Category Archives: Tools & Tips

Quick Tip: Create a Modern Volume Bar with Adobe Illustrator

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In the following steps you will learn how to create a simple volume bar. It’s a pretty simple Tutorial that will introduce you to the basic tools, effect and techniques used in Adobe Illustrator. You will start with a simple rectangle and circle then using multiple fills, strokes and several simple effects along with some nice blending and masking techniques you will create your own volume bar.

Create a Sparkly Female Portrait in Illustrator

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In this step-by-step Tutorial you will learn how to create a sparkly female portrait through playing with transparency and overlapping vector shapes. In this Tutorial you’ll also learn to experiment with colors and just letting go of your creativity. Let’s get started!

Quick Tip: How to Create a Love Heart Greeting Card for Valentine’s Day

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On Valentine’s Day, a holiday of people who are in love, everyone gives greeting cards to each other. This day is a good opportunity to show your feelings with an unusual gift. I’ll tell you how to create a vector-card for this holiday of love. This artwork was created by my student Eugene Nikandrov.

Quick Tip: How to Create a Blueprint Illustration

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Have you always wanted to be an architect, but really just because you want to show people cool blueprints? Well‚ neither has Ryan, but he’ll certainly show you how to create a blueprint illustration in Adobe Illustrator. It all starts with a square filled with a gradient, and demonstrates techniques that will help you create almost any type of document.

Quick Tip: How to Create Typographic Snowflakes

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In this Tutorial you will learn how to create a series of different snowflakes from letters. To achieve this effect you will use the Transform Effect on a single letter. You will easily be able to create a series of individual snowflakes, taking advantage of editable type and the variety of letters in the alphabet.

Quick Tip: How to Create a Quick and Easy Diagonal Pattern

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In this Tutorial you will learn how to easily create a diagonal pattern in Adobe Illustrator. Creating seamless patterns is a challenge in itself, but it is even harder if the pattern is supposed to be at an angle. But there is an easy trick to do so by creating a simple straight pattern first.

Illustrator’s Type Tool: A Comprehensive Introduction

Type is an essential part of Illustrator; whether you’re desktop publishing, designing logos, or using type for image building, you’ll be reaching for the Type Tool. This guide comprehensively covers the essentials of what is a huge amount of Illustrator functionality, which is type.

Quick Tip: How to Evenly Distribute Different Size Objects along a Path in Adobe Illustrator

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In this Quick Tip we will use the Art Brushes and the Blend Tool to evenly distribute different sized objects along a path in Adobe Illustrator. I’m sure that techniques described here will make you look at the well-known tools and their properties in a different way. This technique was developed by my friend Iaroslav Yemz.

Quick Tip: How to Create a Watercolor Background Using Adobe Illustrator

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In this Tutorial we will learn how to create Watercolor Background using a Gradient Mesh, tools of deformation and Blending Modes. The techniques which are described here allow the creation of complex textural backgrounds in a simple and effective way.