Making a Clock Face in Illustrator

Introduction

Setting up Illustrator

Start a new letter-sized print document. Open the Attributes palette (Window > Attributes). Make sure the Show Center button is depressed. If it is dimmed out, draw the circle mentioned in the next step then click the button.

This will make a small dot appear at the exact center of your objects. Turning on Smart Guides (View > Smart Guides) also helps placement because angles and centers will be labeled as you hover over them with the mouse.

Adding Guides and Rulers

Use the ellipse tool to draw the circle for the clock dial. Hold the shift key as you draw to constrain the ellipse to a perfect circle (or just click on the artboard with the ellipse tool and fill in the sizes). Mine is 200 pixels X 200 pixels, but you may want yours larger.

If you cannot see the rulers on the document, View > Rulers or Ctrl + R to activate the rulers. Drag guides from the top and side rulers across the center mark of the circle to mark the center of the circle.

Making the Hour Markings

We need to mark hours first. The hour markings are usually different in some way than the minute markings, so I have used a longer and darker tick mark than I will be using for the minute marks when we do those (increase the stroke size to make the line darker).

Make one tick mark using the line tool on the vertical guideline at 12:00. I also added an arrowhead (Effect > Stylize > Add Arrowheads).

Select the tick mark (NOT the circle), click the rotate tool in the tool box, then Alt click on the exact center of the circle (now you see why we needed to use the Attributes palette earlier) to open the rotate dialog box. This will set the point of origin at the center of the circle.

We're going to let Illustrator do the math to see the angle we need to rotate the hour markings. In the rotate dialog box, type 360/12 in the Angle box. This means 360° divided by 12 marks. This tells Illustrator to figure out the angle needed (which is 30°) to place 12 marks for the hours evenly spaced around the point of origin you set at the center of the circle.

Click the Copy button so that a copy of the original tick is made, and it doesn't move the original. The dialog closes and you will see two tick marks. To add the rest, we use the duplicate command. Type Ctrl + D 10 times to add the remaining 10 tick marks for a total of 12.

Making the Minute Markings

To add the minute markings, make another small line using the line tool on the vertical guideline at 12:00. It will be over the hour tick mark, but that's OK. I made mine a different color, shorter and thinner than the hour marks, and without the arrowheads.

Keep the line you just made selected, choose the Rotate tool again in the toolbox, and Alt click on the center of the circle again to open the Rotate dialog.

This time, we need 60 minute marks so type 360/60 in the Angle box so Illustrator can figure the angle needed for 60 marks (which happens to be 6°).

Once more, click the Copy button. Now use Ctrl + D 58 times to add the rest of the minute marks.

Zoom in close using the Zoom tool and click with the selection tool on the minute marks on top of each of the hour marks and delete to get rid of them. Be careful not to delete the hour marks

Adding the Numbers

Select the rotate tool again, and Alt-click on the center of the circle again to set the point of rotation.

Type 360/12 in the Angle box and click the copy button. Now press Ctrl + D 10 times to copy the number 12 around the circle. You should have twelve number 12's.

Use the type tool to change these 12's to the correct numbers. Because they are also in the wrong position (6 will be upside down, for instance), each number needs to be rotated. Go to the next step to see how to figure the angle of rotation

Rotating the Numbers

Select the number 1. Choose the rotate tool in the toolbox, and Alt click on the center of the baseline of the numeral. There will be a small dot at the center of the baseline (if you set the alignment to center) so you don't have to guess where the center of the baseline is. This puts the point of orientation at the base of the numeral.

Starting with 30° for the numeral 1 (because the hour tick marks were rotated at 30°, 360° divided by 12 equals 30°), type 30 in the Angle box in the rotate dialog, then click OK to rotate the number 1 by 30°.

Select the next number, 2, and choose the rotate tool in the toolbox. Alt click on the center of the baseline of the numeral to set the point of orientation.

To keep the numbers rotated in proportion to the hour marks, add 30° for each new rotation. That means you rotated 1 by 30°, so you rotate 2 by 60°, 3 by 90°, etc. Enter 60 in the angle box and click OK.

Continue in this manner, adding 30° of rotation to each number around the clock face. (3=90°, 4=120°, 5=150° and so on up to 11=330°). When you are done, some of the numbers will be too close to or even on the clock face depending how far from the original circle you placed your first 12.

Repositioning the Numbers

Shift-click to select only the numbers.

Hold the Alt key and the shift key and drag outward on a bounding box corner to resize the numbers. Holding the shift key constrains the resizing to the same proportions, and holding the Alt key allows the resizing to take place from the center.

Next use the arrow keys to nudge them into position so you have something like this. If the guides get in your way, you can hide them at any time by going to View > Guides > Hide Guides.

Adding the Hands

Click the circle with the selection tool to select it. Shift+Alt+drag one of the corner handles on the bounding box to resize it in proportion from the center to make the clock face larger than the numbers.

Add hands using the line tool with arrowheads (Effect > Stylize > Add Arrowheads). Place them on the vertical and center guidelines.

Note: If your clock was larger than this one and you want to add a rivet to hold the hands together, draw a circle and fill it with a radial gradient. Place the rivet at the center of the clock face.

Finishing the Clock

Give your clock face some style with images, styles, symbols, strokes, or fills. If you want to remove the arrowheads from the hour marks, open the Appearance palette (Window > Appearance) and click the Clear Appearance button at the bottom of the palette. (It looks like the "no" sign, a circle with a slash across it.)

Because the clock face is totally vector, you can make it as large or small as you wish. Just make sure to Select > All and then group it (Object > Group) so you don't miss any parts when resizing or moving the clock.