Illustrator

Making Custom Shapes in Illustrator

Making Custom Shapes in Illustrator

Creating Custom Shapes In Illustrator is Faster Photoshop is great for a lot of things, but some tasks I prefer to do in Illustrator, simply because I can do them much quicker there. One of those tasks is building complex and precise shapes. Honestly I feel like I can...

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How to Transition From Photoshop to Illustrator

How to Transition From Photoshop to Illustrator

Switching From Photoshop to Illustrator Adjusting to new software always seems intimidating, especially when it is packed with so many features, as Adobe products are known to be. Well-designed programs like Photoshop and Illustrator are flexible enough to accommodate...

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Quiktip- Control the Opacity of Gradients In Illustrator

Quiktip- Control the Opacity of Gradients In Illustrator

You can control the opacity of each individual color of a gradient inside of Adobe Illustrator. This is fantastic for flexibility with colors. Simply click on the color swatch of the gradient, and there is an opacity setting on the gradient panel. You can also double...

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Winner Announced: Free Design Book Giveaway

First off, I want to thank everyone that participated for their invaluable comments for this post. There are many aspects to branding and corporate identity, and I think each comment touched on a different aspect. Branding is a vital part of marketing and building a...

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Make your text fit an object in Illustrator

Make your text fit an object in Illustrator

I got this question yesterday, and thought that it would be a good topic for the day. If you want to fit text to a certain shape, you have a couple of options. The first option is to do what is called an envelope distort. First, you make your shape, and then take the...

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Quiktip: Key Commands For Type

When creating type in Photoshop, and you are looking for just the right display face, it helps to use the key commands to get things just how you want them. If you double click your text icon next to the layer, it will highlight your text. Then, simply go up to the...

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Playing with Opacity and FX In Illustrator

Playing with Opacity and FX In Illustrator

Opacity has a lot of uses for different types of effects. We like to see certain things bleed through in some areas, while in others we want a shape or text to be a certain color. Recently, I was playing around with opacity in the appearance panel in Illustrator, and...

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Exploring the Blob Brush In Adobe Illustrator

Exploring the Blob Brush In Adobe Illustrator

This tool is one of the best tools if you want to create a sketch within Illustrator. You can really draw and add to an existing shape like you would if you were drawing with an ink pen. the best part about this, is that with a drawing tablet, you can very closely...

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Easy Grids in Illustrator

Easy Grids in Illustrator

This tip is to save time when creating a group of squares or any type of grid in Illustrator. This is a good trick for making easy grids in Illustrator. For our purposes, I am creating a 300px by 300px square and it is filled with purple. You can make yours any color...

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Is There a Limit to How Much We Can Do?

I was having a discussion with a colleague the other day about design and all the things that we know how to do. The topic came up where he found out that i don't know ajax, which I admittedly, don't even know exactly what that does. My response to him was that I am a...

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Dotted Stroke in Illustrator

Dotted Stroke in Illustrator

Creating a dotted line stroke in Illustrator First, create a new document in Illustrator. I created one 1024 x 768. Then, select a typeface that you want to use and create a nice large word or couple of words. For our purposes, I am taking away the fill to see the...

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Transforming in Perspective in Illustrator

Transforming in Perspective in Illustrator

In this tutorial, I am going to show you how to transform an object in perspective in Illustrator. This is extremely handy when trying to make a pattern fit a certain perspective. First, we are going to create a simple circle pattern. Select your ellipse tool, holding...

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3D Electric Type

3D Electric Type

3D Electric Type This tutorial uses Illustrator and Photoshop to create 3D electric type, quickly and fairly easily. First open a new Illustrator document and pick a nice bold typeface. I chose Helvetica Black and the text is set to 225pt and the color is set to a...

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3D text in Illustrator

3D text in Illustrator

Today we are going to use the extrude and bevel options under the 3D menu in effects. You can use a simple default setting, or we will show you how to play with the settings to get a unique and more dimensional look that might fit your application better. Start by...

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3D Shapes in Illustrator

The 3D option in Illustrator is a great tool for rendering quick 3-Dimensional shapes for your design work. First we are going to make a solid vase shape. Then, we are going to edit it to make it a hollow 3D vase, so you can see how to do a live edit on a vector 3D...

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Opacity mask in Illustrator

Opacity mask in Illustrator

This is a really easy trick to give you a gradual fade on any object in Illustrator. This works well for reflections. First, make your object and make a copy, and go to object>Reflect>horizontal. This will flip the copy, to where it is upside down. Position your...

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