(upbeat music)
- [Gareth] Hello and welcome to this video tutorial.
Gareth here from TastyTuts.com
In this tutorial, I'm going to discuss and demonstrate
a method of how you can create a wreath logo
in Adobe Illustrator.
So here are some examples I have prepared earlier
in various styles.
Now you can find these examples in the project folder,
which you can download for free,
the link is in the description.
Now, I suggest your download the files first,
before watching the rest of this video.
The folder contains a series of files to help you
follow along with this tutorial.
Okay, so at first glance, it may seem a complicated task
to create wreath graphics like this.
Here, we have what look like complex, intricate, graphics.
Now check this out.
With this selection tool, if I come and select
all the examples then come into the brushes panel,
if you cannot see your brushes panel,
come up to Window, scroll down and access it there.
For the sake of this tutorial I'll just quickly
drag it out from my panel group so you can clearly see it.
Now in the brushes panel,
I'll change the brush stroke to basic and click off.
And all of a sudden the wreath graphics have gone.
And where the intricate graphics were,
we now have simple stroke lines.
So I'll press undo and we have our wreaths back.
So to create these wreath compositions,
we are going to use a feature in Illustrator
that will make it easy
to create wreath graphics like this.
To do this, we are going to create custom brushes.
So to create the wreath compositions,
we first need to create the intricate designs
and them make them into custom brushes.
We will then apply the brushes to a curved stroke,
much like we just saw
when we set the brush strokes to basic.
This will give that wreath appearance,
so it really is that simple.
The only tricky part is creating the wreath brushes.
So here are the brushes I created
that make up the wreath examples we just saw.
You can also find these examples
in the downloadable project folder.
So these are just simple vector compositions
I made using the basic tools of Illustrator.
And up here, in the right are some of the leaf shape vectors
I used to compose them.
Now if we come back to the wreath example document,
and look closely in the brushes panel,
we can see that the vector compositions composed
in the other documents have been created as brushes here,
which have been applied to these examples.
Now, as you can see here, under each example,
we have a color and a number.
So for example, here we have example number two.
If we just back into the wreath examples,
we can see up here on the left,
and I'll zoom in a little, that this wreath example
is using that particular vector brush.
Now with the selection tool,
we can click both parts of the wreath.
Here are two parts that make up the wreath,
the left and the right part.
If I select the right wreath part, with the selection tool,
and come into the Brushes panel and choose another brush,
I can change the appearance like so.
So if I select both parts and change the brush to basic,
we can see two simple stroke lines that mirror each other.
So these strokes were first drawn,
and then the custom brush was applied, easy.
I'll just change them back to the wreath brush.
Now if I quickly select all the wreath examples
and change the brush to basic we can see that these
various examples were created using various stroke lines.
Some overlap, some form almost perfect circles,
and other strokes are shorter.
Here we can also see where I have added and included
other vector shapes to create the complete wreath logo.
So depending on the wreath style,
you first need to set up the right stroke lines.
Okay, so with that introduction,
let's take a look at how we can create a wreath logo
composition and how I made my examples.
So first, we will need to create a wreath brush
to work with.
To create my brushes, I used the basic shape and pen tools
to create vector shapes and then arrange them
in various ways.
Now, I'm not going to go into too much detail on how I
created these brushes,
and how to use the vector tools because I just want
to keep this tutorial nice and short.
I recommend you try and create your own brushes first,
if you wish to have a go you can use the leaf vectors
here to create your own brush,
or just use one of mine for now.
If you're new to Illustrator and don't know how to use
the shape or pen tools,
you can find a beginner's guide on my channel.
So once you have created a brush you want to use,
next open my logo grid document
and you can find this in the downloadable project folder.
This is a simple document to help set up this quickly.
Here we have two squares made from guides.
We have example one and example two,
which we are about to create.
If you cannot see these guides, press command + :
to toggle the guide visibility.
So with this open, I'm going to make a start.
And I'll zoom in on example one.
Now first, I need to create the line strokes
to apply my brush to.
So I'm going to come over to the menu
and select the ellipse tool.
With that selected, I'm going to click and drag
from the top left of the square,
down to the bottom right while holding shift
to draw a perfect circle inside my guide.
With my ellipse created, I can see the four anchor points
that make up this ellipse.
The top, the bottom and the sides.
So next, I'll press A to activate the Direct Selection Tool,
with that active I'm carefully going to select
the far left anchor point.
Once selected, I'll press backspace on the keyboard
to delete that anchor point.
So now the ellipse is a half circle.
With the half circle selected, I'm going to come down
in the menu and set the foreground color to transparent,
and the stroke to black.
Nice.
Now we have a line stroke of half a circle.
So now I'm going to come and choose one of my vector
compositions from my examples.
So for this example, I'm going to choose this sample
on the far left.
So with the selection tool, I'll click and drag
over all the vector shapes to select them all,
and press Command + C to copy,
and back in my logo grid, I'll paste Command + V
to paste in my vector comp.
And I'll just move it over a little.
So as you can see, this is just a bunch of vecships
I have positioned in this way.
