: What is this circle technique called? What is this technique called: http://dribbble.com/shots/260469-Squirrel-Construct See how the image is the result of overlapping many circles to create the

@Bryan765

I believe you are looking for the Designer's Golden Ratio.
Here's a lesson from behance: www.behance.net/gallery/10698637/how-to-design-a-logo-using-golden-ratio Or just look it up and I'm sure you will find plenty of other sites.

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@Welton168

When creating something in Illustrator you tend to use the pen tool or basic geometric shapes to get to your idea. Depending on how you were taught in the beginning you will tend to use one tool over the other.

This is not a specific technique, it's just grid based design using the golden rule (math attached below).

golden rule www.cut-the-knot.org/do_you_know/GoldenWindow.gif
Most designers that studied graphic arts will understand and use this grid wisely, while others just tend to use whatever size they see fit for the job.

Everything begins with a pencil drawing, you import the image and then you begin to construct creating a single big circle. You measure the circle and set that as the primer circle from which you subtract different ratio circles to create your idea. After that, using the pathfinder tool in Illustrator, you divide all circles and delete the ones that you don't need in the logo. The final step is to merge the pieces depending on how you need them and that would be it.

Using this method will give you a nice refined image fast.

If TL;DR > It's called Grid Based Design.

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@Shelley591

It's called 'sketching'. At least, the concept of using basic geometric shapes to create a 'wireframe' to fill in with detail is.

If it leans more towards hard geometry, one could perhaps call it reminiscent of CAD or engineering drawings.

Either way, what you see on Dribbble is often done after the fact. You'll see lots of logos and icons with these guide lines shown that were actually added after the fact merely for aesthetic presentation purposes.

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@Harper654

In all kinds of drawing, a formalised methodology has been attempted for centuries (ref. The Vitruvian man). Rules and guidelines for proportions of the human body etc. have been drawn out for the use in architecture and art (and in some cases to hunt for the magic golden section). This, in a way, is an engineering approach to imagery: laying down basic guidelines. The examples you show kind of refers to that tradition.



My guess is that the drawings you show are partly "reversed engineered" - someone doodled a lot, and then afterwards reconstructed the (seemingly sequential) process. I am not saying they did not work with circles in mind, they clearly did, but just pushing circles around in photoshop is probably not the way to go.

In this case, the resulting images are stylised animals; note that they are animals that are roundish by nature. I doubt you would find a similar image of - say - a horse or a snake :-)

If you want to make stuff like this, my suggestion would be as much "mindless" doodling as you have time for. I cannot stress the importance of doodling enough. There should be more doodling in the world :-)

 




Edit:
Albrecht Dürer (bow to the master! ) reconstructed latin letters. Note that circles are prominent:

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