Tools/Functions Used:

• Rectangle Tool
• Gradient Palette
• Expand Function
• Transform Palette
• Brushes Palette
• Brush Tool and/or Pen Tool

When asking “How do I apply a gradient as a stroke?” you’ll often be told that the solution is as simple as expanding your stroke into a shape (select your path, and use either Object>Expand or Path>Outline Stroke) and then applying your gradient. This is all fine and dandy, unless you expect that your gradient is going to following the curvature of your original stroked path.

Outlined stroke filled with a gradient vs. stroke with gradient brush applied

Our first step is to use the rectangle tool to create a square (hold Shift when using the rectangle tool to constrain the proportions to a square). This square is going to be the “template” for our brush, so the final size of the square is important. In this example, the final size of my square is going to be 10px X 10px. I’ll explain why the size of the square is important in a little bit. For now, I will use a larger square, so that you can see what’s going on.

Use the rectangle tool to draw a square

With our rectangle drawn, we will now select a gradient that we want to create a gradient brush with. For this example, I will be using the Spectrum gradient from the Spectrums Swatch Library (in Illustrator CS4, from the Swatch Palette, Open Swatch Library>Gradients>Spectrum).

Spectrum gradient

You can use this method for any gradient you wish, the steps are the same regardless of your gradient. Once you have chosen a gradient to use, select your square, and:

1. Set the Fill on the square to your desired gradient
2. Set the Stroke on the square to Transparent (No Stroke)

Gradient fill with no stroke

At this point, we want to have our Brushes Palette open, if it is not already open go to View>Brushes (F5 keyboard short cut).

Brush Palette

To create our gradient brush, we are going to select our square and drag it over into the brush palette and specify it as a new Art Brush. However, there are a few steps we have to take before we can do this. If we were to attempt to drag the square into the palette at this point, Illustrator would give us the option to specify our brush as a new Art Brush, but we would then receive the following message.

Gradients cannot be used in an Art Brush!

We cannot convert our square to an Art Brush because it contains a gradient. Fortunately, we can get around this problem and still maintain the appearance of our gradient, by expanding our gradient into individual shapes. To do this, select your square, and from the main menu select Object>Expand to bring up the Expand dialog box. In the Expand dialog box, you need to make sure that “Expand Gradient To” option is set to “Specify: 255 Objects.” The default for the number of objects to expand your gradient to should be 255. What this number specifies is the number of objects/shapes used to create the appearance of our gradient after it has been expanded into a series of objects. The higher you set this number the closer your expanded gradient will appear to its original gradient appearance. However, setting this number too high can cause some serious performance issues, so if you’re going to experiment with altering this value, try to use the lowest number of objects necessary to achieve your desired gradient appearance. (Note, if you select “Expand Gradient To Gradient Mesh” you will get the error message above when trying to create a new Art Brush.)

Expand Dialog Box - Set Expand Gradient To Specify 255 Objects

Now that our gradient has been expanded, we need to make sure that we don’t have any other elements that would prevent our gradient square from being converted to an Art Brush. When we expanded our gradient, Illustrator created a Clipping Mask around our object. We need to remove this before we can create our Art Brush. With our gradient square still selected, from the main menu select Object>Clipping Mask>Release (Ctrl-Alt-7 keyboard short cut).

Release the clipping mask

Once the clipping mask is released, it might appear as if your square has changed to a solid fill color, as seen in the image below.

Square after clipping mask is released

Fear not, what you’re seeing the selection highlights of all of the shapes that our expanded gradient are made up of. There are so many of them that when the square is selected, the highlight color for the layer that our square is on, appears as a solid color. If you deselect the object, you will see that all of our gradient elements are still there just as they were before we released the clipping mask.

Earlier, I said the size of our square was going to come into play. The reason that the size of the square is important is that the size of the square when we drag it into the brush palette will determine the size of our brush when set at 1pt. When we set up are Art Brush, we can specify the width as a percentage of our original square, but to save us from calculating a percentage width (in the event that you have some arbitrary values for height and width), we will go ahead and set our square to the width that we want our brush to be at 1pt. To do this, we select our square and set the height and width to 10px using the Transform Palette, Widow>Transform (Shift-F8 keyboard short cut).

