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I am trying to design a logo for my company. However I have tried for 12 hours now making the design below, but I have huge problems getting what I want.

I want the road to be crossing the other one like it was a bridge. It should not look like a intersection like it does now. Can someone give me instructions to how to manage to create a shape like this?

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This is what I have.

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2 Answers 2

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I assume you're trying to do all this with a single stroke?? Things really depend upon how you currently have objects constructed.

In order to get the appearance of an "overlap" you need an overlap. So draw a section of road to cover the overall path:

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Same stroke style applied to an additional path on top of the base path. You won't be able to create the appearance of an overlap, regarding the white stroke, with a single path and the Appearance Panel.

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To deal with those hairline bits that appear on the ends due to anti-aliasing, you can add an Effect the the base black stroke. This is really just a drawing anti-aliasing artifact and won't be visible on export (Art Optimized) or in print. But if it bothers you or you are uncertain it really isn't an issue, you can tweak things to remove it.

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Highlight the base stroke... Choose Effect > Distort & Transform > Transform from the menu. Enter a very small scale change in the top two fields of the Transform Options dialog window:

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This will cause the black base stroke to be slightly larger than the underlying white stroke, and subsequently remove that hairline you may see.

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  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
    – Cai
    Jul 10, 2017 at 18:14
  • Any time I have an idea I have to remind myself: there's a very good chance that someone somewhere has already thought of that before me; that what I want to do has already been done before... It's always a good idea just to check and see: infinity symbol road
    – BANG
    Jul 10, 2017 at 18:46
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    @BANG And how does that help me? It was not the design that I had problem with. It was how I should do it in Illustrator.
    – Andreas
    Jul 10, 2017 at 18:54
  • @Metis May I ask how you created your infinity symbol?
    – Andreas
    Jul 10, 2017 at 19:02
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    There's really no "wrong" way to construct the symbol as long as it appears as you like it. In short.. 2 circles, delete anchors, join opposite anchors, Convert Path Tool to create smooth points.. add guide to center, extend anchor handles to center guide. Animated here Also note I prefer working in CS6... so there may be additional methods in CC (Via the curvature tool or other newer features)
    – Scott
    Jul 10, 2017 at 22:15
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Here's a little bit easier way to make this:

  • Draw a perfect circle and add a nice thick stroke to it. This will be the base of the road

  • Duplicate the circle, move it over. Group them and center them on the artboard, then ungroup them again

Result:

Two circles

  • Hit the A key to grab the Direct Selection Tool

  • Drag a selection over the center of both circles and press the Del key:

Two semicircles

  • Hit the P key to grab the Pen Tool and make a path to connect the top of one semicircle to the bottom of the other:

The centerpiece

  • Hit the A key again, click on the part you just drew and press Ctrl+C and then Ctrl+F to copy that section of the path and paste it in front:

Copy and paste in front

  • With that piece selected, hit the O key to grab the Reflect tool, and while holding down the Alt key, click in the center to bring up the Reflect dialog, choose Horizontal (or Vertical in this case) and press 'OK':

Reflect dialog

So this is what we want to see at this point (colors changed for demonstration only):

Two paths

  • Before adding strokes to round out the appearance, select both paths and press Ctrl+8 to make a compound path

  • Go into the Appearance Panel flyout menu (blue arrow below) and deselect 'New Art Has Basic Appearance':

Appearance Panel flyout menu

Now add your new strokes as desired to make your road. When you get to the dashed yellow stroke change it to 'Projecting Cap' and also set it so Illustrator 'Aligns dashes to corners and path ends, adjusting lengths to fit'. This way all of your dashes will line up nicely...

Now we're at this point:

Compound road

(This is the point you were already at but I had no idea how you got there... My method assumes that it was done my way from the start.

If you've done it the way I've shown here then all you have to do now is release the compound path (Object > Compound Path > Release) and you're done:

Final result

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