Illustrator Tips for Beginners

When I first started to figure out how to use Adobe Illustrator for a few things at WNYC, there wasn't a good tip list out there for beginners. And almost none of the help I found addressed using CS4. Here are a few tips that would've been enormously helpful to me. I hope that they help you! Please click on the images in order to enlarge them.

Selection Tool: this tool lets you select different pieces of whatever object you’re working with. You can select multiple objects by using the shift key while clicking with the mouse.

Lasso Tool: this tool is very important in Illustrator. You use it by lassoing objects that you wish to select.

Type Tool: this tool allows you to add type to your work. If you click and hold the Type Tool button, you get several other type options.

Shape Tool: this tool allows you to add shapes to your work. This is another tool that has several options available; you can add several different shape types by clicking and holding the tool button.

Line Segment Tool: this tool allows you to add a line segment. Any tool that has a small arrow next to its button will show you multiple options if you click and hold to button. The line segment tool will also let you create spirals, arcs, and rectangular grids.

Eraser Tool: Obviously, for erasing. But because you will be working with vector graphics, you can typically just select with the selection tool whatever object you want to delete, and then press delete on your keyboard.

Eyedropper/Measure Tool: The eyedropper is key in utilizing color. It works just like an eyedropper would to pull color out of whatever object you’re clicking on. I use this tool to grab a certain color from a logo to be used in another file. There is also a little ruler that will let you measure distances.

Slice Tool: This can be used to slice an image up into pieces. Typically you would use this when you’re creating something for the web that will need to have different parts of the image linked to different destinations.

Artboard Tool: This tool will allow you to change the size of the artboard that you’re working on. You can also work with artboards by clicking File>Document Setup>Edit Artboards.

Colors: The foreground color is the main color of an object that you’ve selected. The background color, or outlined color, is the color that is surrounding that object. If you have white text and want it to have a black outline, you would select the text object, then double click on the square for foreground color, change it to white. Then you would double click the square for the background color, and change it to black. This can be done with any type of object.

Layers: The concept of layers is very, very important in Photoshop, but not so much in Illustrator. Because you are working with vector images, for the most part, you can group objects together by going to the objects menu and selecting group or ungroup. You can also delete things very easily by just selecting them and pressing delete. In Photoshop, it is more important to have a separate layer for each piece you’re working with so that the layers can be made invisible or visible or placed behind or in front of each other. The same concept holds true in Illustrator, but I don’t find myself needing to utilize it that often.

How to create rules (guides): Sometimes you want thing to be lined up perfectly. In order to create rules, or “guides” as they are called in Illustrator, you will first need to turn on the rulers in your document. You can do that by clicking View>Show Rulers or by hitting Ctrl+R. Once the rulers are turned on, you should click on the ruler, hold and drag down or to the right to create a guide and move it around. Once you’re created the guide, it will show up in the layers panel. This makes it easy to delete or manipulate them as needed. You can also hide guides and print them out.

Grouping: Creating groups is an important concept in Illustrator because if you have a logo with many, many pieces (like the WNYC logo or The Greene Space logo), you will not want to move just one piece of the logo. You will want to move it in its entirety. If you select all of the pieces in the logo by using the Lasso Tool, and then click Object>Group, you will have grouped all the pieces. It is sometimes handy to then clicking Object>Lock to lock all of the pieces of the logo together so that you don’t have to worry about the group coming apart. You can also unlock and ungroup from the same menu.

Artboards: If you want to create a multi-page PDF document, you would be sure that your PDF document in Illustrator had more than one artboard. When you create a new file, you have the option to select the number of artboards in your document and the size of each. These are editable by selecting either the Artboard Tool or by clicking File>Document Setup>Edit Artboards. There is more to artboards than just this, but we won’t get into that here!

Transforming: Sometimes objects are too big, too small, or you want to move them, reflect them, or rotate them. You can do all of this from the Transformation menu, which can be found on the Object>Transform menu.


Adjusting Leading and Kerning: When you have a file open and you want to adjust the leading and kerning of some of the text in the file, you would first select the text using the Selection Tool. Then you would open up the Character Panel by clicking on Character next to where you select the Font. By letting the pointer hand hover over each of the different icons next to the boxes, you can see what each little box does. Some adjust leading, kerning, rotation of the lettering, size, etc. Underneath the info box that reads “Character Panel” in this image, there is another tiny menu that will allow you create subscript text, all cap text, small caps, and superscript text.


Aligning objects: There is a menu that will allow you to align objects called the “Align Panel.” Select the objects that you want to space a certain way by either lassoing or using the Shift+click selection method. Then click on align at the top of the toolbar. You can then hover over each option and align accordingly. You can choose what you are aligning to, as well, by changing the selection in the “Align To” menu on the bottom right of the Align Panel.