by Esben Thomsen

In this tutorial we are going to make a PDF icon and I know what most of you are thinking… “PDF icon, what should I use that for? That’s completely useless, just like Illustrator!” But hear me out!

Aside from a lesson in using the three basic Illustrator tools—Pen tool, Selection tool and Direct Selection tool—to create something simple, I wanted to make something different from all the other Illustrator and Photoshop sites; something I think is missing.

I know that not all of you are bloggers and perhaps don’t have anything to use this for, but at least try it for the sake of the exercise.

Icons are easy and fun to make in Illustrator, unless you like making everything complicated… Remember icons should be simple, but knowing the rules allows you to break them sometimes.

The Purpose of this Tutorial

In this tutorial we are going to learn the following:

• Basic use of the Pen tool
• What “expand” does and what outlines means
• A brief overview of hand tracing.
• The difference between Selection tool (black arrow) and Direct Selection tool (white arrow)

A Little Background

I read a lot of blog post every day, and I would feel lost without access to the Web.

When drawing or coding CSS for a website at a café—which often has that ridiculous “pay per minute” WiFi access—and you need a break from the coding and paying, wouldn’t it be nice to have a couple of unread articles on your hard drive? I wish more bloggers implemented a PDF service, that makes it possible for me to download their posts in PDF form so I can read it offline; while I travel or commute for example.

Post2PDF Plugin

Thankfully there is a PDF export plugin for Wordpress that does just that, and now I simply need to create an icon, similar to the RSS icon we did last week. We need an icon that people already recognize, but with a flair that makes it our own (hopefully Adobe doesn’t see this as a copyright problem).

First, download the plugin.

Now we need to learn three basic Illustrator tools: the Pen tool, the Selection tool and the Direct Selection tool.

The Dreadful Pen Tool

It’s only recently that I started using the Pen Tool for free-hand drawing. Before that I used it for editing paths, deleting anchors and so forth, even though I knew the tool like the back of my hand. I always felt like I shouldn’t be using it on my PowerBook laptop— with the even more dreaded touchpad—until I bought a good mouse or Wacom tablet. Windows to Mac converts know what I’m talking about and to answer your question: YES I use a touchpad for drawing!

This also means that anyone—-no matter what mouse-like tool you have— can learn to use the Pen Tool, so you have no excuses for not trying. There are many ways to learn how to use it, but if you’re a Photoshop junkie, then you should already be familiar with it. The Pen Tool in Photoshop is fairly easy to learn and works the same in Illustrator.

How to Use the Pen Tool is covered by this excellent blog post with a Illustrator exercise file for download, at Veerle’s blog.

On the Layers Magazine site, they have an excellent video demonstrating how to use the Pen tool and watching this more than once, isn’t a bad idea either.

The Two Arrow Tools

No one has ever asked this question to my face, but I read that it puzzles users.

Black arrow (Selection tool, shortcut: V) is for selecting the entire path, moving around shapes, flipping and scaling—that’s it.

White arrow (Direct Selection tool, shortcut A) can move objects just like the black arrow, but it can’t flip or scale. It’s for selecting anchor points and anchor handles for manipulation and you can even click on the curve itself to adjust it with the Direct Selection tool.

Now to Make the Icon

Now that we have the tools covered for this exercise, we are going to get down and dirty with anchor points.

We need to import a PDF icon into Illustrator and I just used Google to find it, by typing “PDF icon” and looking under images.

Download the first image you see, it is perhaps not that big (mine is 150x150px), but it will do.

You can drag and drop the image into Illustrator or go to Illustrator and choose File>Place and find your PDF icon from the dialog box that comes up.

Next you have to go to your Layer panel and lock the imported image by clicking empty box next to the eyeball icon. A padlock icon should appear there indicating the layer is locked. Now make a new blank layer (same as the Photoshop icon, it’s next to the trash icon in the Layers panel)

Chose the Pen Tool and make sure you have no fill. Make the stroke black at 0.25pt and zoom in on your reference image so you can see all of those nasty pixels as close as possible. Start drawing a path on top of red path. Do your best; at this point it doesn’t really mattes if 180-degree curves look a bit weird. We will fix this later.

