Illustrator: Shapes 101

This is a very simple thing to make in Illustrator and should definitely help you guys get your feet wet if you are a novice and Illustrator is still intimidating to you. During this tutorial you will deal with shapes: how to make them, lock them, and merge them. Let's get right to it, shall we?

Make the shapes. On the left of the screen you will see the toolbox containing your selection tools, type tools, and pretty much everything else. Click and hold down on the rounded rectangle tool. The menu will expand giving you more shape options. Select the ellipse (circle) tool and make a circle on your artboard about 100 x 100 pixels in size.

Select the hexigon tool and click the artboard. A window will pop up giving you the option to specify sides. Choose 3 sides and click OK. Shrink and stretch it accordingly and drag it down to the bottom left corner of the circle. Alt click and drag the triangle to make fangs. Repeat this by making and duplicating a rectangle half the size of the fangs and drag them to make front teeth. Use the ellipse tool for the eyes and set the fill to black, along with the stroke.

Lock the shapes. Select an eye and go to object/lock/selection to disable selection, and repeat with the other eye. Unfortunately, once you lock a bunch of stuff you can't unlock one without unlocking them all, but grouping your objects will help keep them sorted for you. To group objects select them and go to object/group. You can ungroup them at any time.

Merge the shapes. Click and drag across your artboard to select all unlocked objects, which includes the teeth and circle. Go to window/pathfinder and select "Add to shape area", which is a button top-left in the window. With this new multi-shape selected, click the color palette in your tool box and the color window will pop up. At the bottom right of the color window there is a hexidecimal field (six digits) thatlet's you input a color code to specify a very specific color. You will be entering F7F2DA into this field. Click OK.

Well there you have it: your very own cartoony vampire skull. My next installment would probably be on stylizing and texturing to create a truly horrific little vamp skull. Keep your eyes peeled, because you'll be seeing this little bugger again.

WHAT'S UP: Micro Buttons

Ever wondered what the hell kinda font people have been using for those tiny 'link to' buttons? Well, out of absolute boredom I figured it out. All hail the almighty Google blah blah blah.

These tinies are called 'micro buttons'. Though they are not for the visually inept they do provide a good bit of linky information in a stylish manner and they take away very little of the site's design. Hell often times they add to the site's design. Here are the specs for making your own:

• The standard micro button size is 80x15.


• The universal font used for them is Silkscreen by Jason Kottke.


• Most of the time these buttons have a small white cut to the left to display initials or whatever, but they come in all styles.

Happy button making and remember: Uncut Columbian is only uncut if you're in Columbia.

HTML: Crash Course

This post is all about tags. I'm sure a lot of you are damn tired of having 'Hosted by Photobucket' appear at the bottom of every picture you link to, so I'm gonna tell you how to bypass the sickening commercialism attached to all of your hosted photos. Your dead dog shouldn't be hosted by Photobucket.

Copy the direct link url located below your image on the Photobucket website. Navigate to the place where you want to place your image and follow these steps:

Insert this short code and paste the url you copied in place of (url):

<img src=" (url) ">

When you're done, you should have something like this:

<img src="http://www.photobucket.com/image.jpg">

Same goes with linking text instead of just slapping a long ugly link down. This is what you write:

<a href="http://www.google.com">This is a link.</a>


This is what you get: This is a link.

For a while you'll have to reference the code and c/p it, but eventually you'll memorize it and be able to toss those brackets around like hotcakes. Practice is key to mastery, grasshopper.

Business Card How-to

Everybody needs a good business card, especially designers. In an occupational field based on looks, the first impression means everything. Think of the graphic design industry like the model industry, expect you don't have to puke every time you eat a cracker.

Business card stuff you outta know:

• Create the image in CMYK color mode


• Set the size for 3.5 x 2 inches at 300 PPI


• Save it on a flash drive as a PDF


• For something simple go to Kinko's


• Pick out a cardstock and go grab a coffee.

I dig the Kinko's because it's convenient and cheap as hell. Six cut sheets run you about 13 bucks. But of course, you can set it up there but your designs options will be limited and you'll pay around 40 friggin' dollars for the same number of cards. Now that you know how to set up your own you can save some money. And I suggest you do; gas ain't gettin' any cheaper.