5 tips to help you get a 💫 fast Adobe Illustrator workflow
I tried writing this article 1000 different ways. Why? Illustrator is a huge deal for me. Like really huge. Illustrator is the tool that introduced me to design, and it’s a universe on it’s own. A bit like Photoshop is too. As a result, it’s a good challenge to find a good starting point to write about it.
But, limitations inflate creativity soI will make this one short and expand in other articles.
I actually lied to you.
Illustrator wasn’t the first vector design tool I used. Macromedia Freehand was. But if you are old and experienced enough to know about Freehand then you probably don’t need to read on.
For those who are still hanging around, here are 5 tips to make your Illustrator workflow a lot easier:
# 1 — Know your shortcuts!!!
I can’t stress this one enough. Shortcuts can literally help you be twice, three or even for times as fast when using Illustrator. There is a shortcut for everything and, and of course, if there isn’t a shortcut for a menu item then you can definitely make create one yourself. Here’s how. (At this point I want to apologise to our Windows users as I only know how to do this on a mac.)
#2 — Use global colours
Are you really asking what global colours are? Alright, alright, alright. So, the Swatches panel is there for you to organise all the colours you are using. And, bear with me now, it is possible to connect these colours with objects you are using in your designs. Say for example, you are using a star shape in your design and you are assigning to it the colour yellow from the Swatches panel. If that’s a Global colour then changing it from yellow to say, red, will also automatically change the colour of the star.
In that way you can easily re-colour your artwork without having to do extra work selecting objects, as the change will automatically take place on all the objects the Global colour has been applied to.
#3 — Layer Management vs Grouping vs Both
There are plenty of ways to organise your objects in Illustrator. In my journey towards the golden workflow I have used a handful of them. Also, after chatting with fellow designers I realised there are even more ways.
Some of them work and some don’t. One thing is for certain though:
There is no golden, perfect way to organise your objects. It really depends on your temperament and project targets.
But, there are 2 techniques and some combination of the 2 will most definitely get you there:
- Using Layers
- Using Groups
For example, when I design a simple poster I would use a layer for the background and a layer for the text in the front.
On the contrary, when I’m rendering the UI of a chat app I use a combination: one layer with the background and on the same layer a group for each bubble and their text. In that way I can move the bubbles with their text around in one go.
Those examples are intentionally simplistic to illustrate the foundation of how object organising works. You will have to figure it out for yourself but I would really like to hear what you have to say about this in the comments. Is there a technique I haven’t thought of or haven’t mentioned? Please do!
#4 — Select menu is a🤴king
I wish I had taken interest in this menu earlier. In short, the Select menu in Adobe Illustrator enables you to select all objects that share specific attributes in order to edit them all together.
The selection criteria could be:
- Appearance
- Blending Mode
- Fill Colour
- Stroke Colour
- Opacity
- Existence of Clipping masks
- Stray Points
- Pure Will. Well, not that one but the list goes on and I guess you get my point.
Go play with it and select away!
5 — Outline view
Nothing hidden under the sun. Last but not least, the outline view reveals all object in your illustrator file, but, yes you guessed right, as outlines. This allows you to see all the design elements at once and directly spot inconsistencies and misalignments without the extra complexity of layering and colouring to worry about. Outline view is a beauty.
I hope all that helps. Let me know of your own tips and tricks in the comments!
Feedback, comments, requests? Also let me know in the comments section.
