Hi, this is Anne with Graphic Design How To, and today I'm going to show you how to set up your
workspace in Adobe Illustrator and then save it as a workspace. Now if you have a bunch of panels
that you use a lot in Adobe Illustrator, you want those to all be kind of expanded.
So in this video, I'm going to show you how I set up mine and yours will probably be quite
a bit different, but it's whatever works for you. I just want to show you kind of how it all works.
By the way, this is an excerpt from my new Skillshare class, which is called
10 Easy Things to Draw in Adobe Illustrator. And if you want a two week free trial to Skillshare,
there's a comment below that will give that to you, and that way you can take all my classes for
free. All right, let's get started. This video is about setting up your workspace, and this is
something you might want to do if you want to have the same look as my workspace. All right, let's go
ahead and open Illustrator. We'll come over here to Create New. And then I'm going to choose Print,
and then Letter. And we'll come over here to Create.
So that we can get the same starting point, I'll come up here to Window, and then Workspace and
then we'll choose Essentials Classic. Then go ahead and come up to Window > Workspace again,
and then Reset Essentials Classic. So now your workspace should look a lot like mine, except
it might be the dark settings. So if you want to use the light setting like me, you can come up to
Illustrator > Preferences, and then General. If you're on a Windows system, this will probably
be under Edit. So Edit > Preferences. Now I'll come down here to the user interface,
and here's your brightness. I know a lot of people like the dark setting, and that's
totally fine. There's no difference. This is just my preference to make it light. And now we'll come
down and press OK. Okay, so now we all have a similar look for our Illustrator interface. I'm
going to show you how to customize this so you can get to the panels you need a little easier.
These tools over here are your toolbar. And I like to pull these out so that they sit right here,
it gives me a little extra space at the bottom. So to do that, you just grab the
top right up here and then just pull like this. And then I just put them kind of back in the
same place. Up here is your Control panel. Now if you're not seeing your Control panel
for some reason during the lesson, you'll want to come up here to Window > Control
right here. And all of these panels over here are also available in Window. First, we'll
open this little flyout. So I'm going to click these two little arrows to expand the panels.
First, you'll see Color and Color Guide, and I like these right up here in the upper right. So
I'm going to click in this blank area over here to just pull this out like this, and then I'll click
on the top and set it right up there. You can see when you hover over different parts that you'll
get some blue areas, and that shows you that it's going to snap in between those places. We want to
come up here to the very top. You'll see you get a rectangle around everything. But if you move up a
little higher, you'll get just a line. And when we see that line, we'll just release. And that
way it'll snap up to the upper right. Okay, next, I also want my swatches to be over here. So I'm
going to click in the blank area, pull it out, and then I'll click on the top here, hover under Color
until I get the blue bar, and then just release. Now for this next set, the Stroke, Gradient and
Transparency, I actually want Transparency to be separate. So I'm going to click right on the
word and pull this one out. And that'll separate it from its little group. Then I'll get right on
the top and pull it right underneath Swatches like this. I want my Artboards to be right underneath
Transparency. I need to pull it out of this group, so I'll get right on the word itself,
and they just click and drag, come up here to the top and hover. Right underneath Transparency
underneath Artboards, I like Transparency, Align and Pathfinder. So I'm going to come up here to
Window and I can choose any one of those. I'm going to choose Align right here, and it'll open
this little group that has all three of them in it. I want that whole group underneath Artboard.
So I'll come up here to the very top, I'll click and then hover until I get the line, and release.
Now I don't use Properties or Libraries very much. I'm going to get in this area of the group
and just pull it out, and then I'll just click on the X to get rid of these. If you want to bring
them back, you can of course. Just go to Window and find them here. Properties is right here.
Okay, so the right side of our panel is all set up the way I want. Now I'm going to work on the left
side. I like my Character and Paragraph to be up here. So I'm going to go to Window, and then these
are a little hidden. You'll have to go to Type and then you can just choose Character or Paragraph
and it'll open that set. I'll click up here in the very top and then I'll hover at the top of this
column. Stroke is already exactly where I want it, so it's perfect. And then I'm going to open my
Links. I'll go to Window and Links. And these I'll put it right underneath my Stroke. Next, I want to
separate my Appearance and Graphic Styles. I'll go ahead and click on Graphic Styles and pull it out.
And then I'm just going to put it right above the Appearance. Now I have Layers and Asset Export
down here, and I don't want either one of those to be in the column. So I'll click here and just drag
it out, and then I'll click the little X. Now I do use Layers sometimes, but not that often. So when
I need those, I just hit F7 on my keyboard, and it brings them up, and then I can hit F7 to toggle
them off. Okay, my Illustrator setup is exactly how I want it. So now I need to save my Workspace.
We'll go to Window > Workspace, and I'll choose New Workspace. And I'll call my new workspace
'A.' Now I already have a workspace named A,' so I'm just going to override it by hitting OK.
Now as you're working, you might accidentally pull some things out like this. You might be
moving things around, and when that happens, it's hard to remember where they were. And that's why
workspaces are so great. So to reset everything we can just come up to Window > Workspace and
then choose our workspace. Then we can go back to Workspace and Reset our workspace. And it'll put
everything exactly back where it was. All right, if you liked this video, please click on the Like
button. And I'll see you in a couple days with another graphic design tutorial. Thank you!!!