How to redraw the BP Logo in Adobe Illustrator CC

Hey there, in this video we're going to make the BP flower. We're going to make one of the petals using Ellipses, and the Curvature Tool. Then we're going to set Centers of Rotations, spin it around. Shape Builder Tool, it's all very exciting. Let's go and learn how to build that now in Adobe Illustrator.

First up, open up 'Exercise Files', go to 'Logo Redraw'. There's one there called '6 BP', open that one up. There's a few ways of drawing this. I'm going to start with an Ellipse. Draw one of the petals and rotate it around. Seems like the easiest way to do it. So you might have to hold down the Rectangle Tool, grab the Ellipse Tool. There's a couple of things in here. I can’t find out where the center of this thing is. So I'm going to open up 'Rulers'. If you haven't done this before let's go to 'View', 'Rulers', and let's go to 'Show'. We are going to click, hold, and drag in this dark area here to get kind of an option for the middle. Click, hold, and drag from this dark numbered area here to get the middle of that. Awesome! We'll easily get them started, and we'll clear them in a second.

Within my Ellipse Tool I want to draw out something that roughly looks like-- it's going to start from the center, so move him as well, connect to that. If yours aren't on-- we're going to turn the Smart Guides on and off during this class because sometimes they're super useful, and sometimes they're not. So 'View', make sure they're turned on. 'Black Arrow', I'm making sure I've got a Fill of 'none', and a Stroke of 'black'. I'm making sure the Stroke is quite small, at '0.25'. I'm going to just drag this along. So Smart Guides now are being a bit of a pain. So I'm going to turn them off, you, 'Smart Guides'. Zoom in a bit. Hit 'space bar'. Holding down space bar, clicking, holding, and dragging to move. I feel like the basics are there. I need it a little bit wider. You might have to come back to this stage a couple of times to get it to do what you want.

We're going to hope for the best. So we've got this kind of rough shape in here. Now we want to convert these to little points. The Curvature Tool's really good at it. Looks like the Pen Tool. It's the Curvature Tool. If you click on these guys, double click them. Double click them, turns it from a curve to a corner. So we might have to make some last minute adjustments. 'Black Arrow', I'm going to probably move it in a little bit. Press my 'arrow' key. Kind of get him to look okay. It's taking way too long. I'm not even watching these. I'm going to drag these out to match those guys. I think what's happening here is, it's actually just... it's not running from the center. So I'm moving it out, trying to match the shape underneath. That's why I had to practice this before the class. That feels about right for me at the moment. There we go. Cool. I'm going to select this Guide, and delete it. Just dragging a box with the Black Arrow, deleting him. So good! We're finished now.

So now I want to 'Step & Repeat'. To rotate this thing around, I need to set the rotation point because at the moment it's rotating around the center. I want it to rotate around the center mark that I just deleted. I'm going to turn it back. One thing I want to do is make sure that just this guy here is snapped on to that line there. The way to do it, is click off, move it away Grab just this point here, and it should snap into the line. Then I'm going to move it up just to make sure it's directly on this guide.

Next thing I want to do is change my rotation point to this center bit here. To do it, grab the 'Rotation Tool' from your Tool Bar. Make sure your 'View', 'Smart Guides' are now on, which is super handy. It's going to find the intersect of the Guide. And all I do is hold down the 'Option' key on a Mac, or the 'Alt' key on a PC . This is how to set the rotation for an object. Click it once, and that will set the rotation there.

Now, next thing we want to do is work out what the rotation needs to be. Mine has defaulted because I've already practiced. So whatever it is here, it might be something else, drag it around. You can see it's rotating around this point which I guess is the important thing. What I did was I counted the petals, and there were 18 of them. Then, because my Math is so bad, I went 360 divided by 18, and I tabbed out. And it said, "That is 20°, Dan,", and I'm like, "Phew." What I'm going to do is click on the 'Copy' button. At the moment it's just rotating that original, so I'll click 'Copy'. And it rotates that.

Now we get to do this really cool thing, it says 'Object', 'Transform', do that thing again. 'Transform Again', 'Command D' on a Mac, or 'Control D' on a PC. So he will be going in here. So I'm going to smash away at that shortcut and just keep going around until I get 18 of these. Awesome! We're partially there, right?

What we're going to do now is, with the 'Black Arrow', select all of these guys, and we need to do some merging, and slicing, and dicing. First one, we'll do the white ones, they're quite easy. So we're going to grab the Shape Builder Tool, my favorite tool in the world. And with nothing held down on your keyboard, it's this '+' icon. What I want to do is kind of drag a little bit of loop around here. Man, this is going to be tough. There's lots of stuff in here. Basically I want to get out to these guys, right? So I'm just kind of dragging across these so I get these outer ones, at least. I'll fix the inside ones in a sec, with a different technique. It's not joined most of them.

What I'm going to do is grab the 'White Arrow' and click in the background, and select all of these guys, and just delete them. So we've got the white center. Back to our 'Black Arrow, I'm going to zoom out. I need the colors now. So I might as well use the colors while I'm working. So I'm going to steal them first, then apply them. I'm going to grab my 'Eye Dropper Tool'. Actually, 'Black Arrow', click in the background, nothing selected, grab your 'Eye Dropper Tool', there he is there. And I click on the green. Over here, we go to 'Fill'. And I'll say, you are a new Swatch. Just going to click 'OK', there he is there, Global Swatch.

Same thing again, click off in the background. Actually no, just the 'Eye Dropper Tool', grab that green. Go back to 'Properties'. You are a new Swatch, click 'OK'. Grab the 'Eye Dropper Tool', which you've already got. The yellow in there, pick the 'Properties', you… these are the three colors I'm going to use. So I've got my colors. Now with that all selected, because at the moment it's not going to quite work because they're all still kind of separate chunks. So I'm going to select them all, 'Black Arrow', I'm going to grab the 'Shape Builder Tool'. And if I reload my Shape Builder with a Fill color, let's say it is going to be the green, and I just go around, click, click…

Okay, I might get this to speed up. I'm just going to use this technique to go through and fill all the colors. And yes, let's do the speedy version. All right, we're back. So we've gone around and done it. The last thing I might do is, select it all, and go to 'Stroke'. You have 'no' Stroke. Oh, didn't do it. Come on, Stroke, 'no' Stroke, click in the background. I think it's pretty good. It's not too bad.

So that is how to redraw the flower from the BP logo, using Adobe Illustrator. We learned how to use the Curvature Tool to kind of change those points from curves to corners. We used the Shape Builder Tool to smash it all into pieces. We even used the Direct Select Tool to clean up all the junk in the middle. All right, that is it for this video. I will see you in the next one.