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

This will be a simple Illustrator tutorial on how to design a basic RSS icon. Part 1 will only deal with creating the shapes (paths) needed for the icon. This tutorial is intended for Adobe Illustrator “beginners.”

Tools Used:

• Guides
• Rectangle Tool
• Rounded Rectangle Tool
• Ellipse Tool
• Pathfinder – Divide

Start by creating a new document in Illustrator. Since this type of icon is typically used for web applications, we will use RGB color mode. The dimensions of the document should be 600px by 600 px. (If you are using CS4, we will only be using 1 artboard.)

Now, that you have created a new document, make sure you have your Rulers visible. If they are not visible, you can turn them on using View>Show Rulers or with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-R (substitute Cmd for Ctrl on Mac).

We are going to use Layer 1 for our guides, so double-click on Layer 1 in the Layers palette to bring up the Layer dialog box and name this layer “Guides.”

Layer options

Next we will set up our guides. For this step, make sure that “Lock Guides” is unchecked (View>Guides>Lock Guides or Alt-Ctrl-; ). A new guide can be created by clicking on the rulers at the top (for horizontal guides) or left (for vertical guides) of the page and then dragging the mouse across the artboard. The guide will be set at the position at which you release the mouse button. As long as you have “Lock Guides” turned off, you will be able to select your Guides with the Selection Tool (or Direct Selection Tool). When a guide is selected you can set the x and y positions of the guide either using the x and y value boxes on the Control toolbar (at the top of your screen, under the main menu) or by using the Transform Palette (Window>Transform or Shift+F8).

Setting Guide Position

We will be creating Guides using this method at the following values.

• x=25px  y=0px
• x=575px  y=0px
• x=0px  y=25px
• x=0px  y=575px
• x=175px  y=0px
• x=0px  y=175px
• x=125px  y=0px
• x=0px  y=125px

(note: The zero x-values for horizontal guides, and zero y-values for vertical guides are done for illustrative purposes. These values are actually arbitrary given the nature of guides.)

Once you have your guides set, your artboard should look something like this.

Guide Setup

Now that our guides are set, we can go ahead and turn on the “Lock Guides” option. Next, we will add a new layer by clicking on the “New Layer” icon in the Layers Palette. Double-click this layer to bring up the Layer Options and name it “Artwork.” We will be creating the paths for our RSS symbol on this layer.

Add a new layer and name it "Artwork"

Now we’re ready to start creating our paths. We’re going to start out with the the Rounded Rectangle Tool. The first thing we want to do is set a stroke color for our path, so that we can see what we’re creating. I’m going to select black as the stroke color, and keep the fill color empty (transparent), since we are really only just going to be drawing paths for this exercise. (See image below) We’ll get into fills, gradients, and stroke in Part II. After you set your stroke color to black, click on the Shape Tool icon in the toolbar. The Rectangle Tool is typically the default Shape Tool, but we want to use the Rounded Rectangle Tool. Anytime a shape tool other than the one you want to use appears as the Shape Tool (for example, a rectangle or another shape is there instead) click on that shape and hold down the mouse button and more shape options will appear.

Selecting the Rounded Rectangle Tool

Before we start drawing paths, we want to make sure that “Smart Guides” are turned on (View>Smart Guides or Ctrl-U). Smart Guides will facilitate positioning are objects in relation to the guides we created in our Guide layer.

With the Rounded Rectangle Tool selected click and release the mouse button anywhere on the artboard. This should cause the Rounded Rectangle Dialog box to pop-up where we can enter Width, Height, and Corner Radius values for our rounded rectangle shape. The rounded rectangle that we are going to create will have the following values.

• width=550px
• height=550px
• corner radius=20px

Enter these values into the Rounded Rectangle Dialog box and click “OK.”

Rounded Rectangle Dialog Box

You should now have a rounded rectangle somewhere on your artboard (depending upon where you clicked and release the mouse prior to the Rounded Rectangle dialog box appearing). We are now going to select the Selection Tool to position our rectangle with each of the four edges aligned to the guides we set at x=25px, y=0px; x=575px, y=0px; x=0px, y=25px; and x=0px, y=575px. The Selection Tool is the black arrow in the upper-left corner of the Illustrator Toolbar (keyboard shortcut V). With the Selection Tool click on any edge of the rounded rectangle (but NOT on one of the vertices/corners, see image below) and hold the mouse button down. You can now the drag the rectangle to any position on the artboard. Since we have Smart Guides enabled, you should notice that while you’re dragging the shape around, it will “snap” into position whenever an edge approaches one of your guides. Drag the rounded rectangle so that the edges approach the guides that we are trying to align to until it “snaps” into our desired position.

Positioning rounded rectangle with Selection Tool using Smart Guides

Once you have positioned the rounded rectangle, your artboard should look like this…

Positioned rounded rectangle

Next, we are going to use the Ellipse Tool to create a circle. The Ellipse Tool can be activated the same way we activated the Rounded Rectangle Tool. Click on the Shape Tool icon in the toolbar (which is currently the Rounded Rectangle Tool) and hold the mouse button down until the shape option pop up. Now, select the Ellipse Tool (the Ellipse Tool can also quickly be selected with the keyboard shortcut L).

