layers from Illustrator on different layers in Photoshop (top tip!).

Play around with it by blurring the crescent shapes a bit and copying and colouring layers a bit.

Most of the work I did was to the steel rim layer. Add a Drop Shadow and an Inner Glow in Layer Styles in Photoshop. Add Grain or Noise and a horizontal Motion Blur for the steel effect.

I put the orange button layer on top of the House layer and set it to Linear Burn Blend Mode.

They look quite nice as navigation icons.

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Remember Adobe Streamline? Adobe stopped upgrading its vector conversion application some time ago. But with the advent of CS2, Illustrator’s old Trace Tool became the new super Live Trace and opened up a new world of possibilities!

As soon as you place or paste a photo into Illustrator a button on the Control Palette offers a Live Trace option. However, I like to see all the options first off by going, Object > Live Trace > Tracing Options…

Here you can choose Color, Greyscale or Black and White from the Mode drop down menu of the Live Trace pop-up box. Marilyn Monroe below was done by colouring up Live Trace with the default, Black and White option.

This is the Illustrator/vector equivalent of Photoshop’s Image > Adjustments > Threshold…

The drop down menu next to Presets: in the Tracing Options dialog box gives you thirteen different tracing presets. However, if you ignore the presets and choose Color from the Mode drop down menu and enter a value in the Max Colors box you will see an identical effect to Posterizing in Photoshop – a finite number of tones within a colour picture. There are only 5 colours in the illustration of a dog below.

Photos are made up of pixels and making them larger makes the pixels larger too and the result can be blurry and jagged or “pixellated”. They are bitmap images and their file formats are .BMPs, .JPGs, and .PSDs. Vector images are composed of mathematical formulas that consist of curves and points. They can be resized without losing quality. Vector’s file formats are usually .EPS (although EPSs can be bitmaps) and .AIs (Adobe Illustrator’s native file format).

You may find the colours chosen by Illustrator are a little dull. Hit the Trace button and go Object > Expand… to turn your pic into Vectors. At this point you cannot go back and edit your trace (only with a Cmd/Ctl-Z). Another advantage of these resulting vectors is the ability to re-colour them as above with Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas Towers.

To re-colour: simply select one of the colours you want to change with the Direct Selection tool (A) and go Select > Same > Fill Color and move those sliders!

Lastly, play around with the blurring option in the Tracing Options panel in order to create more figurative, impressionistic illustrations as with Big Ben below.

Overview: Go Object > Live Trace > Tracing Options once you have Placed or pasted your image into your Illustrator document. Make sure you have the Preview check box checked so you can see your chosen options before you hit Trace. Remember you have to go Object > Expand to turn the trace to outlines/vectors.

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This is one way of reproducing a striking image without having to pay for it!

The logical way of doing an image made of dots would be like this: Make sure that your image’s width and height are divisible by 10 pixels (the above is 450 by 300 pixels). Nice round numbers make the following mathematics a lot easier. In Photoshop go Filter > Pixellate > Mosaic… and make you cell size 10 pixels. This gives the “pixellated” effect with each 10×10 pixel square having a flat colour. Save it.

Then in Adobe Illustrator, create a new document the same size as your saved Photoshop image, go File > Place, or just copy and paste the image and move it until it snaps on to the Illustrator artboard (if you have View > Snap to Point checked).

The object of the exercise is two cover the image with circles. Click once with your circle tool and make a circle with a width and height of 10 pixels. Put your first circle in the bottom left corner of your artboard. Two ways of doing this is either by “feeling” it snap there (if you have View > Snap to Point checked) or by making sure you have zero in the x and y co-ordinates in your Transform palette once the bottom left corner of the box is highlighted.

Now there are two ways you could fill the bottom of the pic with adjacent circles. You could either hit Return and get the Move dialog box and put 10 pixels in the Horizontal field, clicking Copy and then going Cmd/Ctl-D again and again and again until the line fills up. Alternatively, you could copy the circle in the bottom left corner to make another one in the bottom right corner and with both selected go Object > Blend > Blend Options… and put 10 pixels in Specified Distance. Hit Cmd/Ctl-Option-B to Make your Blend and the computer will do it for you! You will need to go Object > Expand… to turn to paths.

Use one of these methods to copy the line of circles over the whole of the artboard. To make the circles as “holes” inside another object, simply draw a white rectangle behind the circles (but in front of the placed image) and, with them all (the rectangle and the circles) selected go Object > Compound Paths > Make (Cmd/Ctl-8).

Now what you should have is a flat colour in each circle. However, I was finding this very difficult so what you have here, above, is an image with 10 pixels wide mosaic squares overlaid with 20 pixels wide circles.

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Choosing a group of colours can be a daunting exercise. OK, so there’s some golden rules to follow, like “always choose from the same third of the colour wheel”. Golden rules are made to be broken.

