Make Retro Shapes in Adobe Illustrator - A Graphic Design for Lunch™ Class

1. Make Retro Shapes - Introduction - A Graphic Design for Lunch™ class: Hello. I'm Helen Bradley. Welcome to this Graphic Design for Lunch Class: Make Retro Shapes in Adobe Illustrator. Graphic Design for Lunch is a series of classes that teach a range of tips and techniques for creating designs and for working in applications such as Illustrator, Photoshop, and Procreate. Today we're looking at creating a range of small retro shapes in Illustrator. We're going to start by creating a color scheme to use and then we'll use a range of tools and techniques to build some simple retro shapes of the kind that you could use for your own designs or even to sell online. The focus of this class is on exploring a range of handy techniques to help you build your Illustrator skills. As you're working through these videos, you might see a prompt which lets you recommend this class to others. Please, if you're enjoying the class, give it a thumbs up. These recommendations help me get my classes in front of more people just like you who want to learn more about Illustrator. If you'd like to leave a comment, please do so. I read and respond to all of your comments and I look at and respond to all of your class projects. If you're ready now, let's get started creating retro shapes in Illustrator. 2. Make Retro Shapes Part 1: We're going to start this class in a web browser where I have located a retro color palette just in case we need some colors, we could use these sorts of retro colors. You can find lots of color palettes online, I'm going to give you the link to this one in particular. I've clicked already on download color palettes. I've downloaded it to my computer and let see now, how are we going to use it in Illustrator? I'm going to create a new document file, new, it's going to be 1400 pixels by 1000 pixels, RGB color mode, and I have aligned new objects to pixel grid disabled, and click "Okay". To add my color scheme, I'm going to choose File and then Place, going to locate the graphic, click on it and click "Place". I'm just going to drag a small rectangle for that graphic into my Illustrator document. I want to extract these colors, so I'm going to create a series of small squares for those colors. I'm going to hold the Shift key as I drag out a small rectangle here, and the very first rectangle I'm going to fill with the first of my colors. So I am going to the eyedropper tool and with the fill color at the foreground, I'm just going to click on this color to sample it. Now we need four other rectangles, with this rectangle selected, I'm going to choose Effect, Distort and Transform, and then "Transform", I'm going to turn "Preview" on. I want four copies, so I'm going to type four, I'm going to start moving these shapes down. So I'm just going to press "Shift" and the up-arrow key to just create the five boxes I need. And I'll click "Okay". This is a transformation so I need to expand it with Object, Expand Appearance, and at the same time I'm going to "Ungroup" it and continue to ungroup it until ungroup is no longer an option. Which tells me that in the last pallet, I should have one layer with five shapes in it, which is exactly what I've got. I'm going to click on the second shape, go to the eyedropper, click on this color. I can do this a little more quickly in future by pressing the letter "V" to select the selection tool, I'm going to click on this shape here and then press the letter "I" to bring up the eyedropper tool in between the letter V and the letter I. I can very quickly sample these colors and fill my squares. Once I've done that, I no longer need this shape here, so I'm going to select it and remove it. I'm also going to lock down this layer with these little pieces on it because they are just there for color reference. I'm not actually going to use them as my shapes, so I'm going to click here to create a brand new layer. So all our work's going to be on a new layer and these boxes won't move, but we can select colors from them. 3. Make Retro Shapes Part 2: Let's look at the first of the shapes that we're going to create. I'm going to click on the ''Line segment tool'' here, because I want to create a line and I'm going to make sure that my line is black. Right now, it's a fill color. I'm going to switch this, so it's just going to be a black straight line. I'm going to click once on my document. Now, I don't want my line to be very big at all, so I'm thinking probably about 200 pixels long, but 90 degrees is a good setting, so I'll click ''Okay.'' Let's just bring the line down here. I'm going to thicken this line up, so I'm going to the stroke, I'm just going to increase the stroke to say three pixels. I'm going to repeat this by clicking on the ''Line segment tool'' click once on the ''Document'', and this time I want a line that's just a little bit shorter. I'm going to type 160 for it's length and I want its angle to bay at 45 degrees and I'll click ''Okay.'' It takes on the same characteristics here as the previous line. I'm going to add one more and this time it's rotation is going to be 135 degrees. That's going to rotate in the other way, but it's still going to be a 160 pixels long. Now gather up, always lines and I'm going to center them over each other. But before I do so in the align options here, I want to make sure that when I click ''Show options,'' that here I have aligned to selection. I don't want to align things to the art board. I want to align them to the selection. If you don't see your Align palette here, go to Window and then align to open it. Now I'm going to click here to horizontally align the centers and now vertically align the centers. I have the beginning of