For both novice and experienced pin makers, Adobe Illustrator can be quite frightening. Today, I’ll remove all of the intimidation for you. I’m ready to demonstrate everything you require to create enamel pins using Adobe Illustrator.

Thus, after seeing this video, Illustrator won’t appear frustrating to you, and you’ll be eager to finish all of your drawings! Since I’ve been using Illustrator for 20 years, I’ve worked with my pin manufacturer to build a system that makes creating pins and sending them to the factory total ease.

FIRST STEP: SKETCHES

Okay. Let’s enter your sketches into the computer as a first step. If you’ve been drawing with a real pen and paper, you can take a photo of the drawing with your phone and send it to yourself via email. It’s simple, or you may use your camera to take a picture or scan it in.

If you’re using iPhone, you can simply email it to yourself, utilize Google Drive, AirDrop it from your iPad to your Mac, or any other one of those options. There is no right or incorrect approach to taking. Once more, that’s ideal as long as you’re downloading it to your PC.

STEP TWO: SUMMARY

Alright, the second step is to outline your image. To open your image file, simply drag it into Illustrator. Then, to avoid messing up anything, I like to lock the layer and set the opacity of my sketch to around 50%. After locking that layer, I add a new layer above it.

You then make a new layer and select the Pen Tool. You’ll use this as your primary tool to vectorize your image. It will take some getting used to, and everyone I know who uses it initially despises it, but after enough repetition, it will come naturally. Although there are additional possibilities, let’s start with the Pen Tool because it’s important to understand the basics.

The Curve Tool is a nice additional tool. It’s a pretty cool thing. You don’t need to manually click and drag the Pen Tool because it predicts the curve you’re generating. It’s just one more method to do a curve, and I find it quite appealing.

Another useful tool for adjusting curves is the Smooth Tool. It is nested beneath the Shaper Tool and enables more natural curve modification. If you have some very curvy curves, try it!

If the Pen Tool is clear, let me know in the comments. Please comment and tell me how awesome the Curve Tool is because I’m into it.

Let me know if it’s less frightening now. Okay! I’m good. now back to work.

STEPPAGE THREE ADDING COLOR

I lock the contour layer and create a new layer underneath as I move on to adding color. Since your color layer is buried beneath your outlines, it doesn’t need to be flawless. This process moves much more quickly, and you can also change the colors quite easily.

QUICK TIP

To obtain the closest Pantone color when using your color picker, simply select Edit > Edit Colors > Recolor Artwork, click the tiny palette in the center of the window, and then click the color you want to use. The color group is thus restricted to shades from the Swatch Library. The closest Pantone color will be selected for you if you select the Pantone Solid Coated from this list.

ACTION: EXPAND

You should enlarge your strokes and convert them to shapes to maintain the integrity of your strokes and prevent them from scaling when your artwork is resized. To accomplish this, first, select everything, then select Object > Expand > Stroke from the menu. All of your strokes have formed now.

Blend all of your strokes into one large shape as a quick additional tip. This makes changing the colors in the template—which I’ll show you next—simple.

IT’S DONE!

To send your design to your manufacturer, simply insert it into your template, specify your colors, finishes, and any other specifications, and you’re good to go! This template has been approved by my manufacturer, who claims I don’t need anything else when I submit designs. You can obtain a copy of this manufacturer-approved template from the section below right now and use it for all correspondence with your manufacturers. It’s the only template you’ll ever need, for real.

Okay. Therefore, I vector all of my pin designs in this manner. Every single time I move from a drawing to a vector to a manufacturer, I do exactly that.

I’m confident you’ll pick it up and start busting out pins in no time. It is going to be amazing!

While you wait for your pins to arrive, you can jumpstart your reach thanks to the extremely actionable advice I give.

If you find it troublesome, you can contact us, we have professional designers to draw, we only need you to provide the pattern, and we can draw a sketch.

I hope this was useful. Make some pins now!