Delve into the process of creating transparency in a graphic design as detailed in this article. Learn how to enhance the aesthetics of a traffic cone design by integrating the element of transparency.
Key Insights
- The article elaborates on the process of making the white areas of a traffic cone design transparent for better compatibility with different backgrounds.
- Utilizing the shape builder tool, the author demonstrates how to create individual segments of the cone, merging certain areas to form one consistent segment which can be made transparent.
- The article concludes with the process of saving the work and introduces the concept of working on a helmet and goggles in the future.
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In this video, we'll be working with the transparency of our traffic cone. So let's observe the traffic cone that we have.
If we drag a selection box over it, we'll see that we have a top segment that's black, a middle segment that's black, and a bottom base that's black. In addition, we have the white middle segment and the lower white segment.
While this works on the current artboard, if we drag it over the gray, we'll see that it's not transparent where the white is. I'll hit CTRL + Z to undo. Therefore, in this video, we'll be working to create transparency for this cone.
To do this, let's double-click and enter isolation mode for our group. For the top segment, it's easy enough to change our fill from white to no fill. However, if we click on the bottom section and attempt to do this, clicking 'No Fill' from our color panel, we'll see that we still have the black box in the background.
Therefore, we can change this with the Shape Builder tool. Let's create a selection box over all of our objects, and with each of them selected, we'll now use the Shape Builder tool to create individual segments. While our top and second segments are good for right now, for our third segment, we want to create the segment as well as absorb the top edge of our background from the base.
We've now created one consistent segment. Next, we want to create one segment from the corners and the middle. We'll click and drag across, and we now have one consistent segment.
We'll then hit V on the keyboard, and in this case, we're going to select our middle segment. However, with no fill, we can't simply select the middle of it. We'll go until we see the path outlined, select it, and then, making sure that our fill square is on top, we'll select black.
We can then click outside of isolation mode by double-clicking, and we now have a transparent cone. To see the effect of this, let's simply click and drag our cone over, and we'll see that it's transparent. We'll then hit CTRL + Z to undo, and we've finally finished our cone.
Well done. Let's move our traffic cone into our final layer by selecting it on the right and dragging it into Final. We'll then save our work using CTRL + S on the keyboard, and in the next video, we'll be working on a helmet and goggles.
See you there.