7 GOLDEN RULES For Icon Design *MUST KNOW*

today seven golden rules that you must keep in mind when designing icons in Illustrator what is that people welcome back to Satori graphics the Hema graphics and content right here on YouTube the first golden rule in today's video icon design is the preview bound setting which is essential for web-based projects but also really helpful for icon design too so to demonstrate I can press M for the rectangle tool and then click the artboards I then just manually type in the values of 200 by 200 pixels generate a square if I then take the line tool and create a line of 200 pixels you can see that the square is actually larger than the line itself even though I use 200 pixels for both things this is because the stroke on the square is 20 pixels wide and illustrator doesn't compensate for this but what we can do is press command or control K to open up the preferences and then activate the preview bounds option so now in the transform window you can see that illustrator now measures things from the edge of the stroke this is very helpful in designing icons and it's something that you want to keep in mind the second golden rule icon design is to use geometric shapes rather than drawing them yourself so just to quickly demonstrate I'm gonna make the top part of the lock here pressing L for the ellipse tool will allow me to make a circle and then I conflict the fill label to a stroke by pressing C for the scissors tool I can then cut the circle in half and then later create rectangles the same size of the stroke the reason for using geometric shapes to make icons is that firstly it's quicker than drawing everything out yourself but more importantly things are more precise and more smooth when you use geometric shapes it is a lot easier to use the curvature of a circle than to try and draw a perfect circle using the pen tool so ever possible try to use geometric shapes to create your icons in Illustrator the next golden rule in today's video nikon design is to use the preview pixel modes now by default if i zoom into the design illustrator I can see obviously a crisp and a clean edge this is because it's a vector design however play press outs and then command or control Y I'm going to enter into the pixel preview mode in the bottom left of the screen I can zoom in to 100% to see how crisp the icon is going to look on a screen when finished so to ensure a crisp and a clean design make sure your icons are designed on a pretty large our boys one of the essential parts of designing an icon is to use a grid and to activate the grid come into the View menu and then click show grids however you can use a shortcut of command or control and an apostrophe and the grid is so helpful for keeping your icons symmetrical and precise so I do suggest using their on all of you like on projects the fifth golden roof icon design is simple because icons should be simple they can appear very small on the screen or even a print project so they need to be basic and also minimal as possible this is so that detail does not get lost when they're scaled down to a small size another quick and easy golden rule that you need to keep in mind is that you need to expand your strokes but before finishing the design if your icon is sent to someone and then they resize it down or up the strokes will not look ideal so make sure to outline the strokes before signing off the project a final golden roof icon design illustrator is to make sure you lay them out perfectly once you're finished your final product needs to be showcased really well so utilize the align tool and make the rows and the columns evenly spaced out and neatly packaged so I hope you know a thing or two now by icon design and if you do want to keep expanding your skills and your awareness as a designer subscribe to my channel for weekly graphic design content like and share my videos on social media and of course have a great day and until next time design your future today peace

Channel: Satori Graphics

Views: 136,837

Rating: 4.9194632 out of 5

Keywords: 7 golden rules for icon design, golden rules for icon design, icon design tutorial video, icon design, illustrator tutorial, adobe illustrator, illustrator icon design, illustrator icon design tutorial, flat icon design illustrator, icon design illustrator, icon design illustrator tutorial, icon design tips, icon design tips and tricks, icon design in illustrator, satori graphics, satori graphics tutorials

Id: _-DmavFfy5o

Length: 6min 9sec (369 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 06 2018