Set the Width and Height to 10px with the Transform Palette

Now, we’re finally ready to drag our square to the Brushes Palette. Click on the square and hold the mouse-button down and drag it over to your Brushes Palette. When you see a “+” symbol next to your mouse pointer you can release the mouse button (see below).

Drag the "gradient square" to the Brushes Palette

When you release the mouse button, the New Brush dialog box will appear. Select “New Art Brush” from the options and click “OK.”

New Brush dialog box

The Art Brush Options dialog box will automatically pop-up after you click “OK” on the New Brush dialog box. We can name our brush here. I’ve chosen to name my brush “Spectrum Brush” for this example. You’ll notice an option for “Width,” as well. We can leave this at 100%, since we already set our brush width to 10px when we used the Transform Palette. Leave the “Proportional” option unchecked. What it does is essentially sets the width of your brush stroke equal to the length of your stroke, and this isn’t really what we’re after with this particular brush. For the “Direction” option, select the icon that looks like an “up arrow.” This is the “Stroke from bottom to top” option (see image below for examples of each Direction option). We will leave the flip and colorization options at the default settings (none) for this brush.

Art Brush Options dialog box

Art Brush Direction examples

Once you’ve got your options selected in the Art Brush Options dialog box, click “OK,” and your new “gradient brush” will appear in the Brushes Palette! You can delete the gradient square that we used to create our brush at this point. The put your new brush into action, click on it in the Brushes Palette if it is not already selected and then select the Brush Tool or Pen Tool to try it out! You can also apply this brush to shapes created with the Shape Tools by selecting a shape and then click on the brush in the Brushes Palette. It probably won’t take you long to notice some oddities in these kinds of brushes. Sharp corners and tight curves tend not to work so well with a “gradient brush.”

When and when not to use this kind of brush

Keep in mind, since these brushes are comprised of expanded gradients, excessive use of them in a document will likely bog down Illustrator. Remember, we used 255 objects to create the appearance of the spectrum gradient, so there is “a lot going on” when we use this brush, as compared to more simple brushes. Have fun with them, but don’t overuse them to the point that Illustrator decides to takes a long nap on you, when you’re in the middle of a project that you haven’t saved for a while.

RSS Icon created in
Adobe Illustrator

This is second part of the “Creating an RSS icon” tutorial. In Part 1, we used the basic Shape Tools along with the Pathfinder – Divide option to create an “outline” of an RSS icon. This tutorial will focus on using strokes and fills to bring some color to our RSS icon.

(Note: “Cmd” should be substituted for any instance of “Ctrl” for Mac users.)

Tools used:

• Selection Tool
• Swatch Palette
• Gradient Palette
• Appearance Palette
• Stroke Palette

We’ll start with the RSS icon that we created in Part 1. Open your file from Part 1 or  download the RSS icon file (.AI). Once you have the file open, you should have an illustration that looks similar to the image below. Your active “Fill” at this point should be “Empty” (or transparent) and your active “Stroke” should be black. Fills are colors or gradients that we “fill” our shapes with, while Strokes are the colors applied to the paths (or “outlines”) that bound our shapes. The active Fill is indicated in the main toolbar as the solid rectangle at the bottom of the toolbar, while the active Stroke is indicated by the hollow rectangle next to the active Fill icon. Whichever icon appears “on top” is activated and can be changed by selecting a new color either in the Swatch Palette or by using the Eyedropper Tool (not covered in this tutorial). So if the Fill icon (solid rectangle) is on top of the Stroke icon (hollow rectangle) selecting a new color will modify the Fill color and vice-versa. The small rounded line segment with arrow heads at each end next to the Fill and Stroke icon will change the Fill color to the current Stroke color and vice-versa.

RSS icon outline with black stroke and no fill

Our first step is going to be to set up some Color Swatches for our icon. To make things easier, we’re going to clear our Swatch Palette of any unused color swatches. If your Swatch Palette is not visible, activate it through Window>Swatches. Click the menu button at the upper-right of the Swatch Palette (see image below) to bring up its menu options. Click on “Select Unused Swatches” to select all the swatches in your current palette that are not in use.