my shape. The next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to add an ellipse. Well, it's going to be a small circle. I'm going to hold the shift key as I drag out a small circle, and I'm going to flip the stroke and fill so that I'm filling it, so it's nice little filled circle. Now I want to put one circle on each of the points around this shape, and while I could do it manually, let's look quickly at how we could do it with a script. I have twice school share classes part 1 and part 2 on looking at using scripts and illustrate. We're going to take a really fast trip through those classes here now, but you can see links in the class project area to those fuller classes. I'm going to the web here and I'm going to the site that we're going to download our scripts from. What we're going to use is we're going to use the dup at selected anchors scripts. So you're going to click here on the ''Download link'' and you're going to download the zip file. Once you've done that, you're going to open it in your download's folder. I'm just going to go to my download's folder. I've got my scripts here, and I've already gone ahead and located this script file that I downloaded. I double-clicked on it and then extracted the files from it. The one that we're interested in is cheap at selected anchors. Having done all that, let's go and say how are we going to use it. What we're going to do is select either all of this shapes. We want the circle and this shape here. We'll choose file and then scripts, and then other script. You'll navigate to your download's folder and locate the place where that script file is. Click on the ''Script file'' and click ''Open,'' and that just runs the script. What this script does is it takes the shape that was at the top of the selection. So the topmost of the shapes, and it duplicates to the end this selected anchor points, and each of these lines only has two anchor points, one at each end. Now to complete this shape, we really need to do something with it because right now it is just a whole series of circles as well as a series of lines. We're going to select either the entire shape. We're going to choose object expand and I'm going to click ''Okay.'' Now the reason for that is that if you are selling these online at a stock site, you cannot generally have open paths, so you have to tone lines into rectangles. That's the first bit that we've done. Now we're going to choose object ungroup, and we're just going to clean up this palette so that all we have is a series of circles and a series now of rectangles, not lines but rectangles. Now this is a complete shapes. Let's go to the Pathfinder and let's click on ''Unite.'' That just makes it one single shape. It's now all joined together into a single shape. That's a nice way of presenting an element like this on a stock site. Of course now that we've created as a shape, we can rotate it. We can also select it and we can re-color it. I'm going to select it, go to my eye dropper and I want to color it the same way as this square is colored. I'm just using the eyedropper to be able to select colors from my mini little color palette over here. 4. Make Retro Shapes Part 3: The next shape will create is going to be a retro star-shaped site. I'm going to click on the star tool, click once on a document. I'm going to make a star whose radius one is half of radius two. I'm going to use 50 and 100 for my values and it's going to have four points. I'll click OK. I'm going to select over this start and we're going to use the pucker and bloated effect. Effect distort and transform pucker and bloat. I'll click preview because we wanted to say what we're doing as we're doing it. I'm going to go towards the pucker end. What I want to do is to get an interesting shape here. I'm actually more worried about what the long ends of this shape look like, than the shorter end. We still want to have something here. I'm thinking scale value is going to be better about minus 65. I'll click OK. This is a shape that has an effect on it. If we wanted to do something with this shape, will need to expand it. I'm going to select it, and choose object Expand Appearance. Let's zoom into this shape. Because what I want to do is, I want the next thing I do to affect just these inner point. I'm going to scale tool. I'm just going to click away from the shape, and then just drag around to pick-up just these points. I could have clicked on them with the direct selection tool, just click shift, click all the way around to select them. But you can also do it with the scale tool thoughts worthwhile, learning how to use that tool. I am going to scale tool. It shares a toolbar position with the shear and reshaped tool's. I'm going to click once to select the scale tool and then double-click to open up the dialog. I'm going to click on preview. What I want to do is, I want to bring all of these selected points further in towards the middle of my shape. I'm just going to decrease the uniform setting, because I want to start sucking this middle bit of the star in. This is a really handy technique to understand how to use, when you want to take a whole series of points and either bring them closer or send them further apart because it brings them all in or can send them all out. We just have to add a value in here that's I've 100 percent. I'm going to click OK. Controls zero just to zoom back out and I'm going to take a copy of the star, so I'm just going to Alt+ drag a duplicate of it away. I'm going to size this a little bit smaller, holding the Shift key as I do sought sized in proportion. I'm going to rotate it again holding the shift key, so that I can rotate it in exactly 45 degrees. I'm going to place these two stars on top of each other. I'll make