if you find it difficult for whatever reason to use a de Billa straighter for
your graphic designs don't worry because I've got five
different solutions as to why you maybe find it difficult to use illustrator for
your workflow now the first possible reason that you might be finding a
difficult to use illustrator is that you're using the pen tool too often and
the pen tool is a really good tool for certain situations but I think most
designers overcomplicated and overuse it when you want to design specific shapes
or designs it is actually really useful just to use geometric shapes so for
example here I could generate a circle pressing L on my keyboard and then
generating a square by pressing M directly from the center outward across
the circle now I've got these two shapes on my i/o board
I can select both the shapes and then open up the Pathfinder window now if I
use the unite function in Pathfinder window I've made this shape on the right
as you can see here I can also use the exclude function which would generate
the kind of quarter of a pie section of the shape as you can see in the middle
but we can also use the shape builder tool here and by holding down alt option
key I can - away some of the shapes so as you can see it's very quick and very
useful to use pre generated shapes to make designs in a day billa straighter
if possible don't use the pen tool too much in your graphic designs
now the second reason as to why you might be finding it difficult to use a
de Villa straighter is that you're not using the outline mode you can access
the outline mode by pressing command or control Y on your keyboard the outline
mode is amazing because you can see just a vector path of shapes and this is like
a blueprint of your graphic design work you can perfectly see where shapes align
and join together and this just helps you to keep things really organized and
really precise you can still perform any function that you want to do whilst
you're still in outline mode so for example I can use the Pathfinder options
here and then just press command or control Y to revert back sometimes a
design is too complicated to the eyes and is just too much going on I actually
use outline mode a lot when I'm layered as I name because it's really precise
and you can really hone in on specific parts of your design which you cannot
see with the shapes being as they are originally
now the third reason as to why you might be finding illustrator a bit difficult
to use is that you're neglecting the layers panel I know that many of you
will be accustomed to the layers panel with Photoshop when you might think well
it's not the same illustrator let me tell you right now that the layers panel
in Illustrator is amazing for organizing your work and keeping things really
really neat so for starters I can unlock and unlock specific layers just by
clicking the lock icon this by itself is a really handy feature to have but there
is actually a lot more that you can do with the layers panel if you label all
of your layers with specific names you can quickly jump to that specific part
of the design and then edit it as you see fit this radar speed up your
workflow and it's just professional and neat to keep everything in order like
this you can also rearrange the order of your layers just by clicking and
dragging them as well and sometimes when we're working on designs we accidentally
select layers that are really large and get in the way so working in the layers
window we can just lock or unlock a layer with ease like I'm doing here so
yeah don't be afraid to label and organize your layers and always keep it
open somewhere on your graphic design workflow
now the fourth reason why you might finding it difficult to work in and
illustrator is that your didn't seem in far enough let's say I want to work on
the pink lights on the edge of the laptop you should not be afraid to zoom
in as far as you can for that relevant part of the design to work on it
it's way better than being zoomed too far out and you can't see the design
properly but one bonus feature is that you can set up a full-screen view of
your work to revert back to now to do that and come up to view and then click
new view you can save the current view of your design here so you can just
revert back to it later so for example I can zoom in to say the top right of the
screen let's say I'm working on this part of the area of the design I can
just quickly check my progress but Azumi right back out to the full screen of
view by just clicking in the top drop down menu but the key point here is that
don't be afraid to zoom into your designs because you can make the right
adjustments and the right edits to your designs when you can see it properly on
your screen
now the last reason why you might be finding it difficult to use a day Billis
later is that you're not used to the keyboard shortcuts so firstly let's go
back to zooming in and zooming out just press command or control + + - on your
keyboard and you zoom in and out of your design like so also something
complimentary to this shortcut is holding down the spacebar and then
clicking and dragging to move around this is a real lifesaver and I always
use this shortcut every single day on my designs if I
didn't have it I really don't know what I'd be able to do because using the left
and right arrows on the actual desktop itself is really annoying to use so I'm
really thankful for the spacebar shortcut also of course there's command
C to copy something and in command V to paste a duplicate but also we can press
command F to place a duplicate right over the top of the original position
and then of course we've got the shortcuts for the selection tools which
is a the direct selection tool and then V for the selection tool then you can
press P for the pen tool and also the shift X to change the stroke over to a
fill and then when you want to select off of the pencil paths and just press
the V for the selection tool so yeah just look up the most basic and common
illustrator shortcuts and try to get them imprinted on your memory because
they do save time and they will boost your workflow to practice does make
perfect so just get used to the shortcuts and everything else I've
mentioned today if you want to see more do be literate too content from me here
at Satori graphics go ahead and subscribe for weekly graphic design
content until next time design your future today peace