Illustrator Introduction

Objectives & Expected Outcomes

To understand the Illustrator interface

To be able to use the drawing tools that Illustrator employs, being able to modify shape and colour

To be able to create an illustration from scratch and understand printing implications

Pre-Requisites

Delegates should have a working understanding of their operating system, and be familiar with using a mouse.

Subjects

Getting to grips with Illustrator

Vector and bitmaps | Interface overview | Creating, editing and saving illustrator files | Artboard, rulers, grids and guides | Print areas and the control palette | Toolbox | Setting up documents for print

Colour

RGB/CMYK | Colour palette | Adding/editing colour | process, spot and global colours | Sampling colour in current artwork | Filling and stroking | Gradients

Transformations

Scaling | Rotating | Reflection | Free distort | Envelope distort | Step and repeat

Paths

Using the pen tool | Editing and manipulating the pen tool | Slicing paths and anchor points | Hints and tips for using the pen

Objects and Drawing

Selecting objects | Reshaping objects, drawing lines and geometric shapes | Applying colour fills and stokes | Object transformation | Object duplication

Type

Adding type | Type to outlines | Shaped type areas | Character formatting | Paragraph formatting | Text on a path | Textbox attributes

Graphic Styles

Using styles to enhance objects | Creating, editing, saving and applying styles

Graphs and charts

Creating and editing basic graphs, column and bar charts | Graph options | Importing data from Excel

Layers

Understanding layers | Layer positioning | Shuffling layers | Layer order

Print/Output/Production

Preview Illustrator documents | Output | Export to PDF | Export artwork in alternative formats | File formats | Export to Photoshop | Print options | Print alternatives

See all of the available Seven Institute Adobe Courses