If I want to click them and move them around, I can.
Though on this occasion, I'm just going to select
the bottom right leaf shape and just scale that up a little
to make it bigger than the rest.
I'll select the left leaf and delete this one.
I'll copy and paste the big leaf,
and then come up to Object, Transform, Reflect
and I'll do that to Vertical of 90 Degrees
and click OK.
And then I'll just move this into position like so.
So now, I'm ready to create a brush from this
to apply to my stroke.
Now it's important to keep in mind that the brush
has to be relative to the stroke you want to apply it to.
Right now, this vector comp is a lot smaller
than this line stroke that I'm about to apply it to.
So I'm going to quickly select all of these vectors
and scale them up a little bit.
Once happy, with it selected, I'm going to click and drag
this into the brushes panel.
Upon release, up will pop the new brush menu.
So from here, we need to select Art Brush.
I'll click OK, and up will pop the Art Brush options.
So start from the top,
I'll select stretch to fit stroke length.
Now in the preview window, we can currently see
the arrow direction.
Now, I want to set this arrow from bottom to top,
so I'll click this one on the direction
and then click OK.
Upon click, we will now see our new brush
in the Brushes panel.
Now, all I have to do with the selection tool,
is select the stroke, and select on the new brush.
And there is the wreath brush applied.
Now on this occasion, it looks like it's starting
from the top, and ending at the bottom.
Now, you can either select the shape and rotate it,
like so, or you can double click on the brush
in the Brushes panel and modify the brush.
Here, I'll click the Flip Along square under Options,
on this occasion,
I'll just leave this Flip Along option set,
and I'll click OK and apply the strokes.
And that will fix that issue.
So with the wreath part selected, I'll copy and paste,
and move it over.
I'll come up to Object, Transform, Reflect,
and Flip 90 Degrees Vertically.
I'll reposition and there I have my full wreath composition.
I'll press Command + : to toggle the visibility
of the guides and take a nice look at this.
And that's looking great.
So here is a nice example of a circle wreath,
but what if I want to modify the length of the wreath parts?
So I'll select a part of the wreath I just made,
I'll copy and paste and drag across like so to my example
two grid, and I might have to press Command + : again
to bring back the guides.
Now if I come over to the Menu,
click and hold on the Pen tool,
I will select the Add Anchor Point tool.
Now, to add a new anchor point, I'll click further down
the path like so.
Once I have added the new anchor point,
I'll press A and select the end anchor point at the top.
With it selected, I'll press Backspace to remove this.
By removing that anchor point, we have now made
the stroke shorter and the wreath graphic smaller.
So just like earlier, I'll copy the wreath section,
and Reflect and position it next to it like so.
Simple.
So just like that, I have created two very different
wreath compositions from the same brush
by using different strokes.
Pretty cool.
Now because these are currently brushes,
we can toggle the stroke size.
So I'll select both of the wreath elements on the right,
and in the Stroke panel
we can see this is currently set to one.
If I change this to two, we can increase the brush effect
and make it larger.
On this occasion, it's looking a little big,
so I'll change this stroke size to 0.5
and here it's slimmer.
Now keep in mind, that tweaking the stroke size
like this can distort the brush effect.
Setting the stroke to one,
will be relative to the original brush pattern.
So I'll just keep this set to one.
Now another important thing to bear in mind,
we created the brush from a black vector composition.
With the wreath selected, if we now try and change
the color of the stroke, let's say to red,
it's not going to work.
So to change the color of a wreath composition,
we will need to convert the composition
into a vector shape rather than a brush.
This will allow us to apply all of the usual color
and stroke effects.
To do this is easy.
With the wreath selected, come up to Object
and select Expand Appearance.
Upon click, the brush will be created into a vector shape
and now you can add fill color by selecting
one in the swatches panel.
Now keep in mind,
once you have expanded your wreath like this,
you will not be able to tweak the wreath any longer,
so be sure to keep your original
wreath brush composition backed up.
So that's how you can create a wreath logo using a custom
brush in Adobe Illustrator.
If we look back at my previous examples,
you can see that some are overlapping.
Well, if I set the brush here to basic,
we can see just like in the example we have just made,
we have two strokes,
though in this instance, the strokes curve over each other
at the bottom.
By overlapping the strokes, and applying the right brush,
we can get this nice wreath effect like so,
where they overlap at the bottom.
If I jump to the brush that I used to create this,
you can see I had to add a longer vine
to the wreath base to accommodate for that nice overlap.
So that's how you can create a wreath logo
in Adobe Illustrator.
Once you apply your custom brushes, you can then start
to add text and other vector shapes,
to create your own unique wreath logos like these
examples I have created earlier.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this video tutorial,
if you liked this tutorial,
hit the like button on my Facebook page.
If you would like to see more videos like this in future,
hit the subscribe button.
Don't forget, you can download the templates you saw
at the start of this tutorial,
all links are in the description.
Well, that's it for another video,
brought to you by Gareth here at TastyTuts.com.
Thanks for watching, have fun guys,
and I'll see you next time.
(upbeat music)