How to make Repeating Grids & Concentric Circles in Illustrator?

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Keyboard Shortcuts 14:06

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Course info

104 lessons / 10 hours 33 quiz questions 31 projects Certificate of achievement

Overview

Hey there, I'm Dan Scott, an Adobe Certified Instructor with over 16 years of design experience under my belt, I'm part of the Adobe Expert program, and my online and in-person classes have been attended by more than a million people, just like you! Join me as we dive into the exciting world of Adobe Illustrator Advanced! In this course, you're not just leveling up in Illustrator, you're transforming into an Illustrator SuperHero!

In this course you will work on a bespoke brief designed to ignite your imagination, coupled with immersive course videos, you'll be crafting jaw-dropping graphics in no time. Throughout our journey together, you'll flex your creative muscles and construct projects that will elevate your portfolio to new heights. So, let's dive in and unleash your creativity!

You’ll learn:

  • - How to use artificial intelligence to boost your creativity in ideation. 
  • - The quick way to take hand-drawn sketches and vectorize and color them. 
  • - The building blocks needed to set you loose on a huge variety of beautiful effects and techniques.
  • - To make beautiful charts and graphs for your documents. 
  • - Color mastery to make quick color adjustments, Pantones, and blend it all together beautifully.
  • - How to master images inside of your illustrator workflow. 
  • - To harness all the secret gems that'll help you level up your typography skills. 
  • - All the tricks of the trade for drawing complex shapes easily. 
  • - To double your creativity with the Transform and Distort section. 
  • - To speed up your personal workflow to get the most out of your creative day.

Explore the full course outline for a comprehensive list of topics that will expand your Illustrator prowess beyond imagination.

If you're already comfortable navigating the basics but want to  unlock the true potential of Illustrator, then this Illustrator Advanced course is your ticket to becoming a master of Illustrator! So join me and the ranks of design superheroes and let's embark on this thrilling journey together.

Requirements:

- All you need is a copy of Adobe Illustrator, you can get a free trial from Adobe here to get started.
- A basic knowledge of Illustrator is required. I recommend watching my Illustrator Essentials course prior to embarking on this epic adventure.

Who this course is for:

- Creative adventurers who already have a basic understanding of Illustrator.
- Self-taught Illustrator enthusiasts yearning for structured guidance.
- Graduates of my Illustrator Essentials Course, hungry for more knowledge and skills.
- Visionaries who have developed their own unique Illustrator approach but crave exploration of the vast universe of tools, updates, and time-saving techniques.

What you'll learn:

- How to use Text to Vector Ai
- How to use Text to Pattern Ai
- How to use Generative Recolor
- When to use the Scissor Tool, Eraser Tool & Knife Tool
- Advanced Shape Builder Uses
- The differences between the Pathfinder Vs Shape Builder
- How to use the Join tool & Joining Path Ends
- Advanced Pen Tool Tricks
- Width Tool Advanced Techniques
- The Curvature Tool
- How to master corners with corner widget effects
- How to work with Compound Paths
- The difference between Expand & Expand Appearance
- How to create Graphic Styles
- How to make Symbols
- How to use the Smooth Tool
- Advanced use of Simplify Path
- What Live Shape Effects are for
- How to make Repeating Grids & Concentric Circles
- How to make Random Objects
- Advanced Keyboard Shortcuts in Illustrator
- How to add a Gradient on a Stroke
- How to add a Gradient in Text
- How to use the Freeform Gradient tool
- How to use Advanced Color Swatches
- How to use Global Color Swatches
- What is the difference between RGB vs CMYK color modes?
- How to proof colors
- How to use Pantone Spot Colors
- Recolor Artwork & Changing all colors at once
- How to use Blending Modes
- How to work with Images & Blending Modes
- How to make Black & White Images
- Learn Advanced Workflow Tricks
- All the Super Selection Mastery
- How to use the History Panel
- Advanced Fonts Tricks & Tips
- Use Retype to know what Font is being used
- How to put Text Inside a Letter or Shape
- How to use the Touch Type Tool
- How to add a Connected Stroke Around Multiple Shapes
- How to Offset a Stroke with Text
- How to make a Bar Chart in Illustrator
- How to make a Pie Chart in Illustrator
- Layer Power Moves
- Advanced Artboard & Pages Tricks
- How to Unlink vs Embedded Images
- How to Crop Images Rather than Mask
- How to Mask Inside Text & Multiple Shapes
- How to you use the Puppet Warp Tool
- How to use the Distort Envelope Shape & Type
- How to use the Envelope Mesh
- How to blend lines together
- How to make a Linocut Effect
- How to make 3D Gradient Lettering Blends
- How to spin text into a ring
- How to turn text into a 3D donut shape
- How to make a Duotone image effect
- How to make a Roughen Stamp Vector Effect
- How to make a Neon Sign Glow Effect
- How to use a Halftone Effect using Plugins
- Advanced Exporting Assets Tricks in Illustrator
- How to use the Dimension Tool

So what're you waiting for? Let's start the course now!
Daniel Scott

Daniel Scott

Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor

instructor

I discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.

Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.

Certificates

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Check out the How to earn your certificate video for instructions on how to earn yours and click the available certificate levels below for more information.

Downloads & Exercise files

Transcript

Hello. It is time to look at something called  repeat in Illustrator. Okay? It is a feature that lets us do things like this. Look, lots of donuts, all radioed around each other. Same with this, my little coffee and donuts option.

Watch this. I can make 'em bigger, smaller, flip 'em around. Okay? It's a great way of making patterns. Very similar to the pattern maker or like and repeat,  but just a little bit cut down  and often exactly what you need. And the nice thing about it is that it is this kind  of like live effect where you can adjust  that afterwards, okay?

Without having to commit it  to say a swatch like the pattern maker. Alright, let's jump in and work out how best  to use the repeat feature in Illustrator. Alright, if you wanna follow along,  open up the file called repeat grid. Let's start with this donut at the top here. I created this using the text vector  and what it does is it ends up putting out a rectangle  around it, which can cause us a little bit of problems  with this because I want my uh,  donut knot to have this border. So I'm just gonna hit ungroup, click off, click back on  and it's no longer got that border around it.

Okay? So sometimes you have to do that  with text to vector at the moment. Now I wanna keep a good version of this  and I'm gonna duplicate it. Okay? So hold down option key on a Mac,  hold key on a PC and drag it out. Now when you are using any of these tools, it is way easier  to get it to the right size  before you put it into the repeat grids.

You can totally do it afterwards. It's just, it's really confusing  to do it while it's um, in a repeat grid. So I got my donut. Let's look at the one, let's go to object  and let's go to repeat grid. Okay? Or repeat.

We're gonna start with repeat mirror. I don't use this one very often. You might decide that you like the mirror option. You can play around with these settings  how far apart it is and the rotation. I just don't use this one very often. You might be like, oh my goodness, that's awesome.

Okay, there you go. I'm gonna undo it until it's gone. Let's look at the other one. Let's go to object. Let's go to uh, repeat  and let's go to the one that says radial. There we go.

We got a donut. Oh, sunshine. Okay. Uh, you can on here, you can decide  how many versions of it you want. Okay? Quite like the live shapes, okay?

So the same sort of dragging components here  and this one here is like where it starts  and where it stops. Okay? Like do you want it just to be a semicircle  or a full circle or just one? Okay, so there you go. There's this one I can play around with the size here. Okay, so it's in this kinda like live effect type deal  and you can use these on art kind of graphics here  or over here in the properties panel.

Can you see there's a repeat options panel, okay? And it gives you some of these options in here  so you can decide more like I, you know, I need uh, six  of them, not just some random number. You can see in here with a repeat radio. You can reverse it, see which one's on top. Okay, awesome. I'm gonna use that as my like little star sunshine thing  here that you saw at the beginning.

Um, and let's do the grid one. This is the one I use the most. So it's kind of similar to um, like just like we did  before we duplicated this, okay? You're holding down the option KE mac, oh ke a pc, okay? And just dragging it over and then you can hit command  or control D, okay? And we'll duplicate it.

Then I can grab this and duplicate it. D, d, d and  You can get lots of duplicates, okay? And that works fine. You can also use the patent feature  that we looked at really early in this course using the um,  the AI version of the patent maker  or in the essentials course where we use the patent tool. This one here is just a little simpler. Let's have a look.

It's go to object actually I'm gonna  get the right size first. Okay? And that works and I'm gonna go to object repeat  and let's use this grid option, okay? And it's really cool, okay,  I'm gonna say you, I'm gonna get it. So the sidelines up and kind of snaps to the side there. Then I can extend it out.

I need it to be that full background there doesn't quite  snap and we go, it's gonna be here. And like the radio one, we've got this kind  of like um, things we can drag. Okay? Like how many versions of it's gonna be there? Same with this way, okay? Just be careful dragging it.

I find it can be nicer just using the  options on the side here. Now the main one you're gonna want to play  around with is the grid type. You might want just a complete like grid style thing we are  gonna using as it a pattern,  but you might just need a few of them. There you go. Job done. Way easier than like copy and pasting and duplicating.

But if you want a kind of like a pattern style,  you have got some of the pattern options here. So grid type, okay, the normal one, then uh, brick by row  and then brick by column. I'm gonna do brick by column. It's the one I end up using the most. It's totally up to you. And then you can mess around  with these flip, okay, it's a little bit tricky.