(I used 1 pt stroke in the image below to make sure you could see it)

Hide the background image, from the layers panel (the eyeball icon right next to the lock), so that it doesn’t disturb you.

My path is ugly and bumpy, but with the white arrow tool, we are going to fix this. Start at the 180-degree curves and make them smooth.

Take the Direct Selection tool make sure that the path has a coloured Bezier curve (green in my examples) like on those little dots that represent the anchor points. They can be somewhat difficult to hit, but you will know they are selected when you see the handles become visible. Click and drag the handle about to reshape the curve. If that doesn’t work, undo it (Cmd/Ctrl+Z) and select the anchor point or the curve itself. Try to align the curves with the reference image so they are smooth.

It might take some time to learn how the manipulation works, but eventually it should align somewhat smoothly. If you have particular problems with the curves, try adding or deleting anchor points with the Pen tool. Remember not to place too many anchors or have to few; too many may make your curves have divots or bumps and you won’t be able to achieve the proper curves with too few. With those 180-degree curves I would suggest only 2 or three points.

You can click the background image visibility on and off, if you really want to have a perfect trace.

When you are mostly satisfied, go to brush palette and get your standard library of brushes out. Find a brush you feel contours with the narrow and wide, probably an artistic calligraphic one. It doesn’t have to be an exact copy of the original PDF icon, just similar enough. If the stroke becomes messy and too big, scale the path with the black arrow tool and experiment with the stroke size (between 0.25pt and 1pt). I used the 15 pt flat brush.

Now it is time to change the stroke to a fill and find a hidden feature for Illustrator beginners, which is extremely important.

All objects, paths and artwork can be “expanded” and this is a useful feature when you have to apply curtain effects or when you have to outline any text for serious manipulation. Actually, every time you want total control, expand will help you get it.

I said a couple of articles ago, that all Illustrator artwork is vector, right? Well that isn’t entirely true. Gradients and Photoshop effects are actually bitmaps; it’s just difficult to see. They can be expanded to become true vectors, though.

Select your path and go to Object>Expand Appearance. The path has become an object now; a filled area with anchor points. It might be easier to adjust some of your curves with this new object, and if you want to make some last minute alterations, do that now.

We have to apply some colour and I like to give it a gradient to make it less “flat.”

Select the object and double click on it so that you are in group mode. Go into the Layers panel and you will see that it made a group layer. Inside this group, there are two paths. You want to select the expanded path (has a lot of anchor points). Go to the swatch and drag & drop colours on top the gradient bar in the Gradient palette to make a gradient you like. If it fills in the whole object, then you have chosen the wrong path on the Layer panel. Select the other one.

Just to be sure people recognize the icon, I’m gonna add “PDF me” with the Type Tool. You can use any typeface you want, but I just chose the standard boring Myriad Pro. When you have finished typing, use the Selection tool (black arrow) to scale a size that fits the object. Make sure to hold down Shift and drag from the corners to maintain the proportions!

Expand the type by going to Type>Create Outlines. Anchor points around the text should appear.

Now select the text and double click so you’re in group mode. With the Selection tool select the “m” and “e” (hold down Shift to select the second one) and hit the Gradient palette to give it some colour.

Tip: you can use the Gradient tool (shortcut G) in the tool box to make the gradient fill go a different direction; click and drag it really far apart or even very close for different effects.

Apply a background with any shape you like, as we did in the RSS article, and feel free to play around with all sorts of effects. Rescale it with the Transform palette and make a crop area, both these steps can be found in the RSS article, if you need help.

Congratulations!

You just made your first hand-trace, which is the bred and butter of vector experts. Hopefully now when I visit your blog, I will see this PDF button so I can PDF your post to read later!

Download a .zip of the svg, eps and ai file for help, redesigning and all around inspiration.

On Wednesday, Andi “Toon” Creffield will share an interesting distinction developing among traditional print logo design vs. web logo design. Subscribe to Creative Curio so you don’t miss it! Email subscriptions are an alternative to the RSS subscription, which you can sign up for here.