Introducing Adobe Illustrator

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Adobe Illustrator is most commonly used to create logos, icons, infographics, and technical diagrams for print and web use. Illustrator’s vector drawing capabilities make it ideal for creating the smooth curves, bright colors, and clean transitions found in these types of art.

In this course, we’ll use Illustrator to first make a landscape illustration. We’ll also use Illustrator to make some basic logos. In the process of working through these projects, we’ll gain familiarity with the tools most typically used to create artwork in Illustrator.

We’ll start off with a short tour of the Illustrator interface, then set up our workspace to help us work more efficiently in Illustrator.

Making sure you’re using the most current version of Illustrator

This course was developed using Adobe Illustrator CC 2022. While you’ll be able to complete many of the exercises in this course using other versions of Illustrator, your interface may look different than what’s shown in the course. If you are working with Illustrator CC 2021 or older, you may want to update Illustrator to the latest version for the best experience.

The following instructions will walk you through how to update the Adobe Creative Cloud program you're working with if it’s out of date. To check for updates, you'll need to open Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop, which is separate from the Adobe application you're working with.

Open Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop.

The Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop app will open:

Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop application. On the left side of the screen is the navigation bar, where we can access all the apps in Creative Cloud and check for updates. The main section of the screen currently shows a list of installed applications.

Here, we can see what applications we have installed and which of them need to be updated. If there are updates available for any of the installed applications, a blue circle with a number in it will appear to the right of Updates in the navigation on the left side of the screen.

To see which Adobe Creative Cloud applications need to be updated, in the navigation on the left side of the window,
Click

Any applications with updates will be listed underneath the New Updates heading, similar to the image below:

Adobe Creative Cloud desktop app showing the Updates list, indicating that Illustrator has an update that needs installing.

To update an application, to the right of the application’s name and update description,
Click
To continue the update process, if necessary,
Click

The selected application will then start downloading and applying the update. This may take some time to complete, depending on the size of the update being downloaded and your internet connection speed. When the update is finished, the application will disappear from the New Updates list and appear under the Updated Recently heading, as seen in the following screenshot:

Adobe Creative Cloud desktop app displaying the list of recently updated apps. Illustrator is at the top of this list, as it is the most recently updated app.

Exploring the Illustrator interface

The Illustrator interface is complex, and at first glance might be overwhelming. Before we get started working on the landscape illustration, let's take a quick tour of the different interface elements. To get started, we’ll open Illustrator, then create a new file to create the landscape illustration in.

Open Illustrator.
To create a new Illustrator file, on the Menu bar,
Click File, Click New…
To view the Print presets, in the category tabs across the top of the New Document dialog box,
Click Print
To indicate we want to work with the Letter preset,
Click
To finish creating the document, in the lower right corner of the New Document dialog box,
Click

Now that we have a file open, let’s take a look at the interface. If you’ve used other programs in the Adobe Creative Cloud suite, the interface may look familiar to you, as many of Adobe’s graphic design programs share similar interface elements.

The following video shows the Illustrator interface in detail. If you'd rather have a text-based introduction to Illustrator, scroll past the video for an introduction to the various interface elements.

This video explores the Illustrator interface and points out the most essential elements to be familiar with when creating art in Illustrator.

Description of the video:

