October, 2007
In this tutorial you will learn how to make type look like it is reflecting of a shiny surface.
1. File > New > Document (Ctrl+N)
2. Create a document about 8.5in x 4.125in. Fill the top half with a black rectangle by using the Rectangle Tool(M).
3. In the swatches pallet change your Black to a Tint of 10%. Drag that new swatch to the list below.
4. Open up your Gradient pallet and drag the new 10% Black swatch down to the gradient slider and replace the 100% Black that is there with the new 10% Black swatch.
5. Then change the angle of the gradient to 90. You should have something that looks like the image below.
6. Next we want to duplicate the gradient. So click on the rectangle and hold down ALT as you drag it straight down. You should get a double arrow head when you hold down the ALT key because this means you will copy what is there. Place the new rectangle below the top one with them touching in the middle.
7. Create a type box by using the Type Tool (T) and drawing a rectangle in the middle of the two gradient rectangles.
8. Type in the words you wish to have reflected. I chose to use Designer Today in Helvetica Black. Heavier fonts tend to look better reflected.
9. Now to give the tutorial a little color we are going to select red from our swatches pallet and change the text to outlines.
10. We need to duplicate the text the same way we did with the gradients. Click on the text and hold down ALT to drag a copy below.
11. As a reflection the text needs to be flipped vertically. To do this you select the text and then the arrow head in the circle way up in the top right of your Control Panel will have Flip Vertical in the drop down menu.
12. Bring your top text down just below where the two rectangles with gradients meet and then have the vertically flipped text touch the bottom of the right reading text.
13. Open your gradient pallet and your swatch pallet. Drag the color red you are using onto the white slider of the gradient to change the gradient to the red color fading into the 10% Black.
14. Click on the bottom type and apply this gradient. Change the angle to -90.
15. Here is where we will do some adjusting to the bottom type gradient so that it looks more like a reflection. You may need to adjust your setting differently depending on where it sits on the two rectangles in the background. You can do so by adjusting the sliders and transparency setting or you can shift both sets of type up or down. You will see how eventually the top of the bottom text disappears into the background. This is what you wish to achieve.
16.Here is the final result that you are looking for.
Download the original source files from this tutorial in Zip format Here
Copyright (c) 2007,