sure that they're centered, making sure that I have aligned tool selection, selected here, and then just use the horizontal and vertical aligned center. I can now unite these to make a single shape. I'm going to click on the unite option. That is a retro style. I'm actually gonna turn this around so that it is pointing upwards. I'm going to grab the direct selection tool and just Shift+ drag on the bottom point because that allows me to then break the star out, so that it has a long tail, and other retro star effect. Going back to the star tool. This time, I'm going to create a star where radius one is one-tenth of the dimension of radius two. I'm using 10 and 100. Again, a four-point star, and I'll click OK. We're going to zoom in here. What I want to do is to round the inside corners of this star, but I'm going to make a duplicate of the star first. I'm going to choose edit, copy and then edit paste in place. I'm going to select over just the top most star and you can check in the Layers palette to make sure that you just have the top star selected. It's going to turn off the bottom one because I want you to see this effect as we're creating it. I'm going to choose effect, stylize round corners. Going to turn preview on. What I want is some nice round corners on the inside of this shape. 10 is pretty good. The downside of using this round corners tool is that it's affecting these other corners on the shape tool. So I'm getting blunt ends where I had sharpens before. But that doesn't really matter because I have a saved version of this same shape that has pointy ends on it. But right now, this is a shape that has an effect applied to it and the effect is removable. If we look in the appearance panel, you'll see that this is our path and it has a removable rounded corners effect. Well, we need to bake that into the shapes and we're going to choose object, Expand Appearance. This is the shape. There's no removable effect left there. Let's go and now make the bottom shape that has the pointy ends, now visible. I've got a shape on top that has this nice bend in it and the shape on the bottom that has the pointy ends. We're going to select over both of them and we're just going to click in the pathfinder on the unite option. That gives us a single shape that has these two characteristics, sometimes just saving a second version of a shape away will give you a few more options than you might otherwise have. Now, I could use this shape on its own or I could make a duplicate of it. I'm actually going to make a couple of duplicates. Let's put one away, just as a shape on its own. Let's look at these two. I'm going to hold the Shift key as I drag in on this one just to make it a little smaller, going to place it in position here, so it just overlaps one of the legs of that star. Select both and I'm going to unite them into a single shape. Again, this is a nice little retro shape for our retro shape collection. This time, we've been looking at stars. 5. Make Retro Shapes Part 4: The next shape we're going to create is going to be a boomerang shape, is going to have an interesting edge effect. We're going to use the Pen tool, but don't worry because it's pretty easy to draw. You're going to start with a point and you are going to drag out headed towards the left of the document. Then we're going to spin around here to a position around here and we're going to click and drag back towards the bottom left of the document. That's pretty important to get this curve in place. Now we're going to the very back of our boomerang shape and we're just going to drag towards the top right of the document. Now that we're ready to finish, we're going to click and drag back on the initial starting point. We want to create a even set of handles here so that the handle on the left and the one on the right are pretty near the same length and then let go the mouse button. When you're done, you can click on the Direct Selection tool and click on any of these paths and just move them if you need to. I just want to make this just a little bit more of a boomerang shape. But you don't need to make too much of an effort with it. I'm going to select over this shape and I'm going to flip this stroke and fill because I want a stroke but no fill. Now I want my stroke to be uneven around the shape and for this I'm going to use a calligraphic brush. I'm going to the Brushes panel, I'm going to open up the menu choose Open Brush Library. I'm going to choose Artistic and then Artistic Calligraphic. This opens up the potential options you have for using a calligraphy brush on your shape. I'm just going to click on these in turn to see what it's going to look best for my shape. The calligraphy brushes give you a dimensional look to your shape much as you would get if you actually drew this shape using a calligraphy tool. Now I'm thinking that this 31 is probably the best for my particular shapes. I'm going to use it and then just close down the panel here because the brushes now in my brushes panel. If I want to make changes to it, this is the one I need to make changes to. I just going to double-click on it, you can see it's a 30 point flat brush. Well, I want to make it a little bit rounder, so just going to increase the roundness. What happens when I increase roundness is that these very thin bits become a little bit thicker and that's really the look that I want. So I'm just going to click, Okay. I want to apply it to the strokes that I've created. So I'm just going to click to do just that. Now this is the shape that I want, but right now it's a line that has a brush stroke applied to it. So I'm going to select it and choose Object, Expand Appearance and now it becomes a shape. So it's actually a filled shape again, something