Drawing logos

[cward]

I have been drawing logos a lot since i got illustrator last year. just one question. how do you make a logo have multiple outlines? I know how the stroke and fill buttons work, but how do you make multiple strokes? id apprciate any tips.

[nitroseed]

I'm not sure that's possible, but even if it is, I'm also not sure why you'd want to have multiple strokes. Can you give an example of a logo you've drawn in which you want to give it a multi-stroke?

[cward]

i would use it in areas of a logo such as script, where the text is say blue, and i want a white stroke between the text and say a red outline. an example is the new astros logo, that is sand colored with a red and black outline. thanks

[nitroseed]

Well, the following is the method I prefer to use, although others may use varying other methods.

What I typically do is first, select (in your blue-white-red example) the blue text. Then, in your menus, go to Object > Path > Offset Path. A "path" is basically the surrounding outline of an object. Then, determine the distance to which you want to offset the path, like, say, 3pt (points), and hit OK. What this does is create a new object that is 3 pts larger than the original.

At this stage, I create a second layer. I then put the second layer below the first layer and drag the newly created object to the second layer. The purpose of this is to separate all of these objects so they can be selected separately on individual layers rather than having them all cluttered on one layer. Once you've done this, you can color the new object whatever color you like, say, white. Make sure that only the new object is selected while doing this, of course.

For an additional "border," you can repeat the same process with the new object, creating a third object and layer that are placed below the previous two and recolor it red.

That's my method. If it sounds confusing, let me know and I'll try to clarify. Hope this helps!

[cward]

Thanks nitro-seed. Your my hero.

[slapshot]

If you are using Illustrator 10 (although I think this was available since version 8) there is a palette called "Appearance".

Whenever you have an object that is stroked and filled, these attributes appear in the appearance palette. This palette functions like the layers do; you can click on the stroke listing and drag it under the fill listing. This way, you can have one object, filled ans stroked, but the placement of each attribute can be altered by the palette.

In this palette, you can also choose "Add New Stroke", and adjust it like any other attribute, including moving it around the heirarchy of the object like I just mentioned. So you can have multiple strokes on the same object, each editable by style and color, and you don't even have to go to the layers palette.

I used this method when creating a Final Four Poster last year, when I wanted to list each team by its team colors, and some teams had more than one color, so it looked nice when printed.

Hope this helps.