Adobe Illustrator for Windows - Bordered Arrowheads

Author

Bordered Arrowheads

Shane_Varnadore@adobeforums.com

2006-08-22, 6:45 pm

I'm using Illustrator 11 to put callouts on snapshots. We like to have a black arrow with a white border so that they don't get lost in the graphic. What we've been doing is we made a path, used Effects and Filter to add arrowheads through the Stylize sub
-menu. We make a black one with a point or so of weight, then a white one with 3 points of weight, put the black on the white and group them. Save the file and use it as a template and we're done.

It's worked pretty well and it's nice to have the template, but I wondered if one can't make a bordered arrowheaded line. So I drew a line, put on an arrowhead, played with the stroke and fill stuff and found out that as soon as I play with stroke and fil
l, I'm playing only with the line and the arrowhead gets written over. I tried doing the arrowhead first and made a line with an arrowhead that has a white border between them.

Is there a way to make a bordered arrow?

Thanks,
Shane
(I played around with FrameMaker to make bordered arrows by joining.. trust me when I say that you do NOT want to change the length of joined arrows by much!)

Kurt_Gold@adobeforums.com

2006-08-22, 6:45 pm

You could define a graphic style that consists of multiple strokes added through the Appearance Palette (a black and a white one, both with different stroke weights). Apply the Effect > Stylize > Add Arrowhead Effect to both strokes and play with the sett
ings in the Add Arrowhead Options dialog.

Better results can be achieved by creating a graphic style that combines an Art Brush and a Pattern Brush (also by using multiple strokes in the Appearance Palette).

Bert Philippus

2006-08-22, 6:45 pm

Along the lines of Kurt's first suggestion, I made a bunch of pre-fab arrows at different weights for use in images I post here, and I just added a variant with white behind it so you get the drift.

Look in the Styles palette of this pdf (open it in Illustrator), that should get you started.

I agree with Kurt, however, that for the white behind the arrow, aa combined pattern-brush style is probably better. I'll post a pdf of such later on if I get a chance.

arrowheads.pdf <http://www.itchybug.com/arrowheads.pdf>

Shane_Varnadore@adobeforums.com

2006-08-22, 10:37 pm

Gentlemen,
Hmm... this holds much promise, I like it! Now, to print out what you've said and see if I can figure out what most of it means. (I thought I understood 'stroke' until I tried to use it! I'm getting there.... slowly).

Cool arrows in the PDF, too :-)

I'll dig in and see what I can figure out.

Thanks!

Shane

John_Garavelli@adobeforums.com

2006-08-28, 6:46 pm

Or, you could draw your line, add the arrowhead, rasterize the image with a transparent background, then add an light color outer glow.

JAG