Icon Design Using Grids - Adobe Illustrator

hello guys shhh here and welcome to the very first tutorial in this one I'm gonna show you how you can create icons using grid system in Adobe Illustrator so without wasting any time let's get started so I have got my illustrator opened up right over here and I am right now in essentials classic workspace so all you need to do is now go to the file new and create a new document and you can select any size you want I'm gonna choose 1080 by 1080 pixels so let's hit the create button alright then what I am going to do is I'm gonna first color my background so we can see things more clearly but white and black will also go pretty fine alright so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to create a new rectangle for the background so the shortcut for rectangle tool is M and this will just create a rectangle in the background so I'm gonna cover the whole background and I'm gonna paste my color code that I got and also I don't want any borders for this one so let's lock this layer and I'm gonna call this BG so that this since this is a background layer so I'm gonna call this one as PG alright alright so the next step is creating a new layer and after that is done we are going to create a new rectangle so again the shortcut is m and all you need to do is just simply click on that and it will pop up dialog box and you can define the width and height over here so I'm gonna go with 200 by 200 for the width and the height and I'm gonna make sure that the borders stroke is in black color and we don't want any feel for it alright so then again I'm going to select this one and make sure that the stroke is 1.4 now and let's zoom in and work on it alright so right now we got a pretty square box over here at the center of the page you need to make sure that for now and then what we are going to do is we're going to create new you alone shape which is the circle shape I'm gonna turn off the background if this is too bright for your eyes anyways so the shortcut to create a circle or the ellipse tool is L and either you can right-click on it and come over here and select this alright so again go to the center and click drag holding the shift and the Alt key and it will make sure that the shape is perfect circle and it will expand from circle from the center side and it goes till the end and you just release it right where it intersects with the square all right so we've got our shape right over here erect a square and a circle and then what we are going to do is we're gonna select the line tool which is this one right over here and the shortcut is the backslash key and you can just hit that then I'm gonna alright so first of all I'm gonna do select these and then I'm gonna come right over here from this anchor I'm gonna shift and drag till the bottom of this one all right the circle then I'm gonna repeat this process in the horizontal axis then diagonally from both the sides so this will create some sort of grid over here and this one is extended a bit too far so I'm gonna hold get my anchor tool which is sorry about that is the shortcut to choose the direct selection tool and then you click on the point first and then you decrease the size so it will make sure that only the anchor point is adjusted not the entire line alright so after creating this sword of shape we are ready to create the internal grids and then we will start creating the icons alright so what we are going to do now is I'm gonna copy this one so command Z and command F to paste it on top of this layer so it will paste directly right above it so now you can do is resize it again holding the alt and the shift key so first you need to make sure you start resizing it then you hold the shift and the Alt key so it will resize it from the center so you want to come right till here where the circle intersects and then just release it after that what we are going to do is copy the circle the outer circle and repeat the process again and we want to make sure that it goes right over here all right so after all these things are done we want to create a few we want to modify a few more things so I'm going to show you first side this grid system so that you'll understand it properly instead of confusing yourself so I'm going to duplicate this line over here you don't need to do that all you need to do is now go to the object and then Pat and offset Pat so what it will do is it will create so if I click the preview over here and if I choose the offset 50 it will create a rectangle and it will make sure that the margin in between these is 50 pixels so what we actually want to do is then select this line and this one the horizontal and the vertical both lines and then we are going to do the offset path with these so it will create two rectangles and these are those rectangles so one is this one and one is the horizontal one all right so these will be used to create if you want to create some horizontal kind of an icon or a vertical kind so this is just a part of grid system and what I am going to do is just resize it a little bit so that it matches perfectly so this can happen sometime you can create the grid system once and then you can just keep it so for next time if you'll work on some I can can just copy pasted it from the previous file and all right so let's create one more circle the last oval shape right over here so we need one more so I'm going to choose the circle tool click on the center and we want to make sure that the width and height is 50 pixels all you need to do that and put it at the center of the overall grid so we have successfully created the grid right over here now we can start working on the icons so let me adjust this shape just a tiny bit all right so everything is ready so this problem can happen if your lines are not extended till the end okay so make sure that you do that all right so now what we are going to do is select all and droop them so command G or ctrl G is the so by doing that you can you will group the whole thing so you can move it easily without picking out a single shape from the whole grid all right so right after we have done that we're gonna start working on the icons so we're gonna create three basic icons that are seen everywhere and we're gonna modify them just a little bit to match our style so those icon will be searched and users account icon and the last one will be the navigation menu I can so first of all we're gonna start with the search icon so what I'm gonna do is select the shape and make sure that this stroke is zero point one so I'm going to decrease the stroke size so we can see things more clearly and I'm going to lock this one right over here so that we don't accidentally change the stroke our grid system right so I'm gonna create a new layer again so now what we are going to do is we just want to create a single icon first if you are working with icons you need to make sure that you have a default size for your icons so let's say for example I'm gonna work with this circle over here so let me just increase the stroke all right so my icons won't in exceed the size of this circle or these rectangles now by doing this you'll make sure that these sizes won't be different for each of your icons depending on different I can shape alright so first thing is the search one so what we are going to do is right now I'm going to choose the circle tool again the ellipse tool and I'm going to create one more shape just till here all right then I'm going to increase the