Every time I start thinking of a tutorial to write, I try to show techniques that I use in my job as a designer. For example, today I will be showing you how to make a nice little map. I was called to make a map for the university which was tedious but still fun. This can also be a neat little add-on to a party invitation or the like.First and most importantly turn on some music! Some Armin van Buuren thumping in the background helps the creative process.

Secondly Make sure your computer is on. Really. Enough small talk, let’s get started.

Setting Up

Same old setup as in my other Illustrator tutorials. Choose New Web Document, and just hit OK until your canvas is set up.

Getting Started

First off, you are going to need a map to use as a reference, unless you have some sort of crazy photographic memory. Google Maps is your friend on this one. For this example I pulled a screen-grab of my apartment complex. Go ahead and drop your Map into Illustrator.

Building Map Legend

Before we even start, it is a good idea to plan the different sizes of roads and terrains that you will be working with. If you decide that a four lane road has the largest shape and you run into a highway, what now? Here is what I came up with:

I am going to go pretty simple for this example, but it can be as complex or simple as you want.

The road graphics are very easy to make, just choose the Line Segment Tool [\] and draw a line with different strokes/colors. For the yellow one I placed a large yellow stroke on top of the two small orange strokes.

Making the Brushes

With the road graphic selected, open the Brush window. Click on the options button which is the small icon with the three lines in the top right corner. This will open up the Brush Options, choose New Brush.

You will be presented with the following dialog box. Choose New Art Brush and hit OK.

A new window will come up that will allow you to customize your new brush. In this case it is set up perfectly for what we need. All we need to do is give the brush a name. Choose something appropriate for the different sized roads. I do encourage you to poke around all the neat settings you can use with this tool.

Repeat this process until you have a brush for each road you made.

Drawing the Roads

Using the Pen Tool [P] draw over one of the existing roads in you map, taking note of how big your graphic will be. Now simply click on the brush in the window that you want to apply to the road.

Repeat this process for all main roads.

This is what I came up with:

Fixing Intersections

As you may have noticed, the lines will sometimes not line up right at intersections, which is easily fixable.

In some cases it is just a matter of changing the layer order. Using Ctrl+[ to send the shape backwards, and Ctrl+] to send it forward try to adjust the roads to where they line up right.

In some cases you will need to draw the intersections. Draw some shapes with the pen tool that imitate the turn lanes at the intersection. Use the satellite picture as reference. Here are a few examples of how I achieved this.

Make sure to add some strokes too.

The quick fix is to just throw a dot over the intersection that matches the style.

Making Houses and Backgrounds

Using the pen tool draw out some houses using the graphic style you decided on. Here is an example of what I campe up with:

Using the Pen Tool still draw some terrain changes and send them back behind all of the other shapes. This is what I came up with:

Conclusion

Map making is very time consuming and requires a good deal of patience. More than likely if you become a graphic designer, someone will eventually ask you to make a map. It is the basic skills I illustrated in this tutorial that can lead you to make much more complex and interesting maps. Here is an example of a map I have made for a university:

Keep practicing and have fun!

In this series, I’ll be sharing basic overviews of some useful tools in Illustrator with you. This article will show you how to use Illustrator’s Live Trace tool. Live Trace will allow you to completely convert photographs and other raster graphics into Vector graphics!

I will be using Adobe Illustrator CS3 for this tutorial. However if you have CS2, you should be alright following along. Earlier versions do not have Live Trace, but do have Auto-Trace, which is a different tool entirely.

Getting Started

First off let’s launch the program. When it loads you will get a splash screen like such.

The nice thing about Illustrator is that it gives you a quick way to generate a workspace, based on what type of document you are working on.

For this tutorial choose print document. In the sub menu that pops up you can leave it as is, since it doesn’t really matter what size you choose for what we are doing. So just hit OK.

When it loads you will have a workspace similar to Photoshop. The large white area, with the box in it is the workspace. Some people might get confused by the fact that they can draw outside the limits of the document space. A good analogy is that the workspace is a drafting table, and the box is your piece of paper. Anything that is outside the box will not show up if printed. When I work I like to store things I am not immediately working on off to the side.

The Tools

Let’s break down the tool bar before we get into any of the advanced features. Illustrator is a very powerful vector illustration program, and as a result has a slight learning curve if you’re not familiar with it.

Here are some of the tools we will be using in this tutorial.

[A] Selection Tool: This is the same old selection tool that has been around since the beginning of time. (Which I have been subjected to many of my co-worker‘s “back in the days of Photoshop 1.0” rants. . .)

