alignment issues with logo design

Question

first time posting here. first off wanted to say that I'm very thankful to the community for all of the answers it has provided me with just a simple search.

BUT now I have a question and I have no idea how to specify that in a search engine haha so here goes.

I am trying to create a logo for my future business in graphic design and hopefully much more haha. It uses a bunch of perfect circles that are scaled based on the Fibonacci ratios. Anyway, I'm trying to align three elements and I'm sure that you guys have a much more precise way of doing this.

This is the issue I'm talking about. As you can see the red like does not intersect perfectly in the middle with the two other lines.

What would be your simplest solution to moving the red circle down only the y axis but with maximum precision? It is already centred to the other objects and the x-axis.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Snapping circles can be tricky, but in this case you can use guides.

Switch to View > Outline and do like this:

• Create a horizontal guide which snaps to the point where the three circles must intersect: the center of the small circle.
• Create a vertical guide which snaps to the same point.
• Create a horizontal guide which snaps to the intersection between the vertical guide and the largest circle.
• Select the last horizontal guide and the large circle.
• Hold down Shift and drag the guide until it snaps to the horizontal guide you created first.

Answer 2

Switch to Outline Mode (view > outline) and nudge.

My nudge setting (Keyboard Increment in Preferences > General) is set to 0p0.125 - meaning an 8th of a point. If the nudge is too great at that point, I simply manually move the object.

Illustrator doesn't contain any feature to align the middle of an arc to anything else. There are third party plugs-ins like ColliderScribe from AstuteGraphics.com which will. You might try their free trial.