Hi everyone, this is Anne for Graphic Design How To, and today we're going to talk about
how to use symbols in Adobe Illustrator.
Now, I personally only use symbols in a couple ways, but there are a few other ways you can
use them too.
And we'll go over those too.
So let's get started.
The first way that I like to use symbols is to have sort of a template for the different
clients that I have.
I've got a few different logos that a client might use.
I have a circle with AB, AB Design, if I hit CMD Y, I can see this other logo which is
just white, and then this black logo.
So I'm going to create four different symbols of these.
First I'll come over here to my Symbols palette.
I'm going to get rid of these symbols that are in here because I don't really need those.
So we'll say Select All Unused and we'll delete.
All right, now I'm going to create a different symbol for each one of these logos.
So I'll select this first symbol with my V tool or the selection tool.
Just going to drag this one into my Symbols palette.
Now it's going to ask me to name it, which I never really name it, I don't see the point
in doing that.
You can choose a movie clip or a graphic and I choose graphic.
I've never actually used the movie clip version here.
Today, we're just going to be talking about the graphic one.
For symbol type, I'm going to make this a static symbol.
And we'll say OK, so now we have our new symbol over here.
I'm going to grab all the pieces of this next one, and pull it in.
And we'll make the same changes here.
And we'll do that with the other two.
OK, so now we have four symbols in our Symbols palette over here.
And now let's save these as a library.
I'm going to come up here to the side, go to Save Symbol Library.
And when you do this, you can see that it's saving it in a certain path for a Mac, that'll
be Library > Application Support and then you can see the other places it goes.
So if you actually need to navigate to this spot, you can find the path here.
OK, so let's save this as AB Design.
And we'll save.
If we quit Illustrator and open it back up, and we create a new document with CMD N, or
CTRL N on a PC.
I'll just make it a letter and say Create.
We can come over here to our Symbols palette, Open Symbol Library, and go down to User Defined
and you can see the AB Design there.
You'll have to completely quit Illustrator for this to work.
But now, anytime I'm working on the AB Design client, I have a symbol library for them.
And if I need their logo, I can just pull it out like this.
I can resize it once the document is finalized.
I can expand this so it's not linked to a symbol anymore.
So I'm going to go up to Object > Expand.
You can also hit CMD E or CTRL E on a PC and now it is not linked to one of these, it's
just your regular logo.
And I really recommend doing that.
You don't really want these symbols unexpanded in your finalized documents.
So that is one way to use symbols to create sort of 'logo libraries' for all of your clients.
The second way to use them is to replace all of the instances with one click, or one click
and drag.
So now I'm going to open a different document.
This is one I got from Vecteezy.com.
I believe they used symbols to create this, but when I opened it, there were no symbols
in this document.
So I created this purple symbol, which is all of the lighter color leaves up here.
And they are all connected to this symbol.
If I click on them, you can see the type of symbol up here at the top.
If it had a name, it would be named here.
We can edit it, we can break the link (this is the same as expand).
So I want to show you what happens when we edit a symbol.
There's actually more than one way to do this.
You can pull the symbol out, zoom in and then expand it.
And then make any changes you want.
We can use our A tool or Direct Selection to just move parts of it out, make it a little
wider, maybe make the leaf
parts a little longer, I'm going to P minus to get rid of some of these points.
Now it looks weird.
OK, I think I like this.
This is not a symbol anymore, I've expanded it.
But if we click it, and then hold OPT and drag over the top of our old symbol, it will
update all of those symbols anywhere they were located.
So all of these lighter leaves are now updated with just clicking and dragging.
Now you can delete this one.
You can also click on any symbol and go to Edit Symbol.
And it'll give you this dialog box and say OK.
And then it's somewhat similar to working in isolation mode –
you can make all your changes here, you can change your color.
And now we'll hit Escape.
And you can see that all of those symbols have updated.
OK, let's talk a little bit about dynamic symbols.
First, I'm going to make this a new symbol.
So I'll click the New Symbol button.
We'll change this to a graphic and we'll have it be a dynamic symbol.
The way you can tell a dynamic symbol is it has a little plus in the corner.
So now I'm going to pull this out to make some of these other instances.
Right now these...none of these are symbols and like I said, I downloaded this, but if
I was building it, I probably would want to have all of these be symbols.
If you've made this a dynamic symbol, you can actually change the color of just one
of them.
It won't update across all of them.
So it's a way to keep some differences in your symbols.
I'm going to use my A tool to select this piece, hit I and then choose this one.
So now it's still connected to the symbol, but it's actually a different color.
So that's kind of cool.
Let's put that there, we will do the same, I'll just copy this symbol.
I'm going to resize it with my V tool.
I'll hit A, you have to use the Direct Selection if you want to change parts of the dynamic
symbol, and then we'll hit I. I'm going to delete this one and put this one here.
CMD minus to zoom out, and then I'll create this last one.
OK, now these are all linked to this dynamic symbol up here.
So let's say we want to make a change to this.
I'm going to hit Z and zoom in.
So I'm going to click on my dynamic symbol and then Edit Symbol.
And with my A tool, I'm going to just pull these down like this.
And it's gonna mess up my shadow a little bit.
That's OK.
And then I'll hit Escape.
And now you can see over here that it's updated all of the others, but it's kept their colors.
So dynamic symbols can really be helpful if you're wanting to make changes to the symbol,
but still keep some parts of it separate from the other symbols, if that makes sense.
OK, now I want to show you one more thing.
I'm sure you notice when we first opened up our documents that there are some symbols
already in here, and I wanted to show you that there are a whole lot of symbols, they're
kind of like clipart that Illustrator gives you to work with right off the bat.
So if you come over here to the side and go to Open Symbol Library, you have a lot of
options here.
Let's open Sushi.
OK, let's pull out some of these.
So they're sort of ready made sushi if you for some reason needed that.
Some of them don't work very well in certain color modes.
So this blur that's happening is kind of getting messed up.
But anyway, once you expand this, and hit CMD E or CTRL E on a PC, it just becomes another
usable group of shapes for you.
So those are symbol libraries.
All right, I hope you liked my video this week.
If you liked it, please click on the Like button.
And I'll see you next week for another graphic design tutorial.
Thank you!!!