How to Create Basic Shapes in Illustrator

Every design starts with building blocks and most designs in Illustrator start with basic shapes created with Illustrator’s Shape Tools. In this tutorial, you will learn how to use the shape tools and tips, tricks and keyboard shortcuts for getting the most out of them.

gallery of the basic shapes in illustrator — Basic shapes: rectangle, square, rounded rectangle, ellipse, circle, various polygons including triangle and various sided stars

Table of Contents

Illustrator’s Shape Tools

Illustrator has six shape tools. Five of which, I actually consider shapes and the Flare tool which is actually more like a lighting effect.

Rectangle Tool
Rounded Rectangle Tool
Ellipse Tool
Polygon Tool
Star Tool
Flare Tool

Note: The shape icon that appears as the main shape in the toolbar and the order that the tools that appear in the flyout menu is determined by the last tool you used and will change. Illustrator tries to anticipate what you are likely to want most based on your previous choices.

Create a Rectangle

Method 1: Choose the rectangle tool and click on the artboard. This will bring up a panel and you can enter the width and height.

Method 2: Choose the rectangle tool and click AND drag out the shape releasing the mouse button when you reach the desired size. Notice the smart guides show you the dimensions of your object as you draw. If your smart guides aren’t showing you can use Ctrl + u (Windows) | Cmd + u (Mac) to turn them on.

Create a Perfect Square

Illustrator makes it easy to create a perfect square.

Method 1: Choose the Rectangle tool and click on the artboard. This will bring up a panel and you can enter the same size in both the height and width.

Method 2: Choose the Rectangle tool and click AND drag out the shape while holding the shift key down releasing the mouse button before you release the shift key when you reach the desired size.

Create a Rounded Rectangle

Method 1: Choose the Rounded Rectangle tool and click on the artboard. This will bring up a panel and you can enter the width, height and corner radius. If you want this to be a square with rounded corners then just put an equal height and width in the appropriate fields.

Method 2: Choose the Round Rectangle tool and click AND drag out the shape releasing the mouse button when you reach the desired size. Notice the smart guides show you height, width and corner radius while you draw.
Added:

Changing the Corner Radius (While Drawing)

You can change the corner radius while drawing by holding down the arrow keys.

Up Arrow Key increases the corner radius
Down Arrow Key decreases the corner radius
Right Arrow Key sets the corner radius to the max possible
Left Arrow Key removes the corner radius (ie makes it a regular non-rounded rectangle).

Tip: When you finish drawing the shape make sure you release the mouse button first!

Changing the Corner Radius (After Drawing)

You can also change the corner radius after you draw it.
Method 1: Select the Live Corner Widget and drag it inwards. This will change all four corners at once.

Method 2: With the rounded rectangle selected open the transform panel (Shift F8) and enter a new value in the corner radius fields.

Note there are so many options for rounding corners, rounding just selected corners, different corner types etc that I created an article to cover All the options check out How to Round Corners in Illustrator.

Create an Ellipse

Method 1: Choose the ellipse tool and click on the artboard. This will bring up the ellipse panel and allow you to enter height and width. Click ok.

Method 2: Choose the Ellipse tool and click AND drag on the artboard. You can watch the smart guides if you are trying to make the ellipse a certain size.

Draw a Perfect Circle

There are two ways to draw a perfect circle in Illustrator.

Select the Ellipse Tool, click on the artboard and enter the same amount in both height and width fields
Select the Ellipse Tool and Click and drag while holding the shift key down. Holding down shift constrains the shape to have the same height and width.

Tip: Make sure you let go of the mouse before you let go of the shift key else the shape might jump to a less than perfect circle.

Polygons

The Polygon tool can be used to create shapes from triangles, to octagons and beyond.

Note: How many sides the shape has when you start drawing will depend on what you drew with the tool last – if you drew a triangle then if you were to grab the polygon tool and click and drag out a shape it would have 3 sides – Illustrator tries very hard to remember what you want and offer that up.

