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Draw a Braun watch in Illustrator

At the minimalismo.com site, I came across an arti­cle show­ing re-issued line of Braun watches from the sev­en­ties, designed by Dieter Rams and Diet­rich Lubs. At the same time I was try­ing to solve a long time issue I have been deal­ing with in Illus­tra­tor, where I was try­ing to find a for­mula to use with Illus­tra­tors Trans­form Effect. I used a por­tion of this draw­ing to explain that issue solv­ing. So I when I was show­ing this prob­lem to oth­ers I kept get­ting ques­tions about the draw­ing itself and in the end I decided to make a tuto­r­ial for every­one to play with.

There are sev­eral ways one could make a vec­tor draw­ing of this watch but the way I am show­ing here aims at mak­ing some major ele­ments of the draw­ing reusable. This may seem to make it more com­pli­cated but I am hop­ing that this will open some­ones eyes for meth­ods they might not have been using until now.

This tuto­r­ial is loaded with tips and tricks and is a bit advanced. Don’t let this scare you off. This means you will learn a lot, but I hope I have man­aged to make every­thing easy to under­stand. I use mil­lime­ters for mea­sur­ing but those who use other units should sim­ply type in like: 22 mm in the input fields and Illus­tra­tor will con­vert for you instantly. Every input field in Illus­tra­tor is a lit­tle cal­cu­la­tor and we will use this great fea­ture later in this tuto­r­ial. Now, that was a new trick for some­one wasn’t it?

Two more things: First, I am doing this on a mac but those using a PC please remem­ber to use the Con­trol key where I say Cmd. Sec­ondly, I am using many lay­ers and if you are not used to that, please try it out this time. You will see as we go along how use­ful it can be.

Here is the final image we are going to make.

Start the job by mak­ing a New Doc­u­ment with one Art­board. Make the width 480 mm and height 565 mm. This is more than we need but we can always adjust the size later. Set Raster Effects to High (300 ppi) instead of the default 72. This is impor­tant later on.

Let’s make it an RGB doc­u­ment because I am going to use RGB color val­ues in this tutorial.

We start with some prepa­ra­tion work. Hit Cmd + 0 to make the art­board fit the screen. Put Illus­tra­tor Rulers on, Cmd + R. Drag a hor­i­zon­tal guide line from the top ruler to about the cen­ter of the art­board. Then another one, again from the top ruler but this time hold­ing the Alt key to shift this guide line to a ver­ti­cal guide. For some, like me, pan­els are some­times in the way over the ver­ti­cal ruler so it’s nice to have this option. Drag this guide to about the cen­ter of the art­board too. We now have these two guides in a cross on the art­board and we use the inter­sec­tion as a cen­ter for the drawing.

Open the Lay­ers panel, dou­ble click on the Layer 1 and rename it to Guides. Hold down the Alt key, click on the New Layer icon at the bot­tom of the lay­ers panel. This does two things. It makes a new layer on top of the selected one and it opens a dia­log box to name it right away. Name the new layer Face.

The Face

Select the Ellipse tool by hit­ting the L key. Hold­ing the Alt key, click on the cen­ter. Put 230 mm into both fields, hit OK and fill this cir­cle with black fill and no stroke.

Make a new layer above the Face layer and name it 12 hours. Zoom far in. Select the Rec­tan­gle tool (M), hold down the Alt key and click on the ver­ti­cal guide. Type 2 mm in the Width field and 25,4 mm into the Height field. Drag this box hold­ing down the Shift key, until the top of the box snaps to the edge of the cir­cle. Fill with white, no stroke.

We need 11 copies dis­trib­uted around the cir­cle. There are sev­eral ways to do this but the far best way is to do it like this:

Click this link to get to the Illus­tra­tor Cir­cle Cal­cu­la­tor. Type in the diam­e­ter of the Face which we know is 230 mm. Put in the total num­ber of items we need to use, 12. (The cal­cu­la­tor is set to these val­ues the first time you load this page any­way because I made this cal­cu­la­tor when I was prepar­ing this draw­ing). This shows Hor­i­zon­tal and Ver­ti­cal which we need to use in the next step.

