Snowflake Tutorial

Looks like Rochester’s getting its first (sticking) snow of the season today, so I’ll be sharing a fun Illustrator tutorial on creating your own beautiful, unique snowflakes. 

The method shown is for CS6/CC, it might work the same in earlier versions, or perhaps there are a few adjustments. If you’re using an earlier version of illustrator, please comment or send me a note about any adjustments to make for your version so that I can share it here, too!

If you’ve never used Adobe Illustrator before, then I would suggest you cover some of the basics before attempting this tutorial. There are a number of classes available at Skillshare at a variety of levels.

If you'd like to see more examples of these kinds of snowflakes, I've got a set of 52 available as an .OTF dingbat font file here. 

To get started, open up Illustrator, create a new document. The one I'm showing here has six 4"x4" artboards, spaced out by 2 inches. 

Using the brush tool, draw a stroke. I'm using a calligraphy style brush here which gives some nice variations of thickness along the stroke, but this will work just as well with a basic brush. I'd suggest not using a brush that is very complicated or very large or wide though. For this first stroke, try to make it something not overly simple, but also not ridiculously complex. This should be helpful in letting you see how this works. Once you've gone through the entire process and gotten a hang of things, please, try every degree of complexity! I've done a curly line here that looks something like a cursive uppercase E. Also, don't fuss with your stroke after you've drawn it at this point— leave the weight, brush selection, color, and so on as they are!

After you've drawn your first stroke, switch to your selection tool, and select the stroke you've just drawn.

With your stroke selected, click on the top Effect menu, then to Distort & Transform, then click Transform.

In the Transform Effect dialog box that pops up, there are many options. At this step, only two should be changed. Since our snowflake will be six-sided, enter the number 5 into the Copies box (original + 5 = 6 total), and put 60° as the angle in the Rotate box (360° / 6 sides = 60° per rotation.)
What we're telling the Transform Effect to do with these selections is to make 5 copies in addition to our original stroke, and place them rotated 60° from the previous. The rotation point will be the center, which is the default selection (I'll have more about the rotation point at the end of this post!)

Clicking OK should have taken your stroke and repeated and rotated it, and it should look something like this. If it looks totally different, make sure you had selected only the one stroke and nothing else. However, these will all vary in appearance depending on the stroke you've drawn!

With your same original stroke still selected (or, select it again as per step 2. if you've unselected it) again click on the top Effect menu, then to Distort & Transform, then click Transform.
This time, leave the angle at 0°, check the box next to Reflect X  in the Options section, and enter 1 as the number of copies.
This will add a second transformation to your stroke to make one copy, reflected across the X-axis after the first transformation, resulting in a snowflake that has 6 arms that are symmetrical on both sides.

Clicking OK will then reveal your first snowflake! Not too bad, right? It actually gets easier going forward though, so continue with another.

Draw a new stroke with the same brush tool again. Don't adjust any of the options, just draw. I've shown my second stroke in the next artboard over to keep it separate from my first and easier to see.

Upon finishing your brush stroke and releasing your click, the stroke will then automatically go through the two transformations that you applied to the initial stroke; first rotating 5 copies, and then reflecting one more copy, though it happens quite quickly. If this doesn't happen, and you just have a lonely stroke by itself, perhaps you'd modified your first stroke before applying the transformations, which would have caused the transformations to unlink themselves from the same brush stroke.

Keep going! Try a few more, and see what snowflakes result from different lines. Curves, corners, zig-zag, long horizontals, tall verticals, and any combinations you can think of.

Add caption

When you've made a batch of flakes, it's neat to take a look back at your original strokes and be able to compare what sort of snowflakes were created from them. Command+Y will put you into outline mode where you will view the very basic stroke, without the transformation effects applied to it. To get out of outline mode, just use command+Y again. 

But wait, there's more!

Back up in step 4 I mentioned to not worry about changing the rotation point. Well, if you're ready to now, here's a bit about that.

If you're sitting in your desk chair, great. If you're not, pretend you are for a minute.  Push back from your desk, and ready, set, spin yourself around in your chair! That right there is an example of having your rotation point in the center, as we had for the above snowflakes.

But that's certainly not the only way to spin. If you're lucky enough to have a fire pole, pole-dancing pole, or smooth post like one that a basketball hoop might be mounted on nearby, approach said pole, reach with one hand to grab the pole, and proceed to rotate yourself around the pole, keeping that hand on the pole (imaginary versions still work here too). Now  your rotation point is that one hand. This is similar to a corner rotation point.

If you're still conveniently near the same pole, try this again but using both of your hands, so that you are facing in at the pole, and spin again. This is similar to a side rotation point. 

If you're incredibly good at visualizing things in your mind, imagine that you were somehow floating above yourself as you were spinning in each of these 3 different ways, and were able to see the difference in shape that was made from your body as it travelled around these points. The Transform Effect palette's options will let you change which side or part of your snowflake's stroke its rotation is based around. 

Here I'm starting with one snowflake which was created through the steps above. I've also shown a copy of the stroke to the left of the flake.

I've made 8 more copies of this snowflake (and it's artboard), arranged in a 3x3 grid. This is in outline mode, but all of these artboards include the full snowflake.

I've opened up the Appearance palette, and you should too, if you haven't already. It can be found under Window then Appearance.

If you've got any of your strokes/paths or objects selected, it'll say so right underneath the word Appearance. I didn't when I took the screenshot, so it says No Selection but it shows me what the appearance of what I'd previously had selected was. The order of things listed here from top to bottom are also chronological with oldest at the top and newest at the bottom, so when there are two mentions of Transform (because we used two distinct instances of the Transform Effect) the first (or top) one is the one we did first, the one that made 5 copies, and rotated our stroke 60°. Double click on the top instance of transform in the Appearance palette (when you've got one of your strokes selected) and that occurrence of the Transform Effect will pop up.

