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Cartoon Network 25th Anniversary
Post pobrano z: Cartoon Network 25th Anniversary
Original Penguin “Origins”
Post pobrano z: Original Penguin “Origins”
31 Premium Brochure Templates (Booklets and Tri-Folds)
Post pobrano z: 31 Premium Brochure Templates (Booklets and Tri-Folds)
Your business needs a brochure, but which should you choose? Check out these premium templates from Envato Market.
31 Premium Brochure Templates
Think of a brochure as an extension of your sales team. It lets customers know more about your product or service without any extra fuss.
So make the right impression with a professional brochure. Today, we bring you 31 designs from Envato Market to inspire the budding entrepreneur within you.
Need more help? Let us know! Check out the design professionals at Envato Studio for all your brochure needs!
Garden Brochure Template
Do you have a green thumb? Then showcase your
gardening business with style. This brochure template includes easy-to-use smart objects to replace photos and logos fast. Download this
package now to get eight Photoshop files with 16 total pages and links
to free fonts.
Trifold Brochure – Coffee Menu
Set your coffee shop apart from the others in
town. Use this clean and minimal template featuring a high-quality
design and luxurious coffee beans. Switch out the images using the editable smart objects and change the style to fit your needs.
Multipurpose Brochure
Become
the next best thing in your neck of the woods with this high-quality
brochure. This package features a modern multipurpose template that is
certainly impressive. Suitable for beginners to design, this download
also includes detailed instructions.
Business Brochure
Get
ahead with this modern brochure. Recently updated, this brochure
features eight unique pages and editable logos. Just change the colors
to match your brand in no time at all!
Elegant Portrait Brochure
Create an elegant brochure for your photography business. This template contains 16 total pages with impressive layouts. It’s suitable for InDesign CS4 and above, so you’ll be able to customize it easily! Try it out today.
A4 Photography Portfolio
Highlight your work with a photography portfolio. Whether you’re a seasoned photographer or just starting out, this brochure presents your work in a classy and sophisticated manner. Download it today to get access to this template in several industry formats.
Business Brochure Template
Tackle
a new and exciting business with this clean brochure template. This
professional package includes several InDesign files at the standard A4
size. Enjoy creative angular layouts and access to free fonts.
Trifold Brochure
Modern and stylish, this trifold brochure features a sleek, corporate style with colorful elements. It’s a fully editable template with easy-to-use placeholders for the text and images. Just open Photoshop to edit it.
Modern Brochure
Seek out a stylish alternative with this modern brochure.
Featuring a flexible design, this template can be used for a variety of
businesses. You can add as many pages as you’d like for even more
flexibility.
Minimalfolio Photography Portfolio A4 Brochure
Know when to go minimal. A photography portfolio should let
your work shine. This template, for instance, features a horizontal A4
format with custom styles and master pages. It only uses free fonts, so
you won’t have to pay extra!
Brochure Template – InDesign 8 Pages
Portray your company’s true message with this brochure template. This InDesign template features eight unique pages with a colorful corporate theme. It even includes awesome extras like vector elements and icons.
Medical Trifold Brochure
Created in InDesign, this trifold brochure is perfect for medical professionals. Simply update it with your information of choice, using the simple-to-use text holders. Try it out!
Blue Brochure
When creating a brochure, it’s important that the
template is easy to navigate. Here’s a design that makes the process
simple. Just download the file and open it in Photoshop to update the
text, images, and logos.
Brochure Template
Adjust the colors of this brochure to make your brand stand out. This template includes a 48-page layout with customizable backgrounds and vector assets. A handy help file is also included for further instruction.
3 Fold Brochure III
This brochure template breaks the traditional mold of trifold designs. Featuring a creative layout with many photo options, this template is fully editable and print ready. Try it out for a unique presentation.
Fitness Brochure Tri-Fold
Is your business out of shape? Kick things into gear with this fitness trifold brochure. With three amazing color styles, this template comes print ready with bleed lines. Edit it fast using Adobe Photoshop.
