Illustrator 2020 One-on-One: Fundamentals

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

Learn how to use Adobe Illustrator 2020 in the first of three comprehensive training courses by industry pro Deke McClelland. Deke demonstrates how to work with artboards; how to draw with the Pencil, Curvature, and Pen tools; and how to organize color with swatches. Deke also covers drawing shapes, adjusting strokes, formatting text with variable fonts, painting freeform artwork with or without a tablet, and more.

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