[B] Direct Selection Tool: This allows you to change the actual paths by moving the vertices around.

[C] Pen Tool: This where the magic happens. Used for creating vector paths.

Automated functions are just that, automated. The computer is not an artist, and doesn’t know what “looks good”. As a result it is the artist’s job to create interesting shapes and forms. Live Trace will rarely look as good as something that has been “Hand Vectored“. I have found that Live Trace is great for quick jobs where you don’t have much time, or as a reference tool; otherwise it is best to do it the long and hard way: By hand.

We’re going to begin by importing an image into the workspace. Just drag the image from the folder it is in, into Illustrator. For this tutorial I will be using one of my own Photographs. This image will work great because it is high contrast. I encourage you to use your own image, but you can use this one if you need to (just don’t reproduce it, or any alteration of it without citation please!) I find that I get the most from a tutorial if I use a different image because it prevents you from just trying to imitate the examples.

Now on to Live Trace

Once you have loaded it into Illustrator find the Live Trace Button at the top of the frame. Make sure the image is selected or you won’t be able to see it.

If you are confronted with the following message you are working with a high resolution image.

Hopefully you’re computer can handle this, so ignore it and hit OK, otherwise I would recommend resizing the image to something smaller. Since we are generalizing the shapes it isn’t necessary to have ridiculously huge images. I have a Quad core and there are times when Live Trace will bog it down.

Now you should see a black and white version of your image, this is the works of Live Trace.

Looks great right… Hope you enjoyed this tutorial… pause…

Don’t worry, we’re not really done yet.

This is only the beginning!

Configuring the Trace

Click the options button at the top left of the screen.

This dialog box will pop up.

What you are looking at is the default settings for live trace, which I would argue most designers recommend NOT to use. Let’s break down the setting one by one to help understand what they do for us.

[A] Preset – This changes between different preset’s that photo shop offers. Generally it is a good way to start, but will still require tweaking.

[B] Mode – This will switch from black and white, grayscale, or to color.

[C] Threshold – In black and White mode this changes the threshold between what is considered black and white.

[D] Palette – Either uses Automatic color selection or you can specify your own colors.

[E] Max Colors – Changes the maximum amount of colors used in the computations.

[F] Output to Swatches – Will output the colors used in the computations to your swatches palette.

[G] Blur – Specifies how much Gaussian blur is applied to the image before the computer tries and find edges. The more blur, the more general your shapes will become.

[H] Resample – Changes the resolution of the source image being used. This will help with performance and will change results in some cases.

[I] Fills/ Strokes – Toggles if fills or strokes are to be used in the render.

[J] Max Stroke Weight – Specifies that anything larger than this value will be considered a fill.

[K] Min Stroke Length – The smallest size of a stroke allowed, anything smaller is omitted.

[L] Path Fitting – Lower values create tighter maintained paths, higher values will create more relaxed paths.

[M] Minimum Area – You guessed it, the smallest detail that will be traced.

[N] Corner Angle – The sharpest corner angle allowed. (In degrees)

[O] Ignore White – It omits white from the calculations, and therefore leaves white areas transparent.

[P] Preview – MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL! If you can’t see what you are doing do you really expect it to come out looking ok? Toggling this on will allow a live preview of all changes made.

The Results

Here are the settings I used to get the result shown.

Live trace is one of those tools that you really need to play around with it for a while to get used to the way it works. I am usually never completely satisfied with what comes out from it, but rather than starting with a blank canvas we now have something to work with.

Expanding the Trace

If you want to reveal all the paths that make up this image, click on the Expand button on the top frame.

Now you can use your selection tools to move/ change the actual anchors in the paths. Using the Direct Selection tool (A) you can select the shapes and change their colors and shapes. Below is a vary quick example of how I changed the colors.

Some Examples Where I used Live Trace

With some time and pertinence you can come up with some cool stuff. Here are some other examples I’ve done.

Hope this guide has taught you a thing or two about Adobe Illustrator and Live Trace!

One of a companies main goals is to convince consumers that they’re getting their money’s worth with any particular product. Sometimes, a good advertisement design will go a long ways in the industry. This tutorial will teach you a few techniques to improve your designs in general.

For this tutorial I will be using Adobe Photoshop & Adobe Illustrator CS3. You shouldn’t have any problems following along if you’re using other recent versions of the Adobe Creative Suite.

