Clipping Details

 

 

Design ideas and design process

 

Early on, why did I choose the Illustrator task to present my blog post you might ask. In short, it’s the one I enjoyed the most and had so much fun in experimenting and trying new stuff. I believe that the more you go to the extreme the better the outcome; after all, what’s art without failing a couple of times and why does the Command Z button exist?

 

2nd Design Sticker: Using Gradient, Blending mode, and reducing opacity.
3rd Design Sticker: Using reverse Gradient, Neon effect, and vertical text.
Final Design: Using Clipping mask, drop shadow effect, and adding texture.

 

I always thought that Illustrator was just a drawing app and I didn’t give it much thought and effort. It was until now that my design brain shifted towards thinking outside the box in order to develop my skills further. This encouraged me to start my 2nd design sticker using skills and tools I never thought off. I tried to do it as close as possible to to my 2nd podcast cover as I drew a podcast microphone coming out of a portal and extracted all the colors from it. I also used gradient to all my colors and tried to change the blending mode as much as possible. As to my 3rd design sticker, I thought it would look good to also represent a podcast microphone but to try and do it in a different way so it would match my 3rd podcast cover. I did the Neon effect and tried to show depth and motion in it using the gradient colors and the drop shadow effect. As for my final design sticker, which happens to be named 1st design sticker cause It represented my 1st podcast cover, I tried to use the clipping mask and pathfinder tool as much as possible. And that’s how I came up with the title, “Clipping Details” and as Christian Marclay said, “Art is all in the details”. At first, I used three simple rectangles and put them next to each other on top of a background using the exact colors of my 1st podcast cover (figure 1). Then, I used the pathfinder tool to delete the edges of the smaller rectangles so they would have the same area as each other (figure 2). I used the clipping mask tool to remove some parts of the rectangles and added some color details to it (figure 3). After that, I used the shear tool in order to remove the symmetry in my design as it looked too basic and used the drop shadow effect to add some depth (figure 4). I added texture using the clipping mask tool and added typography by removing parts of the rectangle (figure 5). Finally, I added a small sun like figure with the same texture and typography to make it a little interesting (figure 6). And voila, a simple sticker that I got to be proud of.

 

Figure 1: Creating simple shoes and a background
Figure 2: Using pathfinder tool
Figure 3: Adding texture and using Clip mask
Figure 4: Shear effect and drop shadow effect
Figure 5: Adding textures typography by clipping mask and downloading a texture
Figure 6: Adding multiple circles and lowering their opacity to create a sunbeam

 

 

Software tutorials

 

I used many tutorials in order to develop my design stickers and I chose the three I benefited of the most of to present here. In the 1st illustrator tutorial, I learned how to use the pathfinder tool. Although it was hard at first, I really got the hand of it as I used it many times in my final sticker and practiced using it to the extreme in other projects as well! As for the 2nd tutorial, I discovered the art of gradient and how to play with the opacity to show depth and kind of like a 3D movement that we anticipate heads on. For me, the 3rd tutorial was the hardest. Believe me or not, but I repeated the video 5 times to understand it well. I learned how to use the blending mode as I tried to use soft light, color dodge, overlay, and screen mode in order to move my 2ndpodcast sticker to the extreme! To be honest, I still think I need to develop my blending mode skills further. I saw what professionals can do with it and I wanna try and beat them with my creativity as they have the upper hand on how to use the software right now. I also want to develop my skills in the effects tools since I didn’t watch many tutorials on it, but I tried playing around with most of the effects on my free time.

 

 

Design resources and articles

 

I didn’t use many design articles for these projects because I thought that videos would benefit me more. During the process however, I sought out some design articles because I wanted to understand some stuff that I was having troubles with. For the 1st article, I read about the blending modes in details and tried to understand them one by one. Unfortunately, I still suffer from this tool as I need to practice it more; but I believe that with time I’ll know when to use each mode on spot. As for the 2nd article, I understood how to draw with simple shapes and get amazing results. It helped me finish a whole project with the minimal amount of time. Although these 2 articles were helpful, I think that the 3rd article helped me the most! Given in mind it’s the simplest of them all, a tutorial to how to clip mask was essential. I used this tutorial to develop my final podcast sticker further as I added texture using a clipping mask.

I believe all the tutorials were very helpful and I think this module really increased my skills in every software we were given. I finally know the exact purpose of each of the software and I can develop my skills way further than that!