Illustrator 2020 One-on-One: Fundamentals

Explore techniques for using Illustrator 2020, the flagship vector graphics design application from Adobe.

Introduction

• Welcome to One-on-One

1. Documents

• A first look at Illustrator
• Opening from the Windows desktop
• Opening from the Macintosh Finder
• Introducing the Home screen
• Creating a new document
• The units of design: Points and picas
• The advanced document settings
• Activate missing fonts
• Modifying your new document
• Saving Illustrator artwork
• Closing open documents on the PC
• Closing open documents on the Mac

2. Artboards

• Pages of any size, at any angle
• Using the artboard tool
• Undo, Redo, and Revert
• Selecting multiple artboards
• Creating 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

3. Navigate

• Getting around your artwork
• Zooming in and out
• Using the more precise Zoom tool
• Zooming on a selection
• GPU Performance and Animated Zoom
• Scrolling or panning a document
• Specifying a custom zoom level
• Working with multiple open documents
• Customizing your panels—important
• Saving your custom panels as a workspace
• Cycling between screen modes
• Trim View and Presentation Mode

4. Lines

• It’s time to 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 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

5. Shapes

• And now, we draw better
• Creating a time-saving template
• Using the Ellipse tool
• Live ellipses and pies
• Drawing two perfectly aligned circles
• Creating compound paths
• Using the Rectangle tool
• The dynamic round corner controls
• Adding some simple reflections
• Rotating your artwork into position
• Using the Polygon and Star tools
• Working with live polygons
• Creating the perfect five-pointed star
• Repeating stars in alternating rows
• Introducing the group Isolation mode
• Adding a drop shadow to a layer
• Using the crazy Flare tool
• The top-secret tilde key trick

6. Color

• How color works
• The color modes: RGB versus CMYK
• Hue, saturation, and brightness
• Selecting a color from the spectrum
• 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

7. Strokes

• 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
• Combining multiple strokes
• Offsetting strokes to simulate depth

8. Type

• 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

9. Building

• Join and the Shape Builder tool
• Using the Join command
• Using the Join tool
• Object > Path > Outline Stroke
• Using the Shape Builder tool
• More ways to use the Shape Builder
• Creating a real-world project
• Creating an inset reflection
• Coloring a path with the Shape Builder
• 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

10. Pencil

• 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 with a drawing tablet
• Coloring your Pencil tool art

11. Paint

• The best tools for painting
• Painting with the Blob Brush tool
• 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 lumps
• The Blob Brush and the opacity value
• Painting with a drawing tablet
• Using the Simplify command

12. Curvature

• Drawing a path 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

13. Pen

• The tool that can drawing anything
• Creating corner points
• Adding and deleting anchor points
• How smooth points work
• Drawing smooth points
• Drawing cusp points
• Using the Anchor point tools
• 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

14. Corners

• Making corners smooth
• The round corner widget
• Rounding off corner points
• Changing the corner type
• Rounding characters of type
• Absolute versus relative rounding
• Drawing with rounded rectangles
• Drawing an iPhone
• Decorating an iPhone screen
• Drawing a leather smartphone case
• Colorizing a line art template
• Turning corners into organic curves
• Reshaping rounded paths

15. Screen

• 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
• Scaling your art to suit its destination
• 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

Conclusion

• Until next time