Hi, this is Anne with Graphic Design How To, and today I'm going to show you how and why to
use export for screens in Adobe Illustrator. All right, let's get started. Okay, so I've
got my logo file open, and I've created three artboards with different versions as a logo. So
here I've got one that is full color, this one is white, and you can't see it unless it's selected,
and then this one is black. Now a couple of things to mention: when I make a file like this,
I like to have a little bit of white space around the logo. But that's definitely not necessary.
It's just a personal preference. But one thing that IS necessary is naming your artboards. If I
go to Window > Artboards, you can see them right down here. You can just double click and then
change the name of them, and that part's important for later. Another thing is, as the title says,
this is for screens. So if you also want to save some version for your client for printing,
I actually have another video that shows how to do that, and it should be on your screen above. Okay,
so let's export these. So we'll go to File > Export and Export for Screens.
Now over here, in the left panel, you can see your three logos, and underneath that, you'll
see the names that you put on the artboards. And these will actually be part of the file name,
which is pretty cool. So that's the artboards tab, and there's also a tab called assets here. So I'm
going to click on that. and here it says Asset Export panel. So I'm going to click on that.
And that brings up this window. Now this window is really great if you just want
little pieces of your artwork to be exported that could be used separately. So maybe as a
profile picture or something like that. So I'm just going to select the icon part of my logo,
and drag it onto this Asset Export Window, and we can rename it right here by double clicking...or
we can rename them in the other dialog box. So now we need to go back to the Export for
Screens window again. So File > Export > Export for Screens. And now you can see that asset here.
So we could also rename right here by double clicking. I'm going to make sure this one has
a checkmark on it. And then I'm going to come over here to All Assets, and make sure that
it's checked. And if you don't want all assets to export, you can just uncheck this. If you have a
lot of them in here, you can choose the ones you want. To choose where to export them to,
you can click this folder, and this is fine. So I'll choose that. I want it to open the location
after export, so I'll keep that checked. And I usually want subfolders for this, and I usually
like them saved by format name. So this will just mean that all the JPEGs will go into one folder,
all the PDF files will go in a different folder. Now down here in the Format section. We can add
all the formats we want. The first one I want is JPEG. So I'm going to put JPEG 100.
The 100 here means the quality of JPEG. So I always either keep this at 80 or 100. Actually
always 100, but 80 is probably fine too. I'll change this to 1x. That just means that
it's going to be 100%. And then my suffix will be 100 for 100%. And then down here is the prefix.
So this is the thing that's going to go on the front of every asset. So I'm going to put GDH2,
which is Graphic Design How To. So the way this will be named is GDH2-icon only-100. This is the
suffix here, and you can change this if you want. Okay, so that's good. Now let's add a new scale.
For this one, I want a PNG file. I'm going to put this at 1x.
I'm going to make my suffix also be 100 because it's 100%. Okay, now I want another PNG,
this one I want two times the size. So I'll put this at 200. And then I also want an SVG file.
When you choose SVG, you don't get the options because it's a vector format,
and it can be sized to any size without losing quality. And then we'll also add a PDF.
Same thing there - it's a vector format. Okay, so we'll Export Assets. It'll take just a second,
and then when we come out here you can see the four folders that it's created. We had one JPG one
PDF, two PNGs, and when I preview these, we get a 100% size and a 200% size, and then an SVG file.
Okay, I'm going to go back to my document and go to export for screens again. Now this time,
I want to export my artboard, so I'll click that. And this will give us all the same options. So I'm
going to choose All, I don't need bleed, because this is artboards versus full screen. If we choose
full document, this is what we're going to get, and I don't want that. I want my artboards.
We'll export to the same place and keep everything else set up the same. So down here under formats,
unfortunately, it didn't keep what I had before. So I'm going to have to add these again.
For some reason, it just automatically populates with some strange things. Okay, so we're ready
to export now, and I'll choose Export Artboard. And now the really nice thing is, it just adds
those to the folders that are already created. It doesn't replace what was originally there. So
now when I come in here, I can see each version, plus that asset we did at first. Now this one was
a white on white jpg - that's going to give us a solid white block, and that's kind of pointless.
So I'm going to delete that one. Here are PDFs, and then the PNG files, and then our SVG files.
The white PDF is also kind of pointless, so I'm going to go ahead and delete that one, too.
Okay, I'm going to go back to my document, and I'm going to show you one more thing.
So I'll come into Export for Screens again, and I want to show you these little formats
right here. If we click iOS, this button will give us optimization presets for iOS devices.
And then if we click Android, we get the presets for Androids. And then if we click this little
gear over here, we can actually change the default settings for each of these formats.
So if we always want a background color that's transparent, we can do that. So right now,
it's set that all PNG files will be transparent backgrounds, which is pretty normal. But you
can also change whether you want it art or type optimized. So these are where all your default
settings are located. So if you create a lot of logos, this is a really great way to save them out
for your client. Now keep in mind, these aren't for print, so you would want to go ahead and save
them for print separately. I think the reason they didn't include those is because there are just so
many variables. Somebody might need it to be, you know, a foot wide, and somebody else might need it
to be two inches wide, but the screens version is really nice. So to get these to your client,
all you have to do is select all four of them, and then come over here to File > Compress 4 Items.
And that'll give you a ZIP file of those 4. Now on a PC. I think you can right click and choose
Compress or ZIP, something like that. You can also do that on Mac, by the way. Then we'll rename this
and we could just send this file to our client via email or WeTransfer or something like that
if they're really big. All right, if you liked this video, please click on the Like button.
And I'll see you next week with another graphic design tutorial. Thank you!!