As we mention for every project, housekeeping is essential to keeping your files organized. After organizing these files, we will set up our artboards and tour the Illustrator workspace.
File Management and File Creation
Synopsis: After downloading and organizing our assets (included), we will create our artboards, rename them, and save a .ai document in our project folder.
Duration: 3 minutes.
Downloads
These are the images we will be referencing throughout this workshop:
File specifications
- Print file
- Number of artboards: 3
- Size: 2.5 x 2.5 inches
Best practices
- If your project is for screen use, select 72 PPI and the colour mode RGB.
- If your project is for print use, select 300 PPI and the colour mode CMYK.
The Illustrator interface
Synopsis: We will look at the Adobe Illustrator interface and highlight the tools we use today.
Duration: 2 minutes.
Best practices
- Similar tools are grouped within the Tool Panel. To access related tools, long-click a particular tool (example: text) and the hidden tools will appear (example: type on a path tool, vertical type tool).
- The selection tool (black arrow) allows you to click an object to move content. Please do not confuse it with the direct selection tool (white arrow) that enables you to move anchor points.
- If you scroll over the tools in the toolbar, you will see their shortcut keys.
A profile of three essential tools
Synopsis: We will look at the selection tool, the direct selection tool and the pathfinder options.
Duration: 5 minutes