Business Trifold Brochure
What will be your first impression? This corporate
trifold is sleek and sophisticated. You can keep the original color
scheme or change it to the colors of your choice. Enjoy access to free
fonts and more, for an amazing deal.
Trifold Brochure
Get started with your new business brochure. This corporate design features a high-resolution, fully layered template. Feel free to use the fonts included, or update it with your own favorites.
Business Brochure
This business brochure features a stylish design that is sure to pique interest. There are 16 professional pages and multiple color options for your convenience. It’ll suit everyone from corporate agencies to small studios, so we’re sure you’ll love this template!
Company Brochure
The standard brochure style we often see today is very minimal. This template, for instance, works well for energy businesses and more. Choose clear, high-quality stocks related to your industry to bring this template to the next level!
Brochure
Or step out of the box with this fun design! This brochure template features a trendy geometric design with low polygonal elements. Perfect for creatives and all techies alike, this brochure is colorful and energetic.
Trifold Brochure
What’s your mission? Make it clear with this trifold brochure. This download contains a 300-dpi, print-ready file with editable elements and colors. Choose from four color variations or create your own. Enjoy!
Dark Brochure Template
With 24 total pages, this modern brochure features a lovely dark theme with bold accents. Easily edit the paragraph and character styles, and take advantage of the auto page-numbering option. Grab this amazing asset today!
Trifold Brochure Template
Showcase your luxury apartments with this exquisite brochure design. This download features fully editable files with four color variations. And it’s a great way to maintain quality while saving valuable time.
SEO Brochure
Communicate your SEO knowledge with a clear design.
This print template features six total pages with free fonts and bleed
lines. It’s a smart aesthetic for any creative professional or business
looking for customers. Download it today!
Corporate Business Brochure
Brand your business with a powerful brochure. This
template features a bold yellow color scheme with smart black accents.
It’s clean and professional and definitely handy to have around.
Brochure Template
Beautiful design will set you apart from others. So show off your impeccable taste with this brochure template. Featuring 28 pages and a clean, modern design, this template will definitely do your projects justice. We hope you enjoy it!
Explore Africa Trifold Brochure
Inspired by the phenomenal scenery in Africa, this trifold brochure highlights amazing nature and wildlife shots. It features an attractive modern design with plenty of space for your best photos. We hope you enjoy it!
Real State Trifold Brochure
Dominate your local market with a brilliant real estate brochure. This trifold design features bold, colorful sections with four color variations to choose from. Get more help with your work by reading the helpful guide also included.
Annual Report Brochure
Track the facts and figures of your business with this
annual report template. This brochure is easy to edit with changeable
colors, paragraph styles, and more. Print it out for a presentation or
save it for your official documents.
Landscape Brochure
Live out your dreams with this landscape brochure.
This design features a relaxed, approachable aesthetic with charming
fonts and colors. There are also links to the free fonts used to help
you save money!
Conclusion
This list features exciting
resources for the avid designer
familiar with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign. For
additional help with all your brochure needs, enlist the skills of a talented
professional by choosing one of the amazing designers from Envato Studio.
And with loads of brochures available at your fingertips, chances are we’ve missed a few to add to your personal collection. Be sure to browse Envato Market for more resources, and let us know your favorites in the comments below!
A stack of similarities? / Un tas de similarités?
Post pobrano z: A stack of similarities? / Un tas de similarités?
 |
 |
| THE ORIGINAL? Park Geun-Hye corruption scandal – 2015 “If you lie, your nose gets bigger”. Source : Satirical image found on Korean web Artist : Unknown (South Korea) |
LESS ORIGINAL Der Tagesspiegel Newspaper – 2016 “Will he bully his way into the white house?” Source : CLIO & Cannes Lions GOLD Agency : Scholz & Friends (Germany) |
Instaglasses: a concept project for Instagram glasses
Post pobrano z: Instaglasses: a concept project for Instagram glasses
Designers Angel Petkov and Blagovest Dimitrov, both from Bulgaria, recently released a cool project of Instaglasses. It is a concept project, so the glasses are not going to be produced, at least not in a near future, but the two designers invested a lot of time and effort to make it as realistic as possible.