Select unused swatches.

With your unused swatches selected, click on the “Delete” icon (the small trashcan at the bottom-right) on the Swatch Palette. You should now have a “cleaned-up” Swatch Palette to work with (black and white swatch, along withe Registration swatch, should be the only swatches remaining in your Swatch Palette. Next, we are going to add the color swatches which will use on our RSS icon. Start by clicking on the “New Swatch” icon on the Swatch Palette (see below).

Add a new swatch

Clicking the New Swatch icon will bring up the New Swatch dialog box.  All of our swatches will use Color Type: Process Color and Color Mode: RGB. You can leave the Global checkbox unchecked, as well. We will name our first swatch “RSS_Dark_Fill” and it will have values of R: 212; G: 60; B: 39.

New Swatch Dialog Box - RSS_Dark_Fill

When you have the values entered, click “OK” and your new swatch will appear in the Swatch Palette. Repeat this process for the following swatches:

• RSS_Light_Fill (R: 245; G: 130; B: 4)
• RSS_Outer_Stroke (R: 193; G: 63; B: 39)
• RSS_Inner_Stroke (R:243; G: 133; B: 54)

Once you have added these swatches, your Swatch Palette should look similar to the image below.

Swatch Palette with RSS color swatches

Next, we want to create a Gradient Swatch using some of the color swatches that we just created. Click on the Gradient Palette (Window>Gradient or Ctrl-F9). To make the gradient active click on the Gradient Swatch in the upper-right (see image below).

Click the gradient swatch to make the gradient active

This should bring up the Color Stops on the current gradient beneath the Color Ramp of the Gradient Slider in the middle of the palette. The gradient Type should be Linear for this gradient.

Gradient Palette with 2 color stop gradient

Move your cursor underneath the color ramp of the Gradient Slider, and you should notice that a small “+” symbol will appear next to the cursor arrow when you are not directly over a color stop. Click your mouse button when the “+” icon is visible next to your cursor/mouse pointer to add a new color stop.  You sould now have three color stops (from left to right: white, grey, black).  Click on the the middle color stop (grey). Values should appear for Opacity and Location. We are going to keep the Opacity values at 100% for all three of our color stops. However, we want to set the Location value for our middle color stop to 50%. This will place the color stop perfectly centered between the two end color stops.

Set the Location of the middle color stop to 50%

Now, we are going to apply two of the color swatches we created earlier to our gradient. To do this we simply double-click on the color-stop that we want to apply a color to. Double-clicking a color stop will bring up a Color Stop Swatch Palette, which we can select our color stop color from.

Double-click color stop and select a color swatch from the palette

For both end color swatches (the white and black color stops), we are going select RSS_Dark_Fill. For the middle swatch, we are going to use RSS_Light_Fill. After you have assigned these colors to your color stops, your gradient palette should look like the image below.

Gradient Palette - RSS Icon Gradient

Our gradient is now defined, and should appear as the Active Fill in our main toolbar.

Active Fill = our new gradient

We can now add this gradient as a swatch to our Swatch Palette. Click the “New Swatch” icon in the main Swatch Palette to bring up the New Swatch dialog box and name the new swatch, “RSS Gradient.”

New Swatch - RSS Gradient

We now have all of the swatches we need to start adding color to our RSS icon!

Swatch Palette with RSS Gradient Swatch added

Using the Selection Tool (black arrow in the upper-left corner of the main toolbar or keyboard shortcut V) we are going to select our rounded rectangle, by clicking on the path/edge of the shape.

Use the Selection Tool to select the rounded rectangle

Making sure that the Fill icon is active (in front of the Stroke icon), click on the RSS Gradient swatch in the Swatch Palette to fill the rounded rectangle with the gradient.

Gradient-filled rounded rectangle

Our gradient should now fill the rounded rectangle, but we want the gradient to be at a -45° angle. Currently, it is positioned at 90 °. We can modify this value of the angle in the Gradient Palette.

Set the angle of the gradient in the Gradient Palette

Your rounded rectangle should now look like the image below. (Note: The Gradient Tool is also another way to apply gradient fills and adjust gradient angles, but it is outside the scope of this tutorial, so I will save it for another day.)