To the left of where the number of copies is listed, there is a similar 3x3 grid of boxes. The center one should be selected currently, but now it's time to try the others. There are 4 corner points (top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right) and 4 side points (top, right, bottom, left).

I've gone through my 9 same flakes and changed the rotation point for the first occurring Transform Effect only, correlating their position in my 3x3 grid to which point their rotation is based around. For example, the bottom left snowflake is rotated around its bottom left point, and the top snowflake is rotated around its top point. The center flake remains as it was.

The different rotation points have tendencies of their own. For example, the center point tends to make the most dense final flake as it's got the most overlap when rotated (like when you spun in your chair). The corner points tend to be the most open looking, as they have the least amount of overlap (like when you spun around the pole with one hand). The side points are somewhere between the two. Of course, depending on what your original stroke looks like, there will be plenty of variation.

And so on 

From here, there's lots of variation to explore: different brush strokes, colors, weights, brushes, angles, numbers of copies and more. I'd love to see what you've created from going through this tutorial, please leave comments or tag me on twitter to show what you made! And thanks to Jess for asking how I'd made the Snow Ribbons dingbat font, which sparked this entire post. 

Operation Hydration : A mini-case study

If you've been following along with me this year, you may have noticed that I've been working toward getting/being healthier all around. One big thing I knew I wanted to work on that was probably pretty attainable was to stay hydrated/drink more water.

As a designer, I often find myself approaching seemingly small things as full-blown problems to solve. I found that as much as I knew I should be drinking water throughout the day, sometimes the only thing I'd have before dinner was my morning coffee. No good.

So, I took a closer look at what small things may have been impeding my thirst quenching, or what alterations might increase my hydration.

Access.
During the workweek, I find myself sitting at a desk, mindlessly reaching for whatever is easily accessible—candy, gum, coffee, whatever I've left on my desk. If I could put a glass of water there, I'd probably drink it. The second part of access has to do with where I'd be getting water. I tried in the fall to bring in a pack of bottled waters, so I could easily grab one whenever I felt like it. This somewhat worked, but then there was dealing with the empties that I of course wanted to collect the deposit on, and the weird feeling of bothering to open a new bottle, or just hold out if I was a little thirsty but it was nearing the end of the day. Plus, the small action of unscrewing the cap made a tiny barrier to drinking, versus just grabbing the coffee mug. 

Vehicle.
So, the bottled water was kind of out. My previous job had one of those water cooler things that I could fill up with crisp, cold, filtered water whenever I'd like. It was in the break room, so a small walk from my desk, but totally doable. We've got an assortment of various mugs and cups in our break room, so I've given the rather large teal ones a go. They're plasticky, sort of like what you'd expect to be marketed for summer entertaining on your deck. Maybe I'll bring in a pint glass of my own at some point. I also got a water bottle that has a space on the bottom for *infusing* a piece of fruit or whatever in to it. This is good, if I remember it, and if I feel like washing out all the different pieces...

The water itself.
My current job has no such water cooler, at least in my building, so I'm stuck with our break room sink. Which, the water is ... okay. It's not the best I've had but certainly not the worst (sorry Florida, not a fan of your tap water). How could I be more enticed to fill up on a large glass of this stuff? Ice cubes? Maybe, we have some in the freezer in the break room. Citrus? Ooh! I do quite like a lemon or lime in my water, but man, leaving a partial piece of fruit in the fridge for more than a couple days can leave the fruit not so great, and I hate wasting something. 

Ease.
So ok, even if I do keep a lemon in the fridge wrapped in plastic wrap or a baggie, and then just hack off a piece whenever I'm filling up? Do I feel like washing a knife & plate/cutting board every time I get a glass of water? No, not really. Maybe I can just cut the whole thing up at once... but, would that get kind of gross still if I'm only using one piece or so per day?

Waste prevention.
I don't want to be throwing out half a piece of fruit, nor having to replace my stock of limes/lemons constantly. What is a way to prevent this?

When life gives you lemons...

Making my way through all of that, I figured I needed a way to have portion-sized pieces of lemon ready to go whenever, easily accessible, and that wouldn't spoil or have to be thrown away. Pair that with a good-sized cup or glass to hold it all. Enter my friend, the freezer... With the help of a quart-size freezer bag, and a tiny bit of forethought, I realized I could slice up an entire lemon or two in to the size pieces I'd like, throw those all in that freezer bag, and into the freezer to give myself what I've been looking for. I'd have pre-cut slices of lemon, and they'd double as ice cubes. Win! 

After cutting up a few lemons and freezing the pieces this way, I started exploring methods of cutting the lemon to get the most out of it. I tried quartering it, but that was too big of a piece at a time, and half-ing those didn't seem to leave much of a citrus-y impression. I tried rings, which seemed to work better but were harder to cut because the lemon would roll around a bit. Then I got to the half-rings! These have the advantages of the full ring, but easier to cut, and you can get more separate pieces out of one lemon. 

The illustrations bordering this post chronicle how I am, and recommend, cutting a lemon for these freezing purposes.  Start by halving your lemon through its bellybutton, or in technical terms *hot dog* way. Then, place your lemon halves flat-side down, and proceed to make slices going the opposite direction, technical term *hamburger* way.  This leaves you with a bunch of small half-circle lemon pieces that are perfect to throw in to a freezer bag to freeze. When you do freeze them, try to lay the bag flat if possible and avoid having the pieces stack up on each other, so you won't have to work on prying them apart at a later time. 

So, there you have it—a fairly lengthy blog post about putting a lemon in your water. I hope you enjoyed it, and perhaps have gained some insight in to the inner workings of my mind. 

All illustrations in this post are my own and may not be reproduced without written consent.