Hi everyone, this is Anne with Graphic Design How To, and today I'm going to tell you how
to make a gear icon or a settings icon or cog or whatever you want to call it.
All right, let's get started.
OK, I'm in Illustrator right now, and this is the gear that I've already created.
So I'm going to show you how I made this.
So let's hit CMD N (or CTRL N on a PC) to get a new document.
We'll go to 'Print', and 'Letter,' and 'Create'.
All right, let's come over here to our Shape Tool.
You'll probably have a rectangle here, but if you click and hold, you can see all the
tools underneath, and we need to go to the Star Tool.
And then we can just click and drag on our canvas.
Now before you let go, go ahead and hit the up arrow, and this will add a lot of points
to your star, and that's what we want.
We can also hold CMD to lengthen the segments.
That's CTRL on a PC.
So I'm just going to make it something like this.
And you can hold SHIFT to get it back to straight.
And then we'll release.
I'm going to hit D on my keyboard to give it a fill of white and an outline of black.
And then I'm going to switch those by hitting SHIFT X, hitting X to bring the white to the
front, and then the backslash to clear that.
And now I'll hit V and move this a little more to the middle and drag on a corner while
holding SHIFT...just kind of make it a little bit bigger.
Now I'll click L to get my Circle Tool.
I'll draw a circle like this.
I'm going to copy and paste in front and then make one a little bit smaller than this.
Now, if we hit CMD Y (or CTRL Y on a PC), you want to make sure that both circles are
outside these little points here.
OK, and let's hit V, select everything, and then come over here to the Align Palette and
Horizontal Align and then Vertical Align.
So everything should be lined up now.
I'm going to hit CMD Y again.
And I'll hit Z to get my Zoom Tool, and draw a box around this.
Now you can kind of see how some of these parts might work pretty well for a gear.
So I'm going to get my V Tool.
I'm going to click on this center circle, and I'm going to copy it with CMD C, (or CTRL
C on a PC), paste in front with CMD F (CTRL F on a PC).
And then I'm going to move this off to the side, so I'll hit V and return and that will
bring up my 'Move' dialog box.
I'm going to send it 1000 pixels to the right with zero vertical, and we'll say OK.
So, if we CMD minus (or CTRL minus) and zoom out, we can see this other circle over here.
OK, let's zoom back into our star shape.
And now I'm going to hit V and select all of these.
Then I'm going to hit SHIFT M, which will give us our Shape Builder Tool.
OK, and now the first thing I don't want are all these spikes out here.
So I'm going to hold OPT and just draw hitting each of those spikes, like this.
And I want to combine all of these shapes in here, so without holding OPT, I'll just
draw and combine all of these like this.
All right, now, here are some pieces out here that I don't want.
So I'm going to hold OPT and just touch each one of those shapes.
All right, so we have our cog wheel.
I'm going to highlight everything with the V Tool, which is right up here, your Selection
Tool, and then we'll come down here to Pathfinder and unite these.
OK, now I'm going to CMD minus, zoom out (that's CTRL minus on a PC), and I'll select this
piece, and I'll hit V, return, and get my Move Tool back.
And we'll send this minus 1000 pixels or points to the left.
And now it's exactly where it was before.
Now I'm going to hit SHIFT and OPT, and drag on the corners until about right there and
release.
And now I'll use my V Tool to select both of these.
And we'll use the 'Shape Mode' minus front.
Now the way we just built this, this is all one shape.
There aren't two shapes, meaning, this isn't a white circle and a black cog.
You can tell this by 'Compound Path' right up here, and it's also in your 'Appearance'
palette.
If it says Compound Path, you're only dealing with one shape.
So when you move it, it moves everything together.
And it's as easy as that!
All right, that's my video for this week.
If you liked it, please leave a comment in the comment section below.
And I'll see you next week with another graphic design tutorial.
Thank you!!!