Shadow Type in Adobe Illustrator made simple

1. Introduction: Hi, My name is Russell. I'm a freelance designer. I work in and around London for clients large and small. I have almost 10 years of experience working on a variety of projects that range from anything like brand identity word to custom lecturing for big name brands. During this time, I don't have to work efficiently and smart to Craig. How awful striking. Throughout this class, my teacher tips have to stitch on lay average. It's like striking how awful color palettes nail those type combinations and how to add to debt to your work. Well, then usually skills to create your very own impact, please. This past involves collection Skill can be easily applied to other areas of design or lecture from anything like tips on how to lay out lecturing. Creating your very own guidelines to fund selection or even selecting color palette. Create to strike on the work. You learn those handy shortcuts you can use in Illustrator on photo shop by the end of his heart to be able to effectively out a piece of single lecture answer because from combinations know how to create impact. Any concern, directory or design who's added extra details. This class will have just up your game, just finishing and crossing or what 2. How to thumbnail ideas : very quick and easy thing to do what you time. So we just draw our guidelines. No ship it like organized fund. But it will keep you in a frightened not in town will save you. Great. So you go off locks here. No way. We know that our word is hanging. Okay, Quick tip for anything to be re lettering. I was break out the whales into visual blocks. Imagine, like a puzzle number that so I know that four is in Hang two is inning. And in this five in there and that just helps you plan. You're gonna break out 20 comments here, working at the fronts and stuff, you know, spaces and everything that is gonna work out. Great. Let's take it into really fast pace scamps. Maybe something in at an angle will work for us. So you know these the ones we want to highlight and in will be a sub tiny little somewhere there. Three night that that's in terms of prudence can be one, two and three. Let's take it in. Perhaps a competing at an angle Gricar's and hang could be shooting across the page in Could be in a little circles and they and their could follow that going right round Teoh angled. Everything like that is going to straighten. Okay, great. Maybe that's try. Wonder an angle trick. It is going across the dash Thinness or what we see into that form the angles still the same frames. And we just didn't really quickly y staying in town. Yeah, lovely. So we know then that was shades. Could be that this is a nice cross section there different stuff going on. And you imagine the shades to your right cross saying, That's nice. You got my snake to space full of partner that we tell her background that would be kind of become a You know what's really wrong? Just take it into the next stage. We just a little bit more lipstick on it. You good. And this think through the guys do is a bit nicer because I work at the angles. But you were in the district. Take me seeing No. So then I go hand straining that there will be off stairs sort of age once a Martian into there. So it will probably sit in whatever device we use for that says really nice quick, easy way your ideas on age, forgetting coop in pencils in photos, short pencils in Australia, colors forms. If car really clean idea full of craft in Charles, it's a really nice and this is just finalized what we put on page. Then we take this into TV's into the instructor. We look at funds and see what we can take in terms of they are. I think this is really, well, great. 3. How to select a killer colour palette: The color palette is one of the most important parts of a design that creates him that you are able to pick a color combo that really, really pops. Your main aim is to create contrast in your palate and piece of work. Light and dark and color opposites on the color wheel are your best bets equally. Mood boarding colors can really get your inspiration. Gary. From this you can I drop the colors and start to create a really conceptual impact for color palette. Okay, so where do you find color? There's some great resources around, and I think as a designer, you should really be straining myself with printed materials. This is a great book shadow type. It's breeze Philly and Stephen. Helen is a great collection off amazing type from across the globe that they personally and pull together. You came you sites like unspool ash. It's very good for inspiring color palettes, and you could really pull from images using that I drop it or for you and take it into Illustrator or Photoshopped to really great talk. Teoh imagery for mood boards Bless. Look now on a so we go through the page for adobe color. You can see you've got different choices to go for that we go through now, complementary compound shades on and custom, and it's a great tool on. Did you just drag around? This circle here just to play and select jewel colors is really is open ended. You've got the hex colors there, which is amazing to pull from. You can individually, baby the huge of each color you can set different colors is based colors, which is