Intro Guide to Adobe Illustrator - Key Tools 👩🏻💻
If you’ve been following me on Instagram, you’ll know that over the past few weeks I’ve been learning how to use Adobe Illustrator! I’m halfway through my Udemy course now and have even created some of my own graphics (pictured below) so I figured I would put together an intro guide to Illustrator with key tools and how to use them! ⚙️👩🏻💻
The course I purchased from Udemy is called Adobe Illustrator CC - Essentials Training Course. I’m not sponsored by Udemy - I just really enjoyed this course and think it’s a great intro for anyone who wants to learn how to use Illustrator. I bought the course on sale for $16.95 and split the cost of the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite with my sister since she uses the Photoshop/Lightroom apps. Now that I’ve graduated from college, I want to make sure I keep learning and an online course is the perfect way to ensure that. 😊 I also have a Wacom Intuos tablet my sister gave me but I wouldn’t say it’s 100% necessary - I’ve found a trackpad works fine most of the time.
Okay, let’s get into the intro guide with some key tools you should know!
P.S. I sell shirts with this ‘wear a mask’ design I created over on my Etsy. Click here to check them out!
KEY TOOLS
Curvature Tool
This tool is so important if you’re interested in creating any curvy shapes or text. It’s very intuitive - you just click your mouse where you want two points to be connected and it creates a curve between them! The curve changes depending on where your next click is but you get used to it pretty quickly. I’ve found this is great for creating shapes and unique text.
Shape Builder Tool
The shape builder tool is more advanced but a great asset! You can create all types of unique shapes* using this tool by combining intersecting shapes, selecting all the shapes, and clicking the shape builder tool. You can combine shapes by simply dragging across an intersection point or remove parts of shapes by clicking “ALT” (on Mac) and the cursor will switch to a ‘-’ sign which will allow you to delete parts of the shape. The shape I ended up making here looks like a UFO 😅 but as you can see I’ve created a completely new shape by combining a few ellipses!
*It’s also important to learn how to use the shape tools to create basic shapes (e.g. eclipse, rectangle, triangle) but this is very simple - e.g. clicking the rectangle tool and then drawing out to create a rectangle - so I haven’t included it in this list of tools!
Paintbrush Tool
The paintbrush tool is perfect for handwritten text. This is one tool where it’s definitely useful to have a tablet and draw using a pen! You can adjust the fidelity settings to accurate or smooth, depending on how much correction you want, and change the stroke styles for different effects (e.g. calligraphy, artistic).
Type on a Path
The type on a path tool is great for logo makers in particular because it enables you to wrap text to fit certain shapes. To use this tool, click the shape you want the text to wrap to and click the type on a path text tool. Automatically, ‘lorem ipsum’ placeholder font will display on the shape’s edge. From there you can add your own text and go to Type -> Type on a Path which will open a toolbox with text effects, align settings, and spacing.
To recap, these are the key tools that are great to learn if you’re just getting started with Illustrator:
Curvature Tool
Shape Builder Tool
Paintbrush Tool
Type on a Path Tool
There are so many different tools in Illustrator and each tool has a myriad of settings that you can adjust but I would recommend learning these 4! 😊 I hope that you found this Intro Guide to Illustrator 👩🏻💻 useful and let me know in the comments below 💬👇🏻 what Illustrator tools you find most helpful! Thanks for reading! 💙
