In my first post I gave away a free pack of vector road signs that a lot of people seemed to like so I thought I would make a tutorial on how to create a glossy web 2.0 style interstate sign. Let’s get started.

1. Create a new document at 600 px wide by 800 px tall.

2. If you have Photoshop then you can get interstate sign shape from the custom shapes tool and bring it into Illustrator. Here’s where to find the shape in Photoshop.

Holding shift to constrain proportions, drag out the shape. Select all (control+a=PC/command+a=MAC) then copy (control+c=PC/command+c=MAC). Now go back to your new Illustrator document and paste in the shape (control+v=PC/command+v=MAC). If you do not have Photoshop then you can find a pic of an interstate sign and trace it with the pen tool or you could just download my vector road signs pack and get it from there.

3. Give the shape a 2 point stroke and fill it with white.

4. With the sign selected click object>path>offset path and enter -8 px for the offset.

Offset path is a great way to create an exact but smaller or larger copy of a path. For instance, if we had just made a copy of the sign and scaled it down it would be unproportional like in this pic. Notice how the top corners don’t line up properly.

5. Grab the rectangle tool and drag out a rectangle about the same height as the border around our sign. now place it toward the top of the sign like in the picture below.

6. With the new rectangle selected hold down shift and click the inner sign to select it as well. Now open up the pathfinder window (click: window>pathfinder) and click divide.

This will divide the lower shape according to the shape that is on top of it. In our case it will use the rectangle to divide the sign.

7. With the direct selection tool (white arrow) select the extra paths and delete them until you have something like this.

8. Now that we have our 2 inner sign shapes let’s ungroup them (object> ungroup). Fill the top one with a red color and the bottom one with a blue color and no stroke.

9. Now to make our sign look glossy. We’ll start with offset path. First select both the red and the blue shapes and click: object>path>offset path and enter -10 for the offset amount.

10. Using the pen tool draw a line across the red shape like in the picture below.

Select the new line and the red shape and in the pathfinder window click divide. Now we have 2 smaller red shapes.

Using the direct selection tool select the lower one and delete it.

11. Give this new shape a linear gradient of white to red ( the same red as the background). To do this, click on the gradient button near the bottom of the tools pallet. Then in the gradient window replace the black color by dragging and dropping the red color swatch on to the black color of the gradient.

12. Repeat steps 10 and 11 with the blue part of the sign to get something like the picture below.

13. Now that we have our glossy web 2.0 style sign we can add some text to it. You could add any text you like but I just added “interstate 95″. Pick a simple clean font and give it a white fill.

14. Let’s give our text a little more punch. Select the text in the red part of the sign and click: effects>stylize>outer glow.

Pick a red color a little darker than the background and enter the settings in the picture below then click ok.

15. Now just repeat step 14 for the text in the blue part of the sign except pick a blue color a little darker than the background.

One last thing. Let’s give the blue part of the sign a slight gradient towards the bottom to finish off the glossy web 2.0 look. Just use a gradient of white to blue (the same blue that the sign already is) and with the gradient tool drag out the gradient so that the bottom part of the sign has just a little hint of white like in the picture below.

There we have it! I basically used this same process to make all the signs in the road signs and traffic light vector pack . I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. If you have any questions or suggestions for future tips/tutorials please let me know in the comments.

Thanks,

D.A.T.