In this lesson we'll be sketching in Illustrator so we're going to be looking
at the sketches that we did earlier but we're also going to be brainstorming and
just working with some shapes in Illustrator because while it is best
practices to just have that free-form drawing and sketching just with pen or pencil and
paper. You can also sketch in Illustrator especially for looking at what we drew
earlier and just basing it on that. So a couple of things I want to go over before hand
though. Throughout a lot of these tutorials, I've been using just you know the Tools
panel over here and couple of other panels but if you're finding you're using a lot
of tools all the time, there's a way to actually pull some of those out. So I
suggest using these for logo design but really it depends on what kind of styles
and effects you use a lot. But if you click and hold on the Pen tool, for example,
we have Add Anchor Point tool, Delete Anchor Point tool and Anchor Point tool. And instead of
having to click and hold onto those to get to some of these, you can actually
click this right facing arrow.
It brings it over like that. You could have this go across the top or you could
have it over the side if you click that double arrow there. So that's when I
like to actually have Expanded as its own panel there. I can still click and hold
over here to get to it but it's much quicker just being able to click right here on
the Pen panel. Another one I suggest is the shape, especially in logo design.
If you click & hold onto the Rectangle tool, you don't have to keep on going back to the Polygon or Star tool,
Ellipse tool, Rounded Rectangle tool. Let's just pull that and I'm going to put it over here, kind of a column
and I like the Rotate and Reflect tools to be out in a vertical column like so, a panel and then
also the Scale, Shear and Reshape, very useful in logo design in Illustrator.
So I'm going to have those expanded out like that. I'm going to have color over a little bit here and you
can have them flush or you have them a little bit either way. So now we have those out and it's
easier when you're sketching in Illustrator to have them out. And I do
suggest having a tablet if you have one or you can afford one. If not, not too big of
a deal. You can use the mouse as well. It's just going to be a little more free-form on the
tablet. It's going to simulate a little bit more like drawing with a pencil and pen and
paper. So for this one I was thinking if we use a Rectangle tool and just click and
drag out here and I'm just going to choose some kind of color here. It doesn't really matter at this
point, we just need to be able to see it. And what I was thinking is, I want to make
this mathematically consistent of course. So with the E and then the F, really
just right next to each other and I'm going to use the Transform Each command. So what I
could do, a quick way is ALT click and drag and hold SHIFT so it's vertically
aligned and then CTRL D on the PC or Command D on the MAC. You can OPTION-Click and drag
on the MAC of course to duplicate, but that's one way to do it. Or with this
selected you can just go to Object, Transform, Transform Each. So what I'm going to do here is,
I'm not going to change scale or the size. I'm going to change the vertical
so you can click Preview and preview how far down it's going to move, and I want it just a little bit of space in
between. So bump that up a bit,
something like that. So 79 points in between.
Hit Copy, that's important, and then without deselecting, press CRTL D on the PC or
Command D on the MAC. So now we have, this is going to be either the F or the E.
And so this will be the F.
but we're going to edit it obviously. So now I'm going to click and drag those over,
and I'm going to go back to Object, Transform, Transform Each. I'm going to show you
why this is not best. See how it doesn't go far enough for us. You can only go up to
100 points on here with that option. So instead, I'm going to ALT click and drag and
hold SHIFT, and on something like that, there. So now we have these, they're' are
probably a little bit too wide, and that's the cool thing about sketching in
Illustrator is it's really easy to go back. So I'm going to select all that, click and drag it over
and something like that. So we want to duplicate this. ALT on the PC or OPTION on the MAC.
Click and drag over and then hold SHIFT so it's quickly horizontally aligned.
So I like that. Now what we need to do is just ALT click and drag one of these off
so we can have this for the E over here and then we're going to rotate it and hold SHIFT and put it
up here. We want this just flush with the edge here, so I'm going to do that. And then I'm going to click and
drag it down. I couldn't do the side though or the corner because I want it to be perfectly the
same width and height as that top and bring that down a little bit, right. Now
on this one I just need the F, right, so we don't need this bottom one on here but
I do need to align it which the smart guide will probably align with that one but
just in case, I'm going to ALT click and drag and then click and drag just over to do the same exact method.
And bring that over so now I have two E's but I don't need the bottom line on this.
Backspace. So I'm going to click and drag around there and then Unite and then click and
drag around here,
Unite as well onto the Shape mode and Pathfinder. So now it's one shape. If I
click this, one shape, click that, one shape. Another best practice I suggest
when you're sketching some logos out, even if you're using something drawn out
as inspiration and you're just drawing from that and looking at it. Or if you're'
just sketching in Illustrator just from the get-go is to just keep making copies.
So you don't want to just create this here and you know if you mess up, you just have to
Undo. Instead, why don't you hold down ALT on the PC or OPTION on the MAC, click and drag and now
we have this as a source. So we can change this and then change it again.