Rounded rectangle with gradient at -45° angle

Next we will fill the remaining three objects with white. First select the top-most object using the Selection Tool, by clicking on the edge/path of the object.

Select the upper-most curved object using the Selection Tool

With the upper-most curved object selected, hold Shift in, and select the remaining two unfilled objects by clicking on their edges/paths. Hold Shift down until you have all three objects selected. We do not want to use the marquee selection method that we used in Part 1 for multiple selection. Since the rounded rectangle is now filled, using the marquee selection method will select the rounded rectangle, as well, if the marquee selects any part of the stroke OR fill of the shape. This is why we use the method of holding down Shift and select each object by clicking on its path. (If you accidentally, select the rounded rectangle also, you can deselect it by clicking it, as long as you hold Shift down while doing so.)

Multiple objects selected using the Selection Tool while holding Shift

When you have all three objects simultaneously selected, click on the white swatch in the Swatch Palette to fill these objects with white.

Shapes with white fill color

You’ll notice that all of our shapes still have a black outline or Stroke. For our white-filled shapes, we don’t want a stroke of any kind, so with all three shapes still selected (if you accidentally deselected them, just follow the same method for multiple selections we just used) now click on the Stroke icon on the main toolbar to bring it in front of the Fill icon and make the Stroke active. You can set the stroke to “None” by clicking the small white square with the red line through it in the row of small squares underneath the Fill and Stroke icons on the main toolbar (see image below).

Activate Stroke and set it to None

Once you have set the stroke of our three white shapes to None, you should have the following illustration.

Objects filled with white and Stroke set to None

We’re almost there, but we still have a few steps to go, and another palette to introduce. Our rounded rectangle is not quite finished. We currently have a black stroke with a weight of 1pt. We need to add some color to the border of our rounded rectangle. Use the Selection Tool to select our rounded rectangle (remember that you can click on either the stroke/edge or the fill to select it, now). Stroke should still be activated (the Stroke icon should still be above Fill icon on the toolbar), so we can select a new color for the stroke of the rounded rectangle by clicking on one of our swatches in the Swatch Palette. We’re going to select RSS_Outer_Stroke for our stroke color.

Select RSS_Outer_Stroke as our rounded rectangle stroke color

We’re getting close, but our final illustration needs something more. For our final illustration, we actually want to have two different colored strokes surrounding our rounded rectangle. We’re going to achieve this through the use of the Appearance Palette (Window>Appearance or keyboard shortcut Shift-F6). Our first step is going to be to increase the weight of our current stroke from 1pt to 20pt. Making sure that our rounded rectangle is still selected, click on the row in the Appearance Palette labeled Stroke, where it currently reads 1pt, and change the value to 20pt.

Set the stroke weight to 20pt in the Appearance Palette

Next, we want to set our stroke to be aligned to the outside of our shape (the default for Illustrator is to align the stroke to the center of path). To do this we will click on the word “Stroke” in the Appearance Palette to bring up the Stroke options menu, and click on the Align Stroke to Outside icon. (See image below.)

Align stroke to outside

Now, we want to duplicate our existing stroke. Making sure that the Stroke row is still selected in the Appearance Palette, click on the Duplicate Selected Item icon. (See image below.)

Click the Duplicate Selected Item icon to create a copy of the stroek

You should now see two rows listed as Stroke in the Appearance Palette. Using the methods we used on the first stroke, we want to set a new stroke color for our duplicate stroke (the one at the top of the list in the Appearance Palette). Click on the stroke color to bring up the Stroke Color Palette and select RSS_Inner_Stroke. Also, change the stroke weight from 20pt to 10pt (See image below.)

Set second stroke color to RSS_Inner_Stroke

By setting our stroke to be aligned to the outside and setting weight of the stroke on top to 10pt, we now can see the remaining uncovered 10pt “width” (20pt of the bottom stroke minus the 10pt stroke on top of it) of the bottom stroke. Your appearance palette should now look like this.

And more importantly, you should now have a final illustration that looks like this.

Final RSS Icon illustration

Congratulations! You just created a fully-scalable, vector-based RSS icon.