How to Create Cool Graphics in Adobe Illustrator CC

LEARN TO MAKE THIS COOL “ZERO” GRAPHIC IN ILLUSTRATOR! | We’ll cover building shapes with the Pathfinder, using Smart Guides, global colors, gradients, effects, and much more in this comprehensive Illustrator tutorial!

Design concept stolen from: @shreyasbendre: https://www.instagram.com/shreyasbendre/

In this Illustrator tutorial, we’ll go about creating this “zero” graphic by building a series of circles and then using a color palette that we built to create gradients and strokes to really complete this graphic and add shape and dimension to it. Thanks for watching!

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Tutorial Recording Notes:

Disclaimer: these are the actual notes I used to record this video and are written in a language you may or may not understand. Hopefully, you find them useful or cool.

1. Create a new document 2560×1440 with RGB color
2. Create 2560×1440 rectangle and fill with RGB:10-10-40 and center align
3. Turn on Smart Guides to make alignment fast and easy
4. Create a 300×300 ellipse, duplicate it and resize to 200×200, and duplicate that and resize to 100×100 and align all these shapes centered
5. Stroke the ellipses with black
6. Duplicate the grouping of circles and move it below until it snaps to just the bottom of the group like this
7. Duplicate the largest of both circles and drag them outward like this
8. Hide both of those new circles
9. Use the Pen tool (with the help of Smart Guides) and join each of the circles to convert them to ovals
10. Create 4x global colors:
11. RGB: 255-30-35
12. RGB: 255-30-135
13. RGB: 110-250-170
14. RGB: 0-60-245
15. Create a gradient with the first two colors, light color on the left and darker color on the right
16. Apply this gradient to the bottom oval and then to the middle oval, but reverse the gradient
17. Duplicate the bottom gradient and swap fill and stroke and set the stroke to white, 3pt, align stroke to the inside, and set it to Soft Light and reduce the opacity to 65%
18. Duplicate the mid oval and swap fill and stroke and set stroke to white, 2pt, align to the inside, set to Soft Light, and 65% opacity
19. Copy the smallest oval to the clipboard and use it to punch a hole in the middle of the mid oval and then paste the small oval again and cut a hole in the middle of the largest oval
20. Rearrange the layers as needed to make the effect look proper
21. Select all the shapes and group them together
22. Duplicate this group and paste it in front and change the gradient colors to the second two color swatches that we had created
23. Turn on those other two ellipses we’d created before and drag them above the layers we just created
24. IMPORTANT: Copy the shapes to the clipboard
25. Fill the shapes with a color and dump the strokes
26. Use the rectangle tool and build out a complex shape and use Pathfinder to combine the shapes and cut out the bits we don’t want
27. Fill the shape with solid white and mask the top oval series using this shape
28. Paste those two ellipses we copied to the clipboard back in place
29. Duplicate up the bottom (unmasked) copy of the oval shape and arrange it to the top above everything else
30. Set all the fills to black and delete any center shapes to get a clean oval “horse race track” type of shape
31. Merge all these shapes together using the Pathfinder
32. Copy this new shape to the clipboard
33. Use this track shape and divide it against the top right ellipse and save only the small piece we need
34. Add a drop shadow to this shape: Multi / 100% / -15px X offset / 0 Y offset / 15px blur / black
35. Use the track shape to create the mask needed to limit this shadow to only the area we want it to be
36. Reduce the opacity to 50-65% depending on what looks good
37. Use the track shape and the ellipse on the bottom left and tweak and build out the mask needed to mask a drop shadow shape for this side of the shape like we did for the right side
38. Use the track shape and arrange it beneath all the shapes and create a drop shadow: 40% opacity, 0px X offset, 20px Y offset, 25px blur
39. Create a radial gradient with a very light blue and mask it to the background and set it to Screen or Overlay and reduce opacity to create a spotlight effect for the background