Adobe has a colourful website to make this a bit easier. If you sign in you can download the colourways as a .ase which can be imported to CS2 and CS3 applications via the Swatches palette (InDesign CS2/CS3: Load Swatches; Illustrator CS2/CS3: Open Swatch Library: Other Library; Photoshop CS2/CS3: Load Swatches). A pleasure to use!

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You can use this tutorial to make weeds or grasses swaying in the wind as above. Or colour them orange, yellow and red and you’ve got flames. They are also a useful decorative feature that seems to be quite common these days.

Start with a line…

Go Filter > Distort > Zig Zag, or Effect > Distort & Transform > Zig Zag, and check the preview box so you can see what you are doing. The one above has 10px size, Absolute, 4 Ridges per segment and Smooth Points, but it’s up to you.

So you have your wavey line. Copy it (Cmd/Ctrl -C), Paste in Front (Cmd/Ctrl -V), and select the Rotate Tool (R). Now click on one of the ends of the wavey line and drag the other end up or down a bit (see above).

Now you have to connect the two lines so you can apply a fill. With your Direct Selection Tool (A) select the two end points in the apex by dragging a select over them so they look like the last example above. Then a simple Object > Path > Join (Cmd/Ctrl -J) (select Corner, of course) and you have your shape. Finally, add gradients and transparencies.

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You could do this in almost the same way in Photoshop but I have recently been following the mantra “If you can do it in Illustrator, do it in Illustrator” – to save on disc space if for no other reason.

First draw the circle of your button (I’m following the bottom line of blue buttons in the above picture).

Then copy (Cntl/Cmd -C), paste in front (Cntl/Cmd -F), apply a gradient (the default white-to-black gradient is the one you want, with an angel of 90º) and, lastly, squash it vertically upwards to about half the size (you may need the bounding box for this (Cntl/Cmd-Shift -B).

Now the gradient orb needs to fit inside the button so you need to apply a little perspective. To do this in Illustrator, get your Free Transform Tool (E) click on the top left hand corner, once clicked hold down and press Cntl/Cmd-Option-Shift and then drag towards the right.

You can hardly see the difference after doing the next stage but it’s essential- move the gradient orb down a touch.

Here’s the clever bit. With the both the blue button and the gradient orb selected go to your Transparency palette and select Make Opacity Mask (make sure both Clip and Invert Mask and all other options in the palette are unchecked.

Finally, go Effect > Stylize > Inner Glow, leave the default options of Screen Mode, the yellow colour and a 75% opacity, but play with the blur (these are 35 pixels) and click the Center radio button.

The advantage of this method is that you can then change the fill of the button and keep all the effects. Obviously, it works on all other possible shapes.

And then you can have fun experimenting with adding type to your buttons!

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OK, so you’ve probably seen better line drawings but look at the eyes! One of the best ways to do eyes in illustrations is a simple black circle for the pupil and a smaller white one for the light reflection. Keep the smaller white circle in the “northwest” or “northeast” corner of the black circle and make sure it’s in the same place for all the other eyes in the same illustration. Most importantly, get it so that the white and black circles just touch each other which creates a lovely crescent shape of black that gives a beautiful “window to the soul”.

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Here is an amazingly cool Illustrator tutorial about creating twirls from Veerle Pieters a graphic/web designer living in Belgium. Twirls from Veerle, you might say. (Sorry!)

The Spiral Tool can be selected by holding your mouse down on the Line Segment Tool. Once you have created a spiral you like, copy (command/control -C) and paste in front (command/control -F).

Now select the Rotate Tool (R) and click once on the centre of the spiral exactly where the line ends. Now click anywhere else on the spiral and drag to turn the copy slightly. You will now have two spirals coming from the same point but, unfortunately, they will be crossing each other at some point.

To make sure they don’t cross, select the Scale Tool (S), and with one of the spirals selected, just like before click once on the centre of the spiral exactly where the two line ends meet. Now click somewhere on the outer side of the spiral and drag to size the spiral so it doesn’t cross the other anywhere. (This takes a bit of doing, you’ll find it much easier if the decay percentage of your spiral when the Spiral Tool is double clicked.

All that remains is for your two end points to be joined (command/control -J) and now your twirl can be filled in with a colour and used.

There is another way. Create a 10 pixel triangle and copy it. Go to you Brushes palette and select New Brush… and choose Art Brush, make sure the arrow points the same way as the triangle. Then, after you’ve drawn you’re spiral, give it a stroke value and apply your new brush. The triangle will be applied throughout the length of the twirl and this way you get a more perfect looking spiral.

In fact, this spiral can then be set as a new Art Brush and then you can experiment applying this spiral to lines to create differently distorted spirals! Happy twirling!

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.