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About this lesson
Covering the different types of basic shapes that can be made and how to scale them, rotate or flip them, and manipulate them.
Exercise files
Download this lesson’s related exercise files.
All Shapes and Sizes59.1 KB All Shapes and Sizes
1.1 MB All Shapes and Sizes
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Quick reference
All Shapes and Sizes
Covering the different types of basic shapes that can be made and how to scale them, rotate or flip them, and manipulate them.
When to use
You can use the Shape Tools any time you need to create a geometric shape, whether you want to use it as is or to alter and transform it into a variation of a shape.
Instructions
- Begin by opening the 'All Shapes and Sizes - Exercise.ai' file.
- Click and hold your cursor on the Shape Tools from the Toolbar on the left side of the Illustrator interface.
- Select the tab on the right side with the small arrow to undock the tool from the toolbar.
- Grab the Rectangle Tool (M) and practice creating a rectangle vs a square by dragging out a shape with the Rectangle Tool (M) and then do the same thing while holding down the Shift Key to constrain the proportions of the shape.
- Repeat this with the Ellipse Tool (L) to create an ellipse vs a circle.
- Select the Pentagon and Star Tools and notice how these tools allow you not only to scale and constrain, but also to rotate the shapes.
Hints & tips
- If you have the Rounded Rectangle Tool selected, you can click and drag the corners to make them more or less rounded depending on the look you want to achieve.
- Certain Shape Tools such as the Star Tool and Pentagon Tool allow you to change the number of sides by first selecting the tool and then double clicking on the canvas and entering the number of sides in the dialog box that appears.
- You can also transform your shapes by experimenting with some of the options found under the Object > Transform Menu to do things like rotate and reflect.
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- 00:04 In the previous lesson I kind of touched a little bit on how to create squares.
- 00:08 But in this section I wanna show you guys some of the other
- 00:11 kinds of shapes that you can make.
- 00:13 And how you can manipulate or transform them.
- 00:16 So the first thing I wanna do is bring up my layers palette.
- 00:19 And we're just gonna add some shapes to our first layer, so
- 00:22 double click on layer one, and we're just going to call this layer Shapes.
- 00:27 Now, over here in our tool bar, I wanna show you guys some of these shapes.
- 00:31 So if I hover my cursor over this rectangle, you'll see that it pops up and
- 00:35 it says, rectangle tools, and it also gives you the keyboard shortcut,
- 00:38 which is M on the keyboard.
- 00:41 So, if I press M and then move my cursor over onto the art board here,
- 00:46 you'll see that I can create a shape pretty much whatever I want.
- 00:50 I can make a long rectangle, I can create a tall rectangle.
- 00:56 But if I hold down the Shift key while I do this, it's going to constrain
- 00:59 the proportions and make sure that it remains perfectly square.
- 01:03 By default, you'll probably have a white box with a black stroke.
- 01:07 But I can swap these colors by clicking on this arrow on the top right.
- 01:12 The keyboard shortcut to do that is to hold on Shift and press X.
- 01:16 That's another way that you can do that.
- 01:19 So let's just go ahead and get rid of this white outline by choosing none for
- 01:23 the stroke, so that all we have is a solid black fill, okay?
- 01:29 Now at this point we have our square.
- 01:31 And as I showed you in the previous lesson if I wanted to
- 01:34 manipulate some of these points,
- 01:36 well I could grab my direct selection tool by pressing A on the keyboard,
- 01:40 click on one of these points, or several points at the same time.
- 01:44 And then, manipulate those to transform them, all right?
- 01:50 So I can use the arrows, I can pull them, I can push them, whatever you wanna do.
- 01:54 That's the basic rectangle or square.
- 01:57 Now the next tool if I come back over to my rectangle tool and
- 02:01 I click and hold my mouse.
- 02:03 You'll see that there's a few other shapes here that we can create,
- 02:07 such as the rounded rectangle tool, the ellipse tool which is L on the keyboard.
- 02:12 A polygon tool, the star tool, and the flair tool.
- 02:15 And if I move over to the far right of this little pop out box here,
- 02:19 you'll see there is this small rectangle with an arrow next to it.
- 02:23 And if I click on that, it basically allows me to create this
- 02:29 kind of free flowing panel here, so that I can more this around in my work space.
- 02:34 So let's go ahead and click on the next one, the rounded rectangle tool.
- 02:38 Now this is kind of the same thing as the rectangle tool except you'll notice that
- 02:41 the corners are rounded.
- 02:43 And so, if I just drag out a shape like this,
- 02:46 you can kind of see what it looks like.
- 02:48 But if I move my cursor close to any of these corners inside of this shape here,
- 02:54 you'll notice this little white circle with a blue box in the middle.
- 02:59 And if I click and drag inwards,
- 03:01 it's actually going to round my corners even more until it becomes an ellipse.
- 03:07 And if I want to go the opposite way, I can click and
- 03:10 drag those points out until it becomes a square.
- 03:13 So that's kind of a nice way to choose how rounded you want your corners to be.
- 03:20 But if I grab my ellipse tool you'll see it's kind of similar where I can create
- 03:25 a shape that is just any size, length, or height that I want.
- 03:29 But if I hold down the shift key while I drag it out,
- 03:32 it's going to remain a perfect circle, okay?
- 03:35 So moving along, I have my polygon tool, which I can, again, click and
- 03:40 drag while holding the shift key to create that.
- 03:46 And you'll notice that I also have the ability to kind of rotate this.
