Create Glass Icons using Illustrator - Part 1

There are tons of tutorials on creating icons out on the web. Some have great details and walk you though the steps very well, some have simple techniques to achieving the best results. Well I've learned it from a variety of sources. Here my tutorial, at least what works best for me.

Before you begin, I'm going to try and keep the tutorial as agnostic as I can so you can re-create it using any tool. But I'm using Illustrator CS4.

The Basics : Glass Download Icon
I'm going to create a glass icon. Circular icon with a down arrow on a green base. You will need to have some basic skills on using the tools, like shape drawing, point selector, pen tool, etc. I will try to provide an much detail I can.

Start of by selecting a the canvas size. I like to create my icons on a 500x500 canvas and scale it to the icon size I need.



For this tutorial I will be using a few windows more than often.
- Swatches window
- Layers window
- Gradient window
- Transparency window

if you need help locating these windows go to 'Window" from the menu bar and select the windows from the list. I normally unlock the windows from the dock for quick access.

Lets start by creating a circle.Select the ellipse tools (Shortcut "L")

There are 2 ways you can draw an ellipse, by clicking on the canvas, that open a dialogue to specify the width and height, or by dragging the size needed.

Lets click on the art board to specify the size.



Once you have that complete you will notice that a circle appears on you art board with the specified dimensions. Illustrator has 2 major properties to any object you draw onto you canvas. Stroke and Fill. If it set to default you will get a circle with a white fill and a black stroke.



I like to keep things organized so I name my layers appropriately, in case i choose to duplicate the objects, I know what layers are copied and another advantage is you will know what layer you are editing.



You can edit Layer properties by double clicking the layer from the Layers window. That should open a dialogue to edit the Layer name.

A quick look at the windows workspace for this tutorial.



Now lets get started on creating the other layers.

I'm going to keep the base layer with a white fill and a gray border. I select the Base circle layer and look into the appearance window.

- Change the stroke color and width to Gray(#999999) and a width of 2 px.
- Change the fill color to White(#FFFFFF) if its not white already.



- Lets lock the Basic Circle Layer. You can do this using the layer properties dialogue or click on the lock box on the layer.
- Now lets create another layer(you can click on the new layer icon at the bottom of Layers window).
- Name it "Gradient Layer".
- The using the Ellipse tool create another circle with 290x290 dimensions.
- Align the circles on top of each other.
- Using the appearance window change the fill to Gray(#999999) and stroke to a lighter shade of gray.

You should have something that looks like this.


Now lets fill the Gradient layer with a gradient.
- Select the Gradient layer
- In the Gradient window , select "Radial" from the drop down.
- This should color the circle with a default gradient centered on the circle.
- Now on the gradient color bar, drag the colors you need from the swatches window.



If you get the gradient correctly the circle should now look like this.



Now lets change the orientation of the gradient. I want the light source to hit the circle from the top left corner. To change this select the Gradient tool (Shortcut "G")

- Once you have the Gradient tool selected, click anywhere on the top left quadrant of the circle, to change the gradient location.
- There a bunch of gradient control options (I'm hoping you have some experience with it, else monkey with it and get a hang of it)

Play with the gradient until you satisfied with the gradient fill.



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