With the Ellipse Tool selected, move your cursor over the intersection of the guides positioned at x=175 and y=175. Hold down the “Alt” key and click and release the mouse button. Holding down the “Alt” key causes the point at which we click the mouse button to be the center point of the ellipse/circle.

Create a circle center at x=175px and y=175px with the Ellipse Tool

Once you release the mouse button the Ellipse dialog box will appear, and you can enter width and height values for your ellipse. We will be using values of 100px for both width and height.

Ellipse Dialog Box

Note: While clicking and releasing the mouse button causes the Ellipse dialog box to appear, holding the mouse button down and dragging the mouse allows you to set the width and height of the mouse based on how far you drag the mouse from where you first clicked the mouse button. Releasing the mouse button will set your ellipse. Feel free to experiment with this technique, as well. For precise sizes, like we are using in this example, using the dialog box makes things easier. This click and drag technique works across the various different Shape Tools in Illustrator.

Enter 100px in for each value in the Ellipse Dialog Box and click “OK.” You should end up with the result below.

Resultant Circle

Next, we will be using the Rectangle Tool. It can be found in the same spot on the toolbar as the Ellipse Tool and the Rounded Rectangle Tool, by clicking and holding the mouse button over the Ellipse Tool until the Shape options pop-up appears or by using the keyboard short-cut M.

With the Rectangle Tool selected click and release anywhere on the artboard to bring up the Rectangle Tool dialog box. This will be very similar to the method we used for creating our rounded rectangle. Enter values of 375px for both width and height in the Rectangle dialog box and click “OK.”

You should now have a 375px x 375 px rectangle on your artboard. We are now going to select the Selection Tool to position our rectangle with the bottom-left corner at the intersection of the guides at x=125px and y=125px. Since we have Smart Guides enabled, you should notice that while you’re dragging the shape around, it will “snap” into position whenever an edge approaches one of your guides. Drag the rectangle so that the bottom-right corner approaches the intersection of the guides at x=125px and y=125px until it “snaps” into place. Once you have positioned the rectangle, you should have a resultant image that looks like this.

Positioning the rectangle

Now, that we’ve gone through the Rounded Rectangle Tool, the Ellipse Tool, the Rectangle Tool, and how to position objects with the Selection Tool. I’m going to pick up the pace a little bit. Next, we will be drawing 4 circles using the same method we used with the Ellipse Tool to draw our first circle. Our four circles will have the following dimensions:

1. 350px x 350px
2. 500px x 500px
3. 600px x 600px
4. 750px x 750px

Each circle will be centered at the intersection of the guides at x=125px and y=125px (the same position as the lower-left corner of our rectangle). Select the Ellipse Tool in the same manner you did before. Since we know we want each circle to be centered at a specific point, we will again hold the “Alt” key down and click and release the mouse button at the point (x=125px and y=125px) we want the circle to be centered upon. Enter each set of values above for each respective circle. You should end up with the following result.

Resulting Four Circles

You’ll notice that your circles are overflowing off the artboard. Don’t worry about this, as we are about to take care of any overflowing objects. Our next step is to simultaneously select the four circles that we just drew along with our rectangle. Select the Selection Tool, click and hold the mouse button and drag the cursor to create a selection marquee (see image below). With the Selection Tool, any shape that is intersected by the selection marquee will be selected.

Selecting Multiple Objects with the Selection Tool

With all four circles and our rectangle selected, we are now going to use Illustrator’s Pathfinder Tool (Window>Pathfinder or Shift-Ctrl-F9). We will be using the Divide option in the Pathfinder palette. In Illustrator CS4, Pathfinder seems to “Expand” compound shapes by default, but I believe older versions of Illustrator used to require holding down the “Alt” key while clicking the Pathfinder option. (This may vary depending on your version.) Click the “Divide” option to divide intersecting paths into separate shapes.

Using the Pathfinder Divide option (Expand compound shapes)

With our divided shapes still selected, we now want to use the Ungroup (Object>Ungroup or Shift-Ctrl-G) command to ungroup the separate shapes. We can also “turn off” or “hide” our Guide layer at this point, because we no longer need to use the guides we created. In the Layer Palette click on the icon that looks like an eye next to the layer named Guide. This will turn the visibility off for this layer, so that our layers are hidden. You can toggle the visibility of any layer on or off by this method.

Toggle Guide layer visibility off to hide the Guide layer.

After we have ungrouped the divided shapes, we can now select each one individually, by clicking on an “edge” or path with the Selection Tool, and delete the shapes we do not need. Selected objects can be deleted by hitting the “Delete” key.

First we will select the objects that are overflowing off the artboard.

Select and Delete Unwanted Shapes

Deleting the objects overflowing off the artboard should give you the following resultant.

Resultant after deleting overflowing objects

Using the images below as guidelines, delete the remaining three unwanted shapes. I have used the Selection Tool in the example images to create a selection marquee around part of each unwanted shape to give you a guideline for what shapes should be deleted.

Select and delete the remaining upper-right corner of the rectangle

Select and delete the "middle" ring fragment

Select and delete the remaing bottom-left corner of the rectangle

If you deleted the correct unwanted shapes, you should now have the shapes for an RSS symbol!

RSS icon outlines

Part 2 of this tutorial will walk-through applying stroke and gradient fills to our shape to achieve this…

RSS icon color

Stay tuned for Part 2!