They went far in the features explanations and took care of every small detail to make it look as realistic as possible. You can see a preview in the following images, and look at the video and more features on the project’s Behance page.
The Art of Comments
Post pobrano z: The Art of Comments
I believe commenting code is important. Most of all, I believe commenting is misunderstood. I tweeted out the other day that „I hear conflicting opinions on whether or not you should write comments. But I get thank you’s from junior devs for writing them so I’ll continue.” The responses I received were varied, but what caught my eye was that for every person agreeing that commenting was necessary, they all had different reasons for believing this.
Commenting is a more nuanced thing than we give it credit for. There is no nomenclature for commenting (not that there should be) but lumping all comments together is an oversimplification. The example in this comic that was tweeted in response is true:
This is where I think a lot of the misconceptions of comments lie. The book Clean Code by Robert C. Martin talks about this: that comments shouldn’t be necessary because code should be self-documenting. That if you feel a comment is necessary, you should rewrite it to be more legible. I both agree and disagree with this. In the process of writing a comment, you can often find things that could be written better, but it’s not an either/or. I might still be able to rewrite that code to be more self-documenting and also write a comment as well, for the following reason:
Code can describe how, but it cannot explain why.
This isn’t a new concept, but it’s a common theme I notice in helpful comments that I have come across. The ability to communicate something that the code cannot, or cannot concisely.
All of that said, there is just not one right way or one reason to write a comment. In order to better learn, let’s dig into some of the many beneficial types of comments that might all serve a different purpose, followed by patterns we might want to avoid.
Good comments
What is the Why
Many examples of good comments can be housed under this category. Code explains what you’d like the computer to take action on. You’ll hear people talk about declarative code because it describes the logic precisely but without describing all of the steps like a recipe. It lets the computer do the heavy lifting. We could also write our comments to be a bit more declarative
/*
We had to write this function because the browser
interprets that everything is a box
*/This doesn’t describe what the code below it will do. It doesn’t describe the actions it will take. But if you found a more elegant way of rewriting this function, you could feel confident in doing so because your code is likely the solution to the same problem in a different way.
Because of this, less maintenance is required (we’ll dig more into this further on). If you found a better way to write this, you probably wouldn’t need to rewrite the comment. You could also quickly understand whether you could rewrite another section of code to make this function unnecessary without spending a long time parsing all the steps to make the whole.
Clarifying something that is not legible by regular human beings
When you look at a long line of regex, can you immediately grok what’s going on? If you can, you’re in the minority, and even if you can at this moment, you might not be able to next year. What about a browser hack? Have you ever seen this in your code?
.selector { [;property: value;]; }what about
var isFF = /a/[-1]=='a';The first one targets Chrome ≤ 28, Safari ≤ 7, Opera ≥ 14, the second one is Firefox versions 2-3. I have written code that needs something like this. In order to avoid another maintainer or a future me assuming I took some Salvia before heading to work that day, it’s great to tell people what the heck that’s for. Especially in preparation for a time when we don’t have to support that browser anymore, or the browser bug is fixed and we can remove it.
Something that is clear and legible to you is not necessarily clear to others
Who’s smart? We are! Who writes clean code? We do! We don’t have to comment, look how clear it is. The problem with this way of thinking is that we all have deeper knowledge in different areas. On small teams where people’s skillsets and expertise are more of a circle than a venn diagram, this is less of an issue than big groups that change teams or get junior devs or interns frequently. But I’d probably still make room for those newcomers or for future you. On bigger teams where there are junior engineers or even just engineers from all types of background, people might not outrightly tell you they need you to comment, but many of these people will also express gratitude when you do.
