Creating Shapes in Illustrator, Part 2: Polygons and Stars
In part one of Creating Shapes in Illustrator, I introduced the Shapes tools, and we talked about the different ways you can use the Rectangle, Ellipse, and Rounded Rectangle tools. In part two, we'll talk about the other two common shape tools, the Polygon and Star tools.
Polygons
Let's start with the Polygon tool. It functions a little differently than the other three that we've already reviewed. You still can drag out the object onto your Artboard, and hold Shift to constrain those points, but unlike those other three, these shapes are always created from the center point, even if you do not have Alt pressed.
What makes the Polygon tool unique, is being able to create custom shapes with any amount of sides. There are a few ways to do this. The first is doing this live, while you are dragging an object out onto the canvas. If you use the Up and Down arrows to add or subtract sides from your shape.
The Up arrow adds sides to the shape, the Down arrow subtracts.
The second method to create a polygon is to use a Dialog Box. They are a great way to learn all the different options a tool offers. To see these options, select the Polygon Tool, and click once on the Artboard. You have two different options here, Radius and Sides. The radius has to do with how big your object is. I created some examples to show you some different ways to customize your shape.
The Live Corner effects that we discussed in Part one also apply here. If you use your Direct Selection Tool (A), you can edit one or multiple corner points to make a rounded corner. You can make all kinds of interesting shapes using this method. For example, here how I manipulated the four shapes from the above image:
Don't forget about the Corners dialog box at the top when you have an object selected. This gives you other options for customizing your corners, like Inverted Round and Chamfer corners.
Stars
Next, let's talk about the Star Tool. By default, this tool is set up to make a five point star, so when you drag out a new shape with this tool selected, it should look somewhat like this:
Remember to hold down Shift when you create your shape to make it perfectly constrained like the example above.
Just like with the Polygon Tool, if you press the Up and Down arrows while you have your mouse still selected, you can add and subtract corner points to your star, like this:
Another cool way to use the Polygon Tool is to press the Command key on Mac (control on Windows) while you are drawing the shape. Hold down the Command tool, and dragg your mouse selection in and out to define how sharp the edges of your star are.
An alternate, more precise way to create stars is using a Dialog box, just as we have been doing with all the other shapes. You have several options here, where you can customize exactly what you want your measurements to be. The radius has to do with the inner and outer corners of your star. Remember that the larger the difference between Radius 1 and Radius 2, the sharper your shape will be:
You can make your results even more interesting by using the Live Corner effects, which still apply to these shapes, the same as they are used with Rectangles, Rounded Rectangles, and Polygons.
There is one tool that you might have noticed that we have ignored in these two posts, and that's the Flare Tool. I'll be honest, I have yet to find value in that tool, and so for that reason, I'm not going to discuss it on this blog.
So that's it for the Shapes tools! As I mentioned at the beginning of Part one, once you master these tools, and start using some of the supplemental shapes tools, like the Pathfinder, and Shape Builder tool, you will really start to see just how powerful Illustrator is!
If you've been enjoying these posts, I would appreciate it if you'd leave a comment for me! I'd love to get some feedback on what types of posts you'd like to see in the future, especially if you are a beginner in Illustrator. What are your pain points currently? What skills are you looking to master in Illustrator? Let me know!