Artwork by Megan Badilla
“I am a maximalist in a lot of my life,” says San Francisco-based graphic designer and illustrator Megan Badilla. “I enjoy having a lot of bright colors around me.” Megan has filled her room with colorful tchotkes culled from thrift shops, and finds inspiration in her city’s gaudily painted Victorians. You can see her love of color in her cheerful illustrations that often feature irreverent motifs like anthropomorphic displays of food.
Color is a vital part of any design — whether you’re establishing your brand guidelines, making a business card, or mocking up a t-shirt — and can sometimes feel the most daunting due to nearly limitless choice. Even Megan says that refining the color in her creations can be the longest part of the process, as she nudges a color just one shade darker or lighter. But there are many tools and tricks in Illustrator that you can use to jumpstart your creative process and generate unique, inspiring palettes in a few minutes.
We asked Megan to create an original illustration for us and recolor it using some of these simple techniques. A pastry display in her local bakery inspired her to create the ebullient buffet of smiling sweets above.
Explore the color palette tricks below, then grab Megan’s file above so you can try out the techniques yourself. We’ve included space to practice making palettes as well as Megan’s illustration for you to recolor. “With color it’s fun to relinquish control,” says Megan, “And tools like these really aid in that. You can develop new ideas you wouldn’t have thought of before.”
STEP 1/4
Blend it up.
Start with two squares with different fill colors. Megan chose a deep forest green and a yellow. Select both squares and align them by clicking the Vertical Align Center button in the Options panel. Making sure both objects are selected, set your Blend options (Object > Blend > Blend Options). Set the Spacing to Specified Steps and the steps to 3, and click OK. Now blend them (Object > Blend > Make). Voila! Three fresh colors have appeared between the first two. Select all of them and Expand them (Object > Blend > Expand) to make each color its own object, then click the Folder icon in the Swatches panel to open the New Color Group dialog box. Name your new group, click OK, and your fresh color palette will be saved in the Swatches panel for future use.
STEP 2/4
Click, palette, repeat.
The Recolor Artwork tool is a powerful way to quickly generate new color palettes from an existing design. With your colors selected, go to the Properties panel (Window > Properties) and click the Recolor Quick Action and begin dragging the handles of the color wheel around to instantly generate new hues.
Another quick way to generate new color schemes is to click the ‘Change saturation and brightness randomly’ option above the color wheel. When you see a color palette you like, select the artwork and add it to your Swatches panel like you did in Step 1. To go back to the original color choices hit the Reset button at the top of the panel. Megan started with her original cake-inspired palette. “You get these unexpected pops of color that I wouldn’t normally think to use,” she says. “It’s nice when you’re in a rut to have Illustrator give you some inspiration, and tweak it afterwards.”
STEP 3/4
Be transparent.
Draw a series of squares in different colors like in step 1 and align them. Now draw a rectangle over the squares (you don’t have to cover them completely). The rectangle can be any color.
In Properties, click Opacity and change the Blend Mode to Multiply or Screen. At this point, you might want to try out new colors for the rectangle. Once you like the results, select everything and Flatten Transparency (Object > Flatten Transparency > OK). Then select all the shapes and Ungroup them (Object > Ungroup) to turn each color into its own object so you can add them to the Swatches panel.
You can also do this on a smaller scale: Megan repeated this technique three times using just one one square and one rectangle, sometimes using the same color for each shape to generate a similar shade.
STEP 4/4
Shortcut to color.
Visit Adobe Color, a swift and fun color palette generator, to browse libraries of premade palettes and quickly make new ones with an interactive color wheel or by uploading photos. Megan opted for the photo route, which you can find by clicking on Extract Theme option on the Adobe Color homepage. Once you’ve uploaded your image, the tool will automatically create a five color palette based on the photo. You can move the dots around individually with your cursor to change the palette. Megan used an image of colorful vases that she snapped at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “It’s really interesting to see what colors are picked,” says Megan. “If I looked at that photo and picked colors myself, it’s not what I would have chosen, so it was really cool to see the image in a different light. I love the blue and muted green.”
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Megan Badilla is a graphic designer and illustrator based in San Francisco, CA. Her upbringing on the California coast inspires her work which aims to bring about introspection as well as glee. She has enjoyed working in a variety of fields including public media, arts nonprofits, and children’s education, which has given her the opportunity to make impactful and thought-provoking work. Megan gets her inspiration from taking walks, talking to her friends, and watching cartoons. When she’s not working she’s most likely playing Mario Kart or making a cup of tea. You can follow her work @tiny_egger_cheeser.