that we could potentially sell for stock. I'm just going to double check the last pallet to see what I've got here. Well, the path is inside a group, so I'm just going to break it out of its group, so it really is just a single path. I'm going to add a small oval to this, so I'm going to the Ellipse tool, I'm going to drag out a narrow small oval. I'm just going to move this into position if I want to, I can recolor that by selecting on its fill color and just sampling one of the colors to use, some have used this color here. Before I finish it, I'm actually going to borrow this shapes. I'm going all drag the shape that we created a little bit earlier, just resize it to position it here outside our shape. These together now make a nice little retro shape effect. I would group these so that they are going to be easier to locate and work with in the last pallet. 6. Make Retro Shapes Part 5: For an X shape, we're going to start with the line tool, but I'm going to sample the green color and use it as a stroke. With the Line tool I'm just going to drag out a short vertical line. I'm going to increase the stroke weight on. It needs to be fairly thick. Then I'm going to create a filled circle here. No stroke and just a filled circle. Now I'm going to add this to both ends of this shape, not going to bother with the script here because it really is just two circles and a line. I'll select over them all and just make sure that they are horizontally aligned center so they're right on top of each other nicely. I'm going to expand this object with Object, Expand because this was a line and I need it to be a rectangle of filled shape. I'm going to choose Object, Ungroup, I'm going to continue until that's no longer an option, and then just go to the pathfinder and join this together. I have a barbell shape if you like here. Going to drag two copies away, and I'm just going to place them on top of each other in a loose arrangement by just rotating them. I don't want anything to be exact, I just want it to be a little bit organic. I'm now going to select over the entire shape and I'm going to unite all of it into a single shape. I'm going to the Appearance panel, you can see that the shape has a fill but it has no stroke at all. Well, I'm going to add a stroke to it, but first of all, I'm going to need to add this color here to the color swatches. I'm just going to drag it and drop it up here in the color Swatches panel. Now, I can get to it and apply it as my stroke color. The stroke however because it's the same color as the shape, is just not showing at all. But what I want to do is I want to move it away from the outside edge of this shape and take it further away. I'm going to choose Effect, Path, Offset Path. The benefit of the Offset Path tool is it allows me to get this effect where the stroke is actually outside the shape. Now, I don't want it to be quite that far out. I think that I can probably get away with about an eight pixel offset. I'm going to click "Okay", I'm just going to crank the stroke weight up a little bit. Now when we look at the shape you'll see that there's some interesting things going on in the pointy areas on the shape. If you want to experiment with what options you have, you can with the shape still selected, open up the Stroke panel here and experiment with these options for the corner. You'll get different effects according to which you select. You may also get different effects if you align the stroke to the inside, center or outside of the shape. This is effectively just slightly adjusting the path offset. If you need to adjust the offset itself, go back to your Stroke, open it up and you've got an Offset Path option here. You want to click on it, click "Preview", and then just make an adjustment to the setting that you have. I'm actually going to type mine up one and click "Okay". There's another of our retro shapes. 7. Make Retro Shapes Part 6: For our next effect, we're actually going to borrow this shape here. So I'm just going alt-drag a duplicate out of the way so that we can work with this. I'm going to add a small red filled circle to the middle of it, and I'm just going to join these altogether. You will need to make sure for this effect, that you have actually joined these all together into a single shape and that your lines have been expanded from being lines into a rectangle before you do so, otherwise, this effect is not going to work quite the same way. I'm going to again, go to the Ellipse tool. I'm going to drag out an ellipse that partially covers this shape I've just created, and for convenience just so we can see what's going on, I'm just going to fill it with a different color. I'm going back to my layers palette because what I want to do is I want to move the star-shape that we have at the bottom here, all the way out so it's at the very top of the layers palette. So I think this is the star-shape, so I'm just going to move it above the oval. Now I can just move it into position. I can fine tune the look that I've got here. I'm going to select over both shapes, the ellipse and also star-shape and I'm going to use the PathFinder, and this time I want to click on "Exclude". So when I click on "Exclude", something really interesting is going to happen, and what happens is that everywhere that red shape was over the yellow shape, it's now applied as a cut out. So there's actually a hole in this shapes. So if I go and put a rectangle behind it that is filled with this yellow color, let's just put it behind this group shape, we can actually see through it. So there's a really interesting little retro effect created using the Exclude option in the PathFinder. Now, if you're interested in a little bit more of that particular type of effect, I do have