In this week’s free episode of Deke’s Techniques, Deke takes an "imaginary" logo (except it’s totally based on the former United Pixelworkers logo), and rotates it around in a star shape (like, uh, the United Pixelworkers used to do because they were awesome).

For reference, there was once a company named United Pixelworkers that made awesome t-shirts for designers and other pixel-wrangling nerdistas. Alas, understandably, they had to change their business model and are now defunct-ish as far as awesome t-shirts go, but this was their logo:

And here is my favorite shirt I ever bought for Deke from their site (designed by an obviously cool dude called Evan Stremke):

Anyway, Deke starts with the logo of an imaginary company that likes the letter J:

...and spins it around in a circle in Illustrator using the Rotate tool, custom guides, and even a bit of Shear.

If you’re a member of Lynda.com, you can even see how Deke added those shadows and white border in this week’s exclusive movie.

Not a member? You can get a free 10-day trial by spinning on over to lynda.com/deke.

(By the way, the Illustrator One-on-One: Advanced course that Deke mentions is being finished up this week. So, be on the lookout in a month or so. We’ll be sure to let fans of Deke know when it’s fully cooked.)

Deke’s Techniques, spinning the logo of awesome but now defunct companies in circles!