Page 21 - CS6_AI_Look_Inside.pdf

draw Basic shaPes
Now that you have a place to draw (the artboard), you’re ready to start creating the
icon artwork. The first step of this project requires a set of background shapes —
simple rectangles with rounded corners — to contain each icon. Illustrator includes a
number of shape tools that make it easy to create this kind of basic shape — rectangles
(or squares), ellipses (or circles), and so on.

1. With icons.ai open, click the Rectangle tool in the Tools panel and hold
down the mouse button until the nested tools appear. Choose the Rounded
Rectangle tool from the list of nested tools.

2. Click the Default Fill and Stroke button at the bottom of the Tools panel.
In Illustrator, the default fill is white and the default stroke is 1-pt black.

Note:
You can also press D to
restore the default fill and
Rounded stroke colors.
Rectangle tool

Rounded Rectangle
tool cursor

Fill and stroke options are
in a slightly different
Default Fill and location if your Tools panel Swap Fill
Stroke button is in two-column mode. and Stroke

Default Fill
and Stroke

3. With the Rounded Rectangle tool active, click anywhere on the artboard.
The resulting dialog box asks how big you want to make the new rectangle, defaulting to
the last-used measurements. The default measurement system is points, as you defined Note:
when you created this file. If you Option/Alt-click
with any of the shape
When the dialog box tools, the place where you
opens, the Width field is
automatically highlighted. click becomes the center
You can simply type to of the new shape.
replace the existing value.

Project 1: International Symbols 29