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Matt Fons/4 min read

Creating a Striking Moon Design in Adobe Illustrator

Build the Moon

1

Draw a Circle

Ellipse tool, hold Shift for a perfect circle.

2

Add Crater Variation

Smaller circles with subtle gradient fills — uneven sizing reads as natural.

3

Apply a Radial Gradient

Bright on one edge, dark opposite — instant 3D feel.

4

Add a Soft Glow

Effect → Stylize → Outer Glow with low opacity for atmosphere.

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This Illustrator tutorial walks through creating a striking moon design in adobe illustrator, covering essential tools and techniques for your projects.

In this video, we'll be adding our moon. Let's begin first by creating a new layer. We'll retitle this “Moon” and hit ENTER.

In addition, let's also lock our “Clouds” layer. Now, within our Moon layer, we're going to be adding a moon that intersects with our two guides. We'll again utilize the Ellipse Tool and make sure that we have No Stroke selected.

From here, we're going to begin creating our moon. We'll start by dragging a moon shape from the center, holding Shift to make a perfect circle and ALT to drag from the center. Let's drag our moon to be right around 400 pixels and then release.

Next, we want to add rings to our moon. To do this, we could add additional ellipses, or we can offset our path. We can offset our path by going to Object > Path > Offset Path.

For our offset, we're going to add 60 pixels, and we'll see a preview of this. This will be our first ring, and we'll click OK. Next, we're going to repeat this two additional times.

With this outer ring now selected, we'll go to Object > Path > Offset Path, again enter 60 pixels, and click OK. We'll do this one more time: Object > Path > Offset Path, and again set it to 60 pixels. Next, we need to select all the rings of our moon.

We'll do this by hitting CTRL+A, and we're now going to change the Opacity from 100 percent—double-clicking—to 5 percent, and hit ENTER. If we hit CTRL+Shift+A, we'll deselect and can see our work.

Looking at these rings now, even though they all have the same Opacity, stacking them on top of each other increases the overall visual Opacity. Therefore, adding multiple transparent objects on top of each other produces a stronger effect. In the case of these outer rings, I like them at 5 percent. However, let’s hit V on the keyboard to select the center circle—our main moon—and set its Opacity at the top to 100 percent. Then hit ENTER.

Here, we have a nice bold moon with outer rings. In addition to this, let's add one more effect to our moon. With the moon selected, we'll go to Effect > Stylize > Outer Glow.

With Outer Glow, we’ll use Screen mode and choose a white color instead of black, then click OK. To preview this, check the Preview box. While the change is subtle, with it selected, we can see a slight glow effect. Click OK.

For our other rings, we'll select them one at a time while holding Shift. For these rings, we want to blur them slightly. We'll go to Effect > Blur > Gaussian Blur. If we preview this, we’ll see a soft blur effect. Click OK.

Then, click outside to see the full effect. To fine-tune the blur, we can also select our rings and go to the Properties Panel, selecting the Gaussian Blur, where we can either increase or decrease the amount. In this case, I'm going to decrease it slightly, and I’ll leave it at 1.8 pixels. Click OK. Clicking outside, we can now see the result.

I prefer this look with less blur, as it helps distinguish the lines. Let's select all parts of the moon and right-click to group them together.

As one final change, we're going to add a mask to our moon. To do this, select the Rectangle Tool and simply drag a rectangle from the top-left side, cutting off just the bottom of the moon.

Release there, and then hit V on the keyboard. With the rectangle selected, hold Shift and also select the moon. Then, right-click and select Make Clipping Mask. As we can see, the moon is now clipped at the bottom and only visible within the bounds of our clipping mask. Let’s now save our work using CTRL+S on the keyboard. In the next video, we’ll be importing our city.

See you there!