Vectordiary

Revamp for Vectordiary???

It has been close to a year since my blog started and now the current blog theme feels dry to me. I think it needs to be more exciting with a more professional look since my RSS readership has grown to more than a 1,000. If you have any suggestions or features to help improve Vectordiary, I will wish to hear.

Also, help cast your votes at the sidebar poll to decide whether Vectordiary needs a new look to step into year 2009!

Illustrator Trick #9: Colorful Waves

This is a common trick to produce abstract colorful waves in illustrator. First you draw a curve line using the Pen Tool and drag a copy of it by holding Alt/Option. Select the Blend Tool and click the first line and hold ALt/Option while you click the second line to show the Blend Options. Change Spacing to Specified Steps and set it to 5.
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Illustrator Trick #8: Scaling Strokes & Effects

By default when you resize an object, the stroke weight remains the same. At times, you may wish to scale the stroke weight with proportion to the shape. This can be achieved by turning on Scaling Strokes & Effects. This can be found under Edit>Preferences>General. Check Scaling Strokes & Effects to turn on scaling strokes.

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Illustrator Trick #7: Aligning to objects

Here is a very quick tip to align shapes to an object. For this example, I want to align the 2 red crosses with the white button without moving the white button. To do this, select the 3 objects and click the white button again. This will set the white button as the object to align to when you align horizontally and vertically.

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Illustrator Tutorial: Snowflakes

Christmas is coming and it’s time to make greeting card. This tutorial will teach you how to draw a snowflake pattern in Illustrator to spice up your Christmas design. You can also use this technique to create any snowflake pattern you like!
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Illustrator Trick #6: Copying Text Styles with Eyedropper

Most people thought that the Eyedropper tool is used for picking colors or gradients in Illustrator. However, not much people knows that the eyedropper can be used for picking character styles and appearances. To do this, select the text you want to change and select the Eyedropper tool. Using the Eyedropper tool, pick the text style you want to copy from and it will set you current text to that new style.
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Illustrator Trick #5: Art Brush Direction

Here is a quick tip to change art brush direction. Sometimes when you apply your custom art brush to your path, it goes in the wrong direction. So here’s how to swap the direction, using your Pen Tool, click one of the anchor corners again and it will swap the direction. Simple as that!

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