Illustrator Tutorial: How to create a WordPress logo?

February 7, 2009 · Filed Under Web design

The challenge of this tutorial is to use various design techniques to replicate the WordPess logo. This tutorial is a good exercise for a lot of beginners to learn and discover how the pathfinder palette can be such an important tool in combining and making more complex objects more quickly and efficiently than what they may otherwise do.

Step 1: Start by creating a new document at 600×400.

With Adobe Illustrator open, select File/New. Choose the color mode to RGB and click OK.

Step 2: Turn on the Smart Guides by choosing the pull down menu View/Smart Guides.

Step 3: Center your drawing by choosing View/Fit in Window. Turn on the rulers by choosing View/Show Rulers.

Step 4: Now we are going to make use of the drawing tools, and more specifically we are going to look at the shape tools. If you are an intermediate to advanced user of Illustrator, you will probably want to just pass this one over.

On the tool box, there is the rectangle tool; it’s also (M) on your keyboard. If you click on it, you will get the rectangle tool witch allows you to draw rectangles all sorts of shapes. But you can see that there is small black triangle just to the lower right of the tool. If you click and hold on the rectangle tool you will get a fly-out menu with a number of shape tools. Come all the way to the end, there is little arrow that says tear off, release the mouse there, and you will get small pallet with all the shape tools available. So go ahead and tear that off, we will keep it open for the rest of this tutorial. The default tool is the rectangle. Fly out of all the shapes to get to the ellipse tool, failing that just type (L) on the key board. The ellipse tool works, well pretty much, like you may expect one of these tools to work. It gives you a crosshair cursor and where you want to start drawing the ellipse you will get to drag. As you drag you will see a blue preview of the ellipse shape as it will appear when you release the mouse.

As you drag, it’s a rounded shape which will go to any shape you want. As you let go, you can see that it has also taken whatever paint setting. That is whatever is fill and stroke on the toolbar. Whatever the fill and stroke were when you’ve created that shape were immediately applied to that ellipse. Now switch to the selection tool, or (V) on the keyboard. And click anywhere to deselect. It’s hard to tell if this circle has a fill and a stroke even though it is deselected since it’s a black stroke with a white fill on a white background. So let’s go to the view menu, and turn on the grid, so View/Show Grid. This now gives you a kind of graph paper background and it’s much easier to see the fill on the object. Now you can see this object, it’s filled with white and that is obscuring the grid that’s behind it.

Let’s go back to the ellipse tool, if you want to draw a circle, you can straighten the ellipse tool by holding on the Shift key. Then you will see that no matter witch direction you move your mouse as you drag, it’s always creating a circle as if you were using a circle tool. As soon as you let go, you will have a perfect circle. To draw a circle from the center, hold on the Alt key and Shift, as you drag.

NB: This was just a demo on haw to use the ellipse tool. (Beginners)

Step 5: In the tools palette select the Ellipse Tool (L). Place your cursor anywhere on the center of the drawing and while holding the left mouse button drag to draw a perfect circle. Hold the Shift and Alt keys down before clicking with the mouse.

TIP: To straighten the ellipse to a circle. Create a circle that is about 300px diameter (you can just estimate this visually) or use the Ellipse Dialog box, just click once in the art work. Enter 300px for both the width and the height and click OK.

Step 6: Choose the Selection Tool (closed black arrow) and the circle should automatically become selected.

Step 7: Set your fill color to black, and make sure that there is no stroke on the circle. You can easily do that by hitting the Swap tool (Shift+X) and setting the stroke to none. Make sure the circle has been selected with the Selection Tool before.

Step 8: Now it’s time to duplicate your circle. While the circle is still selected, hold the ALT key down and select the circle with the left mouse button. Before releasing the Alt key and the left mouse move your cursor somewhere on the page and you will be moving a copy of the circle. Release the Alt key and the left mouse button once you have moved the circle.

TIP: To duplicate the circle you could also press (Ctrl+C) and then (Ctrl+V) to do a copy and paste When it’s selected.

Step 9: You will want to fill the second circle with a different color. Then you should scale it down to a slightly smaller diameter (278px).

Step 10: Select both circles by dragging over them with the selection tool (V), you will notice the control pallet that gives some options from the align pallet. Hit the Horizontal Align Center button then the Vertical Align Center to center both circles.

TIP: You can also select both items by hitting (Ctrl+A) to select all. Then make a precision alignment using the align pallet or the arrow keys.

Step 11: Now bring up the pathfinder palette (Shift + F9) or Window/Pathfinder. With both circles selected hit the Subtract from shape area button from shape modes. Your image should look similar to this:

NB: You may want to click “Expend” on the Pathfinder Pallet to make the shape permenant.

Step 12: Double click the current layer from the Layers Pallet and rename it to “C1” on the Layer Options.

Step 13: Save your drawing.

Step 14: In the Layers panel, click the Create a new layer and rename it to “C2”.

Step 15: With the new layer still selected. Draw a new perfect circle (248px) inside and from the center of the first shape we’ve just created on our first layer “C1”. Select all objects, and then use the same technique as on step 10 to center aligns both objects. Your drawing should look similar to this.

Step 16: Now you can lock the first layer. Then duplicate the second layer. You can do that by hitting the small arrow on the top-right corner of the layer pallet and selecting Duplicate “C2”.

Step 17: Again you will want to rename the third layer to “C3” and fill the new circle with a different color. Then lock the layer.

Step 18: Create a new layer and rename it “W”. Select your Type tool (T) and write a “W” on the center of the drawing.

Step 19: While the text is selected. Adjust the font size to 300px. Change the font family to “Perpetua”. You can download this font from the internet.

Step 20: Align the “W” character as shown bellow using your arrow keys.

Step 21: Right click on the “W” character and then select “Create Outlines” from the options list. Alternatively you can select Type/Create Outlines. Now you can see all Paths that made up the type.

Step 22: Now you should use your imagination to edit the type. Use the Direct selection tools (V) to select individual points and move/scale them. Make sure all layers bellow are locked.

Step 23: Choose the Pen tool (P), and then draw something similar to this:

Step 24: Cut half of the top right shape of the “W” and align the new object next to it.

Step 25: Select to the two objects using your select tool then choose Add to shape area from the Pathfinder pallet to combine them. Now you are having what we call a compound shape and it’s a group of objects. You can click on the “Expand” button to change it to a simple object. You should have something similar to this:

Step 26: Now, It’s time to unlock the previous layer “C3”.

Step 27: Select all unlocked objects on the drawing. Then hit the Intersect shape areas button from the Pathfinder Pallet. Then “Expand” the object.

Step 28: Delete the third layer “C3” and change the fill color on the “W” to white.

Step 29: make all layer visible and save your drawing.

Step 30: finally choose File/Save for Web.

TIP: You can undo steps at any time by using “Ctrl+Z” or “Ctrl+Shift+Z” if you are gone back too far.

I hope this was worth reading and maybe even helpful to someone. If you have used this technique and would like to showcase your work, I would definitely like to here from you. Please use the comments form below to post you link. Have fun