657 Create an octagon of concentric rings

- [Instructor] In this movie, we'll take that concentric rings logo that we created in the previous movie, and we'll turn it into this eye-catching octagon of rings, once again here inside Adobe Illustrator. All right, so I'll switch to my artwork so far. Once again, I don't want to mess up my existing path outlines, so I'll create a copy of this top layer by clicking on the flyout menu icon in the top right corner of the layers panel and choosing duplicate intersecting. Then I'll turn off the original layer so I don't mess it up. I'll double-click on an empty portion of the new layer. I'll re-name this layer 68% copies, for reasons that will become evident in just a moment.

And I'll change the color to whatever, yellow might work. And then I'll click OK. All right, now you want to go ahead and turn on the guides layer once again, and then click on that layer to make it active. Next, go up to the View menu and make sure your smart guides are turned on. In my case, they aren't, so I'll ahead and choose the command, and then I'll select the polygon tool from the shape tool flyout menu. Now you want to click at the intersection of those two guides, and you want to set the Sides value to eight, that's very important, so we end up getting an octagon, and then you can set the radius to pretty much anything you like, but if you've been working right along with me, then go ahead and set the radius value to 200 points, it's just a nice, round number, and click OK.

All right, now just go ahead and right click somewhere inside the document window and choose Make Guides in order to convert that octagon to a snapping guide, like so. All right, now just go ahead and switch back to that 68 percent copies layer, and then switch from the polygon tool to the ellipse tool. Next just go ahead and click anywhere inside the document window, it really doesn't matter, and enter the height and width of that very first circle that you created in the previous movie, in my case both the width and height values are going to be 90 points, at which point I'll click OK to create that circle.

All right, I want to keep track of this guy, so I'm going to change its fill color to really any old thing, red will work just fine. And then you want to switch back to your black arrow tool, which you can get by pressing the V key, and then drag this top anchor point until it snaps into alignment with that center top circle, like so. And then go ahead and release it. All right, now press Ctrl + A, or Cmd + A on the Mac, to select all the shapes, grab that center point, that's why we created the circle in the first place, and drag it so that it snaps into alignment with this right-hand corner of the polygon.

And once it does, just go ahead and release. And then click off the shapes to deselect them. All right, now you want to select that red circle once again, and drag its top point until it snaps into alignment with the bottom central circle, and then just go ahead and release it. And the reason we're doing this is to measure the distance between these two center points. Now press the Enter key, or the Return key on the Mac, to bring up the Move dialogue box, and note your position values. The horizontal value should be zero, if you've done things correctly, because after all we just performed and entirely vertical drag.

The vertical value is what you are interested in. In my case, it's 225 points. Whatever it is for you, depending on what scale you're working at, go ahead and write that value down, and then go ahead and click Cancel. Now press Ctrl + Z, or Cmd + Z on the Mac, to undo that move and go ahead and drag this guy again, this time by its center point, until it snaps into alignment with another corner of the polygon. And if you're having problems making that snap work, then just undo and zoom in, and that's because sometimes when you have smart guides turned on, Illustrator isn't so great at the snapping.

So now that I'm zoomed further in, I'll go ahead and drag that center point again, until it snaps into alignment with the corner of the polygon below it, and then I'll release. And now you want to press the Enter key, or the Return key, yet again to bring up the Move dialogue box. And note this vertical value right here. In my case, 153.0734. So what I'm going to do is grab my phone and switch to the calculator, you could grab an actual calculator if you want to, and I'll just go ahead and enter 153.0734 and then I'll divide it, so hit the divide sign, by 225, so that value you just wrote down a moment ago, and then hit the equals button, and in my case I get 0.68, in other words, 68 percent, which is why I named this layer, 68 percent copies.

All right, so what do we do with that info? Well, I'll show you. I'll go ahead and cancel out of the dialogue box and press the Backspace key, or the Delete key on the Mac, to get rid of that red circle, then I'll press Ctrl + A, or Cmd + A on the Mac, to select all of the rings. I'll go ahead and switch to my scale tool, which you can get by pressing the S key, and now you want to position your cursor at that top right corner of the polygon and press the Alt key, or the Option key on the Mac, and click in order to bring up the scale dialogue box. And then set the uniform value, in my case the 68 percent, which is what it's going to be for you, as well, if you've been working at the same scale.

But if you got a different number on your calculator, then just go ahead and enter it here. So 0.68 translates to 68 percent. If you got 0.53 or something like that, that's going to translate to 53 percent, and so on. Now if you want to see what you're doing, turn on the Preview checkbox, and definitely turn on this guy, Scale Strokes and Effects. That's very important so that we go and scale all of the line weights. At which point, click OK to accept that change. All right, now press Ctrl + 0, or Cmd + 0 on the Mac to center my zoom, and I'll switch to the rotate tool, which you can get by pressing the R key.

