My 5 Favorite Illustrator Tips, Tricks and Tools

My 5 Favorite Illustrator Tips, Tricks and Tools

by Jason Forrest, Creative Director

As a graphic designer and illustrator, I’m frequently using Adobe Illustrator.

Illustrator is the best way to quickly and efficiently compose vector based artwork for all kinds of projects, and there are a few tools that I find myself using for pretty much every project.

Let’s go through my favorite Illustrator tips and tricks (not in any particular order).

The Pathfinder Tool

Find it here: Pathfinder Panel (normally on the right-hand side)

I use this the most when creating icons or complex shapes. You can make several components of an icon and merge them all together at the end to make one finished product. Or, if you need to, you can whittle away portions of the object without having to manipulate individual anchor points, like in the below:

The Blend Tool

Find it here: Tools Panel (normally on the left-hand side)

The blend tool is usually used to create color fill blends with shapes, but I like to use it to quickly duplicate several objects at once. Below, you can see how I used it to create a custom scoreboard font by duplicating one dot into a grid of dots.

The Warp Effect Tool

Find it here: Upper tool bar > Effect> Warp

The warp tool is a quick and dirty way to modify an object’s appearance without having to draw the object yourself. It’s frequently used in logo projects, and usually paired with other effects (like the free transform tool or scale/skew). Look at it in action here:

Option (Alt) Key Duplication Shortcut

Find it here: Your keyboard

Keyboard shortcuts are crucial for efficiency, and this is one I use so frequently that I don’t consciously realize I am using it anymore.

So instead of constantly having to go to the toolbar to select copy and paste, simply hold down the Option (or Alt) key while the object is selected and drag the duplicate onto your artboard. Bonus: If you hold Shift as well, the object will stay vertically or horizontally aligned to the original.

Live Trace Tool

Find it here: Upper tool bar > Object > Live Trace > Tracing Options

I haven’t used this one as much as I used to, but when it is used it can add a really nice effect to a design. It’s also a great shortcut for when you need to do things like recreate a client’s raster logo into a vector file without having to individually recreate every single path by hand.

It isn’t perfect though, as it almost always requires some kind of manual adjusting, and is usually the best when paired with other effects.

Bonus Tip: Using Multiple Artboards

When you need to create multiple versions of one design, or if you are doing wireframes of several pages of one website, using multiple artboards is a quick way to export those files without having to manipulate individual layers for each version.

About Jason Forrest Jason Forrest is the Creative Director at Digital Ink. Forrest began his career as a staff designer at a futurist consultancy in Washington DC, and since then has worked for clients both large and small in a wide variety of industries. Digital Ink tells stories for forward-thinking businesses, mission-driven organizations, and marketing and technology agencies in need of a creative and digital partner.

Tech Tips: 4 Illustrator Hacks You Didn't Know You Needed: B & J Printing

4 Illustrator Hacks You Didn't Know You Needed

Whether you've been using Adobe Illustrator for years or are just getting started with it, you might not know about these often overlooked functions that can help take hours off of any given project.

Check out these four Adobe Illustrator hacks to make your next project a breeze, while allowing you to still get that good spot for your five o'clock exercise class.

Copy & Paste & Paste & Paste & Paste & Paste & Paste

Let's say you've created a selection that you want to paste repeatedly in multiple areas of your project. Yes, we all know about > Command-C and > Command-V...But really, how fun is it to keep scrolling back to the same content to copy.... and then scrolling back to your new spot to paste? Pretty much less fun than visiting the emergency room after showing your co-workers your side plank on top of that exercise ball you use as your desk chair.

Next time you want to copy and paste the same content repeatedly, choose Select > Save Selection. Name your selection something clever so that you can reselect it at any time from the Select Menu, and conveniently paste that selection into as many parts of your project as you need to, without losing your data.

Erasing In A Straight Line

Your newest project involves some majestic free-form design work. It's got some rough edges, though, and your scheme requires some clean lines. You're ready to start erasing using the free-form eraser tool, but quickly realize you forgot your morning triple shot cappuccino and you've got the shakes.

Before you reach for that can (or cup) of liquid fuel, here's an option that won't jar your nervous system. You can easily erase in a straight line in Illustrator by pressing and holding the Shift Key before you start dragging with the eraser. Problem solved.

Creating Color Harmonies

You may not be able to create harmony amongst your family or rival sports fans, but you can do your part to promote world harmony through your designs. Check out this little hack to make them think you spent an entire afternoon contemplating complimentary hues.

To create an instant color harmony based on a single color, choose color harmonies from the Color Guide Panel. What may have taken hours before, you can now accomplish in 37 seconds.

Converting Text to Outlines

If you've been in the business long enough, you've likely run into this situation: you've just finished your design work and sent it off at 4:50 At 5:05 you get a call to let you know they don't have the font you used, but you're on your exercise mat, leg warmers on. You don't get the message until the next day and you now can't meet your deadline.