With this 12 o’clock mark selected, go to Effects > Dis­tort & Trans­form > Trans­form. We need to fill in val­ues from the calculator.

First, put on the Pre­view.

Copies: 11

Angle: Fill in: 360/12 and this field will cal­cu­lated it to be 30°

Hor­i­zon­tal value: –57,5 mm

Ver­ti­cal value: 15,407 mm

Hor­i­zon­tal and Ver­ti­cal val­ues from the cal­cu­la­tor into the Move sec­tion. Change the Hor­i­zon­tal value to neg­a­tive value by adding a minus in the field. (FYI: If you want to use a pos­i­tive value you have to change the Angle to: 360 — (360/12)= 330°)

Note that the Ref­er­ence Point Loca­tor (in the red) has to be on top because the top of the box aligns with the edge of the cir­cle. The cal­cu­la­tion is based on the diam­e­ter of the cir­cle. Also beware that if you need to edit Effects like this one you have to access it through the Appear­ance panel.

Next we need the 60 min­utes. Make a new layer above the 12 hours layer and name it 60 min­utes. At the 12 o’clock posi­tion draw a box the same way as before using Alt + Click to make it draw from the cen­ter of the guide and call up the dia­log box. Make it 0,64 mm wide and 14,75 mm heigh.

We need to get new val­ues from the Cir­cle Cal­cu­la­tor. Since we are using the same diam­e­ter we only have to change the Num­ber of items in cir­cle input to 60. Then go again to Effects > Dis­tort & Trans­form > Trans­form and set Copies to 59, Angle to 6°, Hor­i­zon­tal move­ment to –12,021 mm and Ver­ti­cal move­ment to 0,630 mm.

The main advan­tage of using the Trans­form Effect for this is that if you need to edit the marks, like chang­ing its shape you only need to edit the orig­i­nal box and all the oth­ers will change accord­ing to it.

Make a new layer on top of the 60 min­utes layer. Name it Num­bers. Select the Ellipse tool (L). Alt+Click in the cen­ter to make a cir­cle of 137 mm in diam­e­ter. Then make another cir­cle of 163 mm in diam­e­ter. Select both cir­cles and turn them into guides by: View > Guides > Make Guides, or sim­ply hit Cmd + 5.

Type the num­ber 12 at the top posi­tion between these guides and Alt+Drag copies to all the other posi­tions and edit the num­bers. I am using 52 pt Hel­vetica Neue Roman which is included on the macs but if you don’t have that font try to find a sim­i­lar sans serif type. Just make sure it fills the height of the guide lines.

This is already begin­ning to look like a clock but maybe not like a watch. But let’s con­tinue and make the clock pointers.

Make yet another layer on top of all oth­ers. Name it Point­ers. The min­utes and hour point­ers are made in the same man­ner as we did the marks. The only dif­fer­ence is that we let the bot­tom of the boxes stay exactly on the cen­ter of our draw­ing. Alt+Click on the ver­ti­cal guide using the Rec­tan­gle tool and use these measurements:

The hours pointer: W: 4,92 mm, H: 62 mm

The min­utes pointer: W: 3,28 mm, H: 93,72 mm

  

Time is now 12 o’clock… We want to change that. Of course we can use the Rotate tool, Bound­ing box to name a few options to move the point­ers. Let’s use the Trans­form Effect again and start with the longer one.

While it’s selected go to the Trans­form Effects. This time we don’t need any copies or cal­cu­lat­ing but we use only the Angle field. First set the Ref­er­ence Point Loca­tor to be at the bot­tom cen­ter, check the Pre­view box and then go to the angle field (why not just click on the word Angle). Now, tap on the down arrow key on your key­board to see how cool this is. The pointer starts mov­ing like a real clock! Add the Shift key to the combo to get incre­ments of 10. When you have had enough, fin­ish off by set­ting the angle to –58°.