And then you want to move your cursor to the intersection of the two guides, press the Alt key, or the Option key on the mac, and click to bring up the Rotate dialogue box, and you actually want to set the angle value to 90 degrees and press the Tab key. And because I've got the preview checkbox on, I can see what I'm doing here, at which point I click the Copy button, in order to create a copy of those paths. And we're going to use these new paths to shape the old ones in just a moment, but first, just so we can tell one set of path outlines from another, let's go ahead and change the stroke color, once again, to red.

Works out nicely. And then I'll right click anywhere inside the document window in order to bring up the shortcut menu. Then choose Arrange and choose Send to Back, or you have that standard keyboard shortcut of Ctrl + Shift + left bracket, that's Cmd + Shift + left bracket on the Mac. That's going to send that guy to back, as we're seeing right here. All right, now we need another copy of it down below, so go ahead and Alt or Option click at the intersection of those two guidelines once again. This time change the angle value to 180 degrees, and again click the Copy button in order to create another copy of those path outlines.

All right, now comes the fun part. Go ahead and press the V key to switch back to your black arrow tool, and partially marquee all of the black path outlines in order to select them. And now let's go ahead and zoom in on them. I actually want to zoom in on these paths up here at the top. And now, just so we can exactly see what we're doing, go up to the View menu and choose Outline, or you can press that ancient keyboard shortcut of Ctrl + Y here on the PC, that's Cmd + Y on the Mac. And you know what, just to make sure that we don't mess anything up, because we're going to be doing some delicate surgery here, why don't we make a copy of this layer, by clicking on the flyout menu icon in the top right corner of the Layers panel, and choosing duplicate 68 percent copies, and I'll go ahead and turn the original layer off, so I don't hurt it.

Then I'll double click on the new layer. I'll name it pattern, and I'll change the color to, let's just say medium blue this time around, and then click OK. All right, now with any luck your path outlines are still selected. If they're not, go ahead and reselect them with the black arrow tool. And then you want to click and hold on the eraser tool here inside the tool box and choose the scissors tool, which has a keyboard shortcut of C. All right, now I'm going to zoom in on this top detail, and notice the intersection of this outside path outline, and this outside guy.

You want to click right there at the intersection of those two paths in order to create a very precise cut. And then, you want to press the Control key, or the Command key on the Mac, to temporarily access the black arrow tool, and go ahead and click on this path, which is now separated from the other one, as you can see here, and then I'll release the Ctrl key, or the Cmd key on the Mac, and I'll press the Backspace key, or the Delete key, in order to get rid of that extra little bit of path outline. So you should now see this outside path coming up and over like so, and then stopping right there.

And if you want to get a sense for what that looks like in a preview mode, I'll press Ctrl + Y, or Cmd + Y on the Mac, and so you can see that this outer black stroke now terminates at the outer red one. All right, but we want to stay in the outline mode, so I'll press Ctrl + Y, or Cmd + Y on the Mac, to switch back to it, and then I'll press the Ctrl key, or the Cmd key on the Mac, to temporarily access the black arrow, and I'll click on this next path outline in to select it. Then I'll release the Ctrl or Cmd key to switch back to the scissors tool, and I'll click right there at the intersection of those two path outlines.

So again, we're looking for the intersection of the selected path, which is the next one in, and the outermost path up here at the top. Then, press the Ctrl key, or the Cmd key on the Mac, and click on this pathlet right there, in order to select it, then press the Backspace key, or the Delete key on the Mac, to get rid of it. And the reason we're tidying up things as we go is just to make sure that we're performing the cuts correctly, because it's easy to go wrong when cutting things with the scissors tool. All right, press the Ctrl key, or the Cmd key on the Mac, to switch back to the black arrow tool, click on the path to select it, release the Ctrl or Cmd key, and then click right there at that intersection.

Then Ctrl click, or Cmd click, on this little bit of path outline and press the Backspace key or the Delete key to get rid of it. Then Ctrl or Cmd click on this guy to select it, next release that key and then just go ahead and click at this intersection right there, and then press the Ctrl key, or the Cmd key on a Mac. Click this guy to select it, release, and then press the backspace key, or the Delete key on the Mac, to get rid of that extra path. And now just to see what we've done, I'll press Ctrl + Y, or Cmd + Y on a Mac, so you can see, especially if I zoom out a little bit here, how we have these nicely intersecting path outlines.

