Last year I had the opportunity to design and illustrate a PHD Thesis. As usual, the project required certain flexibility for adapting illustrations to the author’s requests. It was the perfect scenario to use customized brushes. They provide enough flexibility to adapt to changes as well as a means for repeating patterns throughout a path. I got the main idea from biorender, so I translated it to Adobe’s Illustrator/InDesign environment with my own designs for each type of cell.
Here’s an example of the final result –feel free to navigate through the pages and zoom into them.
Brushes at their Best
Here’s an example of some of the brushes I created for this project.
Illustrator’s brush options provide extensive control over:
- Spacing between elements
- Rotation direction
- Scale adjustments
- Pattern distribution
In this example, you can see how elements automatically adjust when I modify the path –enlarging or reducing it while maintaining the defined spacing and distribution rules.