Illustrator ® : Flower Symbols

Flower Symbols for Adobe Illustrator, PC and MAC OS X

Thumbnail gallery of Flower symbols (Set 87)

Thumbnail gallery of Flower symbols (Set 99)

Thumbnail gallery of Flower symbols (Set 102)

More examples of flower symbols for Illustrator

examples from pack 87 - 16 different flower symbols for use in Illustrator - there are many more in the set. All the flower symbols can be re-colored etc

examples from symbols pack 99 - 16 different flower shapes included in the set

example from pack 87 - flower shapes applied in Illustrator CS5 (the entire flower set is a symbol). Vector designs for any size of work

example symbols from pack 87 applied multiple times with different sizes of instance in Illustrator

example from pack 99 - a complete flower symbol as a tile.

example from pack 99 - basic flower symbol design. The color of the symbol can be modified in seconds, the design itself can be modified - each part of the symbol path can be filled and re-colored in Illustrator

Exporting the flower symbols to other applications

If you are using the flower symbols with products in the Adobe Creative Suite, you should have little (though I cannot promise this) issue copying the flower symbols from Illustrator to Photoshop, Indesign etc. To export them to other applications you will probably find it easiest to use the file export command and export the design as a PNG file or SWF format file. You can also use the file save menu and export the flower symbols in PDF and EPS vector format - you should then be able to use the heart symbols in PaintShop Pro, Apple Pages and other applications.

Eps flowers

You might require some experimentation with the file versions for the EPS etc files as sometimes certain applications only support earlier versions of the file format (I have always had a number of issues with my earlier versions of Flash and Fireworks and their inability to import files - sometimes they are fine but mostly I end up with corruptions or just errors). You might also like to check through the heart symbols after export as sometimes an application will import the files and though they look OK, the flower symbols will suddenly have a petal or the paths will have lost some of their curvature etc.

Flowers and font sets

For the development of my font sets, I often use Illustrator as the start point and I often export the flower symbols etc to Fontlab from Illustrator (via the pasteboard) and in most cases, the copying is fine but sometimes the paths will develop a weird kink which will require further editing. In some cases, it has proved useful to do a three way copy between Photoshop and Fontlab and Illustrator in spotting errors in the paths (flower symbols or any other)

AI format flower shapes

The Illustrator flower symbols are in AI format, this is the standard format for Adobe Illustrator so you can open the files via the file open command as well as the symbols palette. Once loaded as symbols, the flower shapes can be re-colored, combined, modified, exported and much more - they are a powerful toolkit of flower designs that you can use to create cards, books, illustrations, leaflets, adverts, parts of logos, templates, website designs and much more.

Apply the flower symbols once or multiple times

The flower shapes can be applied once or multiple times in the same document. You can re-color them either at source or via the symbol stainer tool in Illustrator.

The flowers are all vectors so you can re-size the designs from 100 x 100 to 10000 x 10000 etc depending on your artboards.

Re-coloring the flower symbols in Illustrator

On buying the flower symbols set, you get a selection or perhaps one AI file and inside that AI file you will find all the flower symbols on the artboard as well as in the symbols palette. If you want to re-color the items on the artboard, just select one or more of the flower symbols and change the color of the object via the fill and stroke in the Illustrator toolbox. You can also use the various color functions found in the edit menu. You can also use (and this is one of my favorite features of Illustrator) the color guide palette where you can set the colors with harmony (tetrad, compound etc)

If you want to re-color the symbols, there are also as many ways to recolor the designs. You can also still use the color guide palette - just select the symbol instance and then go to the color guide palette and click the edit or apply button at the bottom of the palette. You can then click the random change color order, saturation, modify the color via the color wheel - all of the changes will be reflected in the flower symbol instance. Changing the color of the instance will also change the color for the actual flower symbol in the symbol palette so you might like to make a copy of the symbol before you start and modify that.

You can also re-color the flower symbol instance via the effects menu by using some of the effects - if you want some serious control over the color of the flower symbol then I would suggest you check out the excellent Phantasm CS2 filter from Astute as that comes with a huge range of color controls and all of them can be used to modify the flower symbols (as well as other symbols and paths) - the one pleasure of an effect is that the effect can be changed at any point so the color changes can be removed from the flower. You can also save the color effects as a graphic style so you can apply the color effect to the other flower symbols. The flower symbol instance is not updated in the symbol palette.

You can also re-color the flower symbols by double clicking on the design - you enter isolation mode and in that mode the individual parts of the colorful design can be shifted and moved and the color changed. On exit, the symbol instance is updated as is the actual symbol in the symbol palette - any effects associated with the flower are also updated accordingly.

You can also re-color symbols by using the symbol stainer tool found in the Illustrator symbols palette. You can apply the flower symbols via the symbol sprayer and then apply the symbol stainer; you can also apply the symbols just by dragging them from the symbols palette. They can both be stained by the symbol stainer tool. Select the flower symbol and then apply the symbol stainer - set the color for the staining via the swatches palette or the toolbox or via the color guide and then just apply - the application to the flower symbols can be modified by double clicking the symbol stainer tool and you can set the density, size, method such as random or fixed and you can even apply the color in subtle ways by using an artpad and pressure settings.

You can also break apart or expand the symbol instance of the flower symbol, so it is no longer a symbol - then you can change the color in many different ways.

An alternative and more drastic approach to re-coloring the symbols is to simply copy them over to Photoshop via the clipboard / pasteboard and then re-color the designs there and copy them back into Illustrator (not ideal)

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Date modified: May 1st, 2012

Creating plugins and presets since 1995. Privacy - no details sent to third parties. After buying the flower symbols for Illustrator, you receive the download link to them. Unique items - none of the flower symbols appear in the other sets. The flower symbols are for commercial use (which can be used in ceramics, leaflets, scrap booking designs, fashions, textiles, t-shirts, surfboards and more), royalty-free - all of them are by graphicxtras.com.