Inkscape Tutorial: Urban Design

Urban designs are trendy. Look around, everywhere you'll see typical
urban elements applied in graphic designs. They make use of various
circle designs, which is trendy in all ages. Other elements that are
quite common are clouds, swirls and starbursts. Often designs are
given a grunge look, by adding or deleting nondefined shapes from
the orignal drawing. !lso quick design wins as partial halftoning or
overlay of a design element by a pattern are applied. !nd of course
silhouettes. The ipod people are everywhere"
#n this #nkscape tutorial # will provide a quick method of making a simple urban design by only
applying a few elements$ circles, clouds and swirls. # use #nkscape as it is freely available and is very
suitable for this kind of work.

Circles
%irst we need circles. # have a few sets of fancy circles in my symbol libraries and you can grab one of
my sets for free at the bottom of this article. &ut don't let that stop you to create your own set.
# never bother picking colors for base sets but keep it simple black and white.
'. (ust start drawing a circle using the circle tool, hold down the
)trlkey to scale uniformly.
*. Use )trl+, to duplicate a circle. The new circle will be directly
on top of the original, and have the same centre point.
-. .ow scale the duplicate smaller or larger to your likings, hold
down both the )trlkey and the /hiftkey so scaling is uniformly
and from the centre.
0. 1ary the stroke style and width to create different looks for each
circle. !lso make use of the toggle to either affect stroke scaling
with the ob2ect scaling or not.
3. Use a fill for the innermost circle in a few symbols.
4. Typically -3 concentric circles are used in a symbol.
5. 6hen you complete a symbol, select all circles for that symbol and use )trl+7 to group them.
8. /ave your designs in a seperate #nkscape file as part of your personal symbol library, ready for
reuse in many designs.

Urban design
%or our Urban design we start with a fresh #nkscape canvas$ a new document. #mport the cicle set into
the current document$ %ile 9 #mport :or use )trl+#; and open the circle set from the first part of the
tutorial. This allows us to use the circles in a design without damaging the original. <ove the set such
that it is not on top of the document. #f you already have a basic idea and colour scheme for your
design, you could color the set to match. #n this tutorial # will create a square design, with the powerful
colors of bright green, chocolate brown with dashes of white and orange. These are trendy colours, and
you will see them in many contemporary designs. #f you have troubles picking colour schemes that
work, 2ust hop over to =uler and have a look at colour schemes that others have created, or create your
own 2ust by selecting a base colour you like and using =uler's basic modes.

Circle composition
!nyways... like # said.. # decided to use a bright green. # recoloured the circles and then placed them on
the canvas in a random order, randomly resi>ing and repositioning until # liked the composition. ?old
down both /hift and )trl when resi>ing as it scales the elements uniformly and from centre. # started
with the circles as they will be the focal point of the drawing, and if the composition is bad there, the
drawing will not be too good when completed either.
#n designs like these # make use of layers. There is no written law on how to segment any drawing in
layers, and # 2ust use layers by element type or colour groupings. #t makes it easier to organise work
and to hide and show elements is as easy as hiding or showing a layer. Open the layer manager, click
the + symbol to create a new layer, name it circles and create it below the current one which is Layer
' by default and now holds our circle elements. /elect the circle composition and use /hift + @age
,own :or the move option in the Layer menu; to place it on the newly created layer.

Brown Cloud
.eAt step is creation of a layer to hold a a darker element which serves as a background against which
the circles are displayed. This cloud will be created from the outlines of our circle composition, so it
makes sense to use a duplicate of this layer.
'. /elect ')reate duplicate layer' from the Layer menu.
*. Bename the layer by double clicking on the layer name. # named it brown cloud.
-. <ove the layer below the circles layer.
0. ?ide the circles layer so it is easier to see what needs to be done.
3. /elect all the circles in the 'brown cloud' layer.
4. Ungroup by using /hift + )trl + 7. ,o this multiple times until the message in the status bar
reads that there are no groups in the selection.
5. 6ith all circles still selected, choose any fill colour :tho brown is a good option already; and
remove the stroke :hold shift down while clicking the C in the colour pallette;.
8. .eAt select 'Union' from the @ath menu. This will merge all ob2ects into one.
D. .ow there are probably still a lot of large gaps. Use a few shapes :circles or rectangles; to fill
these, and again use Union with all ob2ects selected. This should result in a basic cloud with the
same outline as the circle composition.
'E.!ssign an appropriate colour to the element, # used brown.
''.<ake the layer with the circle composition visible and then scale the brown cloud a bit up so it
forms a nice background.
That was not too hard ayeF

Background
6e are almost up to making the white clouds, but as our drawing background is white, they will
disappear. )reate a layer for the background below the brown clouds layer. ,raw a simple rectangle
that is large enough to be a background for your design. ?old down )trl to scale uniformly. 7ive it any
fill you like, we'll tweak it later.

White Clouds
Then the white clouds. !s you may have guessed, they are similar to the brown cloud, so select the
brown cloud layer again. !s before, make a duplicate layer of the brown cloud layer, move it down one
step and name it white cloud. ?ide the circles and brown cloud layer. Becolour the brown to a white,
and flip the element both hori>ontally and vertically. <ake the other layers visible again to check
results. Besi>e and reposition the white cloud to your likings. That was easy"


Floral Swirls
)reate a new layer 2ust above the white cloud layer and call it floral swirls. /wirls are easy to create
and give a design a bit of swoosh. # hide all other layers while # create the swirls. 6e use a spiro curve
here. )heck my /piro /wirl tutorial if you have no idea how spiro works.
'. /elect the be>ier curve, set the mode to /piro @ath, set the shape to 'Triangle in' and draw a
curly curve.
*. !fter completion, select GOb2ect to pathG from the @ath menu. This applies the path effects
permanently and allows us to resi>e and rotate the path without funny side effects.
-. !dd a simple circle and use Union to combine both shapes.
0. )reate a few duplicates and resi>e H rotate H reposition them untill you have a nice branch, use
Union again to make a single ob2ect.
3. To create a longer branch, 2ust place * of the branches on top of each other and use Union to
make them into a single shape. Use the node editor to correct bumps where needed.
4. Unhide the other layers.
5. )olour the branches in the same colour as the brown cloud and place the branches randomly
over the top half of the brown cloud. ,uplicate, resi>e and rotate to your liking. ?ideHunhide
the other layers temporarily if they get in your way.
Final Tweakings
Background
.ow let's spice up the background a bit. # chose a bright green matching the circles, but to make it
more interesting # applied a radial gradient. # used white in the center and a green at the edges. /elect
colours that match your design and change the gradient to your likings.
Circle composition
The circle design in all green is a bit plain, so # selected a few circles and changed the stroke to orange
or white. # also filled the centre of some circles with orange. The circles are grouped, but you can
select an individual element in a group by first doubleclicking the group, and then selecting the
element you want to edit.
Brown cloud dripping
The last step is to apply a filter to the brown cloud layer. %ilter eAtensions are new in #nkscape. The
filter editor has been around for a while, but now it is very easy to apply certain standard effects. .ote
that using filters in a design really slows down working in #nkscape, so it is a good thing to apply
filters at the very last step. #t also helps to >oom out quite a bit so not too much detail needs to be
rendered. There are also some options to render lower quality on display, but high on eAport. Tweak
these settings if #nkscape slows down too much to work with. The filter applied to the layer is
@rotusions 9 ,ripping.
That's all folks" # hope you liked this tutorial, feedback is appreciated.