True Stories:

How to draw an icon. Minimization process

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.

Read more…

Optimizing Adobe Illustrator: thrusting to the Earth orbital velocity

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.

Read more…

Drawing an icon: Creating and destroying the Earth

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.

Read more…

Cone Gradient in Adobe Illustrator. Episode Three: Happy End

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.

Read more…

The Birth of Venus

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!

Read more…

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

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:

1. Linear gradient
2. …
3. Effects → Warp → …

Can you make out anything? Or not too much?

Read more…

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

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.

Read more…

Pure vector

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.

Read more…

Rasterizing in Adobe Illustrator 10 & CS

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?

Read more…