amazing until you want a base around the car and you begin to try out our monochromatic you can even explored. And this is where Adobe color really comes into its own. People cannot blow the color palettes, and it automatically say, Is it from images being uploaded? And it's such a inspirational way to draw color from a community can even see trends, and where that's aligned in the fashion or graphic design or illustration. It's amazing to see how people are using colors in different industries. I'd probably air on the side of caution with this, and you just uses his inspiration, explore and create are gonna be where you can really culture and create those color palettes there strong in your work. Even better, you've got options here to pull out the colors in RGB c m y que HSV or lab, which is such an amazing tool tohave on your fingertips. So I would recommend that the seas This is where you should be creating your call about it because it's so powerful, so strong. Okay, see that in this example, you can see that I have pulled out the type from the title imaging for this car's on. I've pulled out the colors that I used in each individual element, and there's six colors there that range from the background to the outlines of the shadows to the highlights. The low lights. You can see that I have highlighted each area and each different color that I've used in a piece of work. Now let's go on to the next bit where I have pulled those out in just a flat color palette in circles, just so you can see the large contrast in colors. You've got three types of blues, a really strong, vibrant color, a nice compliment, your product to the blues for the shadows. I really like highlight, and that will just pick. How really help? Great impact in your lettering. You can see this in our next bit, where the type explode and you can see how this is being made up into always different layers. And you can see how those colors here really work together to create that impact for peace of letter on when they will go back together. You can see that really does drive home the shape, the form and how that shadowing really works. Hard to make this wording really stand out. Way to start with our colors of selected a nice color palette. Here you can see there's a wide Fareed commoners we've supporting red supporting greens and really nice highlight light color, which is great when we give them hope. These the greens and the pinky huge are far enough away from each other that they're going to stand down, which is perfect. Say a quick note on color management. And maybe you want to select all on use, get rid of everything or these because that's was born. Then you want to grab that one selective drank it in that one selected Drag it in on the same again on this is just a really help you manages, Carlos, that nothing's gonna mess up and you want to go through and slipped them as global. See, on what that will do is, um, Thesis will say your bacon on any bad day. Any client color changes any last minute amends to colors or say perhaps they needed artworks in an hour, anything like that. This will mean that because it's global, you change the color jewels on a preview, and it will change in the thing. So you just need to remember that these now are set as thes colors se means now you wanna just the colors. You're quite happy. We've the hue or anything like that. You can just adjust it and see how quick that was. How amazingly quick. So you can change it to lie Regenerative blue names the dark. You can change it to see em like a it really is endless on your save. So much time on and effort we just streamlined clever actions like this is always gonna save any better time. So it is great to have this obvious leave for those times where you do get those last minute changes. His last minute remains. We all know it happens that this would stop you put in that year. So a really good, handy way of controlling colors and managing within the swatches panel using global tools in Adobe Illustrator. 4. Shadow and light source: readable lights someone that if you don't quite get it right, stands out here. You can see that I've shown the light source for their typographic piece from the title cards. You need to imagine the light beaming down from the top left coming across. Get in the front of the type and bouncing off, casting a shadow on the rights of the type. Imagining the type as a structural living, breathing object really helps when planning the shading on the color. On this next light, you can see three light sources and three letters and how they are all effect differently. You can use this as a reference. When I didn't shave him to your piece, you'll be able to find this in the resource section for his class. When thinking about where the light source will be coming from, you need Teoh also think about at what angle the depth will be shown. You can see here that's using the wrong angle on the wrong debt on the wrong angle of light . Source doesn't make the type pop or stand out Here. You can see three examples of three light sources, but also the angle ation on the death. I think this is a really good example that you can pull from because you can see the light source isn't the only part in the spirit of puzzle for the shadow type. It's also