Comments like chapters of a book
If this very article was written as one big hunk rather than broken up into sections with whitespace and smaller headings, it would be harder to skim through. Maybe not all of what I’m saying applies to you. Commenting sections or pieces allows people to skip to a part most relevant to them. But alas! You say. We have functional programming, imports, and modules for this now.
It’s true! We break things down into smaller bits so that they are more manageable, and thank goodness for that. But even in smaller sections of code, you’ll necessarily come to a piece that has to be a bit longer. Being able quickly grasp what is relevant or a label for an area that’s a bit different can speed up productivity.
A guide to keep the logic straight while writing the code
This one is an interesting one! These are not the kind of comments you keep, and thus could also be found in the „bad patterns” section. Many times when I’m working on a bigger project with a lot of moving parts, breaking things up into the actions I’m going to take is extremely helpful. This could look like
// get the request from the server and give an error if it failed
// do x thing with that request
// format the data like soThen I can easily focus on one thing at a time. But when left in your code as is, these comments can be screwy to read later. They’re so useful while you’re writing it but once you’re finished can merely be a duplication of what the code does, forcing the reader to read the same thing twice in two different ways. It doesn’t make them any less valuable to write, though.
My perfect-world suggestion would be to use these comments at the time of writing and then revisit them after. As you delete them, you could ask „does this do this in the most elegant and legible way possible?” „Is there another comment I might replace this with that will explain why this is necessary?” „What would I think is the most useful thing to express to future me or other from another mother?”
This is OK to refactor
Have you ever had a really aggressive product deadline? Perhaps you implemented a feature that you yourself disagreed with, or they told you it was „temporary” and „just an AB test so it doesn’t matter”. *Cue horror music* … and then it lived on… forever…
As embarrassing as it might be, writing comments like
// this isn't my best work, we had to get it in by the deadlineis rather helpful. As a maintainer, when I run across comments like this, I’ll save buckets of time trying to figure out what the heck is wrong with this person and envisioning ways I could sabotage their morning commute. I’ll immediately stop trying to figure out what parts of this code I should preserve and instead focus on what can be refactored. The only warning I’ll give is to try not to make this type of coding your fallback (we’ll discuss this in detail further on).
Commenting as a teaching tool
Are you a PHP shop that just was given a client that’s all Ruby? Maybe it’s totally standard Ruby but your team is in slightly over their heads. Are you writing a tutorial for someone? These are the limited examples for when writing out the how can be helpful. The person is literally learning on the spot and might not be able to just infer what it’s doing because they’ve never seen it before in their lives. Comment that sh*t. Learning is humbling enough without them having to ask you aloud what they could more easily learn on their own.
I StackOverflow’d the bejeezus outta this
Did you just copy paste a whole block of code from Stack Overflow and modify it to fit your needs? This isn’t a great practice but we’ve all been there. Something I’ve done that’s saved me in the past is to put the link to the post where I found it. But! Then we won’t get credit for that code! You might say. You’re optimizing for the wrong thing would be my answer.
Inevitably people have different coding styles and the author of the solution solved a problem in a different way than you would if you knew the area deeper. Why does this matter? Because later, you might be smarter. You might level up in this area and then you’ll spend less time scratching your head at why you wrote it that way, or learn from the other person’s approach. Plus, you can always look back at the post, and see if any new replies came in that shed more light on the subject. There might even be another, better answer later.
Bad Comments
Writing comments gets a bad wrap sometimes, and that’s because bad comments do indeed exist. Let’s talk about some things to avoid while writing them.
They just say what it’s already doing
John Papa made the accurate joke that this:
// if foo equals bar ...
