Author: Tyler Jordan

Fine Artist, illustrator, web/graphic designer, photographer, chef...

Last month I was doing some graphic design for a motion control company and after doing a little research on what motion control was, I decided to take myself down memory lane and build a spirograph.

Growing up, my parents bought me a spirograph kit, which allowed me to make some of the coolest geometrical designs with ease. I hadn't thought about the spirograph for years so I thought it would be fun to revisit the wonder years for this project.

Step 1

To get started, open a new document in Illustrator and click on the ellipse tool.

Step 2

Now draw an ellipse. You don't have to make it the same way I did. Any size or shape will do. The fun part is practicing with different types of ellipse.

Step 3

Now you want to make overlapping ellipses. Make these wherever you want.

Step 4

Once you've made these shapes, group them, then copy and paste-in-front by clicking control-F, then click object > transform > rotate.

Step 5

Now set your rotation to 4%. You can make this more or less. Go ahead and explore your possibilities!

Step 6

Click OK and you'll see that your new duplicate shapes have rotated making two sets. Now keep repeating this process (copy, paste-in-front, rotate 4%)
As you can see, you'll start creating an interesting design in no time.

Step 7

Once you've completed a circle with your duplicates you're all done!

These types of designs can be made simple or complicated and are great for backgrounds as well as for logos.

diyet

thanks for good info

Jason Cameron

Had one of those when I was a kid too, you're right it was really a lot of fun. Thanks for a nice tutorial, if people see more of these they might be more willing to learn and use Illustrator.

Kathleen

That's great, thanks for sharing!!!

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