I needed the shape of a gear recently — you know, something round with “teeth.” Fortunately, it’s pretty darn easy to make one of these in InDesign.
First, double-click one of the two Polygon tools and define a starburst:
Next, draw the starburst (probably with the Shift key held down, unless you want to end up with some kind of weird elliptical gear):
Finally, choose Object > Corner Effects and give your polygon bevelled corners. Turn the Preview checkbox on, so you can get the look just right:
Of course, you can always add a fill and some effects to the object, such as bevels to make it more 3D:
If you make the corner effects larger, the gear turns into a bottle cap. Hey, bottlecap art!
Of course, I can’t stop there! Time to go crazy and make even more wild designs by pushing the effects to the limit:
Well, okay, may you don’t need those… but the gears sure came in handy!
This article was last modified on July 25, 2019
This article was first published on March 24, 2009
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