Creating Neon Glow in Illustrator

You can create a neon glow (the illusion that the graphic is made from neon lights) in many ways. This technique uses the Appearance palette to add multiple strokes of different colors to a single path. The technique is especially cool because it’s a “live” effect and can be applied to the stroke of any path — even to text! You can change the path or enter in new text, and the glow matches the changes! Best of all, even though it may be labor-intensive to create, you can save the effect as a Style to apply to other objects at any point in the future just by clicking in the Style palette.

For this technique, you need the Appearance palette, the Swatches palette, the Stroke palette, and the Styles palette. Find them all under the Window menu, open them, and you’re ready to rock. Just follow these steps:
1. Open a new document in Illustrator.

2. Create a piece of simple artwork.
In this example, we create a star by using the Star tool, but this technique works equally well with text, path segments, or any other object.

3. Add additional strokes by using the Appearance palette.
Choose Window➪Appearance. From the Appearance palette’s pop-up menu, choose Add New Stroke. After you do this, you don’t see any difference in the graphic itself (because the second stroke is identical to the first), but you see two strokes listed in the palette. Every object in Illustrator always starts with one stroke listed in the palette. You don’t need to worry about the color of the strokes at this point. You’re just adding the strokes so that you can modify them later. Repeat the Add New Stroke command until you have five strokes total listed in the Appearance palette (see Figure 2-11). With all these strokes, you’re ready to add color and change the width to neon-ize the text.

4. Turn the bottom stroke into a thick red stroke.
The stroke listed at the bottom of the Appearance palette appears behind all the other strokes in the image. Click that stroke in the Appearance palette. Set the stroke’s color to red (by clicking a red swatch in the Swatches palette) and its weight to 20 pt (in the Stroke palette).

5. Make the second stroke from the bottom dark orange.
In the Appearance palette, click the second stroke from the bottom; set its stroke color to dark orange (by clicking any dark orange swatch in the Swatches palette), and then set the stroke weight to 20 pt in the Stroke palette.
This weight is the same as that of the bottom stroke; thus, this stroke totally hides the red stroke. (Don’t worry — we correct the problem shortly.)

6. Make the third stroke from the bottom light orange and narrower than the underlying strokes.
Click the third stroke from the bottom in the Appearance palette. Set the stroke color to light orange by clicking any light orange swatch in the Swatches palette. Set the stroke weight to 12 pt in the Stroke palette.

7. Make the second stroke from the top yellow and narrower than the underlying strokes.
Click the second stroke from the top in the Appearance palette. Set the stroke color to yellow by clicking a yellow swatch in the Swatches palette and set the stroke width to 8 pt in the Stroke palette.

8. Make the top stroke white and narrower than all the other strokes.
Click the top stroke in the Appearance palette. Set the stroke color to white by clicking the white swatch in the Swatches palette, and set the stroke weight to 2 pt in the Stroke palette.

At this point, your object should look halfway decent as a neon glow effect. You could use Steps 1–9 with very different colors to create striped text. This time, however, you complete the neon glow effect by softening the edges of the strokes by using the Gaussian Blur effect.

9. Soften the edges to the white stroke by using the Gaussian Blur effect.
With the top stroke selected, choose Effect➪Blur➪Gaussian Blur. The Gaussian Blur dialog box opens. Set the Radius to 1.5 and click OK. The white stroke is blurred.

10. Soften the remaining strokes one-at-a-time except for the bottom stroke.
Select the next stroke down by clicking it in the Appearance palette and applying the same Gaussian Blur effect that you applied to the white stroke.

Selecting the top menu item in the Effect menu (this is the name of the last Effect you applied) repeats the last Effect you used with the same settings.

Do not apply the effect to the bottom stroke. Remember, neon tubes glow, but they are still hard glass tubes!

The result is a neon stroke! Save this stroke and apply it anywhere you want. Click the New Style button in the Styles palette, create any text or path you want, and then click the style in the palette to apply the neon stroke.