these illustrator tips will make you feel like you've become fully Adobe enlightened
oh and we're also going to make this thing later but let's start with this window right
here the Navigator window you might be thinking to yourself how is this little panel so helpful well
trust me when it comes to large documents like this one right here it's a true gem
now I can scroll around my document via this panel as it shows my entire workspace as a sort
of preview also I can just click to a certain point like maybe the last page on my document
it just makes workflows more intuitive and less stressful especially on those larger documents
so yeah the Navigator panel open it up and slap it to your sidebar just like this it will come in
handy next not one but two pencil hacks that are totally going to change the way you use the pen
tool so when we want to make an awkward shape in illustrator maybe a logo Mark some custom
typography or something like that the best thing to do the best practice is to apply some guides
the guides are taken from the rulers on the edges of your document and you should apply them
whenever your shape or your artwork will touch a vertical or horizontal plane so we want to drag
out some handles carefully and you can hold down shift to keep them straight and then you simply
just move to the next point of touch on your shape again click and pull out some handles but we can
actually hold down the command or the control key and then manipulate the handles like so and you
can also hold down shift to keep them level as I said before that's the first hack with the pen
tool so I'm going to continue as we started and I'm going to continue this Vector path around the
shape but wait what if I want to add anchor points what I'm still using the pen tool well press shift
and C on your keyboard and then you can do things like this pretty neat little function
but once you're finished you just simply press P for the pen tool again and continue with your path
and then here we finally have our neat and our smooth shape lovely
now I'm going to hit you with three quick hotkeys that you likely won't know about or at least you
probably haven't used all three the first one is with the type tool now if you want to click
away from our text after we've finished writing it out we normally would have to come up to the
selection tool which is across to the other end of the screen and you know it's just really annoying
when you do it over and over again in a workflow so instead simply press the Escape key on your
keyboard and bingo we now have the selection tool ready to use the second hotkey is all about the
eyedropper tool which is eye on your keyboard that's not the trick the trick is that say if I
wanted to take this CTA call to action here and I want to use a color sample from the gradient if I
do that I will actually sample the entire gradient which is annoying because I don't want that
instead hold down shift and then sample your color and now you're actually going to sample a precise
color sure the CTA looked better before in blue but this is just a demonstration now you can also
click and hold down that click or the eyedropper tool and actually move away from illustrator to
the edge of the screen somewhere else and you can sample colors like this but you often get
false colors doing this but it's also something pretty cool to know now here's a quick hack for
aligning things in illustrator if I want to make a shape directly in the center just find the center
point and then hold down both alt option and shift and click and drag now the shape is perfectly in
the middle without using any alignment tools or features we can also use this technique to
generate shapes within other objects or shapes but directly in the center and then hopping into
outline mode which is why on your keyboard we can see that yes in fact they are super Central
now it's time to put some of those things into practice and make this right here I
saw this on Pinterest by a dude called branding expert so appreciation to that
guy however I did tweak the workflow a tiny bit myself and made it a bit more intuitive
so draw out a circle with no fill and only a stroke using the alt option and shift process
then press a for the direct selection tool and click the bottom half of your circle and then just
delete it then press T and hover your cursor over the line until it says path and then click to make
this perfect you get the direct selection tool and carefully move the text fully around on each side
add your text and then open up the character
window and increase the weight until we have maxed out the text on the line
using the selection tool hold down the alt option key and then click and drag to duplicate
then click here hold down shift and rotate 180 degrees perfect now I'm going to press I for
the eyedropper tool and Sample the background color and don't worry it hasn't disappeared
select a different color and then generate a circle like so
we need to move this thing back and then bring It Forward in one layer so
it's actually behind the text I'm going to bring the circle to about this size so it
creeps over the text and then flick it over to a stroke and increase that stroke weight
in my experience the closer to the edges the text is the better now select everything and
press command or Ctrl G to group them together and then heal up the transform window found here
you can experiment with these values but 80 percent here then minus 19 right here
and at the bottom 10 copies and then click preview
pretty cool looking and like I said you can actually experiment with values in
this window but we're not actually done yet there's something important left to do
so select everything it's an expand appearance and then again expand
foreign objects that you can play around with and scale with ease I think this looks really cool
actually so Props again to Brand the expert a lot of resources used in today's video were actually
sourced directly from envato elements and it's something I personally use on a daily basis just
to save time in my workflows on envato there are millions of resources that designers can use on
their projects and lately I've been grabbing a bunch of resources from the 3D section you can
even just click and rotate and choose a kind of point of view you want to download which
is pretty neat there are tons of downloads though and all kinds of different projects and styles and
you can be confident using them on your designs because it's a one license fits all kind of deal
when you sign up to envato now you can try it for seven days totally for free but if you don't like
it after that you can just move on with your day as usual and you can find envato elements
Linked In the description box below but if you want to further boost your Adobe Illustrator
workflow just click the video on screen and until next time guys design your future today peace