Back to Illustrator tonight and for this exercise I'm going to recreate the cover for Queen's 1978 album Jazz. In actual fact, this particular cover is not much of a favourite of mine. However, it's ideal for taking advantage of Illustrator's extreme ease of use when it comes to creating geometric patterns.

It also gives me the opportunity to put Illustrator's excellent blend function through its paces, as well as creating an Opacity Mask, some 3D revolve, a little Free Distort and the Polar Grid tool

Don't worry, it's a lot easier than it sounds.


So let's begin:

1. I'm going to start by drawing the concentric circles that form the major part of the design. There are actually countless ways of doing so but in this case Illustrator's Polar Grid tool is perfect for the job. Select the tool and click on the artboard to bring up the Polar Grid tool dialogue box. These are the settings that I've used. The skew value is particularly important as this governs the increasing gap between the concentric circles.



This is the sort of result that you're after:



2. Before you do anything else select all and bring up the Align palette (Window> Align). In the palette menu make sure that Align To Artboard is checked and then align your Polar Grid to the artboard both vertically and horizontally. When I'm creating artwork I always find this a useful thing to do. It will place the object exactly in the centre of the artboard.

Now go to the Layers palette and expand the contents of the layer by hitting the small triangle. In the concentric circle group hold down the shift key and select the first six concentric circles. Now hit delete to get rid of the nasty blighters.



3. Now for the inner circles. Create a new layer and then draw a constrained circle that is just a little smaller than the inner concentric circle and set its stroke width to around 6pt. Copy the circle, Paste In Front (Command-F) and then reduce the circle in size (hold down shift and alt to do so). Now select both circles and hit Command-Alt-B (this will blend the two circles. Double-click on the Blend tool and from the pop-up menu choose Specified Steps. Make the value 7. You now have a second set of concentric circles.





4. This set of concentric circles now needs a little perspective added to it. Go to Effect> 3D> Revolve and tweak the circles a little. Below are the settings that I have used.



Here's how both sets of concentric circles should look:



5. Now select all and apply a white stroke to everything and a fill on none. Create a second new layer (you now have three in all) and move this one beneath the other two. Now draw a square and fill it with black. Use the Align palette to align the square to the centre of the artboard.



6. Now we're getting places. But first we have to do something about the concentric circles on layer 1. At the moment they are just a little too bright. They need to fade as the circles get smaller. As always there are many ways to do this, but on this occasion we are going to use an opacity mask.

Copy the black square that you created earlier. Now select the concentric circles on Layer one. Go to the Transparency palette and select Show Options from the palette menu. From that same menu select Make Opacity Mask. In the Transparency palette you will now see two squares. Click on the one to the right and hit Command-F to paste the black square into the Opacity channel.



7. You will be forgiven if you are now feeling a little confused. The concentric circles seem to have disappeared. Not so. Go to the Gradient palette and after selecting Show Options from the palette menu, double-click the gradient to fill the black square you pasted in with a gradient. Make this a radial gradient and tweak the settings as I have done below. The concentric circles are now back and they are gently fading to the centre. Now exit the opacity channel by clicking on the left hand square in the Transparency palette.



8. Now for some text. Create a fourth layer and make sure it is sitting on top of the other three. Choose the type tool and create the 'Queen' lettering at the top . I've chosen Myriad Italic for this and tweaked the vertical scaling and tracking as below.



9. Colour the text white and position it towards the top left of the illustration. Now alt-drag a copy of the text to the far right of the illustration. Select both bits of 'Queen' text and as before hit Command-Alt-B to create a blend. Double-click on the Blend tool and change the settings to Specified Steps with a value of 3.



Here's what you should have now:



10. Now for the Jazz logo. Select the Type tool and single-click somewhere away from the illustration. Type in the word and set it to Myriad Bold, colour the type red. Now to add some perspective to the type.

Back in the Selection tool, select the type object and got to Effects> Distort & Transform> Free Distort... Drag the anchor points to get something like this.



And that's just about that. Easy, huh?

Of course, aficionados of Queen will be quick to point out that there are some bicycles missing from the foot of the cover. Haven't got time for bikes now, some other time maybe...