Creating a Family Crest Using Adobe Illustrator

Hello and welcome to my tutorial on making a family crest or Coat of Arms using Adobe Illustrator.  There are a lot of different ways to go about this, but this way has been fairly quick and easy as far as I’m concerned.  There are a couple of good websites on coat of arms heraldry and “charge” images. These are located here http://www.irishsurnames.com/shields.htm  and here http://www.scotsconnection.com/clan_crests/Campbell.htm  Of course you’ll notice that these are from Scottish and Irish origins, but there are other sites available and a lot of the images seem to be the same for English ancestry.  

Okay, so to begin with, open your workspace in Illustrator. I prefer to work a little bigger and use a 2000x2000 pixel area. From this area, select the “square” tool from the left tool menu and draw a medium sized square. This will become the shield for the coat of arms. Just remember that almost all coat of arms includes a shield, but family crests may not. The beauty here is that you can make your creation any way you wish. Now, choose the pen tool from the tool menu and add anchor points to the square at the top and at the bottom. It’s important to get these centered as much as possible. After adding the anchor points, use the “direct selection” tool to move the new anchor points to stretch the top and the bottom of the square

Once the square has been stretched, choose the “rounded” anchor point from the top menu. This will round the edges of the points and give it a more shield-like appearance.

Once this has been achieved, add anchor points midway between the top point and the two sides.

Again, use the direct selection tool to stretch these out to where you want them and then round off the points. Now you have a shield that will be the center point for your composition. Once the shield is where you want it, you can copy the image and paste it in front to give the picture a “border-type appearance or leave it the way it is. At this point, I like to add a little color to the creation. I start by coloring in the shield with a swatch or gradient and placing a background behind it.

This is where the fun starts and you can add just about anything your little heart desires at this point. If you’ve researched the websites at the top, you’ll find different “charges” and images that have specific meanings. Items such as the diagonal line, or banner represents the knight’s scarf and symbolizes defence. I’m all about defence, so I chose to add this to my creation. I use the pen tool for this because it just seems the easiest way to go. You should be able to easily manipulate the anchor points to where it comes to the edges of the shield. On the sides we’ll add some “heraldic beasts” like griffins to frame the shield. The images of the griffins were gleaned from the Internet and modified for my purposes. If you can draw, you might consider drawing your own images and scanning them into Illustrator.

Now we come to the part where we use the “symbols” palette in Illustrator to add the ribbon and other artwork to the composition. First, open the symbols palette and choose the “Regal Vector Pack” from the library. I’ve chosen the first image to the right in this library for the bottom of the shield and flipped it upside down.  However you may chose to leave it the way it is. Either way works fine. Just remember that to colorize the ribbon, you’ll have to “break the link” in the top menu. This basically converts a raster image to a vector image with subsequent parts. Once the ribbon is fixed to your liking, you can then add text to it as in a name. (Note: It is much easier to type the text and work it up BEFORE using the “envelope distort>>make with warp” option). Now it’s time to use more symbols to touch up the outside of the arrangement.

Using the “Florid Vector Pack” from the symbols menu, choose some scroll work, break the link, and colorize these to suit the color scheme of your composition. Arrange these around the outside of the other elements to give your creation a little more visual interest. Once all the embellishments have been added, a Knight’s helmet was placed at the top. However you can put anything there you want. Okay, we’re almost done!

The last objects I add are the charges for the shield. For mine I’ve chosen the Civil War bugle emblem due to the fact that my maternal ancestor actually changed his last name during this conflict. This name is still carried on today. The other emblem I’ve chosen is the U.S. Marine Corp logo. It represents a continuing warrior lineage for the family. And, there you have it!