By Design Bundles
30 Mar 2018
5 Mins

Add Shine in Illustrator

Did you know that you could create a shine effect with a vector design in Illustrator.

For this tutorial, you will need a vector image and a font. We used the free fontMarhaban.

1 - In Illustrator, create a “New Document”.

2 - Select the “Rounded Rectangle Tool”, click on your “Document” and input a “With” and “Height” value of 100 mm and a “Corner Radius” of 25 mm. Click “OK”.

3 - Fill your shape with the color you like and make sure it has no “Stroke”.

4 - Open the image you want to use, “Copy” it (Command/Control + C) and “Paste” it (Command/Control + V) into your “Document”. Resize it to fit your square and change its “Fill” color to white.

5 - Select the “Ellipse Tool” (L), click on your “Document” and input a “With” value of 150 mm and “Height” value of 85 mm. Click “OK”. Position your shape on top of your square covering the top part. Fill it with white.

6 - Select your 2 shapes (exclude the image) and drag them to the side while holding the “Alt” key to duplicate them.

7 - Lower the “Opacity” of the Oval shape to 30% in the “Transparency Panel”. Select both shapes and go to the “Pathfinder Panel” and choose “Intersect”. Delete the original oval shape and drag the resulting shape on top of your square and image. You can use the “Direct Selection Tool” (A) to pick a point and tweak your highlight if you want. You can also change the color of your image (we used a darker shade of the color used for the square).

8 - For another version, select your “Type Tool” (Y), choose a font (we used Marhaban) and type some text. Fill it with a color of your liking.

9 - Select the “Pen Tool” (P), draw a shape that has a wave in its lower part, fill it with white.

10 - Select your text and go to Type > Create Outlines, then in the “Pathfinder Panel” choose “Unite”.

11 - Select the shape you created, fill it with a “Linear Gradient” with a 90° Angle. Use white in both sides but change the “Opacity” of the left value to 15% and the right value to 60%.

12 - Copy (Command/Control + C) your text and “Paste” it in the back (Command/Control + B). Select the top text and shape and in the “Pathfinder Panel” choose “Divide”, then right-click on top of the resulting shape and choose “Ungroup”. Check your path and delete any pieces that don’t belong to the text shape.

13 - Select the text you copied to the back and in the “Appearance Panel” click on the “Effects” menu button located at the bottom and choose Stylize > Drop Shadow. Input the following values:

14 - Check out your work. You may need to delete some more portions of the merged text if you see that they cover the shadow.

by @lornacane

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