If (foo === bar) {
} // end ifis a big pain. Why? Because you’re actually reading everything twice in two different ways. It gives no more information, in fact, it makes you have to process things in two different formats, which is mental overhead rather than helpful. We’ve all written comments like this. Perhaps because we didn’t understand it well enough ourselves or we were overly worried about reading it later. For whatever the reason, it’s always good to take a step back and try to look at the code and comment from the perspective of someone reading it rather than you as the author, if you can.
It wasn’t maintained
Bad documentation can be worse than no documentation. There’s nothing more frustrating than coming across a block of code where the comment says something completely different than what’s expressed below. Worse than time-wasting, it’s misleading.
One solution to this is making sure that whatever code you are updating, you’re maintaining the comments as well. And certainly having less and only more meaningful comments makes this upkeep less arduous. But commenting and maintaining comments are all part of an engineer’s job. The comment is in your code, it is your job to work on it, even if it means deleting it.
If your comments are of good quality to begin with, and express why and not the how, you may find that this problem takes care of itself. For instance, if I write
// we need to FLIP this animation to be more performant in every browserand refactor this code later to go from using getBoundingClientRect() to getBBox(), the comment still applies. The function exists for the same reason, but the details of how are what has changed.
You could have used a better name
I’ve definitely seen people write code (or done this myself) where the variable or functions names are one letter, and then comment what the thing is. This is a waste. We all hate typing, but if you are using a variable or function name repeatedly, I don’t want to scan up the whole document where you explained what the name itself could do. I get it, naming is hard. But some comments take the place of something that could easily be written more precisely.
The comments are an excuse for not writing the code better to begin with
This is the crux of the issue for a lot of people. If you are writing code that is haphazard, and leaning back on your comments to clarify, this means the comments are holding back your programming. This is a horse-behind-the-cart kind of scenario. Unfortunately, even as the author it’s not so easy to determine which is which.
We lie to ourselves in myriad ways. We might spend the time writing a comment that could be better spent making the code cleaner to begin with. We might also tell ourselves we don’t need to comment our code because our code is well-written, even if other people might not agree.
There are lazy crutches in both directions. Just do your best. Try not to rely on just one correct way and instead write your code, and then read it. Try to envision you are both the author and maintainer, or how that code might look to a younger you. What information would you need to be as productive as possible?
People tend to, lately, get on one side or the other of „whether you should write comments”, but I would argue that that conversation is not nuanced enough. Hopefully opening the floor to a deeper conversation about how to write meaningful comments bridges the gap.
Even so, it can be a lot to parse. Haha get it? Anyways, I’ll leave you with some (better) humor. A while back there was a Stack Overflow post about the best comments people have written or seen. You can definitely waste some time in here. Pretty funny stuff.
The Art of Comments is a post from CSS-Tricks
Getting Nowhere on Job Titles
Post pobrano z: Getting Nowhere on Job Titles
Last week on ShopTalk, Dave and I spoke with Mandy Michael and Lara Schenck. Mandy had just written the intentionally provocative „Is there any value in people who cannot write JavaScript?” which guided our conversation. Lara is deeply interested in this subject as well, as someone who is a job seeking web worker, but places herself on the spectrum as a non-unicorn.
Part of that discussion was about job titles. If there was a ubiquitously accepted and used job title that meant you were specifically skilled at HTML and CSS, and there was a market for that job title, there probably wouldn’t be any problem at all. There isn’t though. „Web developer” is too vague. „Front-end developer” maybe used to mean that, but has been largely co-opted by JavaScript.
In fact, you might say that none of us has an exactly perfect job title and the industry at large has trouble agreeing on a set of job titles.
Lara created a repo with the intent to think all this out and discuss it.
If there is already a spectrum between design and backend development, and front-end development is that place in between, perhaps front-end development, if we zoon in, is a spectrum as well:
I like the idea of spectrums, but I also agree with a comment by Sarah Drasner where she mentioned that this makes it seem like you can’t be good at both. If you’re a dot right in the middle in this specrum, you are, for example, not as good at JavaScript as someone on the right.
