Think of it this way… do you want the same buttons as everyone else or do you want to create unique graphics for yourself or your clients? Whatever the answer is there is no harm in knowing how they are built using Adobe Illustrator.

Finished Image

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Step One

Pick or sketch a reference image.
I chose an old fashioned button Coke® sign, photographed outside, so I can get a sense of realistic light and shadow to reproduce.

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Step Two

Draw a circle and fill it with a Radial Gradient.
I based the colours on samples taken from the image with the Eyedropper tool.

Fill the circle with a a radial gradient. Sample the colours from the reference photo.

Colours
The Centre Red colour is: 6C 100M 95Y 0K
The Shadow colour is: 6C 100M 95Y 69K
The Highlight colour is: 6C 100M 95Y 28K

Place the colours at these positions along the slider:
Centre Red at 75%. Shadow at 95%. Highlight at 100%.
Notice the midpoint between the Centre Red and Shadow colours has been slid closer to the shadow (approx 70%)

Duplicate the layer.

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Step Three

Create a new layer by Duplicating the Gradient Circle layer.
Lock your original Gradient Circle layer to prevent accidental changes to its settings.

Call the new layer “Lighter Side” and go to your gradient fill dialog box.
Change the colours in the new circle to the following:
The New Centre Red colour is: 14C 80M 90Y 0K
The New ‘Shadow’ or Near Edge colour is: 0C 60M 60Y 0K
The New Highlight or Outer Edge colour is: 6C 100M 95Y 0K

Again: I sampled some colours from the image and experimented in order to come up with these colours.

Step Four: Create a new layer and a new gradient.

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Step Four

Create an Opacity Mask.
Duplicate your latest circle by copying and pasting in front (Command-C then Command-F)

Offset the circle up and to the right so that the bottom edge approximates a position on the sign just outside the bottom shadow of the original art. You can always fine-tune its position later.

Fill the new circle with a Black to white linear gradient and adjust the angle to 60 degrees, the black slider to the 35% position and the white slider to the 75% position as shown in the image below.

Preparing an Opacity Mask

Make Opacity Mask

Your art should now look like this:

Opacity mask applied to vector art.

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Step Five

Create a new layer and call it “Reflections”.
Look at the original photo and you will notice the reflection of sky and buildings on the surface of the sign. Little details like this will separate your art from the standard clip art glass buttons.

Draw an outline of the buildings paying attention to the fact that the edges of your sign curve away from you. Don’t worry about the edges of the circle, we will mask that out later.

Fill the buildings with 0C 100M 100Y 20K and in your Transparency Dialog box set them to Multiply with an opacity of 30%.

Creating the reflections

Next, go to the effects menu and select EFFECT / STYLIZE / OUTER GLOW. Set your Glow mode to Multiply, Your colour to 19C 100M 100Y 10K, Your opacity to 75% and Blur to .05 in. All these settings can be tweaked and adjusted for your final art, they came to me through experimentation.

Adding an Outer Glow

Now, go to any previous layer and copy the circle and paste it into this layer with Command-F (not Command-V). It should now cover your reflection drawing. Select both the new circle and your reflection drawing, ensuring the new circle is layered on top of the reflection drawing. Now create a clipping mask by hitting Command-7 (Menu: OBJECT / CLIPPING MASK / MAKE).

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Step Six

Create the sun reflection.
The highlight on the top right corner is from your light source. This highlight helps identify your button sign as being smooth and reflective. If the sign were chrome it would be a very contrasty and harsh reflection. For this weathered sign we are creating a slightly softer highlight.

Draw a small oval in the upper right corner and fill it with white. Go to the menu FILTER / DISTORT / ROUGHEN and play with the settings until you have a nice uneven edge around your oval. Experiment. See the image below for my settings.

Roughen Filter Settings

Next, go to the EFFECT / WARP / ARC dialog and play with the settings there to add a bit or an arc to it to match the roundness of the button sign. Once you are satisfied hit OK and then make this transformation permanently by going to the menu EDIT / EXPAND APPEARANCE (ensure you do not have any stroke on your oval first, only fill.)

Warp Options: Arc Settings

Rotate and distort your roughened oval into position on the edge of your button.

Next, using the EFFECT / STYLIZE menu add a Feather and Outer Glow using my settings as pictured below or your own experimental results. I then tweaked the scaling and duplicated the glowing oval, playing with various transparency settings, for my final result. Never hesitate to go back and tweak any element again until you are completely satisfied.

Feather and Outer Glow options

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Step Seven

Final weathering.
The original sign has water streaks, cracks, and other reflections which you can cherry pick from to give your sign those final weathering details. The most important part here is your drawing. It can’t look too mechanical and must follow the curves of the sign.

The cracks I’ve drawn here were treated as follows:
Stroke Colours: 0C 80M 100Y 0K (again: EXPERIMENT)
Outer glow: Multiply, 100% Opacity, Blur .05 in of the same colour.
Transparency: Soft Light at 40%

Adding ageing

I added some other weathering or reflective details, which I will leave you to experiment with, by this point you should have no trouble. The point of this exercise is to teach you to find and re-create your own design elements.

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Step Eight

The Shadow.
I created the drop shadow in 2 parts. Remember that a shadow is not a uniform tone when doing photorealistic art. It softens a bit around the edges and is darkest near the centre. The closer the object is to the cast shadow the darker the shadow is in that immediate area. When an object is far away from its cast shadow, say floating in the air, the shadow is more uniform and its edges even softer.

Create a new layer and call it shadow. Duplicate your button circle from any previous layer and past it in place with Command-F. Offset it down to the left until you are satisfied with its position.

The outer shadow can now Coke® be filled with Black, and in you Transparency Dialog set it to Multiply and 40% opacity. Now the light is rather strong here and the object is close to its cast shadow but the edges of this circle are a little too artificial so I added a slight Outer Glow to it from the EFFECT / STYLIZE menu.

Creating a Shadow

I then pasted another circle in its original position with Command-f and distorted its top right edge away from the edge of the original button sign so that when i added an Outer Glow to it, it would not show up at the top right edges of the sign.
I filled this with Black, set the Transparency to Multiply at 100% and added another slight Outer Glow (see image).

Adding a darker edge closer to the sign

I am creating the shadow on a layer on top of all the other art so I can see what I am doing. Once done I moved the shadow layer to a position behind the sign to finish it off.

Finished Shadow

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Step Nine

Lettering.
I added a Coke® Logo and the word DRINK but found them to be too crisp for my liking. I applied a little FILTER / DISTORT / ROUGHEN to it.

You can choose to add a slight roughen to any reflection or weathering detail on the sign as well. It’s up to you.

Ageing the lettering

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FINISHED

I hope you found this tutorial helpful. Please leave feedback so I can improve and expand upon these tutorials.

Finished Image

david