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.
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