This could probably be fixed with some different dataviz (perhaps the size of the dot), or, heaven forbid, skill-level bars.
More importantly, if you’re really interested in the discussion around all this, Lara has used the issues area to open that up.
Last year, Geoff also started thinking about all our web jobs as a spectrum. We can break up our jobs into parts and map them onto those parts in differnet ways:
See the Pen Web Terminology Matrix by Geoff Graham (@geoffgraham) on CodePen.
See the Pen Web Terminology Venn Diagram by Geoff Graham (@geoffgraham) on CodePen.
That can certainly help us understand our world a little bit, but doesn’t quite help with the job titles thing. It’s unlikely we’ll get people to write job descriptions that include a data visualization of what they are looking for.
Jeff Pelletier took a crack at job titles and narrowed it down to three:
Front-end Implementation (responsive web design, modular/scalable CSS, UI frameworks, living style guides, progressive enhancement & accessibility, animation and front-end performance).
Application Development (JavaScript frameworks, JavaScript preprocessors, code quality, process automation, testing).
Front-end Operations (build tools, deployment, speed: (app, tests, builds, deploys), monitoring errors/logs, and stability).
Although those don’t quite feel like titles to me and converting them into something like „Front-end implementation developer” doesn’t seem like something that will catch on.
Cody Lindley’s Front-End Developer Handbook has a section on job titles. I won’t quote it in full, but they are:
- Front-End Developer
- Front-End Engineer (aka JavaScript Developer or Full-stack JavaScript Developer)
- CSS/HTML Developer
- Front-End Web Designer
- Web/Front-End User Interface (aka UI) Developer/Engineer
- Mobile/Tablet Front-End Developer
- Front-End SEO Expert
- Front-End Accessibility Expert
- Front-End Dev. Ops
- Front-End Testing/QA
Note the contentious „full stack” title, in which Brad Frost says:
In my experience, “full-stack developers” always translates to “programmers who can do frontend code because they have to and it’s ‘easy’.” It’s never the other way around.
Still, these largely feel pretty good to me. And yet weirdly, almost like there is both too many and too few. As in, while there is good coverage here, but if you are going to cover specialties, you might as well add in performance, copywriting, analytics, and more as well. The more you add, the further away we are to locking things down. Not to mention the harder it becomes when people crossover these disciplines, like they almost always do.
Oh well.
Getting Nowhere on Job Titles is a post from CSS-Tricks
How to Create a Set of Sexuality Icons in Adobe Illustrator
Post pobrano z: How to Create a Set of Sexuality Icons in Adobe Illustrator
In the following steps you will learn how to create a simple set of sexuality icons in Adobe Illustrator.
For starters, you will learn how to set up a simple grid and how to create the male and female symbols using basic tools and vector shape building techniques along with the Rounded Corners effect. Using these two icons and the Rotate Tool, you will learn how to create the remaining ten icons. Finally, you will learn how to add some subtle shading and highlights.
For more inspiration on how to adjust or improve your final icons, you can find plenty of resources at GraphicRiver.
1. How to Create a New Document and Set Up a Grid
Hit Control-N to create a new document. Select Pixels from the Units drop-down menu, enter 850 in the width box and 1730 in the height box, and then click that More Settings button. Select RGB for the Color Mode, set the Raster Effects to Screen (72 ppi), and then click that Create Document button.
Enable the Grid (View > Show Grid) and the Snap to Grid (View > Snap to Grid). You will need a grid every 1 px, so simply go to Edit > Preferences > Guides & Grid, and enter 1 in the Gridline every box and 1 in the Subdivisions box. Try not to get discouraged by all that grid—it will make your work easier, and keep in mind that you can easily enable or disable it using the Control-„ keyboard shortcut.
You can learn more about Illustrator’s grid system in this short tutorial from Andrei Stefan: Understanding Adobe Illustrator’s Grid System.
