Fixpert

I often use Illustrator to create technical illustrations that look sort of like schematics — the types of illustrations that you might find in the Owner’s Manual for your new digital camera. It’s a handy technique for taking some source photography and translating that imagery into something more iconic and general. The line-weight tends to be uniform, which helps keep the illustration clean, but this can often flatten the image too much. That’s where the “gel” comes in.

A “gel” is an illustrative technique that I often use to help pop something off the page. It’s something that I originally noticed as a technique in graffiti, but it’s common in traditional illustration, comic books, and other mediums. A gel is simply a thicker outline around the entire image, the interior line weight remains thinner and uniform.

There’s a simple way to do this in Illustrator using the Pathfinder palette. When you’ve completed your drawing, select the entire thing, and Group it (command-g), then copy and paste. Now you’ve got two versions of your drawing.

The one that’s floating on top will become your gel. Select this one and go to your Pathfinder palette and click on the “add to shape area” icon. Hopefully you see a big blob that has the general shape of your drawing. If so, you’re in business. (I’m simplifying this step a bit, and making the assumption that you are somewhat familiar with Illustrator, but if you need more instruction please let me know in the comments for this post.)

Now select “None” for that object’s fill, and make the outline black, dark grey, or another color that will create sufficient contrast between your object and the background that it’s resting on. Make the outline thick, thicker than you think it should actually be — try 5 pixels.

Then send that sucker to the back, Shift + command + [. Now select your original drawing and the new outline you just created. Use your Align palette to align these two objects vertically and horizontally. You should now have a beautiful gel, and a sweet illustration that jumps off the page.

You can also use this technique in limited ways inside your drawing, like this illustration of a camera. The lens is really protruding out from the body of the camera, so a little mini-gel in there helps to create that sense of dimension. Enjoy, and send me examples of stuff if you play around with this technique!