[music] In this video, I’ll be introducing you to the different elements of the Adobe Illustrator interface. For today’s demonstration, I’ll be using Adobe Illustrator CC 2022. If you’re using a different version of Illustrator, your interface may look slightly different, but all the interface elements I point out today will be in roughly the same locations. The Illustrator interface is composed of various panels in different locations on the screen. These panels contain a wide array of tools and features that we can use to create and edit artwork. We’ll start on the left side of the screen, with the Tools panel. The Tools panel contains all of the various tools used to complete tasks in Illustrator, including selection tools, shape creation tools, the Pen tool, and more. To activate a tool in the Tools panel, click on its icon. I’ll activate the Rectangle tool here by clicking on it. Each tool has a keyboard shortcut as well - to see the keyboard shortcut for a specific tool, hover your mouse cursor over the tool and a tooltip will appear with the shortcut. Here, we can see the keyboard shortcut for the Rectangle tool is the M key. You may notice that many tools in the Tools panel have a little triangle in the lower right corner of the tool’s icon. The Rectangle tool is one of those. This indicates that there are multiple tools stacked together here. To view the tools stacked with the Rectangle tool, I’ll click and hold on the Rectangle tool in the Tools panel. A menu will appear, showing the other tools in the stack – in this case, we see the other shape tools. I want to switch to the Ellipse tool, so I’ll click on it in the menu to activate it. The Control Panel is located across the top of the screen underneath the Menu bar. The Control Panel is context-sensitive. In Illustrator, this means the contents of the panel will change not only based on what tool we have selected in the Tools panel, but also what object we're working with. To illustrate this, I’ll click on the Selection tool to activate it. Next, I’ll click on one of the objects I have in my document. The contents of the Control panel change, and display options for working with the object I’ve selected. On the right side of the screen, we have the Panel dock. This is where the majority of the panels we’ll work with are located. The panels here are collected into groups - to switch between panels in a group, simply click on the panel’s tab to display it. To collapse a section of the panel dock, in the upper right corner of the section of the panel dock you want to collapse, click the Collapse to Icons icon - it looks like two arrows pointing to the right. The panels will collapse to icons, and clicking on a panel’s icon will make the panel appear. When the panels are collapsed, the icon changes to the Expand Panels icon, which looks like two arrows pointing to the left. To expand the panels again, click the Expand Panels icon and the panels will be visible again. If you’re looking for a specific panel, or accidentally closed a panel, you can open it by going to the Window menu - all of the panels available in Illustrator are accessible here. The panels we see on screen are part of the Essentials Classic workspace. Illustrator has a collection of workspaces available that collect panels focusing on specific types of tasks, such as creating artwork for print or the web. To switch workspaces, in the upper right corner of the Illustrator interface, click on the Switch Workspace icon. In the menu that appears, click on the name of the desired workspace to switch to it. The document window, located in the center of the Illustrator interface, displays the file that you’re working on. Inside the document window, one or more artboards may be visible. The file I have open right now has five artboards visible. These artboards are where we create our art, and we can have up to one thousand artboards in a single Illustrator file. We can have multiple files open at the same time. To switch between open files, click on the tab for the file you want to work with at the top of the document window. Now that you’ve been introduced to the Illustrator interface, you’re ready to start working in Illustrator. [music]

The following diagram points out the main pieces of the Illustrator interface that are visible when a file is open:

Diagram of the Illustrator interface, with the main interface elements highlighted with red boxes. Each interface element is outlined in detail in the following section.

NOTE: Your Illustrator interface may look slightly different that what is shown in the diagram above, depending on the workspace you're working with.

To learn more about the interface elements in the diagram, expand the appropriate accordion fold below:

The Tools panel is located on the left side of the Illustrator window, and contains all the tools necessary to create and edit graphics in Illustrator.

There are two ways to activate a tool in the Tools panel — you can either click on the tool’s icon or use the tool’s keyboard shortcut. To find out the keyboard shortcut for a particular tool, hover over the tool and a tooltip will appear with the keyboard shortcut displayed after the tool’s name, as shown in the following screenshot:

Cursor hovering over the Direct Selection tool, with a rich tooltip indicating the tool's keyboard shortcut and a graphic demonstrating how the tool works.

NOTE: To turn off Rich Tooltips, like the one shown in the previous image, in the Menu bar, Click Edit, Point Preferences, Click General, then uncheck the checkbox next to Show Rich Tool Tips.

The Control panel is located at the top of the Illustrator window, underneath the Menu bar. The Control panel is context-sensitive, which means that the options change based on what tool we have selected and what object we’re working with. For example, the following image shows the available options for the Pen tool while we’re creating a shape:

When the Type tool is active and being used to edit text, a different set of options are visible in the Control panel, as shown in the following image:

The panel dock is located on the right side of the Illustrator window, and contains the majority of the panels needed for creating artwork. Each individual panel provides tools, functions, or other options for creating and editing artwork. The panels are collected into groups — to switch between panels in a group, click on the desired panel’s tab to display it.

