in today's video I thought I'd share six things that I've come to learn about
Adobe Illustrator in the last 365 days now we're all constantly learning and so
I also discover new tips and new functions within Adobe Illustrator some
of them were suggestions by viewers of this channel and others were just me
messing about illustrator and discovering certain things on my own
accord there's going to be a test at the very end of the video so let's jump
right in the first one is actually an expansion on the last video I made and
that was about offsetting strikes around typography the method I showed you was a
destructive way because we outline the text but this new method I found out
actually allows us to edit the text after the stroke has been offset so
firstly come in to the appearance panel and then add a stroke we then in to
offset the stroke and like before it looks rather messy if you remember back
to the previous video however what we actually need to do is to come into the
path find option right here and then click Add now this was brought to my
attention by a viewer so thanks to that person for this tip we can now edit the
text whilst the stroke is offset awesome
so this next function I learned recently in Illustrator is based around the group
selection tool so here are four squares and we can group them together like so
with command or control G the group selection tool allows us to select and
move objects within a group however if we double click the group selection tool
in the toolbar menu we now have access to a menu of precise transformations on
the selected object this is a quick and a very easy thing to do and like I said
it just offers more precision on your movements within a group selection it's
just really nice to have this option there when you want to be working with
precision on your graphic designs now the third tip that I've realized across
the last year in Illustrator is linked to patterns now I've made a quick
selection of circles here and I can actually go ahead and open up the
swatches panel to turn this into a pattern itself that's not the actual tip
however is just part of the process but in the swatches panel you will find the
patterns menu right here and I can drag and drop my shapes into
that menu and it's going to give me a maid pattern swatch now the thing I've
learned is that you can apply your pattern to a shape and if you retake
that shape the pattern rotates as well
but the question arises what if you want to only rotate the pattern or just
rotate the square well in the rotate menu you can check only the pattern box
and this is going to allow you to rotate the pattern itself within the shape and
of course the shape is staying stationary which is pretty cool
do you remember there is a test at the very end of this video but for now let's
move on to the fourth illustrator tip this tip is another instance of trying
out the old double click method on something new now that something is the
live corners in illustrator CC no I did showcase this not long ago in a video
but to quickly go back over it you can double click the live corners in
illustrator CC and you're gonna open up this menu here which offers more options
for corners of shapes now I only realize this a short while ago by playing around
with double-clicking things in Illustrator and there are actually quite
a lot of things that you can access with a double click it's quite interesting to
know actually so the fifth tip today is based around the eyedropper tool and I
have one circle off to the left here but let's say I want to copy the
transparency of the circle here but not the actual stroke style I want to have
the same epatha T which is 23% now if I press I for the eyedropper tool and then
sample it I get the opacity but I also get the stroke style and everything else
relating to that shape now what I can do however is to double-click the
eyedropper tool in the toolbar menu and I'm gonna have many many options open to
me so here I'm only gonna choose transparency and this will ensure I copy
that alone from the shape and finally before the test part of today's video
something really needs that can save you a whole lot of time and that's something
I did showcase recently and that's the shift key if I hold down an arrow key to
move this object it moves quite slowly across the artboard due to my increment
settings but if I hold down the shift key I will speed things up by a factor
of 10
I can also do this for things like increasing or decreasing the stroke
weights and also note that control or command will actually increase and
decrease things by decimal points effectively slower than usual
but yeah the shift key can be used on many aspects of your design workflow
such as when working at a blog Rafi as well changing the size and also the
kerning of the type is increased when holding our shift so how well were you
actually listening to the points in today's video well it's actually time to
test your knowledge your attention and your skills so when offsetting a stroke
around typography in a non-destructive workflow method what function in the
Pathfinder menu in the appearance panel did we use
what was the main reason for the first tip when offsetting strokes around
topography where exactly can you find the group selection tool in Illustrator
how do you access the group selection tool menu that offers you precise
movements around the group objects
which panel did I drag my pattern to so I could feel a shape with that pattern
how do you access the eyedropper selection settings menu
to increase the amount of nudges on objects by a factor of 10 which keyd
hold down
so how well did you do on the test do let me know the comment down below and
also let me know what you think of my content here is a toy graphics how I can
improve it and also just suggestions for the future be sure to share my content
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your skills and your awareness as a graphic designer until next time guys
design your future today peace