Illustrator Blend Tool Tutorial

This tutorial will show you how to use the blend tool in Illustrator. The blend tool will create transitions between two lines, colors, and paths. It will take between 15-45 minutes depending on experience.

1. Create a circle with a 1pt stroke. Give the stroke a color, keep the fill color white.

2. Create a square further down on the page, around the middle. It should have a different stroke color, and should also have a white fill.

3. Create a polygon, the amount of sides isn’t too important, but you can change the amount of sides with the up and down arrows on the keyboard, while creating the shape. Give your polygon a different stroke color and a white fill.

4. Select all 3 shapes

5. With the shapes selected go to Object > Blend > Make (Alt+Ctrl+B).

6. You should now have something similar to this.

8. Go to Object > Blend > Blend Options…

8. As you play with the settings notice the different types of effects you can get. When you’re done press cancel, we don’t want to change the settings yet.

9. Select the Convert Anchor Point Tool (Shift+C)

10. Drag downwards on the middle point and make a loop.

11. You should have something like this.

12. Add some more points with the pen tool and use the Convert Anchor Point Tool (Shift+C) to make it more interesting.

13. Also try changing the Orientation in the Blend Options. Go to Object > Blend > Blend Options… Most likely it will be set to align to page, which is the default, but try settings it to the align to path and see how your results change.

15. Our blend has a white solid, but if you want you can give it no fill and it will be transparent. To edit the shapes you can choose them from the layers palette or you can double click your blend to make the shapes editable.

18. I’ll show one more type of blend which is more typical, but still cool. Create a new document and make a path with a stroke, no fill.

19. Create another stroke further down on the page.

20. Go to Object > Blend > Make Blend. Play around with your settings and path until you’re happy with the results.

If you’re looking for a tutorial going into more detail about the second method I’ve shown you, there’s a good tutorial at N.Design Studio which shows how to create a background similar to the ones that come with Mac OS X.

One last note, there is a “Blend Tool” in Illustrator. It’s one of the tools, but I generally find it harder to use than the method described in this tutorial. Also you can do blends with fills, shapes, strokes, paths, opacity, and more. You don’t need to be using strokes for the blend to work.