There are more panels available than what is currently shown in the panel dock. All of the available panels are located in the Window menu, and clicking on a panel’s name in the Window menu will open the panel in the Illustrator workspace.

Illustrator has a collection of workspaces available that collect panels and other interface elements that focus on specific types of tasks, such as creating print layouts or making graphics for the web. These workspaces are available through the workspace switcher located in the top right corner of the Illustrator window, and can also be accessed through the Window menu.

The document window is located in the middle of the Illustrator interface, and displays the file you are working on. Multiple files can be open at the same time — you can switch between open files by clicking on the document tabs at the top of the document window.

Each document’s tab displays some information about the open file, including the file’s name, the zoom level, and the color mode used for the document, as shown in the following image:

Document tab showing information about the file Lake Practice.ai. Details in the following paragraph.

The document tab shown here indicates that we have the file Lake Practice.ai open, and we’re viewing the image at 51.17%. The color mode used for this image is CMYK.

NOTE: For more information on color modes in Illustrator, visit the Adobe Help page About color in Illustrator.

Inside the document window, one or more artboards may be visible. These artboards are where artwork is created, and each artboard can be exported to an individual file, if desired. An Illustrator file can hold up to 1,000 artboards.

The default Illustrator interface is a medium dark gray color — if desired, you can change the brightness of the interface to make things easier for you to see. There are four different brightness levels, ranging from dark gray to light gray, and the options for changing the interface color are found in the Preferences dialog box.

To view the Illustrator preferences, on the Menu bar,
Click Edit, Point Preferences, Click User Interface

NOTE for MacOS users: To view the preferences on MacOS, on the Menu bar, Click Illustrator, Point Preferences, Click Interface.

To change the interface color, at the top of the Preferences dialog box under the heading User Interface,
Click the swatch for your desired interface color
To accept the changes made, in the bottom right corner of the Preferences dialog box,
Click

NOTE: The screen captures for this course were taken with Illustrator's interface color set to the default medium dark gray. Depending on which brightness level your interface is set to, the interface elements may appear slightly differently than they do in the screen captures here.

Setting up Illustrator for efficient design

When working in Illustrator, especially if we're creating artwork that contains elements that need to be a specific size or have specific panels we'll be accessing frequently, we'll want to set up Illustrator's interface ahead of time to help make the design process as efficient as possible. Choosing a specific workspace in Illustrator will bring out all the panels and tools we may need to create artwork, and turning on the rulers and grid will assist in measuring and aligning objects as we work.

Switching workspaces

As mentioned previously, any arrangement of panels, toolbars, or windows makes up a workspace in Illustrator, and Illustrator comes with a number of pre-made workspaces we can use when creating artwork. To make it easier to create the landscape drawing and bring out many of the common panels used for creating art in Illustrator, we'll switch to the Essentials Classic workspace.

Once we've done that, we'll adjust the appearance of the panel dock by collapsing one part of it and expanding the other. Most of the panels we'll be working with are located in the left side of the panel dock, so we'll expand that section so we can use the panels in it. We won't be using the panels in the right side of the panel dock, so we can collapse that section.

To switch to to the Essentials Classic workspace, in the upper right corner of the Illustrator interface,
Click , Click Essentials Classic

NOTE: If you’ve previously used the Essentials Classics workspace in Illustrator and made modifications to the default layout, it’s recommended that you switch back to the default version of the workspace before continuing through the course. To reset the workspace back to the default settings, in the Menu bar, Click Window, Point Workspace, Click Reset Essentials Classic.

To collapse the right side of the panel dock, near the upper right corner of the Illustrator interface,
Click
To expand the left side of the panel dock,
Click

To collapse the Tools panel to display the tools in one row instead of two, in the upper left corner of the panel,
Click

Now that we've chosen a workspace and configured it, let's see how to display rulers in Illustrator.

