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.

How CAN Twitter be harnessed to help raise funds?

I worked on Twestival back in February of this year, and I've had the opportunity to talk to a lot of colleagues about the power of Twitter to raise funds. I'm writing a post now to put all of those ideas down onto [digital] paper, and hopefully it will help some of them to raise some money.

The first thing to understand about Twitter is illustrated below. Think of Twitter as a very, very large network of users. If the person at the top of the chain tweets a message that seems to be for a good cause, there is a very high likelihood that people following that person will RT, or ReTweet the message. That can very quickly mean that 1 simple message can turn into 30 people seeing it in a number of minutes. It can be thought of almost as a pyramid scheme, but hopefully it's being used for good!

Twestival NYC harnessed the idea of crowdsourcing even beyond just ReTweeting a message. Paull Young came up with the 20-20-20 idea. Buy a ticket to Twestival for $20, raise $20 to give, and tell 20 friends about Twestival. This is a great example of a memorable way to get people to donate money AND mobilize their network.

A lot of donations come from specific challenges. I read about a woman in Fast Company who challenged a room full of geeks to not only donate as much money as possible, but to get their friends to donate as much money as possible. This is another key piece of the puzzle - turning it into a competition.

Beth Kanter teaches non-profits and individuals how to use social media tools like Twitter, blogs and widgets to raise funds and awareness. Although Kanter has spearheaded several unusual funding efforts, her most effective was at the Seattle Gnomedex 8.0 Conference in August of this year, where she raised over $2500 in just 90 minutes by challenging highly connected geeks to tap into their extensive Twitter networks.

It started with a mass tweet asking people to help her “send Leng Sopharath, a young Cambodian woman, off to her junior year of college in good health.” Tweets and retweets traveled through the online community, and by the end of the conference, Kanter had collected almost $4000. She acknowledges the results as a “special success story,” but believes it’s an example of how the power of networks can be utilized by non-profits.

We were very motivated during Twestival ... NYC wanted to be the city to raise the most money, and we were. Everyone that worked on Twestival kept that in mind, and it was a friendly competition, but we did NOT want to lose to another city. If you can figure out a way to get the charitable to compete, you've got another compelling way to get people to give.

To wrap up, here is what's important when trying to harness the power of Twitter to raise money for charity:

1. Come up with a succint message. You want something shorter than 140 characters so that it can easily be ReTweeted.
2. Include a link. The link can utilize URL shorteners like http://www.bit.ly so that the url fits more easily into the Tweet.
   
3. Be sure the link goes somewhere that allows the person to read more about the cause AND includes a place for them to donate and/or get involved.
4. Include "Please RT" in the message. Studies have shown that messages are ReTweeted much, much more frequently when that is included.
5. Engage with the people who are following the account that Tweets your message. That is the best way to get followers that are dedicated to your cause.
6. Tell a story on that webpage.
   

What made charity: water so powerful was their website. After all the money was donated, you could go to their website and watch the wells being drilled this summer. Beforehand, you could see videos and interact with the charity to learn more about their cause. They've also very effectively harnessed the power of visuals.

At Twestival we had jerry cans that water is hauled in. We also had a photobooth with a bathtub that people could have their photos taken in. Those photos were branded with the charity:water logo and the Twestival logo and put up on Flickr. People got their photos after the party and put those up on their Facebook profiles. This FURTHER extended the reach of charity:water all over again. We also created a Flickr Photo Pool for partygoers to add their photos to, and if you search for NYC Twestival on Flickr, there were a TON of photos taken.

Word of mouth has the power in this situation, and your brand is a conversation, as they say famously over at Federated Media. The more that you can get your charity involved in a conversation with people, the more effective you will be at getting people to remember you cause.

Check out what charity:water is STILL doing to raise money through the power of social media. Check out charity:water's head honcho, Scott Harrison, and see how he is using the power of his personality to grow his project.

jeannettearrowood.com

Guys guys guys! JeannetteArrowood.com has finally been worked out! I'm now working on my content. Which definitely needs some work, but I'm so excited to have gotten some help from a very, very old friend in order to get the little pieces put together. It's always wonderful to have help from your friends!

Shouts out to Mollie at Sun Sign Graphic Design for her magnificent help.