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How to draw recolorable icons

Denis Kortunov, 18 June 2009 Comments (0)

Adobe Illustrator Icon design Master-class

What is a recolorable icon? It is a picture which is capable of changing its color, hence is the world recolorable. There are several ways of getting there. I will tell you about a simple technique that we used while developing Iconza. In essence it’s a web application that provides for changing colors of icons followed by generating the required files.

Five reasons for migrating to the new Illustrator CS4

Dmitri Joukov, 13 May 2009 Comments (2)

Adobe Illustrator Reviews Tools

All new stuff is extremely lucrative: it lures a feeling of novelty and freshness. I sincerely believe that a newer version is always better than the previous one. But there is one software package that undermines my life views. I am talking about Adobe Illustrator. It gained so many useless functions that operational mistakes have become too easy to see. It all lasted for six passed years. Here is an appropriate time for a short sermon.

How to draw an icon. Minimization process

Olesya Kozlova, 25 June 2008 Comments (2)

Adobe Illustrator Icon design Master-class

So get your magnifying glasses handy — we continue! After long and feisty arguments (do not worry — no blasters involved) we have 3 approved icons sized 64×64. Further starts the work that requires attention and patience but its end result will be seen by the Alien Invaders much more often (as it happens in the process of evolution they did not enlarge the screens but worked on improving their eyesight). Now we will grab your attention with the proper method of drawing small icons.

Optimizing Adobe Illustrator: thrusting to the Earth orbital velocity

Dmitri Joukov, 21 August 2007 Comments (2)

Adobe Illustrator

I have once expressed my regrets about the quality of Adobe Illustrator as a software package. The speed at which this beauty eats up the system resources is mind boggling! Drawing the first icon you are pleased to learn how fast it happens. But gradually with each new layer (object, raster or vector effect…) Illustrator slows downs and shifts into the idling mode. Since in the very beginning you do not mention it, later you hope that the reboot will “fix the problem”. However things just get worse.

Drawing an icon: Creating and destroying the Earth

Eugene Artsebasov, 31 July 2007 Comments (0)

Adobe Illustrator Icon design Master-class

Last time we finished off with sending sketches to the Invaders corrected and refined according to their comments. The invaders had a lot of discussions and tentacle waving. While they were killing the time all of their Gigantic Assault Squids contracted the Space Pox and died. Oops! There goes the bio-weaponry. The good old methods proved to be more reliable. So the decision was made to invade planets using flying saucers with powerful blasters like in good old times.

While the invaders still have their saucers up and flying, we decided to draw the Earth invasion icon first.

Cone Gradient in Adobe Illustrator. Episode Three: Happy End

Dmitri Joukov, 28 March 2007 Comments (2)

Adobe Illustrator Master-class

Cone Gradient in Adobe Illustrator You still can produce a normal cone gradient in our beloved Illustrator. This process was uncovered in konischer-verlauf.zip file with a description in German, and, I believe, many of you have already downloaded and thoroughly studied it. In general my note repeats all of what’s contained in this file, however, in English and with a few extra comments to clear up on things.

The Birth of Venus

Dmitri Joukov, 25 July 2006 Comments (1)

Adobe Illustrator

The birth of Venus from one of the first splash screens of Adobe Illustrator It is a must for every designer to know what Google Image Search is for. It has a secure place in my top ten of the most frequently visited web sites, alongside with LiveJournal and our Basecamp. All the time you have to be looking for metaphors for your icons. Or to be looking how the next secateur looks like. Sometimes you feel the need to give your eyes a feast of looking at a masterpiece of the world art!

Cone Gradient in Adobe Illustrator. Episode Two: The Truth Is Out There

Dmitri Joukov, 26 April 2006 Comments (4)

Adobe Illustrator Master-class

Last week I promised to tell you how to make the right cone gradient in Adobe Illustrator. I must keep my word, and I have nothing but to reveal this secret on the example of the same compact disc.

First we’ll have a little brainstorm. I’ll give you a couple of clues and you try to make that cone gradient by yourselves. If you are lucky you can save your time and skip reading this article. Do here we go with the clues:

Linear gradient
…
Effects → Warp → …

Can you make out anything? Or not too much?

Cone Gradient in Adobe Illustrator. Episode One: A False Trail

Dmitri Joukov, 18 April 2006 Comments (2)

Adobe Illustrator Master-class

Angel (cone) gradient in Adobe Photoshop Once upon a time there was a conversation about the various opportunities, advantages and disadvantages of vector-based drawing programs, and it was then that Yegor said, a hint of sadness to his voice, “I wish we had some cone gradient at hand, like we do in Corel Draw”. To which I had a delicate question, “Ah, why would you need the cone gradient?” I’ve been feeling uneasy about this question for many years. Who would ever need such a trite thing as the cone gradient? Yegor said, dreamily, “It’s so good when it comes to drawing compact discs!”

Our professional specifics sometimes requires that we draw a wide range of everyday life objects, CDs included. It is true that creating a CD icon is a painstaking process over and over again. How good it would be, had we an opportunity to take two circles, cut one of them from the center of another and apply the cone gradient to the object. Tempting, is it not?

Everyone knows, though, that Adobe Illustrator does not allow you create those cone gradients. How should we draw this CD in Adobe Illustrator then? All right, my beloved reader, I hope you are ready! If need be for preparation, I would recommend reading my article “Pure Vector”. Don’t forget to turn on the Scale Strokes & Effects option, it’s the last time I remind you about it.

Pure vector

Dmitri Joukov, 6 March 2006 Comments (1)

Adobe Illustrator Master-class

Many of you are likely to be using such bitmap effects as Blur and Feather to get nice highlights and shadows. It would be good, but if you were to rasterize such a picture in high resolution you would either have to pre-set the high resolution of the bitmap effects or to enlarge the picture itself in the Adobe Illustrator. Below are some simple tricks to allow you get rid of all that fuss and create modern nice scalable icons (and not only the icons) without using bitmap effects.

Rasterizing in Adobe Illustrator 10 & CS

Yegor Gilyov, 4 November 2004 Comments (0)

Adobe Illustrator Icon design Master-class

Many a stumbling block is there on the way of a patient icon designer. Some you jump, some you push away but still once you stumble. The question “how to make a tiny nice picture — an icon — from a big nice picture?” is in the first lines on the top problem list. In other words, how do you make a raster icon out of a vector-based picture without the loss of clarity and sharpness of the image?