Illustrator: Olympic Rings

With all the furore over the logo for the 2012 Olympics I thought it might be nice to run a quick tutorial on how to create the famous original Olympics logo with its interlocking rings. This interlocking effect can sometimes be a bit of a challenge but with a little lateral thinking you will see how easy it is.

1. Begin with a simple circle. In this case it's best to work with rounded off figures so that things do not become too complicated when you align the circles later on. For this reason, simply select the Ellipse tool and click on the art-board. Key in 150 px in the resultant dialogue box. Now copy the circle and paste in front (command-F). Finally, click on a corner handle of the selected circle and resize it slightly, holding down alt-shift to keep the resizing proportional and from the centre.

Now Select All (command-A) and bring up the Pathfinder palette. Hold down the alt-key and hit the second icon along (Subtract from shape area). You've now created a circle with a hole in it.



2. Al-drag a copy of the circle to the left. Hold down the shift key as you do this to constrain the movement. Now hit Command-D to repeat the transformation and you have three equidistant circles.



3. Select the two right-most circles and alt-drag a cop beneath. Group these two circles and then select the upper three circles and group those too. You now have two groups of circles. Select all and bring up the Align palette. Align them horizontally and then select 'Show Options' from the palette menu. Type in a value of -75px as shown and then click on the top three circle group. Now hit 'Vertical Distribute Space' in the Align palette and the five circles will now be aligned precisely.



4. To create the interlocking effect select all and bring up the Pathfinder palette. Now hit one of my favourite commands 'Divide' and the five circles will be separated into segments that you can individually colour. Hit D before you begin colouring to take the objects' fill and stroke back to default black and white.

In the swatches palette choose yourself a blue colour and begin dragging the swatch over the segments of the circles that you wish to colour. Follow the example below for the correct colours to use.



5. It's slightly tricky but you should be able to complete this in under a minute.





6. Now for a bit of 3D: Select all and group the objects. Remove the stroke and go to Effects> 3D> Extrude & Bevel... You can see the settings I have used here. However, there's no reason why you can't use your own.



7. FInally, add a drop shadow using Effects> Stylize> Drop Shadow.