Retro Graphics: Beginner – Intermediate level Illustrator Tutorial

01.17.2009 // Design // jcbrady // 2 Comments

The best retro graphics are the ones you can make yourself. I’ll show you how to make these simple designs quickly and easily. Not only will they be unique and to your liking, when you make them yourself they’re free!

This is what we'll make!

I’m using Illustrator CS2-CS3 for this tutorial, but you’ll find these steps to be pretty much the same in most versions of Illustrator. I also have my preferences set up for working with the web so I’ll use pixels instead of the default measurement which is points.

In a new Illustrator doc select the rectangle tool and draw a vertical rectangle with black fill and no stroke as thin as you can make it about 100 px tall. (Fig. A)

(Fig. A) Vertical line

Use your width and height panel to enter 100 px for the height and .75 for the width. (In CS2 and CS3 this panel is located by default at the top of your screen) Also, If you’re using points as your default measurement, use the same numbers I use here.)

Sidenote: I often like to use filled rectangles instead of a stroke because strokes can get a little hard to work with when you need pixel perfect accuracy. When working for web it’s always nice to have this accuracy so I find myself getting away from using strokes as much as I used to. That said, use whatever you like, basically, you just need to create a vertical line with similar dimensions.

Click on your newly drawn line to select it and then click on the rotate tool in your tools palette. If you’re new to Illustrator, the rotate tool is shaped like a circle with a small arrow at the end of it.(fig 1.)

(Fig 1) CS3 Toolbar

(Fig. 2) Rotate Dialogue box from Illustrator CS 3

Double-click this rotate tool to and get a dialogue box. (fig. 2)

For your angle enter 60 degrees, check the Preview checkbox and hit Copy. You will now see a copy of your line on your canvas, rotated at 60 degrees. Also notice the cross-hairs in the middle of your line. This is your rotation point which we’ll talk more about soon.

Now hit command-D on a Mac or Control-D on a PC to duplicate the action you just performed. You should now have a total of 3 line segments on your canvas that looks like Fig B.

(Fig. B) Symetrical Image - 3 lines rotated at 60 degrees

Now select the ellipse tool from your tool palette. (skip to the next paragraph if you know where the ellipse tool is) Otherwise, this is a beginner tutorial so I’ll Explain where the ellipse tool is. By default you’ll see a rectangle tool in the palette, click and hold your mouse button over the rectangle tool and you’ll see a fly-out menu with several options. The ellipse tool is the 3rd one down the list.

With your ellipse tool selected, click anywhere in the canvas to get a dialogue box. Fig. 3 and enter the values 10 px for the width and 10 px for the height.

(Fig. 4) Dialogue box for ellipse tool

Give this new ellipse a fill of white and a black stroke of .75. Drag it over to the top of our object as seen in Fig C. Position it so that the center of the circle is over the end of our line. You may have to enlarge the viewing size to do this. Use the magnifying glass or (command/control +) to enlarge the view.

(Fig. C) Drag the new ellipse to the top end of the verticle line

Now we’ll create the other circles on the end of the lines, the instruction here gets a little tricky so stay with me. Click on the ellipse to select it and then click on the rotate tool once to view a new cross-hairs in the center of the ellipse object. (Your curser should look like a cross-hairs as well) Option Click on a Mac or Alt Click on Windows in the exact center of the line object to set the new center of the rotation. You may want to enlarge your canvas to about 1200% in order to see your center point better (Fig. D)

(Fig. D) Option click in the center of our object to get a dialogue box

When you option/alt click, a dialogue box will come up, enter 60 degrees and hit copy. Make sure you hit “copy and not “OK”. This performs your transformation once (Fig. E).

(Fig. E) Hit copy in your dialogue box to get this image.

Now hit Command/Control – D four more times to duplicate it. You should have a full looking ornament as in Fig. F.

(Fig. F) (Almost Done!)

Hit Command/Control G to group the object (The group command is also found in the object menu under group). You don’t have to group it but I like to keep the elements organized this way.

With the object selected and grouped double-click the scale tool in the menu palette (It looks like two rectangles and an arrow). Double-clicking will bring up a dialogue box. Enter 70 in the uniform section and hit copy.

(Fig. 5) Scale Dialogue box

With your object still selected double click the rotate tool and in the dialogue box enter 30 degrees. Instead of hitting copy, hit OK and you now have the finished product!

(Fig. G) Final element.

You can also hit copy in this last state to get an interesting effect. Play around with the different settings and you can end up with some cool effects. I think you’ll find that doing this tutorial will provide you with a backbone for many creative ideas you can use with these tools and techniques. Snowflakes, clocks, wheels, and ornaments just to name a few.

Another good thing to remember when rotating images is to use a number that divides evenly into 360: 2, 5, 10, 15, 30, 45, 60, 120, 180. This will ensure that what you are rotating will fit into your circular object.