Drawing Polygons

Method 1: Using the polygon dialog box

Select the Polygon Tool

Click once on the artboard to bring up the Polygon dialog box. In the dialog box enter the radius (this is the distance from the center point of the object to an anchor point and determines the size of the shape) and the number of sides and click “OK”.

Method 2: Drawing out polygons

You can change the number of sides while drawing! On the fly.

Select the polygon tool and click and drag on the artboard and before you release your mouse button click on the Up Arrow button on your keyboard to add sides to the polygon or the Down Arrow to make a shape with fewer sides. Finally, release the mouse button to complete the shape.

Tip: In several of the other shape tools the shift key constrains the tool to be an equal-sided shape, ie holding down shift when drawing a rectangle will make a square, but… the polygon already only makes even-sided shapes. For this tool the shift modifier has a different purpose, it forces one side to be perfectly horizontal. This is awesome because it gives you a distinct starting point for any transformation such as a rotation.

Stars

Like polygons stars have options: how many points, how far the points stick about past the center, is it a short fat star or a long skinny one.

Understanding how the Radius settings affect a Star’s shape

The star has two radii: the inner radius (Radius 1) which is the distance from the center point of the star to the inner anchor points and outer radius (Radius 2) which is the distance from the center point to the outer anchor points.

If both Radius 1 & 2 are set to the same number, what is created is a polygon. You can see in the illustration below how the ratio between the two radii affects the star’s shape. The greater the distance between the two radius results in longer arms for the star.

Creating Stars

Method 1: Using the Star Options Dialog Box

Select the Star tool from the toolbox and click on the Artboard. This will bring up the Star options dialog box.
Set the inner radius (Radius 1) and outer radius (Radius 2).
Select the number of points.
Then click Ok.

Method 2: Drawing out a Start and modifying while drawing

Select the Star Tool and click and drag to start drawing out the shape. Continue to hold the mouse down while you use other keys to modify the star shape.
to add points to the start click the up arrow and to remove points click the down arrow
To change how far the arms stick out past the base of the star hold the Ctrl (Windows) | Cmd (Mac) key down and continue dragging to lengthen the arms of the star. You can always drag back to the left to shorten the arms.
When you are happy with the shape of your star, release the mouse.

Shape Drawing Tips

Repositioning Shapes while Drawing

This is something so wired into my brain that I don’t even think about it anymore. So you start drawing with one of Illustrator’s shape tools and realize you are not in the right position. Yes, you could release the mouse and then reposition the shape but there is an easier way. Holding down Spacebar while you are still drawing will allow you to move the still-live shape. This is especially great if you are trying to create a shape that fits inside, against or near another shape. You can hold down the spacebar and move the shape by drawing, release it to tweak the size of the shape and then hold it down again to tweak the position. This has got to be one of the absolute core skills in Illustrator.

Drawing from the Center

Typically, at least for right-handed folks, we draw shapes with a click and a drag to the right and this creates a shape starting at its top corner and drawing it out to the bottom right. Sometimes you are going to want to draw your shape from the Centerpoint out, particularly if you are drawing one shape inside another.

To draw a shape from the center of the object out. Click the artboard and start dragging and then hold down the Alt key (Windows) | Option Key (Mac).
Remember always to release the mouse button first other wise the shape you created might jump to the side.

Tip: You can use the Shift + Alt Key (Windows) | Shift + Opt (Mac) to both draw from the center and force an ellipse to be perfectly round or a rectangle to be square.

Before You Go

Mastering basic shapes in Illustrator is a key skill for designers. However, it is just one part of the larger skill set needed to create stunning designs. If you want to take your Illustrator skills to the next level, I suggest checking out this article on a How to Select ANYTHING in Illustrator. It contains a ton of tips to help you select single and multiple objects and to make selecting and working on designs easier and much, much faster.