so in today's video I'm going to show you my very own setup for working on
logo designs in Adobe Illustrator and this is my logo set up in 2019
okay so firstly obviously I'm going to make a new document and when I'm just
starting out my logo design projects I tend to go for a square canvas and I'd
like to start off for making two art words which I will convert into six in a
minute which you're going to see but of course there's no bleeds needed because
this isn't a printed project and the color Molly doesn't matter too much but
let's going to CMYK and then a 300 PPI resolution I say once I have my two our
boards I then grab the artboard tool and I do like to separate them just a tiny
bit
then I can actually hold down shift and then click both of the apples at the
same time and then hold down the alt or the option key to click and duplicate
them downwards I can repeat the process to have six different artboards and I do
this because by default illustrator doesn't space them out enough for my
liking and what I personally tend to do is I start in the top left with my Lego
design and then I kind of evolve that design over to the next and then
downwards so once I have my our board set up I like to make a few different of
hue options and just come up to view and then create new view and I'm gonna make
one of you to see the entire board selection and then I'm gonna create an
individual view for each of the artboards so I can just then zoom right
into a specific design but it's coming up to the view options anytime in my
projects I find this is really fast and a really efficient way to work so the
next step for setting up my document for later designing is that I can actually
rename the artboards if I want to by coming up to here with the artboard tool
selected this isn't essential but it might help later when we get to exports
on a mass amount for web now quickly one crucial thing that I really hate being
activated by default and that is the align to art pixel grid option up here
if you see the icon black like you can see on my screen this means is activated
and for my logo design projects this is going to cause me all kinds of headaches
if it is actually switched on and to demonstrate how it's gonna cause
problems I'm gonna make a shape on my outward and
then watch as I grab the pen tool and try to place a vector point in a
specific place illustrator is actually snapping the pencil to each individual
pixel placing which is really really annoying because nothing can ever be as
accurate and as precise as you want it to be so when I go ahead and turn it off
you can see I can now place my pencil vector points in any position I want
so next for my document in Adobe Illustrator for logo designing and
probably I'm gonna need the rulers so press command or control R to open up
the rulers and then I'm gonna address the increment nudge settings let me
explain what I means so basically if I've got an object or a design on screen
I can press the upper right left and down arrows on my keyboard and this will
dictate you know where the shape or the design is moved if the settings are not
relevant to your canvass size throughout board size then the shape is either
going to move too slowly or too fast along your screen and right now if I try
and nudge this shape it doesn't move anywhere because the settings are too
small too low so I can change the preferences in the preference settings
and I can change the increment values to something a bit more higher in value
commando control K is the shortcut for the illustrator preference headings and
now when I move the circle it moves a lot easier and not further along the
outboards the increment settings are going to be completely down to the sides
of your artboard and also down to just your personal preference I'm now going
to tidy up an arrange my workstation for a logo designing and to begin with I'm
gonna remove these options on the side here just to maximize my screen space
for designing also I'm going to a lesson spacing in a
tool bar and I really make use of the shape builder tool when I'm logo
designing so I'm gonna drag out that panel here so it has easy access
whenever I want to use it and to go along with that I'm gonna grow up the
Pathfinder window as well because I do use that a lot too and logo designing
and it's just nice to have them both in the same place you know easily
accessible I probably should do this at the end but just to let you know now you
can actually save this workstation and this setup that you've got to a relevant
name say for example for me I could save a illustrator 20:19
workspace for a logo designing next another really crucial and important
setting for me is the illustrator smart guides and these are the settings I use
here and this allows me to use illustrator in a way that I'm perfectly
aware when I'm in line and evenly spaced apart from different design assets on my
logo design projects
so as you can see there are magenta lines that appear letting me know when I
am in line with a different points or different objects now you can turn these
off by pressing command or control U on your keyboard because sometimes you do
want to have them when you want to evenly spaced out objects or make things
completely in line in quick real-time but also it can be annoying because you
don't sometimes you want to position something in a specific and a precise
way that is not in line an illustrator will try and fix it in position for you
and we're gonna explore yet more preference settings but this time let's
take a quick look at the user interface and now I personally go for the second
darkest interface and let me explain why if I'm going to be logo designing for
quite a long period of time having the bright interface is really gonna mess
with my eyes and it's gonna give me a headache
but then if you go to the other extreme and go for the completely darker one I
feel the text and the other white elements are too high contrasting to the
dark interface so I'd like to go for the second most darkest as it's easy on the
eyes but it's not too contrasting but yeah let me know down below what is your
personal preference for the interface I'm really curious to know what you guys
use for your setup in Illustrator but
then moving on from that preference I've got a different preference setting that
is for the anchor points on my design by default I don't have them set to the
maximum height and I don't have them too small I do like to have the anchor
points easily seen and easily accessible but I don't want them too big so it kind
of crowds my design
so as you can see they're fairly big and this is what I'm used to actually this
looks normal to me I remember when I changed them up for the very first time
I thought it looked huge but now looking back at it these smaller ones kind of
feel a bit weird but yeah again that's just my preference and that's why
they're called preference settings so we've nearly set up my illustrator
document for Lego designing but one of the really important things is to have
your color swatches ready to apply now I typically design a logo in black and
white firsts but it's just nice to have the colors there if need be and I
personally start off a little design from Pantone colors from the get-go
Pantone colors are universally recognized and universally known
wherever you go into any print shop so it makes sense to use Pantone colors you
can find them in a swatch library under the color book section and Pantone solid
uncoated is usually used for matte designs you can always use standard
colors and then convert the color I work later but you will have changes in how
it looks so I personally think it's just you know it just makes sense to start
using Pantone from the beginning and I'm gonna lump that over with the other
panels here easily accessible whenever I need them so yeah that is my illustrator
setup for a look at designing in 2019 let me know what you think of today's
video but also let me know about your setup and your personal preferences I
find it really interesting that real graphic designers but we all use the
same program in a different way there are probably a few other settings that
I've missed but I can't think of them right now but your make sure to
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time design your future today peace