20 Illustrator Gradient tips in 20 mins - A Graphic Design for Lunch™ Class

1. Graphic Design for Lunch™ 20 Gradient tips Intro: Hello, I'm Helen Bradley. Welcome to this episode of graphic design for lunch, 20 gradient tips in 20 minutes. Graphic design for lunch is a series of classes that teach a range of tips and techniques for creating designs and working in applications such as Illustrator, Photoshop, and Procreate. Today we're looking at gradients in Illustrator and we're going to look at a range of techniques and tips and tricks for working with gradients in Illustrator. Now as you're watching these videos, you're going to see a prompt which lets you recommend this class to others. Please, if you are enjoying the class and learning things from it, would you do two things for me? Firstly, answer yes to the fact that you would recommend it to others and secondly, write just a few words about why you're enjoying the class. These recommendations help other students to see that this is a class that they too might enjoy and learn from. If you'd like to leave me a comment or a question, please do so. I read and respond to all of your comments and questions, and I look at and respond to all of your class projects. If you're ready now let's get started with our 20 gradient tips in 20 minutes or less. 2. First 5 tips: Find and install a gradient shipped with Illustrator. I have my shape selected here. I'm going to fill it with a gradient. Now, when the Gradient panel opens, you'll see that there's only a very small subset of gradients available, and the Fly-out panel doesn't have access to any more gradients. To access more gradients go to the Swatches panel. In the Swatches panel, you can click the Flyout menu and choose "Open Swatch Library" and then "Gradients". There's a whole series of gradients that you can select, I'll choose Gems and Jewels. Now, every single gradient I try out on this shape is added automatically to the Swatches panel for this document, not for any other documents in future, just for this one. I can click here to see the next set of gradients, these are metals, and go through and see neutrals and some others. Again, every single one of these gradients I try out on a shape is added automatically to the Swatches panel just for this document. Deleting a color stop in a gradient, two ways. I have a gradient applied to this shape here, and I want to take out this very light color. Well, I can delete it two ways. Firstly, I can just click on it in the gradient panel here and click the "Delete Stop" key, and that will take out that color. Let's put it back in again. I'll press "Control" or "Command Z" to undo that. You can also just take the Gradient Stop and just pull it off the gradient slider and it will disappear that way too. Add additional colors to a gradient, there are a couple of ways that you can add additional colors to a gradient. One of them is to select one of the color stops already in the gradient, and then you can simply click underneath the gradient slider to add another stop. If you double-click the stop, you can select a color to make it. There's a fly-out here, which allows you to choose Grayscale, RGB, HSB, CMYK, or Web Safe RGB colors. You can also select colors from your Swatches panel. It's also possible to add colors to a gradient from the Swatches panel, just grab the color and just place it on the gradient slider at where you want it to appear. Save a gradient so you can reuse it over and over again. I have a shape here with a custom gradient and the fill is in the foreground here. I can add this gradient to the Swatches panel in a couple of ways. I can drag it from the Fill Color area and just drop it into the Swatches panel. I can also click here on "New Swatch" and then just click "Okay" and it's added again. Now, if I want to save this so I can use it anytime in the future, I'm going to have to first remove all the other colors that I no longer need. I'll click away from it and I'm going to remove these colors. The only thing I'm leaving is the None, the Registration, and my swatch. Now I'm going to save it by clicking the flyout menu. I'm going to choose Save Swatch Library as AI. Now I can give it a name and click "Save". That's now saved as a swatch in my collection. In future, I can click the flyout menu, choose "Open Swatch Library", go to "User Defined", here is my gradient so I can get access to it in any future document. Understand the role of the Gradient Midpoint. I have a gradient-filled shape here, and this is the gradient it's filled with. There are three colors across the bottom of the gradient and two little diamonds here. These diamonds are midpoints. They tell me where the midpoint between the transitions from this color to this color is occurring. They can be moved. I'm going to select this diamond and push it closer to the orange. You can see that we now have a much steeper transition. There's a whole lot more blue and a whole lot less orange, so the transitions much faster, much steeper. We can do the same over here and just drag the midpoint into position. Again, we've got just a very small band of orange and a very large band of blue. Using these midpoints, you can craft your gradient to do as you want it to on your shape. 3. Second 5 tips: How to sample a color from a gradient. I have a gradient fill shape here and a shape that has no fill applied to it at all. I'm going to the eyedropper tool and when I click on this shape to sample the color from it, I'm sampling the entire gradient. But what if I just want a single color, not a gradient? If I hold the Shift key as I sample, then I'm going to get the color underneath the cursor. As I drag over the cursor, if you have a look at the fill color in the color swatch over here, you'll see that I'm sampling the colors. I can preview these colors until I get the color that I want. Let go the left mouse button, and that's the color that is used to fill this shape. The Shift key allows me to limit my sampling to a color within a gradient. Understand why opacity in gradients can matter. I've got a shape here that's filled with a radial gradient. It's yellow in the middle, and it peters out towards the edge. It looks like this is a yellow to transparent gradient, but it's not. Let's take this shape and let's move it over the top of this gradient. We can see that the edges of this gradient are