For those that work in the design industry, we are all to familiar with having to establish an advertising campaign for products. No matter the product, it’s up to you to convince the potential buyer that this product is worth their money. Successful advertising can make or break a product. Apple is a great example of this: They generate a lot of product hype and develop gorgeous ads for their products well before they come out. As a result, Apple can convince consumers to pay ridiculous amounts of money for their products.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you a few techniques that may improve your design abilities when creating advertisements. One of the best ways to hone your skills is to practice making Ads for products that you’ve never seen advertised before (or simply don’t exist at all). More than likely wont be swayed into copying their style.

For this tutorial I’ll demonstrate with the LG KE800 Chocolate Platinum.

Extracting the Phone

We will be extracting the product alone from its background using a vector mask. This extraction technique works great for most objects since it produces crisp edges.

Select the pen tool by pressing “P” or by clicking the Pen Tool icon in the toolbox. Make sure you have it set to “Paths” mode before you start. This option is located in the Options Panel at the top of the screen (this will create a vector path, but with no fills or strokes applied to it).

Now add anchors along the outline of the object. If you’re new to using this tool, check out the Pen Tool Basics Tutorial. Once you have the phone outlined it should look like this:

Now go to Layer > Vector Mask > Current Path. This will create a vector Mask utilizing the path we just created. So now we have the phone cutout.

Setting Up a Spread

Now that we have the phone we will set up our document. We are going to assume that this is for Web use and will create a document with the following size:

Go ahead and drop the image into your new canvas and scale it up to be a bit larger (Edit > Transform > Scale). When making an Ad for a product you usually want the product to be the most striking part of the image. If you try to scale the object and the phone does not change in size, but rather its mask does, you need to deselect the mask and make sure you are selecting the actual phone graphic. (Refer to images below.)

Making a Background

Double click the background layer and hit OK to unlock it. Now double click the layer again to open the Layer Blending Options Panel. We want to add a Gradient that subtly fades from black to dark red. Using the eyedropper tool, you can get select colors from your graphic. This helps keep everything in the same tonal range. After finding a red from the buttons I darkened it a bit more.

Making a Repeating Circle

In this step, we are going to use the shape blend tool in Adobe Illustrator to make some interesting shapes in the background.

Lets hop over into Adobe Illustrator to make some vector graphics. Create two circles, one smaller than the other. Also color the inner one black and the outer one a maroon color. Make sure they are centered. Next press “W” for the blend tool, or hit the button on the toolbox. Click the circles paths starting with the inner one.

You should get a series of circles blending both shape and color. If you double click the Shape Blend tool in the tool box you will get a dialog box. Change the spacing to specified steps, and the number between 8-12.

Now select the object and copy it. Switch back into Photoshop and paste it into the Ad. You can leave Illustrator open because we will return to it soon. When you get the Paste dialog box choose smart object and hit ok. This will leave the object as vector and therefor will be more versatile when working with it. Play around with placement and size and come up with some sort of background for it to sit on. This is what I came up with:

Adding Flourishes

Thats right. As trend whore as they may be, they can allow for amazing artistic originality. I would stray away from using nothing but brushes made by other people, but it’s always Ok to collaborate with their consent. In this tutorial we will be making our own.

Select the Brush tool and change the Brush tip shape to a small soft brush. Open the brush settings and change them to the following:

Now select the Pen Tool and draw a swoosh shapes around the phone, like below. Make sure you add a new layer to work on before doing the next step.

Right click the path with the Pen tool still selected and select Stroke Path. Make sure simulate brush pressure is turned on and click OK.

Double click the layer that you applied the stroke on to get to its Blending options. Add a gradient like this:

Next add a glow like this:

Play around with some different strokes and get some interesting flow of lines. Guide the viewer’s eye around the product. This is what I came up with:

Making a Custom Brush

Next we are going to make a custom brush to treat the graphic further. I will be using a flower because I want to play off of the sensual nature of this phone. Think of your audience, if you personify the ad make sure it is to your benefit.

Find a good stock image of a flower and open it in Photoshop. Go ahead and extract the flower using the technique shown in the beginning of this tutorial.

You should end up with something like this:

Crop it in nice and tight and select Edit > Define Brush Preset.

Now you have the flower saved as a brush, which will speed things up when we are illustrating. So go and add some cool effects with the brush tool. This is what I came up with:

(I used the symbol sprayer in Illustrator. You may need to play with brush colors if working in Photoshop.)

To finalize the image lets throw some text on it and play with the lighting a bit. By using the Dodge and Burn tools you can add shadows and highlight to the various layers and further control the viewer’s attention.

Results

This is my final result.