Illustrator for Beginners – Introduction
If you want to be a professional graphic designer, or if you’re interested in making your own designs for professional use, then you absolutely cannot avoid learning to use Adobe Illustrator.
This is the premier (pun unintended) piece of software for creating vector graphics and as we’ll see, vector graphics are an absolute must in this day and age. Read on to learn more about why this software is so important and how you can get started with it.
Adobe Illustrator Vector :
A vector is essentially an image file that uses a set of instructions in order to tell the software where to draw lines, what angle to draw them at and how thick they should be.
This means that those instructions can be extrapolated in order to create larger or smaller images, with no loss in quality. It also means you can edit images more easily by moving lines and having everything move around that change.
This is in contrast to a PNG or a JPG, either of which would be considered a ‘raster’ file. Raster files are ‘bitmaps’ or maps of points on the screen. They can’t be enlarged without becoming pixelated and they can’t easily be edited.
Seeing as resolution sizes change so rapidly today and seeing as people like crisp, HD images; using vectors over rasters is an absolute must in modern design.
Illustrator Basics :
So with that in mind, how do you get started?
Well, when you open up Illustrator, you’ll be greeted with darkness. So go to File > New and create a new page to draw on.
The first thing you need to know is that the white page right there is transparent. In order to make a real background, you need to draw a square and then fill it with color.
Illustrator Editor :
To start with illustrator editor we’re going to draw a line instead. So go to the line tool and then draw a line as you would with any other image software. You’ll notice that your line is now selected and has points at either end.
This is how you can edit that line – drag and drop those points and you can change the length, angle and more of your line. Likewise, if you click on the gradient in the color toolbox (open this with the ‘Window’ menu if it’s not there) you can change the color of your line. Along the top you should have a box that says ‘Stroke’ and you can use this to change the thickness.
Also Read : Graphic Design Trends 2018
Illustrator Color :
Make your line as thick and red as you like and then draw another line connecting to your first line. You’ll see that when you do, this lets you ‘anchor’ the two together to connect them.
Illustrator Shapes
If you select both lines at once by drawing a box with the select tool, you can right click and ‘join’ to make them into one angle rather than two lines.
This way you can also make full polygonal shapes and also fill them with the fill tool!
Illustrator for Beginners – Winding Up
There’s much more to learn, so if you want to see more on Illustrator let us know in the comments. Of course if you want a professional looking design made more quickly, you can always just leave it to Logo Whistle!
Anusha
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