fully opaque. So we're not getting a really nice blending of these two shapes together. If you want your gradients to blend into the shapes below, you need to make sure that the outside edge of the gradient is transparent. Change the opacity of a gradient stop. In the last tip, we looked at this problem and decided that we needed to change the opacity of the outside color in this gradient. With the shape selected, this is the gradient. This is the outside stroke color. It's white. I'm going to adjust the opacity to make it zero percent. You can see now that the shape has a transparent edge, and so it's blending into the shape underneath. We're seeing some white haloing here because this color is white. If it were this yellow, then we wouldn't be seeing quite that same haloing effect. Display and use the Gradient Annotator. I have a shape selected here. It has a radial gradient applied to it. This is the gradient panel that exists with the other panels on this side of the Illustrator interface. Over here is a gradient tool. I'm going to click on the gradient tool, and that shows what's called the Gradient Annotator. If you don't see yours, you'll go to the View menu and click here where it would say, show Gradient Annotator. Now the Gradient Annotator allows you to draw a gradient on the shapes. I'm just going to go to this bottom corner of this shape, and I'm going to click and drag with it. I can place the gradient where I want it to be using the annotator. Let's go and select this shape. This is the gradient applied to this shape. Let's click on the Annotator. Now, I'm going to drag to position it differently inside the shape. I can drag it to wherever I want it to appear, and in doing so, I'm going to change how the gradient affects that shape. Understanding the Gradient Annotator. With this shape selected, let's have a look at the Gradient Annotator. Underneath it here are color stops, and each one of these color stops matches this color stop here. If I select a color stop and change its position, I'll change its position in the gradient panel as well. With the Gradient Annotator, I can click and drag here to flatten the shape of the gradient. I can move it in or move it out. I can also rotate it. Across the top here are midpoints, each of these midpoints coincides with a midpoint on the gradient here. The Gradient Annotator for this shape works in a similar way. This isn't a move point, this is its rotation end. These are the color stops corresponding with these color stops, and these are the midpoints corresponding with the midpoints here. Changes made here or here will be reflected in the other tool. The Gradient Annotator and the gradient panel are pretty much interchangeable. You can use whichever works best for you. 4. Third 5 tips: Applying gradients to a line or a stroke. Since the Illustrator CS6, we've been able to apply gradients to a stroke, so I've got a shape here with a stroke. I'm going to the Swatches panel. I'm going to click to apply a gradient to this stroke and I can do the same thing to this line here. I'm going to use a slightly different gradient. Now you can control also the way that the gradient is applied to that stroke. Let's select this shape and let's go to the Gradient panel. Up here, because we're looking at a gradient applied to a stroke, we've got three options here. We can apply the gradient within the stroke, we can apply the gradient along the stroke, which gives us a different look, and we can apply the gradient across the stroke, which gives us a different look again. Let's have a look on this line. This is within the stroke, this is along the stroke, and probably this is the one you're most interested in. This is the one where you're applying the gradient across the stroke, and so you're getting this metallic look to this line. Create an angle gradient in Illustrator. Similar to an angle gradient in Photoshop, this is a workaround for creating one in Illustrator and creating a circle that's 500 pixels in diameter, it has no fill and I'm going to apply a regular linear gradient to the stroke. I'm going to set the stroke width to exactly the same size as my circle. My circle's 500 by 500. My stroke is now going to be 500 wide. This is a linear gradient applied to that stroke. Up here in the Gradient panel, if I select to apply the gradient along the stroke, then I get this angle gradient. It can of course now be clipped to any shape that we want to apply that gradient to. I've got a rectangular shape here. I'm going to select both shapes, right-click and make a clipping mask and I now have a rectangle with this angle gradient applied to it. It's pretty easy to create a dimensional sphere using gradients. I'm going to drag out a circle here. I'm going to turn this stroke off and I'm going to fill the circle with a gradient. The gradient here has white at the center and shades of yellowy red going out from it. I'll go to the Gradient Annotator. I'm going to start in the middle bottom of the shape and drag up to replace my gradient centered on the bottom of the shape. Now I'm going to create a flat ellipse. I'm going to fill it with the black to white gradient that's shipped with Illustrator. It's a linear gradient, I'm going to rotate it to minus 90. I'll take this shape and place it over the top of my circle. With it selected, I'll go to the Appearance panel. I'm going to click on "Opacity." This allows me to set the blend mode for this shape to screen. When I click away, you'll see that I have a dimensional sphere all created using gradients. Apply a gradient across multiple shapes. I have a series of shapes here. I want to replace the solid filled with a gradient. I'm going to click here on the gradient that I have already selected to use. You'll see that each of these shapes has a single version of the gradient used to fill it. Let's do the same thing down here. But this time let's go to the Gradient Annotator and I'm going to click and drag across these shapes and I'm going to hold the Shift key, so I'm clicking and dragging in a straight line. When I let go the mouse button, this time you can see that the gradient has been applied differently. It's been applied as if all these shapes were a single shape. If you're working with an earlier version of Illustrator and if this technique does not work for you, undo it. Select your shapes and choose Object, Compound