This is a typography tutorial for beginner level users of Illustrator. I am using Illustrator CS2.

First, type the text that you want to stylize onto your artboard. Because I am feeling in a superhero kind of mood today, I decided I would play with the word SUPERMAN. In order to make things easier down the road, set the fill color to anything besides black.

I want to style my text to appear strong and fast (like Superman), as if I am standing still and it is flying by me. So, in sticking with our mood, I am going to play with my text a little before applying the 3D effect. This step is not necessary to create your 3D text, but it will give it even more perspective.

Go to Object > Envelope Distort > Make with Warp (shown below). The Warp Options dialogue box below shows the settings I used to get my desired look. If you are going for a different look with your text, play around a little. (If you check the Preview box along the right you can click around from Warp to Warp and change your settings while seeing a preview of them without committing to them.)

Here is what my text looks like with the above Warp applied.

Once you have applied the desired Warp, it is time to apply the 3D effects to the text. Go to Effects > 3D > Extrude & Bevel. Listed below are the settings I am using for my text.

Here is what my text looks like with the above 3D Effect applied.

In order to edit and tweak the 3D text, we will need to Expand and Ungroup. First, go to Object > Expand Appearance.

Once the text has been expanded, go to Object > Ungroup to separate the pieces so that we can edit them individually. Note: You may have to repeat the Ungroup steps a few times before all the groups have been separated.

Select the “front face” of each letter and apply a new fill color/effect using your Color Palette. I chose a linear gradient and used colors that create the look of a reflective surface.

Here is my final 3D SUPERMAN text.

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BONUS TUTORIAL!
The Reverse Effect ~ Let’s go over how to reverse the look of our 3D text, while reviewing some other basic tips and tricks.What we want to do is select all of the gradient “fronts” and make them blue and select the blue drop effect and apply the gradient.The first thing we want to do is save our gradient to the Gradient tab in the Color Palette so that we do not have to build it again when reapplying it to another shape. Select any of the “fronts” so that the gradient is showing as the current selection Fill in your Toolbox as shown below. Next select the Gradient tab in your Color Palette, also shown below. Now simply drag the Fill from you Toolbox into the Gradient Palette.To make our lives easier, we can put the fronts and the drag effect each on its own layer. For a review on how to do this, see my tutorial called “Shortcut to Moving an Object to a New Layer”Now that we have each group on a different layer, we can easily select only the part of the text that we want to work on. First, click on the little circle to the right of the drop effect layer in the Layers Palette to select the entire layer.

Now click on the new gradient swatch you just placed in the Gradient Palette.

Next, select the fronts layer by clicking the little circle and change the fill to blue or whatever color you were using.

Now you have a reverse version of the 3D text we created above.

There are all kinds of fun ways to spice up your text. MAKE IT MORE THAN WORDS…MAKE IT ART!

This is a fun tutorial for beginner level users of Illustrator. I am using Illustrator CS2.

First, using your Ellipse Tool, create an elongated ellipse like the one shown below. This is the first petal of our flower.
The Ellipse Tool looks like this:

Next, with the petal selected, click on the Rotate Tool in your tool box.
The Rotate Tool looks like this:

Once you have clicked on the tool icon, hold the Option(mac)/Alt(pc) keyas you move the cursor to the point you want your petals to rotate around and click. You will see the light blue rotation point on your artboard as shown below.

Once you select your rotation point, the Rotation dialogue box will appear.

Select the angle at which you want your petals to rotate around the rotation point (I am using a 30 degree angle) and hit COPY. Do not hit OK as this will simply rotate your original petal rather than adding a new one.

Next, add the rest of your petals by hitting Command(mac)/Control(pc) and D keys as many times as necessary. You can also repeat this step by going to Object > Transform > Transform Again.

Now that you have all your petals in place, create a circle (or a shape of you choice) and place it on top in the center.

There you have your quick and easy flower.

Once you get the hang of the steps, you can get a little more elaborate with your flowers. A few samples of flowers I made using these steps can be seen below.

Have fun with it!

This is an intermediate tutorial. I am using Photoshop CS2, a.k.a. Photoshop 9.0.2.

Bubbles are visually interesting because they reflect, can be transparent, have an iridescent sheen, and float. Sometimes this combination of characteristics can be hard to recreate. I’ll try to show you how. I’m starting with a photograph for my bubble to appear on. You can right click to copy it if you want to work with the same photo:

1. Open your photo

2. Using the elliptical marquee tool, draw a circle on your image. (If your rectangular marquee tool is showing in the tool box, hold the mouse over it, click and hold, and a fly-out menu will appear for you to select the elliptical marquee tool.) You can make your ellipse any size you want, and if you hold SHIFT while you draw it will make a perfect circle.

3. Press Cmd/Ctrl+J to copy your elliptical selection to its own layer.

4. Cmd/Ctrl+Click on the thumbnail in the layer palette to load the layer as a selection. You should see the marching ants in a circle as shown.

5. Select Filter from your main menu, then distort>spherize. Select an amount of 100% in the spherize menu that pops up.

6. Reapply the filter. Either Press Ctrl/cmd+F to re-apply the filter or go to Filter>Spherize (your most recent filter is listed at the top of the Filter menu now).