You can easily avoid this situation in the future by converting text to outlines by right clicking the selected text and choosing Convert to Outlines for press-ready artwork. By converting text to outlines, it eliminates the need to send font files along with the Illustrator file when sharing with others. Before getting too hasty with this neat hack, though, keep in mind that converting to outlines is a one-way street. This means you'll be unable to go back to regular fonts after converting. Make sure you're working from a COPY of your document so that you can easily get the original text back if necessary.

Save yourself some time and frustration - don't work harder, work smarter with these easy-peasy design tricks.

How to Make Adobe Illustrator Brushes

How to Make Adobe Illustrator Brushes

Learning how to make your own Adobe Illustrator brushes is something every designer and illustrator should know how to do.

Why?

The benefits are massive. If you don't know how to make your own brushes you're at a disadvantage. Here's why understanding how to make Adobe Illustrator brushes is so important.

Making your own brushes can save you tons of time.

Custom brushes give your vector art a signature style.

Understanding how to make brushes will help you use existing brushes more effectively.

Here are just a few examples of RetroSupply customers who have used our Illustrator brushes to create clever brush work.

Each of these designs were made with RetroSupply's Vector Brush Toolbox.

We spent over 100 hours making these brushes. But we sort of geeked out.

We bought old source material for authenticity, made way more than we needed (so we could pick the best one), and then tested them (AKA played with them).

The good news is you don't have to pay a dime to get these same effects.

You just need to spend a little time getting familiar with making illustrator brushes.

In this tutorial, I'll show you how you can make your own vector brushes you can use to add your own unique touches to your work.

Let's get started!

Types of Illustrator Brushes

There are five types of Illustrator brushes. Choosing the right one takes a little trial and error but here's a quick definition of the categories of Illustrator brushes.

Calligraphic Brushes

The Calligraphic Brush was designed to emulate the look of pens and brushes. This type of brush is ideal for hand-lettering work in Illustrator.

Scatter Brushes

The Scatter Brush gets existing vector art and scatters it across a path. I tend to use these types of brushes to create organic textures like sponge or grunge brushes.

Art Brushes

The Art Brush gets a vector and stretches it across a line. This tends to work really well for pencil brushes, water color brushes, pen brushes, and more. If they're stretched or compressed too much you can get wonky results. But overall, these are my favorites.

Pattern Brushes

The Pattern Brush allows you to control how every angle of a brush works including corner angles and the left and right termination point.

Bristle Brushes

These are brushes that simulate the look of real brushes. When you use these brushes you'll see differentiation in how the bristles of the brush display and how it performs with different pressures and angles.

Step 1. Create your source material.

You can make your art brush from any vector shape. At RetroSupply we almost always use real source material.

For example, in the InkWash Brush Pack from The Vector Brush Toolbox we used ink and water to create real brushes strokes. Then we scanned them and converted them to vectors.

Step 2. Select the shape and choose "New Brush".

Select your source material. Then open the Brush Panel (Window > Brushes) and choose New Brush...

For this watercolor brush, we're choosing Art Brush. This will allow the brush to stretch a bit and maintain the look of a watercolor brush in our work.

Step 3. Choose your settings in the Brush Options panel.

It's hard to tell you how to set these up. It's different for everyone. But the settings I have here are a good place to start.

Use these settings as a starting point. Then after you've experimented with the brushes you can make tweaks by double clicking on the brush. This will open up the Brush Options panel again and let you make changes.

Step 4. Click Ok and check out your new Illustrator brush

Once you have the settings how you'd like in the Brush Options panel just click Ok.

If you look in the Brushes Panel now you should see your new brush. Here's the one we just made – it made it!

Step 5. Test your new brush.

Now for the fun part. Try out your new brush. Just create a stroke with the Pen Tool, Paint Brush Tool, or other poison of choice.

Try selecting a new color for the brush so you can make sure the Tint setting is working. Here's what our new brush for the InkWash vector brush pack looked like.

Why Adobe Illustrator Custom Brushes are Awesome

I'm sure your mind is percolating with all the different cool things you could do with custom brushes. For example, check out how we used our InkWash vector brushes to add a splash of color to this sweet drawing of an octopus.

Can you imagine how much more time consuming it would have been to color this without a custom Illustrator brush? Not to mention this brush gives us the effect of real watercolor.

I can't stress how much using custom brushes can up your game in Illustrator.

Got 37 seconds? Tell me how you use (or would like to use) Illustrator brushes in your own work in the comments.

Don't have time to make your own brushes?

Check out our massive selection of professional grade brushes for Adobe Illustrator. It includes 200+ brushes for illustrator including ink pens, pencils, chalk, watercolors, halftones, and more.

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