Don't worry about the angle of the black butt caps, that's not going to matter at all once we reassemble things. All right, now we want to zoom in on this region down here, so we're looking at the bottom-most red outer path, and how it intersects with our black strokes. Then you want to press Ctrl + Y, or Cmd + Y on the Mac, to switch back to the outline mode. Now we just need to perform those steps again. I'll Ctrl click on this path, so this is the black path outline right there, and I'll click with the scissors tool at the intersection of those two paths, then you want to Ctrl click on this guy, which is now severed away, and you want to press the Backspace key, or the Delete key on the Mac, to get rid of it.

Now let's do the same with this guy. I'll Ctrl or Cmd click on it, then I'll release the Ctrl or Cmd key and click right there. When I see the word "intersect," I'll Ctrl or Cmd click on this guy and press the Backspace, or the Delete key on a Mac, to get rid of it. And you may be wondering why I'm so very far zoomed in. After all, it might make things a little bit difficult to track in a video, but otherwise I'm not going to get the accuracy I'm looking for. You have to be pretty far zoomed in for the smart guys to give you the proper feedback. All right, so now I'll Ctrl or Cmd click on this path to select it, and I'll click right there at the intersection of those two path outlines.

I'll Ctrl or Cmd click this severed path outline and I'll delete it. And then finally we want this guy, so I'll Ctrl or Cmd click on it, to select it. I will click right there at the intersection. These two paths end by the way, that octagonal guide, and I'll click right there. So we're looking for the point at which everything converges. And I'll Ctrl or Cmd click on this guy, which is now severed away, and I'll press the Backspace key, or the Delete key on the Mac, to get rid of it. All right, now I'll press Ctrl + Y, or Cmd + Y on the Mac, to switch back to the preview mode, then you just want to press the V key to switch back to the black arrow tool.

Go ahead and select any one of these red path outlines, like so, then go up to this icon right here, Select Similar Objects, which is located in the Control Panel. Click on it in order to select all the red path outlines, and press the Backspace key, or the Delete key on the Mac, to get rid of them. Now I'll marquee these guys to select them, and I want to essentially group them together, and so you could just press Ctrl + G, or Cmd + G on the Mac, but when a bunch of paths have exactly the same fill and stroke patterns, then a better way to work is to go up to the Object menu, choose Compound Path and choose Make.

And that's because compound paths are just a little bit cleaner than groups, once again when all the paths are filled and stroked identically. All right, so I'll go ahead and choose that command, and that merges them all together so that they're easier to work with. Next, you want to switch back to your rotate tool, which you can get by pressing the R key, and you want to position your cursor at the intersection of the vertical and horizontal guidelines, and then Alt or Option click to force a display of the Rotate dialogue box. And now, enter 360, because after all, 360 degrees defines a full circle, and then enter slash eight, because we want to rotate these paths just one-eighth of a circle, and then press the Tab key, and lo and behold, that gives us an angle value of 45 degrees, which makes sense, and of course you'll be able to see what you're doing if you turn the Preview checkbox on.

After which point, click Copy in order to create a copy of those path outlines. Then go up to the Object menu, choose Transform and choose Transform again, which is the keyboard shortcut of Ctrl + D, or Cmd + D on the Mac. The D is for duplicate, by the way. And so I'll just go ahead and choose that command, and now I want to repeat the command a few more times, so I'll press Ctrl + D, or Cmd + D on the Mac, until I fill out the entire pattern. All right, now I'm going to turn off my guides layer, and that's because I don't need the guides anymore, and then I'll press Ctrl + 0, or Cmd + 0 on a Mac, in order to zoom out so that I can see the entire art board.

And just to finish things off, I'll switch from the Ellipse tool to the Rectangle tool, which has a keyboard shortcut of M, and I'll drag from one corner of the red bleed boundary to the opposite quarter like so, in order to create a big rectangle, which in my case has no fill and a black stroke. I actually don't want a stroke and I do want a fill, so I'll press Shift + X in order to swap them, and then I'll change my fill to, let's say the shade of purple right here, doesn't really matter, you can just choose your favorite color.

And then I'll right click in the document window, choose a range and choose Send to Back, in order to send that shape to the back of the stack. And then I'll go up to the Select menu and choose the Inverse command in order to deselect the rectangle and select all of the rings, and I'll click on a second color swatch up here in the Control Panel, and I'll change the stroke to white, in order to produce this effect here. And then I'll just go ahead and press Escape to hide that panel, and I'll press Ctrl + Shift + A, or Cmd + Shift + A on the Mac, to deselect my artwork.

And that's how you create an eye-catching logo in the form of an octagonal pattern of concentric rings here inside Illustrator.