the angle that you're putting the depth of the letters you can really see here. This is the best way to do it, because if you're gonna do lectures from straight above, you'll be silly to have the depth, you know, in a refighting angle, because this way you put all the focus on message that will be the type. 5. Creating 3D type: we have our fun TV that I have presented. Did God color palettes our just for reference Up there on we've got our sketch on the top hand left side. That would be really handy, just of throwback reference to ever get stuck. Now the fun I've used a combination of size is that you really drive. Impact is important. Remember when we were looking at the fund nailing? We've already worked out the hierarchy of the type. This is a huge part in playing and picking with the funds, because this is really important to drive impact. You want the higher in the hierarchy, type in the funds. Teoh be much larger, much more boisterous, really flamboyant on their secondary words like a off if much smaller Andi in a very low profile front. That's how you drive the biggest amount of impact. We fund selection as who we send up our guidelines here, set them up in yellow and we sit enough type here with a large amount of tracking. And you can do this with Option Arrow either direction. If you select the whole word on this will just widen out the track for you. We're gonna take the words. Always a copy. Always have a live type copy on the right side of the art board. Just in case you need it. I'm gonna outline it on. We're gonna share it on, transform it to fit in to match, like our sketch here into the guidelines. No gonna use the blend tool by pressing option command be. You'll see the bottom left there, Mikey strikes. And that's a really quick, far short cup. And then you're just gonna double click when the blend tool and bring up the blend options . We're going to use specified steps. Set that about 300. We just want enough for it to blend into one solid block there and you can see very quickly . We've created a three d effect. Now, you take a bit of time here. Just a work. How the right angle and everything like that. Just with with this shadowing, because that would be important later on, the harder it will be, the further we get along, making those big changes. So decide now on your ankle ation of the shadows and do before I easier using the blend tool, you can blend objects to create and distribute shapes evenly between two objects. You can also blame between two open paths to create a smooth transition between objects were. You can even combine blends of colors and objects to create color transitions in the shape of a particular object. It's a great handy tool, and once you get the hang of it, that could be used a lot in your day to day design as it saves an amazing amount of time. Always remember to use layers in your document in illustrator these days time and allows you flexibility when working with complicated pieces of work. Let's just set up the guidelines here on a separate layer in yellow, Andreas up another layer to work on adding in your design. This way, you'll always be able to talk along on off the guideline layer. Whilst we talked about players, you'll be the most popular person in their design studio issue. Label your files on layers correctly. It leaves a good lasting impression, and being able to select exactly the right layer at the right time ultimately gives you a much cleaner workflow. I've worked a lot of places when you inherit the old designers file and there are 1000 or 100 layers. None of them are labeled organized, and it just really slows you down and leaves a bad impression on that Designs reputation. - Okay , now we're gonna add in the darker shadow almost offset shadow on the three d type. And we're going to do that by copying all our words here, and we're gonna bring him down right down. Teoh the bottom, the bases off the letters. If you imagine him to be a very large structure, object would be at the feet. And then we're going to use the blend tool just to offset this to create offset shadow. - Okay , so I'm not too happy with the color off the base of it in. Just gonna swap it around on added the dupe of rich chirping. Just add a bit of contrast and highlight those keywords that we have. - We've got our blended objects, e we going, Teoh, expand them in the blend options on and we going to use the power. Find a tool, Teoh, Make them into one singular object. Now we have the shadow as one singular object. I want to show you a really clever way off adding in the shadow detail without having to pain station Lee bend and borrow and the shadow onto the type to hear. We've created a clipping mask and we're gonna use that Teoh Hide the shadow in on now, save so much time. Once you get into it and I start to see it being put together, we'll realise just how much of a hand it it this is and how much time it saves from that really annoying, detailed work where you're lying, that pixels, which is fine sometimes. But when you're on a tight deadline or someone's breathing down your neck, this is a really clean way of working that stop. You swear for the bacon You can see here that I'm using her repetitive shapes, tangles. You can see now why I wanted to get my shadow straight, because