- [Voiceover] In this movie, we'll make all the squares
match the letters so that they have both
strokes and beveled edges.
And while this doesn't really have anything to do
with alignment per se, it is a really cool technique.
And it is going to throw off the alignment of our artboard,
although we'll fix that problem before the movie is out.
All right, I'll go ahead and switch over to my document
so far, and notice that all of the squares are relegated
to their own layer, here inside the layers panel.
And so to select them all I'll just click
in the upper right corner of that layer.
Then, I'll go out to the line weight option
and increase it to three points, and that should
automatically set the stroke to black
but if you're to shift + click on that stroke swatch
in order to bring up the RGB values, and incidentally
if you don't see RGB, then just go ahead and choose
RGB from the File menu.
It's very possible that you're going to see something
other than zero, which is to say you're going to end up
with a weak black, and if that's the case,
then just go ahead and click on that swatch
instead of shift clicking and select the black swatch
up here at the top of the list, which, if I were
to now shift + click, as you can see, gets a zero
for the RGB values.
All right we also want to align the strokes
to the inside of the path outlines, and you can do that
by clicking on the word Stroke, and then selecting
the second Align Stroke icon, this guy right there.
And that'll shift those guys inward.
All right, now we need to create the beveled edges
and the best way to do that is to go ahead and zoom in
on, let's say, this top left square, I'll click off
the squares to deselect all of them, and I'll click
on this guy once again, so I'm selecting him
independently of the other squares.
Then, I'll press control + c, or command + c on the Mac
to copy the square and I'll press control + f
or command + f on the Mac in order to paste a copy
of the square in front.
And I can tell it's there by moving it.
Of course I don't want to move it, so I'll just press
control + z, or command + z on the Mac to undo that change
and then, I'll change the stroke to None
and I'll go ahead and click on this first
Fill swatch right there and change it to black.
And this black square by the way is going to represent
the beveled edge, but we need to make a couple of changes.
First, because the black arrow tool was selected,
press the enter key or the return key on the Mac
to bring up the Move dialog box, and we want to change
both the horizontal and vertical values to eight points
in this case, and what we're doing is basically determining
the size of that beveled edge.
At which point, go ahead and click the Copy button
in order to create a copy of that black square.
Then shift + click on the original so that
they're both selected, and let's combine them
by going up to the Window menu and choosing the
Pathfinder command to bring up the Pathfinder panel.
After which point you just want to click the first icon
in the first row to unite those two shapes
into one path outline.
After which point you can hide the Pathfinder panel.
Now what we want to do is smooth off this edge right there
as well as the one down left, and you can do that
using the Pen tool.
So go ahead and select the Pen tool, which you can get
by pressing the P key, and then hover your cursor
over this anchor point right there, at which point
you should see a minus next to the Pen tool cursor,
then click in order to get rid of that point
and Illustrator will go ahead and draw a new segment
between the remaining anchor points, then
click on this anchor point right there
to get rid of it as well.
And now we have a nicely tapered edge.
Okay, now you want to press the v key
to switch back to the black arrow tool,
click on the shape to select the entire thing
and right click on it, and then choose Arrange
and choose Send to Back, or you can press
control + shift + left bracket, or
command + shift + left bracket on the Mac.
All right, now we need to duplicate this guy
a bunch of times, so go ahead and zoom out
and then drag this guy by its top left anchor point
until it snaps into alignment with its neighbor
at which point just go ahead and release your mouse button.
You don't need to press the alt key
or the option key on the Mac, even though
we do ultimately want to make a copy.
All I'm doing right now is trying to figure out
what the distance of this move is,
and I can determine that by pressing the enter key
or the return key on the Mac, in order to
bring up the Move dialog box which will replay
the last movement, and so that tells me that it just
moved that beveled edge 180 points to the right.
And so with that information in mind, I'll just cancel out
and then I'll press control + z, or command + z on the Mac
to undo that move, and I'll go up to the Effect menu,
choose Distort and Transform, and choose Transform
in order to bring up the Dynamic Transform Effect
and now I'm going to change that horizontal move value
to 180 just as I saw a moment ago.
I'm going to leave the vertical value alone,
I'm going to turn on the Preview checkbox just to confirm
that everything's working out the way it should
and then I'll click in the Copies value and press
the up arrow key until I fill out that first row.
And as you can see, a Copies value of three does the trick,
after which point I'll click OK
and then I'll go up to the Effect menu
and choose the second instance of Transform,
the one that ends dot, dot, dot,
in order to apply another instance of this effect.
At which point Illustrator will bark at me.
I'll just go ahead and click Apply New Effect
because I do indeed want one, but this time
I'm going to swap these values.
I'm going to change the horizontal value to zero
and I'm going to take the vertical value up to 180,
turn on the Preview checkbox to make sure things
are working out the way they should, and because
Illustrator remembered my Copies value of three,
I have filled out the entire artwork.
And so, having done that, just go ahead
and click OK to accept that change.
All right, now as you can see the extruded edges
are encroaching upon the right
and bottom edges of the artboard.
So I'll go ahead and switch to the Artboard tool
by selecting it or pressing shift + o
and then, I'll go up here to the Control Panel,
I'll select the top right reference point
because I don't want the top right corner
of the artboard to move, and then I'll just go ahead
and add plus eight to the width value
and do the same for the height value as well.
Just enter plus eight for that, and that will take
both the width and height up to 748 points
and the reason I'm adding eight is because
that is the size of those extruded edges.
After which point I'll press the escape key
to exit the Artboard mode.
All right, just one more thing here,
I want to add a gray background and so I'm going to
click off my path to deselect it,
and then notice the Document Setup button right there,
I'm going to click on it and I'm going to give this document
a 12 point bleed, just so I can go all the way
to the edge of my artboard.
And now I'll just zoom out a little bit
and I'll create a new layer below the checkers layer
using the keyboard shortcut of control + alt + l,
or command + option + l on the Mac,
and notice the new layers now at the bottom of the stack.
I'll call this layer Back because it's going to be
a kind of background, and I'll change the color to Violet
then click OK, and then finally, I'll select
my Rectangle tool, I'll go ahead and draw a square
that's as big as the bleed, and I will change the color
of this square from black to this guy right here
Whetstone, which I've created in advance.
And then I'll press the enter key, or the return key
on the Mac to hide that panel, and I'll press
control + zero or command + zero on the Mac to zoom out.
And that friends, is how you add extruded edges
to your squares, beginning with a simple Move function
followed up by a couple of dynamic transform effects
here inside Illustrator.