Path, Make. Then click to fill it with a gradient. A Compound Path will operate as a single path and so your gradient will be applied across that path. Create gradient filled text. I have some text here that's just been typed into the document. It's fully editable. I haven't done anything special to it. With the text selected, I'm going to attempt to fill it with a gradient. This doesn't work. I'm going to undo that. To fill your text with a gradient and still make the text editable, select the text, go to the Appearance panel and click here to add a new fill. When you add a new fill, you can now apply a gradient as that fill. Once you've applied your gradient, go to the Gradient panel where you can now make changes to the gradient, for example, rotating it. 5. Final 5 tips: Why you should use a black and white gradient for a highlight effect. When we created this dimensional sphere, we created a shape here that is filled with a black to white linear gradient. It's set to screen blend mode here in the appearance panel. We did that for a reason. I'm going to select the underlying shape and I'm going to change the gradient that is applied to it, so I'm going to make it orange. The highlight is changing to show orange. When I make it blue, the highlight is showing blue. A black to white gradient blended into a shape underneath using screen blend mode is always going to reflect the underlying color. We don't have to make changes to our highlight, all we need to do is to change the gradient applied to the underlying shape and the highlight works perfectly. Create simple textures with gradients. I have a circle here that's filled with a color. It has no stroke. I'm going to the Appearance panel, I'm going to add a second fill. I'll click "Add New Fill", and I'll go and select the black to white gradient that's shaped with Illustrator. I'll click on the Gradient panel and turn it into a radial gradient. I'm going to push the black out to the very edges of this gradient, and I'm going to make sure that the opacity of the center stop here is back to zero. It's transparent in the middle black around the edge. I'll choose "Effect" and then "Texture" and then "Grain". I'm going to set it to stippled and I'm going to adjust the contrast and the intensity to get the look I want, I'll click "Ok. I'll go back to the Appearance panel. I'm going to blend this fill in to the layer below using the multiply blend mode, and I get this nice stippled texture effect on my shape. Making a gradient with the blend tool. The gradient tool isn't the only way that you can make gradients in Illustrator and the blend tool is another option. I have a couple of circles here, I'm going to select the blend tool, and I'm going to click on each of these circles. An illustrator is going to create a seamless blend from one colored circle to the other. It does a couple of things that not only blends the colors, but it also blends the shape. But since this shape is the same at either end with just saying a continuous gradient, any of these colors can be altered by selecting the shape and just changing the color. An illustrator updates the blend. Now you can do a blend with more than one shape, so let's go and get the blend tool and click on the shapes, each in turn. In this case, the blend is across all three shapes that goes from the yellow through to the red, and then from the red through to the blue. Sometimes your best gradient in illustrator might actually be a blend. Create a faux gradient halftone effect using blends. I have a heart shape here with a dark fill and one with a light fill. I'm going to create a blend from one to the other to create a faux-shaped gradient. I'll click on the Blend tool and then click on each of the shapes in turn. Double-click the Blend tool, turn Preview on. I'm going to choose specified steps, it's going to reduce the number of steps until I get to see the actual heart shapes because, for this effect, I want to see those hearts. I'll click "Ok". Now I'm going to repeat it across the document with it selected, I'll choose "Effect", "Distort and Transform" and then "Transform". Turn Preview on. We're going to move it a few pixels. I'm thinking probably around about 40 or 45 pixels will be fine, and then I'm going to increase the number of copies until we stretch across the document. I'll click "Ok". This is a sort gradient effect using shapes and a blend with ultimately a transform to get across the document in Illustrator. Create detailed gradients using the gradient mesh. When a gradient isn't detailed enough for a project you have in mind, you could use the gradient mesh. I'm going to select over this shape target, the gradient mesh tool. I'm just going to click to add some mesh grids over this particular shape. I can alter the position of this by using the direct selection tool. Then any one of these can be colored by selecting the point and then applying a color to it. In this way, you're able to add detail gradient effects to a shape, and every one of the colors that you apply to any of these points is going to be blended seamlessly in with adjacent colors. With a bit of time and effort, it's possible to achieve almost photo-realistic results using this gradient. 6. Project and wrapup: Your project for this class will be to tell me in the class projects section, which of these tips really spoke to you? Which of these tips do you think you'll be using a lot more now in Illustrator that you know how to do it? I hope that you've enjoyed this class and that you've learned things about Illustrator that you didn't already know. Now as you were watching these videos, you will have seen a prompt asking you if you would recommend this class to others. Please, if you enjoyed the class and learned things from it, would you do two things for me? Firstly, answer yes to the fact that you would recommend it to others, and secondly, write just a few words about why you enjoy the class. These recommendations are helpful to other students, to say that this is a class that they too might enjoy. If you'd like to leave me a comment or a question, please do so. I read and respond to all of your comments and questions, and I look at and respond to all of your class projects. My name's Helen Bradley. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Graphic Design for Lunch. I look forward to seeing you in an upcoming episode soon.