Let's say we add something over here and over there, and then ALT or OPTION click
again then and then you've got a new version. So we're saving versions of it throughout
our work in the same file in case we want to go back and think, you know,
instead of adding that color we did or adding that effect, let's just go back to this and
copy it again. So that's best practice and in this one, I'll be practicing that.
So with this one, I'm going to go ahead and make a copy. So ALT click and drag.
My idea on this one was, I'm just going to take, probably just a square here like that.
Make it different color so it just differentiates. This is not the final color,
I'm just using it to see, and what I was going to do was just kind of adjust the edges
here with the Pathfinder panel. So ALT click and drag this down
perfectly like that and then ALT click and drag this over here, and then ALT click and then
ALT click and drag again. I'm going to actually make this right in the middle like so.
you can see the smart guides are helping me out there, right. ALT click and drag. So what I'm going to do
is just subtract these areas on the edge almost like a digital pixel look.
It's not going to pixelate, that's why we use Illustrator to create these so it will make them larger, but.
since it's an online retail company, I thought some of these
could have some kind of blocky structure on the edges so, if you do one of these
at a time because if we do both of them, it will mess up. So click and drag around
these right there and so the one at the bottom is the blue of course so,
Pathfinder panel with all those selected, just click the Minus Front and then
click and drag around here,
make sure we just have those four selected. Minus Front again alright, So it has that
retro old school look to it. Now I had another i dea that I was brainstorming. If I click and drag
this down, right, and use this. I was going to make some kind of pattern and this is
pretty quick technique. so I'm just going to make this so it's right there flush.
Hold SHIFT for a perfect square. Make them a little bit smaller actually, something like that.
I'm going to zoom in here. My idea was just kind of a pixelated look, blocky look, but the
problem is I want to make sure three of these fit or generally if it's close
enough, fit in one of these. So if we had, this will make sense in a second, but if we
have that there, that there, think that's close enough. I make it a little bit larger,
something like that. And I could do the Math and and divide it but I'm just going to,
I think it's fine for this example. So I don't want to do that. I'll just change the corners.
So I just want to move this over so it's right flush with the top. I'm going to zoom out a little
bit and I'm going to do the Transform Each, so go to Object, Transform, Transform Each and
I'm just going to move these. We're not rotating them like in some of the other ones. We're going to
move them horizontally, so I'm going to have 0 points for the Vertical and for Horizontal, let's' see.
I want there to be a little bit of space. CTRL or Command + does not let us zoom in so,
so what you might need to do is zoom in a little bit here, there we go.
So Object, Transform, Transform Each. So I'm going to, let's, not Vertical. So for Horizontal,
Preview here. Just check the preview. It leaves a little bit of space between it
so I think that's good, so Copy and then CTRL D. We just need a nice pattern here.
We know they're all' consistently placed as far as the same spacing in
between them all and they're all the same width. And so we could just click and drag all those and
then go back to Transform, Transform Each, and instead of of 21 points here, make that a 0.
and let's make this 21 points exactly so it will be the same.
You know it's consistent spacing so you'll see it's going down instead. So Copy,
and then CTRL or Command D will create a nice pattern here. It's OK if we have extra.
So what we want to do is use this kind of as a blueprint. I'm not going to use the Pathfinder panel on this.
What I'm going to do is just click and drag and just manually move this right along the edge there.
And you can see the difference just slightly. It's a little bit off at the edge but we can fix it.
So just click and drag, select all these, delete, leave that one right there because we're going to
to make it a little bit slightly different there. So I'm going to click and drag
this and there we go.
Alright, so now we can actually bring this back over.
For this middle one, I wanted it
perfectly in the middle so you've got 1,2,3 1,2,3 so really, this one here is right here when
you select, right, and then if you divide, we could do this while we're looking at it but,
123456789 10 11. So if we just do, if we did like three, just so it matches that other one and
also we're looking at 3 columns, and then 3 again and that's perfect. So then you have your shape, a couple
of different ways to do that, but I just prefer to do it that way. And then what I was thinking is
you some kind, we'll go over color in the next lesson, but just to create just
a slightly different color scheme, right. So if you have, you know, this one is
slightly darker blue and then you have some that are a little bit lighter blue, kind of like
analagous color scheme around the edge of it. So I will show some of those
examples in the next lesson. It's just meant to have that digital look to it
because it's online retail.
So you experiment. Just click and drag from the original one or if you want to go to the
next step, like say you like this here, just click and drag it over and then
click and drag and you can create a new and and then you can experiment, say
OK, well I want to adjust the edges a little bit, make it a little bit more curved edge like that
so that wouild be kind of cool. Maybe have a curved edge on this side there.
So it opens up a lot of different possibilities.