There are plenty of ways to distort shapes in Adobe Illustrator. One of the tools I use quite often is the Free Transform tool. This is pretty intuitive to use and I find it easier to control than the Skew tool for certain things. Here’s a video showing the basics of sing this tool. The modifier keys are Cmd, Alt and the Shift key.
‘Illustrator’ Archives
Convert Lines to Shapes in Illustrator
To create a quick lozenge shape in Illustrator, you can do it in a couple of short steps:
Slicing Text in Illustrator
Slicing text is a simple way of creating a nice graphic effect. Using Illustrator you can easily create a range of text effects, warping, cutting and reshaping to turn a fairly simple font into something a little bit more unusual.
Getting a Healthy Lunch Delivered to Your Office – The LunchBox Has Landed
We all understand the importance of eating a well-balanced and nutritious lunch at work, yet a healthy lunch is still so often perceived as having to munch your way through your lunch-hour on dry rice crackers and celery sticks! Well, now that The LunchBox Has Landed, they guarantee that your lunchtimes will never be the same again! They understand how busy you are and how easy it is to turn to unhealthy fast-foods or to waste your time standing in long queues, when all you really want is a delicious choice of superior quality, healthy & nutritious lunchbox options delivered fresh to your office every day.
The LunchBox Has Landed website
The LunchBox Has Landed is a great idea for anyone in a hurry who wants their lunch delivered to the workplace and Designermagic is delighted to have been involved.
The logo, branding and website design were all created by Designermagic using a combination of Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver and After Effects, with the eCommerce and back-end built by Edmonds Commerce.
An iPhone version of this site is currently in development.
Using the Gradient Mesh in Illustrator
A tip I picked up when using the gradient mesh in Illustrator came from this gradient mesh tutorial at creativebrush.com – and the work is amazing!
Instead of tracing your initial objects with the pen tool, start with a rectangle and adjust the anchor points & handles for better results.
The tutorial shows you how to do this and the results are certainly better than using that pen!
Units & Increments Preferences
For me, the default settings in InDesign are too crude for the Units & Increments. This is how I set mine for much finer control:
My type preferences in InDesign
Also, for the Display options I tend to set the Greeking to kick in below 3pt.
These settings are my preferred ones in Illustrator too for the type.
