Design tip bits

Ton Fredericks gave a good tip about adjusting stars in Illustrator. Instead of using the Star Tool you can simply draw a circle. Then go to the Effects menu> Distort & Transform>Zig Zag. Using this option you can make perfect stars. The Absolute value is the distance from the outer point of the star to the edge of your circle and from the inner point to the edge of your circle. In this example 6mm. Relative is the same distances expressed as a percentage of the size of the circle. Example: A 50mm circle and a Relative value of 20% = 10mm from point to circle edge. These stars are adjustable using the Appearance palette. Double click on the fx icon to open the Zig Zag palette and change the settings. The only drawback of making stars this way is that you can only make stars with an even amount of points, so no 5 sided stars … That's a lot of flags. Thanks anyway for sharing Ton Fredericks.

The other day the subject of drawing stars in InDesign came up. Which was followed by a discussion about the meaning and symbolism of different stars. That inspired me to write this blog. I will give you a few tips about making stars in InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop. After googling about stars I soon found out that a star is not just a star. Stars have many meanings and you may find yourself sending the wrong even unwanted message with the shape of your star. If you want to know more about stars then check out this wikipedia link. Illustrator Stars The Star Tool is found behind the Rectangle Tool. To make a star, select the Star Tool and drag diagonally. Whilst dragging, to increase or decease the number of points click the arrow keys up or down. This also works for the Polygon Tool. By holding down the Option key while dragging, Illustrator will try to keep the lines of the star horizontal. This does not always work, however with the 5 pointed star it it does just what we want....