10 Adobe Illustrator Hacks That Will Make You A Design Pro

Have you recently discovered the amazing world of Adobe Illustrator? If so, it’s time to take your skills to the next level. 

You might think that after completing an online tutorial or two or watching a few videos on YouTube you have mastered this graphics design software. 

However, the truth is that there are many more hacks out there waiting for you to discover them. Once you use these 10 upcoming Adobe Illustrator hacks, you’ll be able to use this program much more efficiently and become a true design pro.

Adobe Illustrator hacks: Tip 1

So the first tip relates to logo designing or even some of those people who work on illustrations, but it can be applied to pretty much any workflow in Illustrator. Simply come up to Window and add a new window. 

Now, you're going to notice that I have the same document, but just version one and also version two, as you can see here. 

Well, let's go ahead and arrange the windows as a tiled orientation and see what happens. So the awesome thing about this setup is that I can have one window zoomed very far into my design and the other can be a broad outlook of the overall design.

 

And of course, that means I can be working on finer details. Zoomed right in on the left and.
Then my logo on the right is also going to be changed as I work on the left. 

But I get a broader kind of picture of what's happening on the right-hand side. 

I can also select the design on the right and press Command H on a Mac or CTRL H on a PC. And this should hide anchor points so I can see the design a lot clearer.

Adobe Illustrator hacks: Tip 2

Now, this is neat because you can make a grid enlightening speed perfect for a logo design.

So head up to Object >>> Path and. Then split the grid. You have full customization over the columns, the rows, as well as gut options here, too.

But I personally don't want to use it. Those are for a logo grid. This grid is actually a stroke path for now, which means we can adjust the stroke weight. 

But even more useful, maybe is right-clicking the artboard and then converting the grid to guides.

Adobe Illustrator hacks: Tip 3

And let me quickly ask you to think of a font right now off the top of your head. Now, you might go ahead and say something like myriad. And that's because most of us have this font appear when we generate some text in Illustrator, and that's because it's a default setting. 

However, we can actually completely change that, and also a lot more than just the font itself. So, as you can see, I have myriad here. But let's come into the character style panel and then navigate over to a character style options menu. 

In this box, we can put in our defaults for when we generate some text. And obviously, let's address that font first and foremost. And the font I personally use quite a lot is errone. And so I'm going to select that and also a bold version. 

But we can also change things like the leading which is the spacing between lines and also the Kerning settings. And I'm going to use Optical because I do find myself using that more often. 

And these are all going to now default settings for me in my Illustrator program. And to test that theory I'm now going to generate some text and it should start with Elleron and my specific settings that I just punched in.

Adobe Illustrator hacks: Tip 4

So firstly come into the Appearance panel and then add a stroke. We then need to offset the stroke and like before, it looks rather messy .

However, all we actually need to do is to come into the Pathfinder option right here and then click Add. We can now edit the text whilst the stroke is offset.

Adobe Illustrator hacks: Tip 5

Working with stroke paths we might have a stroke style like this and this is the direction of the Path. 

Now you can also make manual adjustments with the Width tool and hit Shift + W on your keyboard. 

But what if you want to change the direction of this path? Well, press P for the Pen tool and then just simply click one of the anchor points on one of the Sides

hold down the command or Control button and then click away. This is a simple feature that not many people know about or even use in their workflow.

Adobe Illustrator hacks: Tip 6

But yeah, this isn't probably news to a lot of you guys and you can use this on the Brush tools and so forth. But there is a setting that you do want to take into consideration. 

If you press Command or CTRL K and you bring up the preference settings you can then come into the general settings and there is an option to select precise cursor icons. 

And this means you don't need to have your keyboard stuck on uppercase caps all of the time and you can still use the Precision Crosshairs whenever you want to. 

Now, I often like to use these when I'm working on detailed designs because some tools such as the Pen Tool do obstruct your view from the design and just your workflow. So do keep in mind that little setting in the preference settings. 

Adobe Illustrator hacks: Tip 7

Well if you click under the Text tool you will find the Touchpad Tool. 

Now, with this tool selected you can move characters around without having to outline your text and that goes for moving up and down as well. 

However, there is no Shift option which allows you to keep things on a straight line so you have to nudge the characters on your keyboard using the arrows.

You can also hold down Shift whilst doing this to make them move ten times faster. 

Adobe Illustrator hacks: Tip 8

If you wanted to know how many colors are on this design or even limit the design to a specific amount of colors, say for example, maybe you're printing a Tshirt.


How would you do that?


Well, we can come into the recolor panel here, and then you're going to notice that you can adjust the amount of colors in this little box, and then we can move through as many colors as we want for our design. 

And again, this is helpful when you're printing via Adobe Illustrator. And you can also move your colors around, too. And actually, this panel is something I suggest that designers do really get to know because it has a lot of uses.

Adobe Illustrator hacks: Tip 9

Now, I've made a quick selection of circles here, and I can actually go ahead and open up the swatches panel to turn this into a pattern itself. That's not the actual tip, however.

It's just part of the process. but in the Swatches panel, you will find the Patterns menu right here, and I can drag and drop my shapes. into that menu, and it's going to. give me a Mave pattern swatch. Now, the thing I've learned is that.


You can apply your pattern to a shape, and if you rotate that shape, the pattern rotates as well. 

But the question arises, what if you. Want to only rotate the pattern or. Just rotate the square? Well, in the rotate menu, you can. Check only the pattern box and this.

Is going to allow you to rotate. The pattern itself within the shape. and of course, the shape is staying stationary, which is pretty cool. 

Adobe Illustrator hacks: Tip 10

If we use a minus fourth option in the Pathfinder window, I cut the top shape into the O shape below. 

The thing is that we can see in the Layers window just here that we have just one shape. If I then go ahead and commit the same process, but this time, if I hold down the Alt key on Windows or the option key on a Mac while clicking the Pathfinder function, I now have a genuine compound path. 

We can come into the Layers window and then click only the middle section with the blue icon and then just manipulate the shape and the size in any which way you want to. 

This isn't a colored circle. You are literally seeing through the shape onto the background. And I can demonstrate that right here.

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