- 03:50 And as I move my cursor inwards, I make it smaller, as I drag it outwards,
- 03:54 it gets larger.
- 03:58 But if I wanted to, I could take any of these shapes, really, and
- 04:02 move my selection tool towards the top corner.
- 04:05 And then, you'll see my cursor change and I can actually rotate these.
- 04:10 So you have the ability to rotate, manipulate the points, as you wish.
- 04:15 Alright, with the circle you won't really be able to tell because it's going to look
- 04:18 the same no matter angle it's at.
- 04:19 Let's say for something like this square,
- 04:22 if I wanted to make it more of a diamond shape, I would just rotate it.
- 04:27 And if you hold down the shift key while you rotate,
- 04:29 it will rotate by increments of about 90 degrees.
- 04:36 All right, but if I don't hold shift, and it just allows you
- 04:40 a little more freedom over exactly the angle that you want, all right?
- 04:44 And that goes with any of these shapes.
- 04:48 Again to go by increments of 90 degrees, hold down the shift key while you rotate.
- 04:52 But if you want to do something a little bit more free,
- 04:55 just release the shift key and you can drag it and rotate it however you like.
- 05:00 Okay, so from there we have the Star Tool.
- 05:02 Now the Star Tool is another cool one where,
- 05:06 I can kinda rotate it as I'm creating it.
- 05:09 Or I can hold down the shift key and move it in and
- 05:13 out to have it constrain the proportions.
- 05:17 Now if I combine this with my direct selection tool,
- 05:20 I can grab some of these points here on the star and I can move them down.
- 05:25 I can move them up, I can grab a point and move it outwards.
- 05:31 And just to manipulate and make it a little bit more interesting looking, Okay?
- 05:38 And then, from there we also have the flare tool.
- 05:43 Now, the flare tool is one that I don't use very often, but
- 05:46 it can come in handy for certain things.
- 05:49 Now sometimes it's nice to add a little burst of light here and
- 05:52 there in an illustration or a typography design.
- 05:56 But this basically just gives you a quick and easy way to do that.
- 05:59 So it's grouped with our shaped tools even though it's slightly different.
- 06:04 Now all of these things can be accessed easily either from this floating dock, or
- 06:09 back over here in our toolbar.
- 06:12 And again, if I click inside of here, you can either have this pop out
- 06:16 to move it around or you can access it directly from the left side.
- 06:21 So one of the other things that I'd like to show you guys about
- 06:24 these basic shapes is that if I select any of them, sure,
- 06:29 I can rotate them, but you can also flip them.
- 06:32 So let's say I select my star, for example.
- 06:34 I could hold down the Shift key and
- 06:36 just rotate it a few times until it's upside down.
- 06:40 Or I could select it, come over here to the top where it says object, and
- 06:45 then I can choose Transform, Move, Rotate, Reflect, Scale, or Shear.
- 06:51 So these are some of the ways that you can transform anything ranging from
- 06:53 shapes to type and things like that.
- 06:57 So for example if I clicked on rotate,
- 06:59 you'll see that I can now put in a specific angle that I wanna rotate it by.
- 07:04 And as long as I have my preview box checked off I can enter that value.
- 07:11 So you can rotate things like that.
- 07:13 You can rotate it 180 degrees, 360 degrees,
- 07:16 pretty much anything you want, okay?
- 07:20 And if I select that again and come back up to Object and
- 07:22 Transform, you can reflect it.
- 07:26 And see if you reflect it, you can just flip it horizontally, vertically, or
- 07:31 again, by a specific angle.
- 07:37 All right, but let's say I wanted to try something a little bit different.
- 07:39 I can select my square over here, come up to Object Transform,
- 07:43 and this time let's choose Scale.
- 07:46 Now this is another handy option because it allows you to increase or
- 07:49 decrease the size of a shape or an object.
- 07:52 Either in a uniform size, meaning it will constrain the proportions or if you just
- 07:57 want to stretch it one way but not the other, you would choose non uniform.
- 08:01 So you'll see I've entered a value of two hundred percent which doubles the width of
- 08:04 this square.
- 08:06 But it doesn't change the vertical height.
- 08:08 And if I check off uniform, and let's say I enter 50,
- 08:11 it'll make it half of the size it was while constraining the proportions.
- 08:17 You can also do this to double or even triple the size of your shape, okay?
- 08:24 And you also have these options,
- 08:25 this scale corners proportionally as well as the Scale Strokes & Effects.
- 08:31 And all that means is that if you have an outline,
- 08:33 it's going to scale that in proportion to your shape.
- 08:37 So those are some of the ways that you can transform a shape, and
- 08:41 the last one that I wanted to show you guys is the Sheer option.
- 08:44 So if I selected my rounded rectangle here, come up to Object,
- 08:48 Transform and Shear.
- 08:51 Well this time I can enter an angle to basically kind of skew our shape.
- 08:57 So let's say I enter an angle of 45 degrees and set it to Horizontal.
- 09:03 Well now it's gonna slant this shape 45 degrees horizontally.
- 09:07 I can also enter a negative value, say negative forty five degrees to go
- 09:10 the opposite way, or if I wanted to go vertically, I can do the same thing.
- 09:16 Negative or positive values will work.
- 09:19 Or you can enter any kind of angle that you want
- 09:23 in here if you want something a little bit different.
- 09:26 And just a little more random looking.
- 09:29 So those are some of the basic shapes that you can create in the illustrator and
- 09:33 the different ways that you can transform them, manipulate them and rotate them.
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