RSS Icons in Fireworks (Gordonmac dot com)

RSS Icons in Fireworks

by Gordon • Aug 16 2006 • Category: Fireworks

One of the things I hate when it comes to design is being forced to use un editable, flattened images in designs, especially when they are icons or symbols.

One of the most commonly used icons on modern blogs is the RSS one that first appeared in the Mozilla Firefox status bar a good few versions ago. It looks like this:

Like most good icons it's very simple, so why use other people's versions of it when it's so easy to recreate in Fireworks. Here's how:

Let's get drawing the icon

Open up Fireworks and create a new 100 pixel by 100 pixel canvas. The reason it's 100 pixels is just to give you enough room to play.

Set the canvas color to black so that it's easier to see what you're doing.

Select the Ellipse Tool () and draw a 40 pixel by 40 pixel circle in the middle of your canvas.

Set the fill to "none", and set the stroke to a 3 pixel soft line. Your circle should look like this:

Now clone the circle you just drew (Edit > Clone) and set it's dimensions to 24 pixels by 24 pixels and position it centrally within the larger circle:

To make our little "RADAR" from these circles we use the Knife Tool () to make two cuts through our circle:

From the 9 o'clock position right through to the 3 o'clock position
From the 12 o'clock position through to the 6 o'clock position

To do this select both the circles and and drag the Knife Tool along the same paths as shown in this picture:

Now delete all the excess paths so that you're left with something that looks like this:

Now draw a 10 pixel by 10 pixel solid white circle and position it like this:

Now all that's left is to place a nice orange filled rectangle behind it, and change the canvas color back to white:

That's all there is to it. Feel free to get creative and use different background colors for your rectangle. Here is a PNG that I made (right click to save to your desktop):

Have fun :) ❖

Want to read more?

If you would like to read more of my diaries please visit the archive page.

Search diaries *

Navertech

Based in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, I work for Navertech which is a leading software company providing products and services to businesses of all sizes and organisations in the UK.

Use the link below to subscribe to the feed you want:

Gordonmac dot com ~ random blethers ~ made in Scotland