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- How to Create a Vector Safari Compass in Illustrator
The Safari browser from
Apple has a great little icon that works well in small formats while
also displaying quite a lot of intricate details when viewed in large
format. Navigate through this Adobe Illustrator tutorial to draw up
your own vector Safari inspired compass in Adobe Illustrator.
As
usual start with a new document in Adobe Illustrator, draw a circle on
the artboard whilst holding SHIFT to produce a perfect shape. Fill the
shape with a grey to white vertical gradient.
Copy
and Paste in Front (CTRL/CMD + F) a new version of the circle and add a
lighter grey to white gradient, this time in radial format. Scale down
the circle slightly.
Paste in a third circle, fill with a very faint grey and scale down leaving a fair amount of the previous shape visible.
Paste in yet another circle, this time with a linear grey to white gradient and scaled very slightly smaller.
Once
again paste in another circle using the radial gradient. This method
of laying up varied gradients gives a great impression of a contoured
and reflective metal frame.
Paste in the final circle but this time fill with a gradient of blues to represent the background of the compass face.
Begin
drawing the decals with a stroked circle and star tool, while dragging
the star shape press the arrow cursor keys to alter the number of points
right down to one. Use the Direct Selection Tool (White Arrow) to drag
the upper most point further upwards to give a longer triangle.
Duplicate
the triangles and place in 90 degree positions around the circle.
Using the Align to Artboard feature within the Align Palette makes work
much easier.
Recreate the triangles and scale slightly to create the diagonal pointers.
Use
more small triangles to mark the points of North, East, South and West.
Adding a stroke to the blue background can help blend the triangles in
with the frame.
Around
the original Safari icon are incremental triangles indicating the
degrees around the circumference of the compass. To recreate this
pattern begin with a triangle, duplicate and move a fixed distance to
the side.
Repeat the process with a slightly smaller triangle, producing an alternating pattern between large and small shapes.
During
my creation of the Safari icon for this tutorial I made a slight
mistake but thought it would be great to include it nevertheless and
show a simple workaround that can be used.
Notice in the example the
brush pattern that we will create doesn't match up correctly giving
unequal distances between the triangles…
…A
simple fix is to add a single point on the end of the pattern,
offsetting it the same distance as used previously. This point will not
be visible but will add an extra section to the pattern area.
Now,
onto creating the pattern, select the group of triangles and rotate the
so that they point downwards. Then click the New Brush icon from the
Brushes Palette.
Select New Pattern Brush from the list and Ok and options in the dialog box.
Copy
and Paste in Front the blue background circle, clear out the fill and
add the newly created brush, scale the circle as appropriate to fit
within the compass area.
Grab a free vector map
from a recent post, open up in Illustrator and paste into your
document. Use a copy of the blue circle along with the Intersect From
Shape Area option from the Pathfinder tool to chop out the excess.
Fill the remaining map area with white and set the Transparency to Overlay or Soft Light, adjust the Opacity as you see fit.
Use the Type Tool to draw in the N, E, S and W initials. The font used here is a sweet serif typeface called Minion Pro.
Rotate and position the initials into place on the compass, use the align palette to match them up exactly.
Repeat the process with the smaller North West etc initials, set these at a lower opacity of 80%.
Use
another triangle to draw half of the compass needle, move the end point
with the Direct Selection Tool as necessary to give a long point.
Copy
and Paste a duplicate of the compass needle and move one of the bottom
points inwards halfway. Fill the new version with a light grey.
Duplicate the compass needle and position in the opposite direction, this time fill the two halves with shades of red.
Zoom in and draw a circle as the needle mounting pin, use a grey linear gradient as the fill.
Paste in another circle, scale down slightly and fill with another gradient to give the impression of a reflective surface.
An
Apple product wouldn't be complete without it's reflection. Paste in a
white circle over the compass face, draw in an additional shape to use
along with the Subtract From Shape Area option in the Pathfinder Tool.
Drop the opacity of the reflection to give a soft light cast across the glass screen of the compass.
Finalise
the vector compass with any little tweaks and additions. Here I
adjusted the size of the frame in comparison with the compass face, made
some minor colour changes and rotated the whole unit slightly.
But wait! There's more…
After
completing a vector illustration it's always good to open up the file
in Adobe Photoshop to add some final tweaks to really bring out the
detail and colours.
Use
the brush tool to gently paint in a faint shadow under the compass
needle to lift it from the face slightly. Also, drag a black to white
gradient across the compass and set the blending mode to Overlay at 65%.
On
a new layer, paint in some rough blobs with the paintbrush tool, aiming
at random areas around the metal frame. Draw in circular masks to
delete out the excess around the edge of the compass and any overlap on
the face.
Set this layer to Soft Light at 50% to add some shading to the metal casing.
Draw
a blue to white gradient across the face of the compass and set this
layer to Linear Burn at 35%, this helps pop out the colours of the
compass background.
If
it was crucial that your illustration remains entirely vector similar
adjustments could be done right within Illustrator, however I feel
Photoshop gives better control over these small tonal adjustments.
Before the image looked fairly plain and flat, but now with these final
tweaks the compass has a good range of tone resulting in a slightly more
realistic illustration.