You'd think gel would have gone out of style by now. We've all seen so many gel buttons, etc. But
I was at a Web site that used hexagons for its logo, and it struck me: I could do gel hexes
and fit them together into a nice pattern! So here's the way I went about it.
2. Shapes
Our first job is to create the hexagon. Ordinarily we could use the polygon tool, but to make
the blend work, we're going to just build it out of line segments.
Start out by setting Snap To Grid on the Property Bar.
Use the Freehand Tool to make a horizontal 1" Line.
You can use + on the numeric keypad to duplicate the line.
Click the new line to bring up rotation handles and move the Tack in the
center to the left end of the line.
In the Property Bar, set the Angle of Rotation to 60° and press Enter.
Hold down Ctrl and press D four times to duplicate the line and rotation.
You should now have a giant Asterisk. These are the parts of the hexagon. We just have to
put them together.
Turn off Snap To Grid and activate Snap To Objects on the Property Bar.
Make a copy of the Asterisk and set it aside for later.
Now assemble the pieces into a Hexagon.
Select the entire Hexagon and push Combine on the Property Bar.
Now with the Shape Tool, marquee select each vertex of the Hexagon in turn and
click Join Two Nodes on the Property Bar.
You should now have a fillable hexagon with only 6 nodes. The number of nodes is given in
the Status Bar when the object is selected. Our second shape will be a flattened hexagon.
Take the copy of the Asterisk you set aside. Select only the 4 angled lines, and
reduce them to 50% in the Scale Factor display on the Property Bar.
Now assemble, combine and join the nodes, just like we did in steps 3-5 above.
Finally, reduce the flattened hexagon to 87.5% and make a second copy of it.
3. Colors
We are going to be using HSB colors here. The advantage for this project is that once we
have completed the first gel hex, we only have to change the Hue values of each part to
get the other colors. If you want the colors to appear as they do on the Web site, go to
Tools | Color Management | Style: Optimized for the Web.
Make a copy of the large hexagon and in the Fill Tool flyout, choose the Fill Color
Dialog. Under Model: choose HSB. Set H: 0, S: 100, B: 40.
Remove the outline.
Put one of the flattened hexagons at the center bottom of the big hex and nudge it
up about 0.1". Set its color to H: 0, S: 75, B: 100, and remove the outline.
Now with the Interactive Blend Tool, blend the two hexagons. See Blend.
Next, take the remaining flattened hexagon, place it at the top center of the blend
group, and color it H: 0, S: 7, B: 97. Remove the outline.
With the Interactive Transparency Tool, drag from the top to the bottom of the upper
hexagon. Make sure the Edge Pad is set to zero in the Property Bar.
Now nudge this piece down about 0.1". See Gloss.
The final step here is to put the glow around the hexagon.
Take the original big hexagon and fill it with the same H: 0, S: 100, B: 40.
With the Interactive Drop Shadow Tool, drag a shadow straight down about 0.25".
Under Drop Shadow Color in the Property Bar, select Other… and set the color to
H: 0, S: 100, B: 100. See Red Hex.
Now with the Pick Tool, click to deselect the Drop Shadow Group and select only
the hexagon (Control Curve). Then shift-select the Blend Group hexagon and type C, E, to
center the glow hex behind the gel hex.
This completes the red hexagon. You can make any other color by simply changing the Hue
values throughout. My examples use, yellow H: 60, green H: 120, and blue H: 240. I made
the shadow a separate piece, so it will be easier to copy the graphic and take it apart
to change the colors. Then when you put them side-by-side, the glows all fall behind the
gels. That's about all there is to it.
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