Hi, this is Anne with Graphic Design How-To,
and today I'm going to show you two ways of making multi-color gradient blends that
you might not have thought of before. And if you have a moment, please hit the Subscribe
button to just keep this graphic design content coming. All right, let's get started. [Music]
Okay, so first we're going to do a gradient blend, and this will take two different gradients and
blend them together. So on this side, we're going to have an orange and a pink gradient,
and over here we'll have a purple to yellow gradient. So to do that, I'm just going to get
on my Gradient tool here, and I'll also bring up my Gradient panel over here. Now, if you're not
seeing the Gradient panel, you can come up under Window, and it'll be under there. First, I'm going
to click right here on the Gradient to give me a white and black gradient, I’ll double click click
here to set my color. I'll get in my palette, and I'm just going to choose, we'll go with
this orange. Then I'll click my other color here, and I'm going to make this one pink.
Okay, and then I'll change it to 90 degrees. So now we have our orange to pink gradient.
I'm getting back on my Selection tool because I don't actually want a stroke, so I'll bring
that to the front and then just get rid of it. Now, since this one is sort of already set up,
I'm going to delete this one and just make a copy of this one, holding shift and option or alt and
dragging. I'll get back on my Gradient tool, and then I'll just change this one to purple and this
one to yellow. You can also do that right here. Now I'll select both of these and blend them
together. So to do that, I'm going to come here to Object > Blend and Blend Options. I just want this
to be Smooth color, and it doesn't really matter the orientation on this since it's two squares,
and I'll say okay. So that doesn't change it, that's just changing your options, and now we have
to go to Object > Blend and Make. Now, as you can see, this is not exactly what we're looking for.
So what we need to do is undo with Command + Z or Control + Z. Sometimes your smooth gradients work,
but for me, they seem really inconsistent. So if we want a smooth-looking gradient,
all we have to do is go to Object Blend and Blend Options again, change this to specified steps, and
we can make this about a hundred, and we'll say okay. Then we'll go ahead and go to Object > Blend
and Make. You can also hit Shift + Command + B or Shift + Control + B on a PC. I'm going
to move this away from those words and just delete those. And now we have the
beautiful gradient that we are expecting. So that's the first way of making the
multi-color gradient. The second way you can try is the freeform gradient, and to make this one,
you can just make a rectangle. So I'm going to hit M to get to my Rectangle tool right over here, and
then I'll just draw a box like this. Next, in my Gradient panel, I'm going to choose this very last
one, which is called freeform gradient. And now it automatically starts us out with a gradient,
and we have these four nodes. Now, the cool thing about this is we can double click these to change
our color, we can move them around so they take up more of the area, and we can even click down
here and expand the gradient that way. And I'm going to make this gradient look pretty similar
to this one up here. We'll make that orange, I'm going to double-click this one, make it yellow.
We'll make this a darker purple, and this one looks like it's already the right color of pink.
Okay, so now we have two very similar multi-color gradients, but they're just made differently. Now,
my favorite thing to do with these is to overlay white text, something like this.
I just think that's a really nice effect. Now, because these are made differently,
when we expand them, we get two different results. So I'm going to go to Object > Expand Appearance
to show you what I mean, and then we'll do Object > Expand. I'll expand the object and fill,
and we have the option to change this to a gradient mesh. But I'm going to go ahead and
tell it to do 255 objects, and we'll say okay. So, normally when you expand a gradient, this is
what you get. You get a lot of little pieces. I'm hitting Command+Y or Control+Y to toggle in and
out of outline mode so you can see the difference here. If we use our group selection tool, all of
these are different pieces. And now, this one has been changed to something called non-native art,
and you can kind of do an internet search, but basically, it changes it to kind of an image.
And just like all gradients, I feel like it can cause printing problems, so just be aware of that.
So, I hope this video is helpful for you. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.
You can leave those in the comments section below. Alright, if you like this video, please hit the
Like button, and I'll see you next week with another graphic design tutorial. Thank you!!!