Shiny buttons in Illustrator

This is a short tutorial, explaining how to produce the following type of effect in Adobe Illustrator:

This kind of texture is fairly popular at the moment. You can use it on buttons, navigation bars, and so on. I’ve adapted the technique so that you have a single Group of objects and can easily change the colour of the button with a single click. No need to mess around with gradient sliders

First, draw a rectangle and apply a Round Corner effect. Then apply an Inner Glow effect (Effects > Stylize > Inner Glow). Set the blend mode to Screen and the colour to white. Then select center. Alter the Opacity and Radius settings until you get a fairly subtle glow effect that does not quite reach the edges of the rectangle:

Next, copy this shape and paste in front. Now remove the inner glow effect from the uppermost shape. Using the Scissors tool, carefully click the path of the new shape half-way each vertical side. This will divide it into 2 halves. Use the Direct Selection Tool to select the top half and delete it:

Lastly, group the 2 shapes before adding your text. Because the Inner Glow effect has a blending mode of Screen, you can change the colour of your button very quickly, just by applying a new fill colour to the group. You might need to adjust the opacity of the Inner Glow if you shift from a dark to a light colour.