Rockstar Icon Designer - Kate McInnes [44]
The appearance panel is fantastic for applying complicated styles and finishes to a basic shape. Use the appearance panel to create an inner offset path and rounded corners for the page.
Adding Grids the Easy Way
Another overlooked tool is the Rectangular Grid tool. As the name suggests, this is a tool to draw grids. Each line in the grid can be selected and edited, so thicker lines can be added to create the finish of Graph Paper. Double Click the Rectangular Grid tool to edit the segments and settings before you draw it onto your artboard.
Stacking and Arranging Elements
The trick to creating an easy to understand and eye-caching icon is the use of color and the visual balance of the design. An icon with too many elements will look over crowded and may confuse the meaning of the icon. With this design I have placed a plain colored document behind the grid style document to provide visual balance and fill the available space without completely overcrowding the image by scaling the grid sheet to fill the space on its own.
I've also taken the time to save the two Appearance styles to the Graphic Styles panel. I've grouped the first document and the grid to create a new object to apply a drop shadow style to. New styles can be applied to groups without changing the styles applied to the individual objects.
Group the first document and the grid to create a new object to apply a drop shadow using the appearance panel.
Blocking and Alignment
When it was time to create the pencil, I blocked out the approximate location and scale I wanted it to be in and made a duplicate of the shape to build the pencil from. Sometimes when a rotated image is rotated back to a straight sided shape, some of the lines can be slightly wonky. To fix this, you can either draw another shape, or (and this is a trick most people don't know about) you can select corresponding points with the Direct Selection tool and straighten them by using the Alignment panel to align one point against the other.
Block out the shape of the pencil.
Joining and Cutting Shapes
To make the wavy line around the base of the pencil, I used the wave effect on a line and took the Scissors tool to cut it to size.
Use the Zig Zag tool to make the wavy edge of the pencil.
I then cut the bottom out of the rectangle of the pencil body and fused the wavy line into place by joining the points. To join a point, select a point and the one you want to join it to and press Command + J. Using this technique will help you build clean and precise shapes that have cleaner lines that drawing them with the Pen tool.
Join the wavy line to the main body of the pencil.
Adding Gradients to Create Volume
As you learned earlier, each material has its own reflection style. To create believable metallic effects you have to let loose and not be afraid to alternate bright and dark colors within a gradient. To create the metallic effect for the pencil end I used light tones of grey and blue for the start, added a slightly darker tone in the middle, and another light tone at the end. The variation of tones gives the illusion of reflection and curvature on the shape. Change the colors to create gold, platinum and copper toned metallic finishes.
Apply a metallic gradient to the top part of the pencil.
The pencil's eraser has two layers: one is an Opacity Mask with a radial highlight and the other is a solid colored shape with a grain effect added in the Appearance panel. The grain adds depth and realism to the object while the gradient forms the round shape. The ridges on the metal ring around the