It’s no later than now that you have to open the Appear­ance panel if you haven’t already. Click with your mouse on the FX icon at the bot­tom of the panel and select Styl­ize > Drop Shadow. Set the off­sets to –2 mm for x axis and 2 mm for the y axis and keep the Blur at 1,76 mm (default setting).

Do exactly the same for the hours pointer except the angle should be 54°

The sec­onds pointer needs a dif­fer­ent treat­ment. Still work­ing on the Point­ers layer, select the Ellipse tool (L). Alt+Click on the cen­ter and give make a cir­cle of 15 mm by 15 mm.

While the cir­cle is still selected, open the Color panel and mix a color of R 248, G 195, B 46 and make sure it’s a Fill color. Hold down the Cmd and Shift key and drag this color to the Swatch panel. This not only adds the color to the Swatches but at the same time makes it a Global color. Global color is a color that is linked to the objects and means that you can edit it any time and every­thing that has been col­ored with it will change too. So, click on this new swatch and you have linked it to the sec­onds pointer. So, why not use the oppor­tu­nity and change the black color we used for the Face to a Global Color since we are at it?

Make a new cir­cle the same way. Make it 7 mm by 7 mm. Dou­ble click the Selec­tion tool, the black arrow, to get the Move dia­log box and insert –15 mm in the ver­ti­cal field. Click OK.

Using the Rec­tan­gle tool (M), Alt+Click on the ver­ti­cal guide­line and make a box 7 mm wide and 15 mm high. Move it down so it sits on the hor­i­zon­tal guideline.

Make yet another box in the same way. This one should be 2,5 mm wide and 92,5 mm high. Move it hold­ing down the Shift key until the top side aligns with the hor­i­zon­tal guide. Des­e­lect the box (Cmd + Shift + A). Select the Direct Selec­tion tool (A), (the white arrow) and use it to select only the two bot­tom anchor points of the box. Zoom close in, 300% or so. Select the Scale tool (S). Alt+Click on the ver­ti­cal guide and in the dia­log box insert 50% hor­i­zon­tal scal­ing in the Non-uniform section.

Open the Pathfinder panel and choose Unite to join all four parts together.

To turn this pointer we have to use the Rotate tool because our ref­er­ence point is not on any of the 9-point ref­er­ence loca­tion. Select the Rotate tool, Alt+Click on the Cen­ter, put the Pre­view on and type in –29° (you can of course use the up and down arrows to rotate the sec­onds pointer).

Add a Drop Shadow to this pointer with the same val­ues as the oth­ers. Fin­ish off by adding a small black dot, 1,5 mm by 1,5 mm over the center.

The watch should look like this at this stage.

The body of the watch is next. Make a new layer beneath the Face layer. A lit­tle trick here is to select the Face layer and click on the New Layer icon hold­ing down the Alt and Com­mand keys. Call this new layer Body.

Draw three cir­cles out from the cen­ter. Make them in these diam­e­ters: 251 mm, 240 mm and 230 mm. The last 230 mm cir­cle is right under the Face shape path, so we have to lock the Face layer. You might as well hide some other lay­ers while you work on this but it’s up to you. You see that using mul­ti­ple lay­ers has already started to pay off.

[When you need to hide or show many lay­ers in a row you can click + hold on one eye and drag over the others.]

Select the out­most cir­cle. Open the Gra­di­ent panel and select the Gra­di­ent tool. Stretch the Gra­di­ent Anno­ta­tor a lit­tle bit out of the cir­cle, about 5 mm, because we need to move it slightly in a bit. Make a gra­di­ent with three color stops, gray to white, using these values:

R 255, G 255, B 255

R 172, G 172, B 172

R 83, G 83, B 83.

Grab the cen­ter of the Gra­di­ent Anno­ta­tor and move it 2 mm to right and 2 mm up. You will now see why this dark­est gray is out­side of the cir­cle. It because by drag­ging the gra­di­ent this way more gray will enter the left side of the cir­cle while the right side goes whiter to make kind of a metal look.