at this stage in the process, it really does save time and helps you from stressing about angle. Was everything like that here I'm just working out the best way. Teoh, over up right PC is remembering about the light sources that we learned about earlier on in the school share course on and I am claimed the pentacle adjusting it round whether highlights will be placed. Okay, so then we're in a good place. She's gonna look at that in now. This is a good example. If we weren't going to use the clipping last method, this is how we would apply those shadows. All those highlights, Very fiddly process. Got to line up corner to corner is very, very fiddly. A good example when seeing another way that you can achieve the same objective, but it's six times his heart. Now we're gonna add in the highlights onto the type of this will transform our work will be really amazing when she starts to go through it and you can see how much difference it makes. Just having that one step up in development is Yeah, it's something else is really, really good. Just I always add something else to work. Remember, it's always easier to take away than the At T always developed. We work that little bit extra. Step it 1234 of our and you can always take it off. It's much simpler, great to have you were in a good place. I am. We've added in the highlights. You can see the overall impact that is having. - So now we have a final peace or the shadows set up all the highlights put in. How else now, can we, aunt, into our work, these extra special parts and finishing touches that will make our work stand down? 6. Where are we now? : So where are we now? Next week we have our type. You've laid out with the corrects hierarchy in the stamp in the thumbnail in pencil, and then we have taken into illustrates. We've selected those killer phone com manages gonna create a huge impact on. Then we started to work into our color Palais, really applying those colors into the into the peace to really make it stand out on. We've worked into the blend tool to save that time. We've learned those quick tips and tricks with the blunt All that's gonna out a huge amount of time. Angel. Let's move on, Teoh finishing touches. 7. Finishing Touches: So we now have our final piece. All the shadows are set up The highlights of put in How else now can we add in tow our work those finishing touches that really make our work stand out? This is difference between a box standard piece of work Onda standout piece that will really make it pop in the crowd Tip one adding noise to your piece of work This makes it look farm or illustrative. The best way of doing this is taking it into photo shop. If we start here, we can create a really quick noise cover way Gonna create the same size as the canvas As in Illustrator, we're gonna stop solid color, set it to gray Then we go up to filter on, then to noise Then we will play around with the noise setting. You want it fine enough Just be up to see it but not so overbearing that it overtakes the whole piece we just exported here and take it back into illustrator Great! So that's placed their overlays Gonna be best bear with the capacity sere about 45 or so The aim is for someone to notice it, But you don't want it to be the key part off the design. This is just a subtle touch That'll raise your game and raise your peace, making it look really, really polished. We're gonna pull through bits and parts straight through from illustrator directly into photo shop. This way we will be able to keep the placement and keep it really nice and clean. You can see here I've pulled in the outlines on I'm gonna add in a bit, if it in a shadow to the main bit of cream type. Now that that's done, I'm gonna emphasize the shattering even more by creating a solid color layer off gray. And I'm gonna burn using the burnt, all adding some more shadowing just a bit more directional flavor just to create those nice contrasts. A shadow. This is more of a satellite kind of thing, But I really think that this does make a difference when you're comparing a book standard piece of work to a piece of world is really being crafted, and that has a real bit of charm about it. Okay, now I'm just gonna add a few more finishing touches. This will be a bit of a sunburst in the background just to draw attention to the type of some subtle Grady int and masking on the background just again making it really looked considered professional. Thanks so much taking out my class, it really has been a pleasure teaching it on. Put it together for you guys. I would love to see your work and progress your sketches of thumb now's as well as your finished projects. It is as much about the process as it is about the finished final piece. One last thing I'd like to leave you on is that for my experience, I found that a lot of creative directors and clients and even perspective clients really like seeing how you got to that final piece work. Sometimes it's know about that final, polished piece about the path you took to get to that final creative. Your work makes so much more of a powerful connection when you show how you work, how you create your ideas and put it down on paper. Thanks again, guys. I can't wait to see your work in progress sketches and, of course, you're finished projects