Kendra Schaefer

In this intermediate-advanced illustrator tutorial, we’ll learn how to make a 3D newspaper icon in Adobe Illustrator. This tutorial is based on the news icon in my <shameless plug> Formida icon set </shameless plug>, and was made in CS3.

We’ll be using the pen tool to create our basic background shapes, adding some shadows, color and shading to give the newspaper a sense of bulkiness and, uh, floppiness. And then we’ll use Illustrator’s Envelope Distort feature to mold the newspaper content to its background. This is the icon we’ll be making:

You should already have a basic understanding of how to use the pen tool and the direct selection tool (white arrow), how to apply color and gradients, and how to move, copy, and import objects and text boxes.

SECTION 1: PAGES

The first thing we’re going to do here is create a series of stacked “pages” to form our newspaper background. To each page, we’ll apply a light white-light gray gradient, and then we’ll apply a drop-shadow to each page to give the illusion of depth. Let’s get started.

Grab your pen tool, and draw a shape like the one below. This will be the top page of your newspaper. The color doesn’t matter at the moment. Mine is green so it can be seen easily. Note how the bottom bows out slightly.

Click on your shape so that it’s selected. Then click over to the gradient tool. You want to apply a light gray-dark gray linear gradient on the shape. The color is very important here, as an unrealistic color will make an unrealistic-looking newspaper.

My gradient colors are:
1. Light gray: #F7F4F5
2. Middle gray: #DDDCDC
3. Dark gray: #878585

Below is what my shape looks like with the gradient originally applied, then correctly aligned. After I’d created the correct gradient, I had to try several times to “realign” the gradient on the shape, so that the bottom dark gray lined up with the angle of the newspaper.

To realign a gradient, make sure the shape is selected. Select the gradient tool. Drag in a line over the top of the shape in the direction you want the gradient to go. This will reposition the gradient.

Now to apply a drop shadow. Select the shape, and go to Effect > Stylize > Drop Shadow. You probably want your drop shadow to be lighter than you think you do. The human eye picks up very subtle variations, so you’re drop shadow shouldn’t be too in-your-face. My settings, and results, look like this:

The trick to making a fully filled out newspaper is duplicating the finished front page you made, altering it slightly by re-aligning the gradient, and altering its shape slightly so that you appear to have multiple pages. This is my finished blank newspaper:

This stack looks like a filled out 3D object. But when we break it apart into its individual pages, we start to see how easy it is to construct a nice looking paper. Here are each of the 6 pages of the newspaper, from front to back:

Your gradients don’t have to look exactly like mine, but they should be varied.

To start duplicating pages like this, select the first page we made, Page 1. Ctrl + C to copy, and Ctrl + V to paste that copy onto the screen. Using your direct selection tool, select just the top-right corner of the copy and change it by dragging it outward, pulling it in, or changing its curve ever so slightly. Do the same for the top-left corner.

With the new page still selected, select your gradient tool, and re-align the page gradient as desired. Then, with your page still selected, right click > Arrange > Send to Back, and position Page 2 behind page 1. Repeat. Adjust page corners as necessary for the desired effect.

You might want to remove the drop-shadow from the last page by selecting the last page (Page 6, in my case) going to the Appearance palette, selecting the drop-shadow field, and dragging it to the trash. If you can’t see the appearance palette, go to Window > Appearance.

Once your pages are stacked and arranged, you’ll want to add some very light shadows to the front of the page to simulate light page folds, and make the newspaper appear to be a little floppy. These will look unrealistic until we drop the newspaper content on top of everything, but bear with me here.

First, using your pen tool or the arc tool, create two curved lines across the newspaper – one thin, one thick. They should be dark gray in color.

Select the smaller arc, and set the opacity (under the Transparency panel) to 63%. Then, go to Effects > Blur > Gaussian Blur. I set my gaussian blur to 17.0 pixels, but your blur will depend on the relative size of the object in your document.

Select the larger arc, and do the same. The opacity on my larger arc is 55%, with a gaussian blur of 42.0 pixels. Select the appropriate blur and opacity settings for your own strokes, so that when you’re done, you have something like this:

Okay, that’s it for the pages and backing. In the next section, we’ll talk about laying in some content.