You should also open the Info panel (Window > Info) for a live preview with the size and position of your shapes. Don’t forget to set the unit of measurement to pixels from Edit > Preferences > Units. All these options will significantly increase your work speed.
2. How to Create the Male and Female Symbol Icons
Step 1
Pick the Ellipse Tool (L) and focus on your Toolbar. Remove the color from the fill and then select the stroke and set its color to R=255 G=0 B=0. Move to your artboard and simply create a 76 px circle—the grid and the Snap to Grid should make this easier. Make sure that this new shape stays selected and open the Appearance panel (Window > Appearance).
First, click that Opacity piece of text to open the Transparency fly-out panel and lower the Opacity to about 50%. Keep focusing on the Appearance panel and this time click that Stroke piece of text to open the Stroke fly-out panel. Increase the Weight to 16 px and then check the Align Stroke to Inside button.
Step 2
Pick the Rectangle Tool (M) and hit Shift-X to invert the existing fill and stroke attributes. Create a 16 x 50 px shape and place it as shown in the following image. Lower its Opacity to about 50% and then go to Effect > Stylize > Rounded Corners. Enter an 8 px Radius and then click that OK button.
Step 3
Using the same tool and color attributes, create a 48 x 16 px shape and place it as shown in the following image. Make sure that it’s selected and go to Effect > Stylize > Rounded Corners. Enter an 8 px Radius and then click that OK button.
Step 4
Reselect your circle and simply duplicate it (Control-C > Control-V). Select this copy and replace the existing stroke color with R=41 G=171 B=226.
Step 5
Pick the Line Segment Tool (\), create a 36 px horizontal line, and place it exactly as shown in the first image. Add a blue stroke (R=41 G=171 B=226) for this path, lower its Opacity to about 50%, and then open that Stroke fly-out panel. Set the Weight to 16 px and don’t forget to check that Round Cap button.
Switch to the Direct Selection Tool (A), select the right anchor point, and simply drag it 36 px up.
Step 6
Pick the Rectangle Tool (M), create a 20 px square and place it as shown in the first image. Add the same blue stroke, lower its Opacity to 50% and then open that Stroke fly-out panel. Set the Weight to 16 px and then check those Round Cap and Round Join buttons.
Switch to the Direct Selection Tool (A), select the bottom left anchor point, and simply hit the Delete key on your keyboard to remove it. In the end, things should look like in the second image.
Step 7
Select all your red shapes and go to Object > Expand Appearance. Make sure that the resulting shapes are selected, open the Pathfinder panel (Window > Pathfinder), and click the Unite button. This will be your icon for the female symbol.
Repeat the same techniques with your blue shapes. This will be your icon for the male symbol.
3. How to Create the Other Ten Icons
Step 1
Duplicate your male and female icons and then place the copies as shown in the following image. This will be your icon for the hetero symbol.
Step 2
Make two copies of your male icon and place them as shown in the first image. Leave a 4 px spacing between those edges, as you did in the previous step.
Once you’re done, select the bottom copy and pick the Rotate Tool (R). Use a simple click to place the center point right in the center of that inner circle (as shown in the first image) and then rotate it manually 135 degrees. In the end, things should look like in the third image. This will be your icon for one of the gay symbols.
Step 3
Make two copies of your female icon and place them as shown in the first image. Once again, leave a 4 px spacing between those edges.
Once you’re done, select the top copy and pick the Rotate Tool (R). Be sure that you place the center point right in the center of that inner circle (as shown in the first image) and then rotate it manually 135 degrees. In the end, things should look like in the third image. This will be your icon for one of the lesbian symbols.
Step 4
Create some new copies of your male and female icons and use them to create the four icons shown in the following images. You have the second icons for the gay and lesbian symbols and two icons for the bisexual symbols.
Step 5
Duplicate your male and female icons and then place the copies on top of each other as shown in the first image. Select these copies and click the Unite button from the Pathfinder panel. This will be your icon for one of the transgender symbols.
