many designers either won't know everything in today's video or they just won't understand how
useful they really are the first one is a handy function that is far superior to the
gaussian blur effect and you'll soon see why so when you have your shape or your object
come up to stylize and then select the feather option
you'll notice this box up here where you can control the feather radius which can maybe feather
the blur edge of your object or you can just totally blend a shape into the background but why
is this better than the gaussian blur well let's try and create a gaussian blur with a new circle
you can see the render is pretty terrible and yes we can often change the document raster
effect settings which sometimes does help but this feather option is just so clean and so reliable
it's great for aspects on designs such as the glow seen on this moon the feather tool is awesome for
vector arts but let's move on to the next part of today's tutorial here is a really large and
complicated design that i'm currently working on more about that soon this next tool really helps
with your navigation within a workflow and it's something i only recently started using myself
and yes i know the text down here is set to differing sizes a lot of this design
is actually unfinished just a heads up anyway this tool in question is found
under the window drop down menu and then found here navigator
you get this pretty cool little window that opens up and essentially shows you your entire document
and beyond the red outline box here shows the section your screen can currently see and view
and you can just click any part of your document to instantly transport to that section or you can
click and drag around your navigator window and scroll around your document in real time
you're also able to set the magnification of the zoom while working in this window but yeah
it's so helpful to have this function off to the side ready to make use of any time this design is
going to be a huge in-depth pdf guide to logo designing it's going to take whoever uses it
along the design process step by step with some tips and some hints along the way more about that
later this month there is a tool in illustrator that most people never use or even know about
so we have two shapes here and a lot of designers including myself love to use the pathfinder tool
which is of course completely fine however there is a little nifty tool that is found here if we
select a shape and we can use this kind of cookie cutter tool to cut the shape below divide objects
below is great for making new shapes possibly for logo designing or other geometric type designs
it's just another function that's great to know about when you're using adobe illustrator
next up something to do with typography so i have here two semicircles in illustrator
with two lots of text the font being of course basement grotesque so to flip this text below
so it's actually legible we can zoom in here and just flip it like so which can be a bit fiddly
actually there is a whole separate panel that some designers aren't even aware of
with your text selected come into this menu here and now we can flip the text with just one click
that's pretty cool but also we have other options to play around with the first one
is just an artistic way to arrange your text with styles and i rarely ever use this one to be honest
but it's just there if you need it of course and then below that is an option that dictates
where the text is on the path so essentially below it in the center of it or above it
and then finally some spacing settings for the characters on your text along a path so yeah this
is one panel that some people don't know about but which is actually very very useful
and here's one i'm sure many of you if not most of you do know about but there will be people
watching this video who don't know about it so i do want to share it because it is so helpful
so i have here a very complicated design if i go ahead and press command or control y i enter into
line mode line mode is so helpful for illustrating but also maybe more so logo designing now you can
see exactly where the vector paths are despite the size of the stroke or whatever effect is applied
heading into line mode is something i toggle between a lot on my designs and to exit line
mode you just simply press command or control y once again so you can keep hopping in and out of
it pretty easily throughout your workflow it's another tool to your arsenal when working in
illustrator and here again we have two more circles but this time with a different tip
i've spoken about this one on the channel before but that was a long time ago and it is so helpful
if we use the minus front option in the pathfinder window i cut the top shape into the shape below
the thing is that we can see in the layers window just here that we have just one shape if i then go
ahead and commit the same process but this time if i hold down the alt key on windows or the option
key on a mac while clicking the pathfinder function i now have a genuine compound path
we can come into the layers window and then click only the middle section with the blue icon and
then just manipulate the shape and the size in any which way we want to this isn't a colored circle
you are literally seeing through the shape onto the background and i can demonstrate that right
here so there are some nifty tools and probably actually hidden tools to some people i hope
you got some value from this video but if you do want to see more graphic design content by myself
just click a video on screen and until next time guys design your future today peace
you