Illustrator ® : Zigzag Brushes

Zigzag Brush Strokes for Illustrator, PC and MAC OS X

Loading zigzag brushes in Illustrator CS5 CS4 CS3 CS2 etc

The zigzag brushes are in standard Illustrator format - they can be opened via the file menu and open command as well as via the Illustrator brushes palette. If opened via the file open command then they can be edited and modified and used within that file. If opened via the Illustrator brushes palette, the zigzag brushes can be selected and added to your current document's library - and applied to brush strokes, text, paths etc

Zigzag brushes for Illustrator CS5 CS4 etc and all creative suite versions

The zigzag brushes are saved in Illustrator 10 format (they can be saved to an earlier format if you wish but that is the earliest version of Illustrator I can still run and test the zigzag brushes against). They work in all the versions up to the current creative suite version of 5.5

Zigzag brushes as pattern brushes

The zigzag brushes are stored in a variety of different brush types such as scatter and artistic. You can also easily save the zigzag brushes to Illustrator patterns brushes by dragging the zigzag brush from the brushes palette and then re-dragging the brush back to the brushes palette and selecting the pattern option. The pattern brush palette has a limited selection of options such as scaling and spacing so a good idea is to create the brushes at different angles as well as perhaps combining multiple designs to create totally unique brushes as well as changing the brushes (ungroup the designs and shift some of the elements to create drop shadows to the brushes)

Example below shows the same brush pattern but the brush has been initially rotated by 90 degrees

Example below shows the same brush but now it has been edited to shift the black outer part of the zigzag to create a shadow.

Width profile applied to zigzag brush stroke

Apply a brush stroke to a basic single line or a brush stroke created via the paint brush tool. Once you have applied the brush stroke (just select a brush from the palette) then you can also apply a width profile to the brush if you are using the CS5 version of Illustrator. There is a small selection of width profiles. You can also use the width tool (found in the toolbox) to modify the width profile and the brush stroke in countless ways to create a more realistic brush stroke from the zigzag design

Modify the brush design even further (without changing the actual brush) via the width tool found in the Illustrator CS5 toolbox - resulting in a warping (albeit limited warping) of the Illustrator zigzag brush. An example of the width tool modifications can be seen below

Zigzag brushes applied to live text in Illustrator

The best (and easiest way) of applying brushes to text and to keep the text live for future updating, is to use the appearance palette found in the window menu. Select the text and then go to the appearance palette and add a new stroke to the text via the right side menu. You can then apply the zigzag brush to the stroke. You can also add multiple new strokes and also offset the strokes by using the live effects menu 'offset' command (offset the stroke path say 40px etc). This way you can create unusual and complex as well as basic text brush stroke effects. The brush effects can also be saved to the graphic styles palette for future use.

As mentioned, the text is also editable at a later stage so if you change the text from 'text' to 'more text' then the brush strokes will be re-applied using the same settings. The zigzag brush strokes can also be modified at a later time if you decide to use a different more colorful or less colorful zigzag design.

Graffiti zigzag text in Illustrator

The zigzag brushes can be used with the appearance palette to create weird and wonderful graffiti art - use the zigzag Illustrator brush strokes with the width profiles to create many different styles of graffiti art

Zigzag pattern brushes in Illustrator

The zigzag designs are just basic standard Illustrator paths that can be used as a source for new brushes (a single brush could be used in countless ways to create many more brushes), as a source for new symbols and as a source for new patterns such as standard tile swatches in Illustrator. The zigzag designs can also be exported to other applications such as Photoshop Elements, Photoshop as smart objects, etc. Below shows an example of one of the designs dragged to the swatches palette. A basic square path is then created and the zigzag swatch is applied to the design.

The zigzag design does not need to be just a straightforward square pattern design. The zigzag design can be combined, rotated, combined in multiple ways to create a checkerboard design (as below) and much more.

Zigzag designs as basic paths

You can just use the zigzag designs as normal paths in Illustrator and re-color them, warp the designs, apply effects such as blurs, apply patterns or gradients to the design and much more. The example below shows the zigzag design as a 3D extruded path

Follow us on Twitter

Follow graphicxtras on google+

Follow graphicxtras on facebook

Date modified: April 11th, 2012

Creating plugins and presets since 1995. Privacy - no details sent to third parties. After buying the wonderful colorful zigzag brushes, you receive the download link to the zigzag designs (via an e-mail from shareit.com) - the link goes to a zip file and that contains the zigzag brushes along with documentation and gallery. Unique items, commercial use, royalty-free.