a class on SkillShare that covers a range of different effects using similar tools, and I'll put a link to that in the class project area for you. 8. Make Retro Shapes Part 7: For the final shape, we're going to the pen tool and I'm just going to flip my fill and stroke. I'm working with a stroke but no fill. We're just going to click with the pen tool a few times. Click here, click over here. I'm going to hold Shift as I click up here so that this point is immediately above the previous one, and I'm just going to click over about here and press "Escape" to turn off the pen tool. Now I'm going to the selection tool. I'm just going to select over my shape, and I'm going to increase my stroke width. About 30 is going to be a good length for this stroke. I want this line here to have an arrowhead over here, so I'm going to select the polygon tool and then click once. I'm going to do a polygon with radius 50 pixels, but it's only going to have three sides because I want it to be a triangle. I'm going to flip my stroke and fill so I've got a nice sized triangle. Let's just zoom in here. I'm going to get the measuring tool. It shares a toolbar position with the eyedropper tool here. I'm just going to click and drag with this tool along here so that I can work out what angle this line describes. It says here 103.171. I'm going to call it about 103. I'm going to turn that off. I'm going to my triangle and I'm going to choose Object Transform, Rotate. I'm going to rotate this 103 degrees. I'm going to click "Okay" and now I'm just going to flip this with Object Transform, Reflect. Click "Okay." Now this pace will line up pretty near perfectly with the end of my shape. If you ever need to know exactly what angle an element is on, you can always go to the measure tool and just measure out the angle and press "Control" or "Command 0" to zoom back out. I'm going to join these pieces together in a minute, but I'd like to keep a copy of the basic shapes. I'm going to the last palette here and here is my path. I'm just going to make a duplicate of that and turn the back version off. I'm going to select over all of the shapes here. I'll choose Object Expand, so expanding the line into a regular shape. Now I'm going to unite them using the Unite tool here. Let's go to the last palette. Let's pull our hidden path above the other path, and let's make it visible again. I'm actually going to lock down my arrow shape. I'm going to the direct selection tool here. I want to bring this path just in a little bit. So I'm just adjusting the end points on the path so that they start a little way into the shape. Now I'm just going to select away from the shape. I'm going to the Ellipse tool. I'm going to flip my stroke and fill and I want to select this color as my fill. I'm looking for the eyedropper tool. They share a toolbar position. Scrubbing that yellow color. With the Elliptical Marquee Tool, I'm just going to draw out a small circle. My circle is going to fit inside the shape in a minute, so I don't want it to be very big. I'm going to the selection tool and I'm going to Alt-drag a duplicate away. Now I'm going to select over both of these shapes, but nothing else. That's really important, that just these two circles are selected. Now choose Object, Blend, Make. I'm going to double-click on the Blend tool here so that I can adjust the blend. Turn preview on, and I'm going to select specified steps. Right now, I've got about 18. I'm actually just going to click "Okay" at this stage. I have a blend. What my blend is, it's just a series of circles here. I also have a path, which is the path that I just shortened. What I want to do is to put these circles on this path. I'm going to select over both the circles and the path. That's why it was so helpful for me to lock down this bottom shape because it's not being selected. It can't be selected while it's locked down. Now I'm going to choose Object, Blend, Replace Spine. That just places my circles inside my shape. If I want more or less circles, I can double-click on the Blend tool here and click on Preview. Now I can adjust the number of steps. I'll click "Okay". The two shapes here at the beginning and end of the blend are also adjustable. So if you wanted to make your dots a bit smaller, you could do so. You want to click on one until you get it selected. Hold down the Shift key and then click on the second one until you select it. Now choose Object Transform, Transform Each. This will mean that we're going to adjust both of these the exact same amount. I'm going to bring them down to about 90 percent of their current size and click "Preview". I can just check and see how the size looks, and I think that's pretty okay, so I'm going to click "Okay". Then I'm going to press "Escape" to come back out of isolation mode. This has adjusted the shapes and the result is that the entire blend has also been adjusted. Your project for this class, it's going to be to create some or all of these retro shapes yourself and to post an image using those shapes in the class project area. I hope that you've enjoyed this class and that you've learned something about using various tools in Illustrator. This has been a grab bag of experiences this class. I hope that you've learned something here. As you're working through these videos, you will have seen a prompt to recommend this class to others. Please, if you're enjoying the class, give it a thumbs up. These thumbs ups helps me get my classes in front of more people who just like you want to learn more about Illustrator. If you'd like to leave a comment, please do so. I read and respond to all of your comments 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, and I look forward to seeing you in an upcoming episode soon.