7. Your bubble area should now be distorted, and we will add a reflection to create a shiny surface. Create a new layer and name it ‘highlight’.

8. Make white your foreground color. Choose the gradient tool (on the fly-out menu of your paint bucket tool), and use the linear, foreground to transparent gradient.

Start from the top of the bubble and drag about 1/2 way down as shown.

9. Now right-click on Layer 1 for your blending options and select Bevel.
Style: Inner bevel, Technique: smooth, Depth: 29% (keep the other options at their defaults.)

10. Cmd/Ctrl+Clickon the thumbnail in the layer palette of the Highlight Layer. 

11. Click “Create new layer” to add a 4th layer (It should be Layer 2 on top of all your other layers).

12. Select your gradient tool and from the pre-loaded gradients select Spectrum (the full rainbow). Double click on the gradient to edit it, and remove the 2 darkest reds (the outermost colors) and the dark royal blue. Just click on the arrow by the color and drag it off the window to remove it.

Apply this newly edited gradient to Layer 2, then lower the opacity of the layer to 11%.

Now you have a round, shiny bubble!

If you want to place the bubble on different areas of the photo, reduce the opacity of layer 1 to 10%-40% and then group your top 3 layers and drag them anywhere on the image. Here I have copied the group a few times, changed the sizes and the opacities to place Lucy on the Beach among many Bubbles.

This is a web graphics tutorial for beginner level users of Illustrator. I am using Illustrator CS2.

A common way to give web buttons a little perspective and visual interest is to give them the look of a liquid filled bubble. It is a quick and easy process! For this tutorial, I am going to create matching red and green bubble buttons, which can be used for a number of actions on your web page: indicating a yes or no answer, start and stop audio, or play and pause video.

First, on a CMYK artboard, create two circles - one red and one green.

Next, place two smaller circles in the bottom half of your red and green circles. These shapes will serve as the highlight areas of the buttons, so make the fill color of these new circles a lighter shade of the same or similar color.

Now, select each set of circles individually and create a blend. To do this go to Object> Blend > Make.
(You can also do this using the blend tool from your toolbox.)

Once you have made your blend, your circle should look something like this:

Next, we need to add a reflection to create the illusion of a liquid texture and add some dimension to our buttons. Create an ellipse and place it inside each circle towards the top. Fill the ellipses with a white to black gradient, making sure that the black is true black (C=100%, M=100%, Y=100%, K=100%). (If you need help with creating a gradient, email me at kelly@rdesignonline.com.)

Now, open your transparency palette (Window > Transparency) and change your Transparency Mode to Screen in the pull down menu. Depending on your button colors, you may want to adjust your transparency % as well.

Once you have made the your changes in the Transparency Palette, your finished buttons should look something like this:

Now you can take your bubble buttons and label them for use on your website. Listed below are some sample uses of this pair of buttons. Enjoy!

Wise designers know that using layers in your Illustrator artwork makes life a lot easier. Keeping objects on separate layers allows you to lock objects, turn visibilty on/off, and makes selecting and editing an individual object fast and uncomplicated. Here is a simple tip on moving objects from one layer to another using the Layers Palette.

We will begin with the numbered shapes seen below.

These three shapes were drawn onto one layer, as indicated in the Layers Palette below. We want to give each of the stars its own layer, so we will need to create two more layers. To create a new layer, click on the Create New Layer icon at the buttom of the palette window.

Illustrator will automatically name layers by number, as shown below. It is a very good idea to name your layers, using a brief description of what is contained in each layer. This will make finding and editing individual pieces of your design quick and easy. Naming your layers becomes even more important if the artwork is a collaborative effort and more than one artist will be working with the file.

To name a layer simply double click on the layer name in the Layers Pallete and a Layer Options window will pop up. Here you will type in your new layer name. (You can also choose a layer selection color and turn on/off several other tools.) For the purpose of this tutorial, we are only concerned with replacing the layer name.

I have named my three layers according to the shape I want be contained in each layer, but if you look closely you can see that all three stars are still on layer #1. Now I want to move shape #2 and shape #3 to thier corresponding layers.

First, select shape #2 using the selection tool. In the Layers Palette, you will notice that the star #1 layer is highlighted, indicating the layer in which the currently selected item appears. You will also see a small box (blue, in this case) to the very right of the layer information.

With your cursor, drag and drop the small blue box into the star #2 layer. Star #2 should now be the highlighted layer, indicating that the selected shape is contained in the new layer.

Now try selecting shape #2 AND shape #3 using the selection tool. You will notice that, because they are on two different layers, the selection guides around each shape is a different color. In the Layers Palette, the color of the little box to the right corresponds to the selected object that is contained in that layer. In this case, shape #2 has red selection guides indicating it is part of the layer with the red box while shape #3 has blue selection guides indicating it is part of the layer with the blue box. I want to move shape #3 up to the star #3 layer, so I simply drag and drop that little blue box up to the desired layer.

Now you can see that shape #3 is on layer #3 and is now a part of the green layer, indicated by the green selection guides and small green box.

VIOLA! Each shape has its own layer. And all by simply dragging and dropping.

Do yourself a favor. Make a habit of using layers and developing a sensible layer naming system. It will make your life and that of your collaborative colleagues so much more efficient. And now you have a quick and easy was to use the powerful organizational tool that is LAYERS.