Step 6
Duplicate your male and female icons and then place the copies on top of each other as you did in the previous step. Select only that male icon and go to Object > Transform > Reflect. Check the Vertical box and then click that Copy button. Select your flipped copy, drag it to the left and place it as shown in the first image.
Pick the Rectangle Tool (M) and create a 44 x 16 px shape. Place it exactly as shown in the second image and then go to Effect > Stylize > Rounded Corners. Enter an 8 px Radius and then click that OK button.
Step 7
Select your newly made rounded rectangle and pick the Rotate Tool (R). Place the center point right in the center of that inner circle and then rotate your shape 45 degrees. You can use the Ellipse Tool (L) to add a tiny circle in that center point which will make it easier for you to spot the center of that inner circle. Once you’re done, make sure that your rectangle is still selected and go to Object > Expand Appearance.
Step 8
Select all the shapes highlighted in the following image and click the Unite button from the Pathfinder panel. This will be your icon for the second transgender symbol.
Step 9
Pick the Ellipse Tool (L) and create a new, 76 px circle. Lower its Opacity to 50%, add a 16 px stroke and align it to inside, and then go to Object > Path > Outline Stroke. This will be your icon for the asexual symbols.
Step 10
Make sure that you have all 12 icons and spread them about as shown in the following image.
4. How to Add Color, Some Subtle Shading, and Highlights
Step 1
Using the Rectangle Tool (M), create a shape the size of your artboard, fill it with R=143 G=94 B=226, and send it to back (Shift-Control-[). Select all your icons and simply hit the D key on your keyboard to replace the existing Appearance attributes with the default ones (white fill and black stroke). Remove the black stroke and only keep that white fill.
Step 2
Focus on your heterosexual symbol. Using the Ellipse Tool (L), create a 44 px circle and place it exactly as shown in the first image. Make sure that there’s no color set for the fill and then select the stroke. Set the Weight to 4 px, align it to inside, and then go to Object > Path > Outline Stroke.
Switch to the Rectangle Tool (M), create a 30 px square, and place it as shown in the second image. Just make sure that this shape covers the surface of your grey shape that overlaps with the male symbol icon. Select both shapes made in this step and click the Intersect button from the Pathfinder panel.
Step 3
Select that male symbol shape and make a copy in front (Control-C > Control-F). Select it along with that red shape and click the Intersect button from the Pathfinder panel. Fill the resulting shape with R=190 G=200 B=200.
Step 4
Keep focusing on your heterosexual symbol. Using the Ellipse Tool (L), create a 76 px circle and place it exactly as shown in the first image. Make sure that there’s no color set for the fill and then select the stroke. Set the Weight to 4 px, align it to outside, and then go to Object > Path > Outline Stroke.
Switch to the Rectangle Tool (M), create a 40 px square, and place it as shown in the second image. Again, make sure that this shape covers the surface of your grey shape that overlaps with the female symbol icon. Select both shapes made in this step and click the Intersect button from the Pathfinder panel.
Step 5
Select that female symbol shape and make a copy in front (Control-C > Control-F). Select it along with that red shape and click the Intersect button from the Pathfinder panel. Fill the resulting shape with R=190 G=200 B=200.
Step 6
Keep focusing on your heterosexual symbol. Select the two white icons along with those tiny grey shapes and Group them (Control-G).
Step 7
Move to the other six symbols that have overlapping icons and add some subtle shading, as shown in the following images. Once you’re done with the shading, don’t forget to Group your shapes.
Step 8
Finally, select your groups and go to Effect > Stylize > Drop Shadow. Enter the attributes shown in the following image and then click that OK button.
Congratulations! You’re Done!
Here is how it should look. I hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial and can apply these techniques in your future projects. Don’t hesitate to share your final result in the comments section.
Feel free to adjust the final design and make it your own. You can find some great sources of inspiration at GraphicRiver, with interesting solutions to improve your design.