Viewing and configuring rulers

Because we want to have a sense of the size of objects in the illustration, we will turn on the vertical and horizontal rulers. Once active, the rulers will appear along the top and left side of the workspace. By default, the rulers are measuring in points, which is a measurement system often used by print designers. However, this might not be a useful measurement for us, so once we turn on the rulers, we’ll change the measurement to inches.

To activate rulers, if necessary, on the Menu bar,
Click View, Point Rulers, Click Show Rulers
To change the default units of measurement, on the Menu bar,
Click Edit, Point Preferences, Click Units...

NOTE for MacOS Users: To change the default units of measurement, on the Menu bar, Click Illustrator, Point Preferences, Click Units & Display Performance.

To change the unit of measurement, in the General drop-down menu,
Click , Click Inches
To accept the changes we’ve made,
Click

Once the rulers are visible, as we move the mouse, light gray dotted lines will appear on the vertical and horizontal rulers to indicate precisely where the mouse is on the artboard. For example, in the following image, the dotted lines in the rulers indicate that the mouse is positioned roughly 3/4ths of an inch in on both the horizontal and vertical rulers:

Selection tool positioned 3/4ths of an inch in from the top and left sides of the artboard. Dotted lines in the horizontal and vertical rulers indicate the cursor's position on the artboard.

The dotted lines are very faint, but can be seen just above the 1 inch mark on the vertical ruler and to the left of the 1 inch mark on the horizontal ruler.

Showing the grid

The grid in Illustrator is a very useful tool. When active, it appears in the background in the document workspace and on the artboards in the document. The grid can help us draw objects more precisely, as well as visually measure and align objects as we make them. We also have the ability to customize the size and spacing of our grid, and even the color of our gridlines if desired.

Let's display the grid now. We'll also adjust the spacing of our major grid lines so they're an inch apart, as well as change the amount of grid subdivisions so our smaller grid squares are a quarter of an inch in size.

To view the grid, from the Menu bar,
Click View, Click Show Grid

To open the Guides and Grid preferences, on the Menu bar,
Click Edit, Point Preferences, Click Guides and Grid...

NOTE for MacOS Users: To change the default units of measurement, on the Menu bar, Click Illustrator, Point Preferences, Click Guides and Grid.

To change the distance between the major gridlines, in the Gridline every field,
Press & Drag the value, type: 1in
To change the number of subdivisions, in the Subdivisions field,
Press & Drag the value, type: 4 Enter key

Saving the file

Before we continue on, let's save our file. We’ll save it in the same folder as the other exercise files we’ll use later on in today’s session, to keep everything together in one place.

NOTE: The following steps assume you have downloaded and extracted the exercise files to your computer’s desktop. If this isn’t the case, navigate to the location where you extracted the exercise files instead of the desktop.

To save the file, in the Menu bar,
Click File, Click Save As…

A dialog box may appear at this point, asking if you want to save the document to Adobe's Creative Cloud storage or to your computer:

Dialog box asking where to save the document.

For our purposes today, we'll save the file to the computer.

NOTE: If the dialog box above does not appear when saving your file, skip ahead to step c.

To indicate you want to save the file on your computer,
Click

NOTE: To prevent this window from appearing every time you save a file, in the lower left corner of the dialog box, Click the checkbox next to Don't show again.

To navigate to the Desktop, in the left-hand side of the Save As dialog box,
Click
To open the appropriate folder,
Double-Click the Illustrator Basics folder
To change the name of the file, in the File name field,
Press & Drag across file name, type: Lake Practice
To finish saving the file, in the bottom right corner of the Save As dialog box,
Click

At this point, the Illustrator Options dialog box will appear. Here, we can change options relating to how our file is saved and ensure the file is compatible with older versions of Illustrator, if necessary. We don't need to change any of these settings, so we'll accept the default options for saving Illustrator files.

To accept the default options for saving a file, in the Illustrator Options dialog box,
Click

Now we're ready to start working on the landscape drawing.

UITS IT Training Content Library

Introducing Adobe Illustrator

Available Files