Overview
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Explore techniques for using Illustrator 2021, the flagship vector graphics design application from Adobe.
Syllabus
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Introduction
- Welcome to One-on-One
- A first look at Illustrator
- Opening a document by double-clicking it
- Introducing the Home screen
- Creating a new document
- The units of design: Points and picas
- Creating very large artwork
- Overriding units of measure
- The advanced document settings
- Activating missing fonts
- Modifying your new document
- Saving Illustrator artwork
- Saving a cloud document
- Pages of any size, at any angle
- Using the Artboard tool
- Undo, Redo, and Revert
- Selecting multiple artboards
- Creating a new artboard
- Copying, pasting, and duplicating artboards
- Five ways to resize artboards
- Introducing the Artboards panel
- Navigating between artboards
- Aligning and distributing artboards
- Automatically tidying up your artboards
- Artboards and rulers
- Getting around your artwork
- Zooming in and out
- Using the more precise Zoom tool
- Zooming on a selection (or not)
- GPU Performance and Animated Zoom
- Scrolling (or panning) a document
- Specifying a custom zoom level
- Working with multiple open documents
- Customizing your panels: Do not skip!
- Saving your custom panels as a workspace
- Cycling between screen modes
- Trim View and Presentation Mode
- Now, you draw
- Guidelines and center guides
- Positioning guides numerically
- Using the Line Segment tool
- Working with and without the bounding box
- Moving and duplicating objects
- Select Similar Objects and Global Edit
- Introducing the Scissors tool
- Joining your line segments
- Introducing the Eyedropper tool
- Using the Arc tool
- Using the Spiral tool
- Using the Polar Grid tool
- Duplicating and scaling spirals
- Using the Rectangular Grid tool
- Auto-blending fill colors
- A preview of shape building
- And now, you draw better
- Creating a time-saving template
- Using the Rectangle tool
- Creating a rectangle by the numbers
- Copying and pasting a hex color code
- Using the Ellipse tool
- Creating a circle by the numbers
- Live pies and custom guides
- Creating a pie with numerical accuracy
- Using the Polygon tool
- Using the Star tool
- Creating a star of a specific size
- Creating a series of evenly spaced rays
- Using the crazy Flare tool
- The top-secret tilde key trick
- How color works
- The color modes: RGB vs. CMYK
- Hue, saturation, and brightness
- Selecting a color from the Spectrum Ramp
- Creating and applying swatches
- Working with global swatches
- Searching swatches by name
- Auto-deleting and adding swatches
- Using the Eyedropper tool
- Loading swatches from another document
- The rich world of strokes
- Adjusting the line weight
- How strokes align to path outlines
- Caps, joins, and miter limit
- Making practical use of caps and joins
- Dashes and arrowheads
- Variable-width strokes
- Numerically adjusting width points
- Custom aligning strokes to paths
- Creating a custom width profile
- Creating a classic round-dotted outline
- Drawing a quick-and-dirty gear
- Outline Stroke and Compound Path
- Combining multiple strokes
- Offsetting strokes to simulate depth
- Text at its best
- Placing and flowing text
- Converting between area and point type
- Modifying the text frame
- Creating custom margins guides
- Changing the font and type style
- Introducing variable fonts
- Paragraph alignment
- Type size and leading
- Dialing in custom variable styles
- Creating your own custom italics
- Kerning characters of type
- Roman hanging punctuation
- Filling and stroking text
- Vertical alignment and justification
- Snapping objects to characters of type
- Join and the Shape Builder
- Using the Join command
- Using the Join tool
- Object > Path > Outline Stroke
- Using the Shape Builder tool
- More ways to use the Shape Builder tool
- Creating a real-world project
- Creating an inset reflection
- Coloring a path with the Shape Builder tool
- Sculpting with variable-width strokes
- Converting text to path outlines
- Gap detection and path splitting
- Drawing with the Shaper tool
- Combining paths with the Shaper tool
- Editing paths inside a Shaper Group
- Freeform drawing at its best
- Drawing freeform path outlines
- The Smooth tool and Path Eraser tool
- Extending and connecting paths
- Drawing straight and perpendicular lines
- Creating a tracing template
- Combining the Pencil tool with a drawing tablet
- Coloring your Pencil tool art
- The best tools for painting
- Painting with the Blob Brush
- Fusing path outlines together
- Blob Brush size and strategies
- Introducing the Eraser tool
- Reassigning keyboard shortcuts
- Painting background paths
- Erasing all kinds of paths
- Erasing and smoothing away lumps
- The Blob Brush and the opacity value
- Painting with a drawing tablet
- Using the Simplify command
- Drawing one point at a time
- Drawing with the Curvature tool
- Working with smooth and corner points
- Creating and editing open path outlines
- Tracing a photographic detail
- Adding a basic textured fill
- Shape building a castle wall
- A first look at gradients
- Editing a shape with the Curvature tool
- A first look at object blends
- Duplicating and scaling a complex object
- Drawing a custom letterform
- Creating a rippling line segment
- Adding a piece of vector-based clipart
- The tool that can draw anything
- Creating corner points
- Adding and deleting anchor points
- How smooth points work
- Drawing smooth points
- Drawing cusp points
- Using the Anchor Point tool
- Real-world drawing with the Pen tool
- Drawing a very complex path outline
- Copying and repurpose path segments
- Drawing a lot with very few points
- Creating dimension with shadows
- Shading the eye, ear, and nose
- Drawing smoothly waving path outlines
- Making corners smooth
- The round corner widget
- Rounding off corner points
- Changing the corner type
- Rounding characters of type
- Absolute vs. relative rounding
- Drawing with rounded rectangles
- Detailing your iPhone
- Combining round-corner shapes
- Create better, faster with round corners
- Turning corner points into organic curves
- Reshaping rounded paths
- Saving for devices and the web
- Aligning objects to the pixel grid
- Aligning objects as you draw or modify them
- Aligning text to the pixel grid
- Introducing the Save for Web command
- For devices and presentations, use PNG
- Saving an 8-bit graphic
- Saving a JPEG image
- Saving vector-based SVG files
- Assigning a copyright
- Using the Export for Screens command
- Using the Asset Export panel
- Asset Export time-saving tricks
- Until next time
