Adobe illustrator Lesson Objectives To familiarise yourselves with the illustrator interface To use symbols and basic shapes to create a logo All students will use vector tools to make a logo Most students will rebrand an existing company logo Some students will rebrand an existing company logo and make realistic improvements The illustrator interface Open Adobe Illustrator. Go to FILE>NEW Select Print under New Document Profile Size: A4. Orientation: Landscape The illustrator interface Is very similar to Photoshop. Ensure you have the essential panel showing Some of the icons on the left you should already recognise, others will be brand new in illustrator Create a designer logo Your first task is to create an identical logo to this one. Later you will have chance to create your own Task 1: Creating a gradient rectangle Use the rectangle tool to draw a rectangle on your page This is the thickness of the line This is the type of line that is drawn This is the outside line colour This is the fill colour Colours You can choose colours two ways. Select the inner or outer colour at the top left of the page Or for more options select the colour options on the right hand side options Gradients Rather than having block colour you can select gradients. There is a gradient panel on the right hand side for you to make your selections On the left toolbar there is also a gradient option. This will add a line to your shape which you can move around and change the direction or your gradient You should now have a rectangle filled with a gradient of your choice Task 2: Creating compound shapes You can create additional shapes. Click and hold on the rectangle and youll see other shapes appear. Click on the star. Click once on the canvas and options will appear You should now have something like this Combining shapes We dont want there to be 4 separate shapes, so we need to join them together. Go to WINDOW>PATHFINDER We want to unite the shapes together, however experiment with what the other 4 tools do you may want to use these at some point Neatening up the edges You may find that there are some uneven edges that need neatening up. Zoom into your image and select the Direct Selection arrow You will notice that there are points at every corner, you can now drag these around and even them up Adding symbols There are many symbols available to you to add to your logo. The symbols menu can be found on the right (it looks like a club) Additional symbols can be found in the symbol library The ones we will be using are under Regal Vector pack Add symbols to create the following look Dont forget to use the layers panel to organise which symbols are in front of others! Editing Symbols To edit the colour or shape of a symbol you need to double click it. You then get the options at the top of the page If you edit a symbol, it will edit every other identical symbol on your page You can also edit symbols using the effects tab at the top Adding text Use the text tool as you would in Photoshop. All of the font and size options appear at the top of the page. Adjusting Text At the top of your screen is an option to distort text, and make it follow a path. Click this and choose the Rise option to make it look like its following the ribbon Lets have a look at what youve done Rebranding a logo Choose an existing logo of a company that you think should be re-branded. Try not to choose a company logo that you really like youll find it hard to improve! Use the skills you have learnt to make a new logo for the company. Be prepared to justify why yours is better than theirs! Ensure you used the tools that we have used compound shapes, symbols, gradients Extension: On your illustrator page include a before and after image. Label your new brand logo with reasons why you think yours is an improvement. Justify your answers!