follow along with satori graphics and make a neat and a sleek vector
background in today's illustrator tutorial making today's video possible
is milla notes now featured this awesome tool before my channel and it is
essential part of my workflow as a designer it's great for generating and
developing ideas throughout the design process and all of your work can be
shared with colleagues and clients at any time melina is in fact free so click
the link in description below to give it a try today and see how it can allow
your designs to evolve and to flourish so the first step for a vector
background is to make a document and I'm gonna do be Illustrated CC 2019 so your
layout my up here different than mine as you can see on screen now however our
design is going to be used for web-based graphics and so the document needs to
utilize an RGB color mode and a resolution of 72 PPI that's because the
effects that we're going to create in today's video are going to work best on
web-based documents so for whatever reason when I make a web-based document
the snap degrees setting is turned on in the top right corner I never use this so
let's turn it off so if you want an entirely white screen on your document
press command or ctrl K and then come into the user face preference settings
right here and then you can adjust the brightness to your personal preference
so let's go ahead and make a neat and a sleek vector background so the
background graphics all coexist over a gradient layer and so we're going to
first and foremost create a solid gradient background and for this I use a
dark blue to a vibrant pinky red for my gradient because I feel the graphics
that we're going to make later really pop and sit neatly on top of such a
gradient
you can set the angle to whatever you want but I'm gonna go with 45 degrees as
of now and then press M for the rectangle tool and then cover the entire
canvas with a rectangle but it doesn't need to be perfectly up to the edge so
like with many of my tutorials the gradient render looks fine on my screen
but on the actual video editing software it probably would have banded lines but
your gradient should look fine however but with a gradient selected press
command or control 2 to lock the object down in place and we're now ready to
make some slick graphics to add to our background design so first I'm going to
show you the illustrator CC way but also advise you how to do it when you're
using CS but first it's wise to increase the around values in the document raster
effects menu because this is gonna help smoothen our blurs and drop shadow
effects
I press M for the rectangle tool and draw a rectangle it is going to help you
if you have the smart guys activated and you can do that by pressing command or
control u after you've made the first rectangle press V for the selection tool
and then hold down the option key and click and drag perfectly below to
duplicate a rectangle now use a smart guides to make sure it's perfect and
then adjust the length as you so wish you essentially repeat this process to
make up a shape to splatter sleek effect object on your vector background also
make a couple of squares in the same way that I'm doing here as this will later
add to the effect a new rule design when ready open up the Pathfinder window
and select all of your rectangles and then unite them together as one vector
shape so here is where the illustrator CC part comes in handy all you need to
do is press F the direct selection tool and then with one click you can round
off the corners for the entire shape like so
but if you have CS then you're gonna have to use the round corners effect
located in the top drop-down menu now let's carry on and really make our
vector design background look awesome so I feel that the design looks best if the
graphic elements are rotated by 45 degrees so let's go ahead and do that
now you can also add a gradient fill to the shape and I personally like to keep
the angle to zero degrees on this gradient but you can experiment with
different angles for your gradient for the actual color of the gradient itself
I like to use a light blue to light pink with a hint of vibrancy and the colors
do actually look better on the screen and using this RGB document so as you
can see the gradient is not spread across you know the small balls and the
splatter shape too by pressing command or control G for the gradient tool will
actually enable you to spread and cross the entire design so at this point you
can either drop shadow which I'll quickly show you how to do here we do
have some finishing touches to make before the end of the video but for my
drop shadow effect I will play around with the settings whilst the preview box
is checked this might take some time to get rights you don't have to add the
drop shadow now at this point because we're going to add in more effects later
I just wanted to show you this now because we're gonna use it later
now for the final effect before we crop the entire vector background copy your
shape with command control C and then paste the duplication right over the top
of the command or control F so as you can see the layers window there are two
identical shapes using the pen tool
carefully draw a line across a design like so and then complete the path to
make a shape press V to select up all the paths and then select the new shape
and also the top splatter layer by holding down shift we're going to use a
divide function in the Pathfinder window and then remove the areas that we don't
want to use which will leave us with one shape though remember to ungroup the
selection first
now add a gradient to the shape and make both sides of the gradient black but you
must absolutely make sure that one side is 0% opacity you can now use the
gradient tool to adjust the direction and also come in to transparency will be
a pasty menu to adjust the opacity and the blend mode if you feel that works
best for your design now we just have one last step to make for our design
today but you can keep adding shapes and shadows like this over your entire
canvas so as you can see on my design I have two gradients for the shapes the
blue and pink one but also when i--when should peak one to now select everything
and add the drop shadow I showed you earlier and the effect is gonna look
pretty awesome
now if you've used shapes with that perfectly round corners either use the
rec selection tool or the ran corners effect and when ready press the alt
option key + command or control - and this is going to in lock all of the
layers then press M for the rectangle tool and draw a rectangle perfectly over
the lab words
finally select everything right or control-click and then use the clipping
mask and there you have a sleek and an awesome vector background using Adobe
Illustrator having a digital mood board is super handy and going into 2019 any
design project that I'm gonna start I will include the use of millinery to
Molino is in fact free so click the link in description below to give it a try
today and see how it can allow your designs to evolve and to flourish
remember if you want to keep boosting your skills as a graphic designer
subscribe to Satori graphics or weekly graph design content and also like and
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design your future today peace