Realistic 3D heart glossy logo Illustrator Tutorial
In this Illustrator tutorial I’ll show some interesting features of this powerful software and I’ll teach you how to create a cool glossy logo with a realistic 3D look. I think you can easily follow this tutorial if you have a bit of exp with Illustrator, since this is not exactly a basic tutorial, but if you are a rookie I think it could be very useful too, I tried to show all the steps with images, but I’ll be not lacking of words.
So, let’s begin!
Simple: a black square on the basic level, go on…
Add a new layer on top of this and lock the first one. This is to prevent to select it for mistake every time…it’s very annoying.
On the new layer we draw a circle with a nice red.
with the Pen tool, starting from the very right side of the circle we start drawing the base of an half of the heart.
If the Pathfinder palette is not visible let’s see it.
Now select the circle and the other object you’ve just drawn.
In the Pathfinder palette click on the first button on the upper row (1). If you waste some second on it with your mouse you’ll see this is the Add command. To remove the exta-lines remaining after the Add click on the Expand button (2). Here we have our half-heart
CTRL+C (Apple instead of CTRL, obviously. I’ll say CTRL all the time, since I’m working on a PC….don’t say a word! 
). Then CTRL+V to paste.
To view the Smart Guides, that will help you in snapping the edge point go to View -> Smart Guides.
Select this second half, go to Object in the scroll down menu and choose Transform, then Reflect. In this window choose Vertical and OK.
We’ve flipped the half-heart. Now click away in your document. Now with the Smart Guides activated pick the half-heart by the lower vertex and drag it to the lower vertex of the other half. You should see the snap that ensures you the parts are connected correctly.
Select the two pieces of the heart and go to the Pathfinder again. Same thing ad before. Add and Expand.
Now, to make it look better later, we want to give a stroke to the heart. Select a darker red and give a stroke, not too fat and not too thin.
With your heart selectrd go to Effect -> 3D -> Extrude and Bevel. Enable the preview and rotate the heart with more or less the parameters you can see at point (1). Give the Perspective you see at (2). Now click on “More Options” (3) and, dragging the white point on the sphere, place the light in the right corner to illuminate the front side of the heart (in this case the lower right corner).
Now menu Object again and Expand Appearance.
This should be the result.
Now, to avoid ungrouping the 3D heart we’re gonna use the white arrow to select areas.
Select the front face (2) with the Direct Selection Tool (1). Give a linear gradient (3) and choose the red you decided at the beginning for and end and a darker red for the other end.
Selecting the Gradient Tool click and, dragging, draw a line to decide the angle of the gradient. Choose the right lower side for the dark area and the upper left side for the light one.
Now pick the white and draw an elipse, more or less like this in the same position.
Choose the front of the heart again with the white arrow. CTRL+C and CTRL+F to paste in position. Now we have to work with layers. Open the closed group (1) and drag the layer with the white elipse you created between the front sides of the hearts (the original and the copy). The arrow (2) show the position of the layer with the white circle. (3) Now click on the little circle on the right of the upper layer with the heart to select it and, holding SHIFT, click to the little circle of the layer with the white elipse.
Pathfinder again. 3rd button (1) Interstect, and Expand, as usually. This is what you should have at this point.
Keeping selected this object go to the Transparency palette and clicking the “more options” button (1) select Make Opacity Mask.
Your white object seems to be disappeared! Don’t panic. Select the Opacity mask layer (1), choose the radial gradient from the swatches (2). Draw a circle (3-4) bigger than the original object (you can guess the dimension and the position and you can move and scale this circle later). Now with the gradient tool decide the position. The white center of the gradient should be at the top of the left side of the heart, more or less. Don’t make this mask too big or the gradient too wide or you’ll have a really bad reflection. Adjust the mask and the gradient to have something like this image.
Dont’ forget to click here! In this way you go back working on the normal object layer and not on the mask (it’s almost the same as the Opacity mask in Photoshop).
Now with the Direct selection tool again (white arrow) (1) select the left depth of the heart (2) and color it with a gradient. Dark red and a darker, almost black, red (3). With Gradient Tool (4) give the direction (5). The darker side is the bottom of the heart, the lighter side is near the reflection.
Do the same with the right part (6). In this case the darker part is the one between the two halves.
Now I noticed that the reflection was a bit too strong. In the transparency palette set the Opacity to 85 or 90%.
Here what you should have for now. Nice, isn’t it? 
Add some text to make this a real logo. Pick the Type Tool (1), choose the font (2), I like the Cooper Std for this work. With the Transform Tool scale the text to a proper size.
Keeping selected the text, right click and “create outlines” or menu Type -> create outlines.
Move it over the heart. CTRL+SHIFT+G to ungroup the single letters. Select the G and move this layer under the heart.
Give to the G and to the L a black and White gradient and adjust it with the Gradient Tool. Make it really soft as a shadow, and place it in the lower right corner of the L and on the left side of the G. It should looks like the heart is casting shadows on the letters.
Pick the whiteand select the star tool.
with a single click WITHOUT drag you can see the Star Tool options window. Set a little Radius1 and a bigger Radius 2, this proportion more or less and set 4 Points. Ok.
CTRL+C and CTRL+F. Now, holding shift rotate of 45° the copy of the star and holding Shift+Alt scale it to make it smaller.
As done before Add one to the other and make it a single star with 8 points.
Following the same process as before add an opacity mask to the star with the white center of the radial gradient in the center of the star. Adjust the opacity to 90% more or less.
DONE!
