Creating Textures 1

Believe it or not, the above image has only two shapes: the logo, and the background. All of the texturing and 3D effects are created in the appearance palette, making this incredibly flexible when it comes time to make edits to the original geometry.

This is a pivotal moment: you are able to create effects that apply only to a given fill in an object. This is INCREDIBLY important. It means that you can make geometry once, and apply all of your textures on top of it. That way, if you make changes to the parent geometry, all of your texturing updates.

This trick just makes it so that the background we’re about to add will show through in our shadow-groove. (In the product-design industry we often call these “penny grooves”).

There’s no decent bevel/emboss tool in AI, so we’ll have to fake it. Yes, you can use the “3D Extrude & Bevel” feature, but I’ve found it to be very messy and unpredictable. This little trick is far from perfect, but works pretty well: two drop shadows.

Now we’ve got a shadow for highlight, and a shadow for… shadow. Not bad, eh?

Our background looks a little flat. Lets take care of that.

Texture! Easy!

So now we’ve make all this art, and it’s only TWO objects! This is so easy to adjust it’s silly! And don’t forget that you can save these appearances as “graphic styles” for quick, easy use later on other objects.

Now just throw another gradient on the logo, and you’ve got some chrome. Nice and gaudy. :)