stroke size which is 15 in this case so again if you are not sure what you are doing I'm just gonna give you one advice which is to work with strokes first instead of creating them as a shape so it will make sure that your width of all your shapes is consistent throughout the whole icon library alright that you'll be working on so now what we are going to do is I'm gonna just expand it a lot I'm gonna move it a little bit towards the top left corner over here of this circle so holding the shift key I'm gonna move this so right after we are done that as you can see that the shape of the circle is exceeding outside this given size so what we are going to do then is go to the stroke and make sure that we align the stroke inside that all right so now you can see that we got a lot of space over here to create our magnifier to handle so we don't actually want to do that so I'm gonna modify this just a little bit to make sure that oh I can is very different from the one that we see all right so I'm gonna increase the size just a little bit and then make sure that it is lined back again to the top over here all right then I'm gonna in then I'm gonna create another line from this corner to anywhere around here at the center of this this circular shape alright so now the next step would be to delete this one and we since we got our icon we can then convert these strokes to the shape so all you need to do is go to expand object and expand it appearance and then expand again so make sure that the fill and stroke both are selected hit OK and it will convert this stroke to the shape layers all right now the next thing that I'm gonna do is usually what we do is we select both and we merge them but in this case since we will have two colors for over I can I'm not gonna merge that so what we will do is I'm gonna cut this one command X and command V to paste it behind this circular shape so that it will be right behind that alright so as you can see that if I expand it the magnifier circle is right here and the line is below that alright then what we can do is using the direct selection tool is the shortcut again I'm gonna select this corner and this Anchor Point and shift select this one and just move the corner radius to max and that'll make it rounded all right so now what we can do is we can color both these icons so I'm gonna enable my background layer and start filling them so I already have two color selected so for this one I'm gonna paste this color and for the background one I have another color alright okay so as you can see that it is already looking pretty good so then I'm gonna select both of these and command G to group them all right so let's move this icon aside and let's create a little bit complex one and then the last one will be pretty easier so the complex one is the user I can obviously so to create the user I can what I'm going to do is I'll have this circle created first so our user I can will have a border and we want to create that first before starting the starting working on the icon alright so the color will be this one and I'm going to shift swept the fill and stroke so the stroke color will be this color so this will be a stroke alright and the and the stroke width will be 15 and again make sure that you have aligned it to inside all right so right after creating that we want to create the body I'm gonna create another circle and I'm gonna explain it why we need that so first what we are going to do is right let me just zoom right you know here and create and another our shape till here alright and just the stroke will be just one point the width of stroke alright so this will be to create the border for our body shape that we'll be creating and I'll explain it to you pretty quickly so I'm gonna copy paste it again and just did you just decrease the size still here gone till the inner circle I guess this is not aligned perfectly I hope so alright so right after creating this circle I'm gonna move it just a little bit right around here so this is just some random guess so I don't have any measurement for that then I'm going to create another rectangle this time and I'm going to start from this corner so the intersection will be around somewhere around here and I'm gonna move it till this corner of the circle as you can see right over here and the height will be till the half of this all right till the line that you can see the center of our whole grid and just release the key now I'm gonna move this down a little bit till the end of the circle that we have so we can as you can see that we have already studied to get the body shape so so now all we need to do is let this circle and the rectangle and let's go to the Pathfinder tool which is in window Pathfinder and you can just click on this one the intersect and it will create the body shape for you it will intersect and cut the whole thing out all right so we can move this a little bit more so we have more room for that again go to the direct selection tool and select the anchor the top two anchors and move the border radius to the max which is 20 pixels in this case then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna fill both of these shapes so the top will be filled with alright so this color and the bottom will be filled with in this color and we don't want any borders for these two alright so this shape will be expanded then so to create the whole shape so as you can see that creating user second was just a little bit complicated but not too much then we can group this and move it aside so the last icon which is the menu icon will be pretty much pretty easy to create so all we need to do is since this these both of these icon circular we are going to create a square one which in that case we are going to use this as our boundary so this square so now what you can do is let's select the rectangle tool and I'm going to start creating the shape so as you can see that the width and the height of this square right over here is 7.62 pixels so what we can do is let's delete this one and just simply click on it and then we can define the width and height so we want just a little bit less from that which will be 65 for both and hit okay so I'm gonna move it to this corner and I'm gonna swap the fill and Stroke again do the same thing and make sure that these stroke is lined inside and the stroke width is going to be changed to 15 all right and let's start duplicating this and place it to this corner and then we're gonna duplicate both of these and move it to the bottom one now what we can do is we can select using the direct selection tool which is again is the shortcut select this corner shifts like this one the all four anchor points of the sides and we are going to change the radius corner radius to 35 for now which looks pretty good and now the last thing that we can do is start changing the color so again I'm gonna use this color and this is going to be the fill color and as you can see that everything is perfect so we can expand its appearance and group the icon and that way we have just finished creating three icons the search the navigation I can end the user I can all look pretty good and I hope you guys like this tutorial and I'll see you guys in the next one

Channel: Couple of Designs

Views: 75,169

Rating: 4.9556961 out of 5

Keywords: adobe, illustrator, design, icons, icon, using, grid, grids, minimal icons, icon design

Id: iMPiXY_2pd4

Length: 17min 20sec (1040 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 17 2018