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Design

Daniel Racowsky
Daniel Racowsky
1,574 Points
Posted by Daniel Racowsky
Daniel Racowsky
1,574 Points

Creating round 'achievement-badge' style borders in AI

Hello Community,

Looking for some guidance from some more experienced Illustrator (CS5) users than I. I am in the process of developing my graphic design skills, and in doing so, am currently working on project that involves creating some round merit-style badges.

Specifically, I would like to create two styles of border to use on the badges, one "rope", and one "star", similar to the black and grey-colored badge examples here: http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photos-mountain-badges-image25792333

Couldn't find any useful information or tutorials on Google, Youtube, etc and despite my continuing journey going through these (great) tutorials here on teamtreehouse and learning AIs tools inside and out, I haven't yet had enough experience with them to glue together all my new-found knowledge to reach a solution.

A pattern? Shapes? Appreciate and am grateful for your help/guidance!

Daniel

2 Answers

Jacob Miller
Jacob Miller
12,466 Points
Jacob Miller
Jacob Miller
12,466 Points

You can easily make the star shape by using the star tool in AI. If you click once with it, it will bring up options for creating a star. Just turn up the amount of points, set the outer radius (Radius 2), then set the inner radius (Radius 1) to be just a bit smaller than the outer radius. Then you might want to apply the Round Corners effect.

As for the rope, this might be a little harder to explain, but here's how I would go about doing it:

  1. Create a circle the size of your rope outline.
  2. Create a rounded rectangle the size of one of the small sections of the rope and rotate it 45 degrees. Also give it a stroke and fill.
  3. Position the rounded rectangle at the top center of the circle, then drag a copy down to the bottom center and group the two.
  4. With that group selected, double click on the rotate tool and using the preview, adjust the rotation so it creates the next sections of the rope, then click Copy, not OK.
  5. With the copy you just make selected, hit Ctrl + D to duplicate the rotation and copy, and hold those keys to keep duplicating the sections of the rope all the way around the circle.
  6. Delete the guide circle, select all the rope sections, ungroup them and regroup them so they're not a bunch of groups grouped together, but just one group.

The only trick to making that work is to rotate the links in step 4 by a number that 360 is evenly divisible by. For example, I tested it with 1.2, and 360 / 1.2 = 300, so when you get all the way around the circle, it will meet up with the first rope section correctly.

Hope that made sense!

Daniel Racowsky
Daniel Racowsky
1,574 Points
Daniel Racowsky
Daniel Racowsky
1,574 Points

Awesome. Wow. Thank you so much for laying these steps out. Super helpful.

I'll give your steps a run. and see how it works out.

Cheers! Daniel