Discover how to create a lock icon in Adobe Illustrator, starting from changing perspectives to designing intricate elements. Learn how to use various tools for designing the icon, including the rectangle tool and the rounded rectangle tool.
Key Insights
- The lock icon is created in Adobe Illustrator using a variety of tools such as the rectangle tool for the bottom part and the rounded rectangle tool for the top part of the lock.
- The process involves holding shift while clicking and dragging with the rectangle tool to create a square, which eventually forms the base of the lock. The color fill of the square can be modified to suit requirements.
- Creating the rounded top of the lock can be achieved by using the rounded rectangle tool. The dimensions of the rectangle and the roundness can be adjusted using keyboard arrows, providing a high level of customization to the design.
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In this video, we'll be creating the lock icon. To do this, let's first change our perspective by scrolling to the right and scrolling down on the mouse while holding CTRL on the keyboard.
Next, we’re going to design a lock within this artboard. Before moving forward, let’s check our preview. Within the PDF, we can see that we have our lock icon here as a square with a rounded top, and if we look closely, we’ll see that we have a circle connected to a triangle to make up the key portion.
Let’s now begin. We’ll go back into Illustrator and start by clicking on our working layer.
The first thing we’ll design is the bottom of our lock using the Rectangle Tool. In our toolbar, we’ll click and hold to select the Rectangle Tool.
For our lock, we’re going to create a square. Similar to how the Ellipse Tool works by holding Shift to create a circle, the Rectangle Tool works to create a square by holding Shift as we click and drag.
We’ll drag our lock to be about this size, and as we can see here, our fill is still set to black from the Wi-Fi icon. To change this from a black fill to a black stroke, we can click on 'Swap Fill and Stroke, ' or we can simply hit D for default on the keyboard.
Next, let’s center our square. We can align it with the horizontal and vertical center lines, and next, we’re going to create the top of our lock.
To do this, we could either create an ellipse and a rectangle, combining both shapes into a rounded rectangle at the top, or we can use a new tool.
In this case, let’s use a new tool by going to 'Edit Toolbar, ' and we’re going to add the Rounded Rectangle Tool.
To do this, we’ll click and drag the Rounded Rectangle Tool, then group it with the other shape tools.
We’ll release, and we’ll see that the Rounded Rectangle Tool is automatically selected.
Let’s now click on the artboard, and we can explore how this tool works. The first thing we want to do before creating our shape is hit CTRL + Shift + A to deselect all objects.
Next, let’s go to the top-center of our square, and we’re going to start drawing our rounded rectangle from here.
From here, we’ll click and drag, and we’ll see that we have a rounded rectangle.
In addition, to establish the point that we clicked as our center point, we’ll hold ALT on the keyboard.
As we can see here, we have a rounded rectangle, and we can simply establish where we want to place it.
Additionally, we can change the dimensions of our rounded rectangle and how much rounding there is by using the left and right arrow keys on the keyboard.
As we click left and right, we’ll see that the rounding changes. If we use the up and down arrows, we’ll see it changes more gradually.
Let’s now go back to the center, hold ALT, and this seems to be a pretty natural round top for our lock.
Drag it down a little bit, and let’s release right about here when we feel like we have a good proportion.
We now have the round top of our lock and the square lock below; however, we now need to remove the bottom section of this shape.
Before doing this, however, we’ll use the Selection Tool shortcut V on the keyboard and drag a selection box around both objects so that we can work with all of our units and sections.
Using the Shape Builder Tool, we’ll now go in and see that we have three different sections that we can combine into shapes.
In this case, since we want to remove this bottom section, we can absorb it into the square, simply making the square section.
We’ll release, and we now have our lock.
Next, let’s deselect our object using CTRL + Shift + A to deselect.
Let’s now save our work using CTRL + S on the keyboard, and in the next video, we’ll be completing our lock.