Lock this path Cmd + 2. Select the two other cir­cles we made. Make a Com­pound Path, Cmd + 8 or Object > Com­pound Path > Make.

While selected, make a new gra­di­ent. This time make the color stops:

R 198, G 198, B 198

R 97, G 97, B 97

R 58, G 58, B 58.

The glass edges we make this way: Make a new layer above the Point­ers layer. Call in Glass. Draw two cir­cles from the cen­ter, first one of 230 mm and the sec­ond of 218 mm. Make a Com­pound Path, Cmd + 8 or Object > Com­pound Path > Make.

Lock all other lay­ers. Make one more cir­cle, this time 235 mm and fill it with black.

Select the Gra­di­ent Mesh tool (U) and click on point 1. In the Color panel change this color to white. Click on point 2. It should also be white. Then use the Direct Selec­tion tool to change point 3 to 70% black.

Select the whole cir­cle and Send to back. Select the com­pounded cir­cles and the gra­di­ent mesh cir­cle and make a Clip­ping Mask, Cmd + 7.

Change the Trans­parency to 50%

Make a new layer beneath the Body layer. Call it Winder. Make shapes like these. The big shape is 13,2 mm wide and 25 mm tall. The lit­tle boxes are 7 mm wide and 1,7 mm high. The lower one is a copy of the top one.

Fill with gra­di­ents. For the big shape use 30, 30, 30 for the ends and 55, 55, 55, for the mid­dle gray. Two white color stops 255, 255, 255.

The small box is just black to white but the anno­ta­tor is stretched lit­tle bit out of the shape to so it’s not fully white or black. Copy the top box down and use the blend tool to add 12 steps in between.

Move the blend over the winder and change the trans­parency to 60%.

Add the Braun logo on a sep­a­rate layer over the Glass layer. I found the logo on brandsoftheworld.com. You will have to sign up to be allowed to download.

This makes up the watch itself. But we would like to add a leather strap to the drawing.

Make a layer called Strap beneath the Winder layer. With the Rec­tan­gle tool, Alt + Click on the cen­ter and make a black filled rec­tan­gle of 140 mm wide and 478 mm tall. Use the Gra­di­ent Mesh tool to add a few mesh lines on the rectangle.

Use the Direct Selec­tion (A) tool to round the cor­ners. Start by mov­ing the cor­ner anchor points inwards and then straighten the con­trol han­dles so they appear like a smooth point.

Also move the near­est anchor points slightly inwards. When we have fin­ished all cor­ners we leave it as it is for a moment. Hide this layer by click­ing the eye in the layer panel.

Make a new rec­tan­gle filled with black color from the cen­ter in a new layer called Mezzo. Make it be above the Strap layer. Make the box 160 x 500 mm.

While selected go to Effects > Pix­e­late > Mez­zotint and apply Coarse Dots to the rectangle.

To make a mask for the Mez­zotint which is exactly like the strap we do this:

Turn vis­i­bil­ity of the Strap layer back on. Select the strap gra­di­ent mesh. Go to Object > Path > Off­set Path… and type in 0 (zero) in the input field. Select this new path and drag the col­ored dot in the Strap layer up to the Mezzo layer. While selected add the mez­zotint tex­ture to the selec­tion and Make Clip­ping mask Cmd + 7. In the Trans­parency panel set blend­ing to Mul­ti­ply and 50% transparency.

Lock the Mezzo layer and unlock the Strap layer. Use the Direct Selec­tion tool (A) to select three of the anchor points in the mid­dle. Reduce the black color to let the grain show through. Also move indi­vid­ual points to shape the light.

The Braun watch draw­ing is now fin­ished. I hope you have enjoyed this and learned some­thing new along the way.

Using lay­ers this exten­sively makes it pos­si­ble to export to a .psd file with every­thing intact if you want to add some extra fla­vor to any parts of the draw­ing. Any part where Trans­form Effect was used can be edited. You can change the shape of the point­ers, mark­ers, shad­ows and more. Using Global Color makes chang­ing col­ors a snap and so on.