So at the moment they're just repeating consistently. Now I can say, so the rows are this way. Actually let's go back to this first grid type. It's a little bit easier to explain, it's hard  to explain anyway, but let's use this first option. So we've got rows and columns, up  and down columns left and right are rows. I can flip the rows so  that every second row is facing a different direction.

Don it on one side. Don it on the side. Okay, so I can turn that off. You can do it by, you can flip horizontally. So one's upside down. So one row's upside down,  the other one's up the right way.

Okay? Same thing with flipping columns. So columns move up and down. You can say every second column is flipped upside  down or turn that off. Uh, every row is flipped kind of like, like a mirror. Now you can have multiple them on,  you can have the flip column on.

So you can have flip column horizontal and vertical on  and then we get a bit lost. I don't find, I look at them and work out which one I want. What I do is I go uh, brick by column  and then mash away at this until something looks good. What I wanna do is have a bit more overlap. Now you can use these options here. Okay, can you see I can bring 'em in, I can hold shift  to get them to kind of eventually go to the minuses.

I'm at zero. So if I go a little bit lower holding shift,  clicking down, going in 10 point increments, okay,  they overlap or it is,  you might just easier drag these ones. There we go. Want a bit of overlap in there? Bit of overlap. I think the overlap's good.

Up and down. There you go. Mash weight these till I'm gonna actually start mashing away  what looks good, alright for me  because my coffee cup needed to be up the right way,  I just used the first two options  so I flipped horizontally on both the row and the column. That's how I got this one. I'm gonna move it off  so it's a little bit easier to see for you. Let's say we do need to edit this afterwards.

You can  Double click on any one of these guys  and what ends up happening is it's quite like the  pattern maker, okay? But you've just isolated one. You can move it probably best not to but you can rotate. Look at this, okay? And I can hold down shift Adrian sound effects, okay,  hold shift and I could resize it. Okay?

It is just, you can see it's kind  of a bit confusing doing it in here. It's better to get it right before you make it into  a grid but you don't have to. There you go to come back out, double click the background  or hit this arrow and you're out. Click on it again. And  because this is a live effect, okay, these things hang  around which is very cool. You can break them apart actually and hit the arrow again.

You can break them apart by going object  and go to expand gets rid, let's click okay. It gets rid of all those effects  but it's now kind of like a regular shape. So have a look at the appearance panel to what we ended up  with appearance panel. Okay, so I've got a group with a bunch of stuff in it. I could now have it selected and go to ungroup  and it's not gonna do anything  because what happened when the patent maker was doing its  thing, it created a mask. So what I can do is I can say over here, let's release  that mask and they all kind of spill out  and you can start working on them.

I wanna leave them in and what I wanna do is I want to go  put you in the background here. So that's it for the repeat tool. I'm gonna style mine to look nice. Where did all this come from? That wasn't there before, huh? Weird.

I'm not sure where all that came from. Did you see where that came from? Uh, yeah glitch in the matrix. What I wanna do is kind of darken these down. So with this, um, this is interesting. So this appearance panel is kind  of like maybe we added multiple fills to a rectangle.

You kind of can, but what's gonna happen? Look, I'm gonna add a new fill to this group  and it's gonna color in my uh, contents. So I'm gonna undo that. So  that kind of trigger's not gonna work. In this case what I'm gonna do is grab my rectangle tool  and draw another one  and they have to be two separate shapes just  'cause there's some complexity going on inside of that mask. So I'm gonna say you snap the edge  and I'm just gonna lower the opacity here down.

Do, do, do, just to kind  of make sure I can see my text on the top. Here we go. So I've got my black arrow,  I'm gonna go you, where is it there? I'm gonna grab both of them by selecting just kind of like  with my black arrow around both of these. I should get them great. I gotta group them just so they don't mess around  and I'm gonna send them to the back using command shift,  first square bracket next to the P key on my keyboard  or that'll be command shift square bracket on yours.

That's my kind of like background pattern thing going on. Now I shouldn't have expanded my uh, grid  because now I have no control over it. That was a mistake. I should undo a few times and keep it. Then you can still put the kind  of darker box over the top just to dull it out. But there you go.

Repeat grid. Very similar to lots  of other methods in Illustrator for making multiple ones. Pat make it very close to,  they've just made a really simple version of it  and often that's all you need. You just need to kind of repeat stuff around. Doesn't have to be a patents swatch  and all the other business  that goes along with the patent maker. Plus we don't wanna be copy  and pasting this forever as well.

Alright, that is the repeat feature in Adobe Illustrator. I'll see you in the next video. Yep. I'm gonna make you make a website. I'll see you there for the class project.
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