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Hey kids!

Remember the universal ISOTYPE symbols from last week? How could you forget, right? They're famous from airport bathrooms everywhere. I mean, just looking at them makes you wanna pee. And they have such sparkling personalities, it makes you wanna pee some more. Plus, Colleen devoted 17 blogs posts and a PhD treatise on the topic, culminating in this universal symbol for an airport bar. I know there's another pee joke in there, but I'm beginning to disgust myself.

Tangentially, did you know Valentine's Day is just 2 weeks and 2 days away? That hateful, horrible holiday. And these two, they have so much in common. So rounded and fingerless. He sports spandex, she wear that pretty cow-bell-shaped dress. And when they look at each other with their blank circular faces, you can see the sparks fly. Because you have eyes.

So I thought, let's put these two hotties in the same document and see what happens. And you know what, not to be a spoiler, but they fall in love. Not real, actual love, mind you, but pretend, stupid love, the kind you get when you edit vector-based path outlines in Illustrator. We even get to witness the man give his heart to the lady as a bunch of strokes. Which, frankly, is messed up.

And yet this all goes to a larger point: No one needs talent to draw anymore. You just need the Appearance panel.

Coming soon: How to render the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel using nothing but Illustrator strokes. And ISOTYPE people, of course. Speaking of which, what's the universal symbol for Adam touching God's finger, when they don't have any? And how does a rounded, fingerless, faceless, everythingless character invoke that cheerful old St. Bartholomew displaying his flayed skin? Because he's a gut buster.

This is gonna be tough. See, Michelangelo's peeps are always wandering around with their junk hanging out. And my lover's got no junk.

But you know, now that I think about it, I bet you can solve that problem with lots and lots of strokes. Inside Illustrator. Read more » 

First, don't panic that I've suddenly skipped from episode 105, "Op Art Experiment 1a:Inflated Checkers," all the way up to 191 in a single week. You didn't miss 86 episodes in between. It's just an adjustment in the numbering convention. I previously counted the free videos (the ones posted on this site) and left out the ones that are only available to members of lynda.com. But given that it's a new year and Deke's Techiques is now officially in its third year, I decided to do the rational thing and catch up with the lynda.com numbering system. And so here we are.

Second, the topic of this week's video: How to create the universal pictographic man symbol in Illustrator. By which I mean, the one below:

And the way we'll be creating this man is, dare I say, innovative. Rather than drawing him as a series of path outlines, either tediously with the pen tool (gawd!) or as a collection of rectangles and circles that you combine from the Pathfinder panel, I'll show you how to construct the guy from the Appearance panel by heaping on a series of strokes and a single fill.

Watch the video. And then, if you're in the mood for a step-by-step companion, see Colleen Wheeler's deliciously diagrammed post from yesterday. Many of you will be able to follow the directions just by looking at the figures. Read more »