Last night I finished the design for a brochure promoting a missions trip to Africa that we plan to take in September. Along the way, I found myself against a few odd problems in Illustrator and thought it worth while to share their solutions.

Large-scale Texture Backgrounds

For the backgrounds of both the inside and outside of the brochure, I wanted solid colors that were accented by subtle textures. Initially, I created full size raster graphics in Photoshop, using textures from the always lovely CGTextures and simply linked to them from Illustrator. This wasn't too cumbersome to deal with, but as the brochure is 8.5" by 11", the file size for each raster was unnecessarily large.

After trying a few things, I found a nice replacement in Illustrator's Swatch Patterns (Window > Swatch Libraries > Patterns). There are only so many that come bundled with the application, but with the right layer blending and opacity, they'll do nicely. Plus, since each is made up of vector shapes, they tile to large physical sizes but maintain an overall low file size.

Bordered Images

I knew from the start of this project that I wanted to drop in the photos with each having a border of consistent look and assumed that I could directly apply a border (e.g. typical Illustrator shapes) or use the Appearance panel to apply a border (e.g. a nice trick to get gradients and borders on live text). Unfortunately, neither option works on linked photos.

I did, however, find success by first placing the photo, applying a shape mask (in this case, it was a simple rectangle) and then adding a border. You won't get access to the Stroke Alignment options (among many other options), but it did make it a lot easier to get consistent borders without having to switch to a page layout application like InDesign or Pages.

Patterned Strokes

My preliminary sketch had these patterned lines that I was immediately fond of excited to see in color. Unfortunately, the pattern used wouldn't separate with the "Expand" command and didn't result in what I wanted with different blending modes.

What did work was recreating the pattern by applying three new Strokes to the line via the Appearance panel (one thick solid for the middle, one white for the space and the last one dotted for the outside) and then using the Graphic Styles panel to apply it to the rest of the border lines. In retrospect, I might have tried using the Symbol Sprayer Tool, as it has done solved similar problems before.

And Done!

The rest of the hard stuff was easy enough to get around, thanks to CS4/CS5's new features ... Artboard Tool, Key Object Selection and Magic Wand options. That last one isn't really too new, but I don't think as many people use it as should. Oh and the last piece of goodness was that this is another design project that I kept versions of using git. Commits at the major changes and if I needed to roll back, I just ran a checkout. Easy peasy.

My submission for this week's Illustration Friday theme of "journey". Simple weaving fun as a little bit of vector laid over the top of some plaster wall.

Texture courtesy of cgtextures.com

On Friday night, I couldn't sleep so I worked up this sneaky sneaky vector for IllustrationFriday's theme of ... you guessed it, "sneaky". He is entirely made of simple objects I drew with the Shape tool, minus the wily mustache; I used Illustrator's new and great variable Width tool to create that.

A simple vector flame ... I first saw this in my head pretty much folded and flicking just like it is here, then put it down on paper with blue pencil and pen. I grabbed a snap of it with my iPhone 4, pushed the photo to Dropbox and then redrew the basic shape in Adobe Illustrator. I think I've finally got the hang of the wonky Gradient tool, so the coloring went pretty quickly.

I did recorded a video of the process, but that video also includes my attempt at making a Mac OS X icon with it, which didn't work out to my standards. You might still enjoy it, so here's the video. I recorded the video with ScreenFlow during DFP lab tonight and since my students and I were listening to movie scores and soundtracks in lab (mostly Hans Zimmer), you'll understand the music choice.

My simple entry into this week's IllustrationFriday theme of "satellite" ... just my thumbs and Adobe's fantastic (and vector-based) Ideas iPhone app. Oh yeah ... my new iPhone 4 and its gorgeous screen were there too. ;)

The standard Brushes iPhone app does have a lot on Adobe's first entry into the space (i.e. progressive playback, shortcut corners, undo AND redo buttons, multiple layers, etc.), but the fact that I can output a vector file (email-able PDF) is just a clear winner.

If I ever find myself with an extra couple of hundreds (hasn't happened yet), I really think an iPad, Adobe Ideas and a Pogo Sketch pen would replace a good chunk of the rough sketches I do for logo and character work.

Staying out with "the boys" the last couple of nights has made my alarms (I had to set three ... my watch, my iPhone and the nightstand one) sound so loud and seem so early lately. At some point, I need to find some sleep ... but for now, I am definitely enjoying playing catch up with work and spending so much time out with people I really enjoy.

This is a simple vector piece made in ye ole Illustrator during the lab session today. All of the repeating elements were made using Transform effects, just cuz it's cool to not have to repeat yourself.

Here is my entry for this week's Illustration Friday theme of "dip" ... it goes out to my wife, Jodie, who is convinced the time is right for swimming, sun-ing and in general heading to the beach. I say it's still spring.

This is all vector, mixing some Brush strokes, the Blob Brush, the new (but still lame) in-line Gradient tool and a tad bit of Illustrator's Raster Effects thrown in for fun.

My entry for this week's Illustration Friday theme of "expired". I think this started out as me yet again trying to work up a propaganda-style poster (hence the color palette), but almost immediately realizing I don't have the right mindset for it. Instead, I spent some time getting more acquainted with Illustrator CS4's much-improved-but-still-goofy inline Gradient editor.

I guess the only thoughts behind the IF tie-in are for you to think of expired milk. If you open it up, icky things are bound to escape. ;) Laters.

My first Illustration Friday entry of the year and my first ever ambigram! That's right ... flip it over and it reads the same :) If you've never looked into them before, there are some really amazing ambrigram logos and designers out there.

Since it was my first ambigram, it took a while to get right. I drew it on paper 3 times, then re-did it in Illustrator about 10 times. It still isn't perfect, but it seems pretty fun.

Thanks to an equally relaxing and productive morning, I managed to wrangled up my earlier drawing into this fun vector. It's sized just perfect for your iPhone, but I am thinking it would make for a great poster print. What do you think? Anyone got recommendations on a place to print them at? I've only ever used Cafepress, which is slightly pricey.

Although it doesn't directly relate to the drawing, this is what I read today to start my morning:

"For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse." - Romans 1:20