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About this lesson

With our logo mostly set up we will expand all of our text and shapes to convert everything into vector points and save on RAM.

Quick reference

Expanding Shapes

With our logo mostly set up we will expand all of our text and shapes to convert everything into vector points and save on RAM.

When to use

Once our logo is put together we can begin expanding all of our text and shapes to convert everything into points.

Instructions

  • Begin by opening the Expanding Shapes - Exercise.ai file
  • Use your Selection Tool (V) to select the thin red stroke that goes around the main part of the bull logo (this should be Layer 11, just below your First Pass layer)
  • Click and drag the fill color to the stroke color so they are the same, and then bring up the Stroke Panel and increase the weight to 6 points to create a slightly bolder and thicker line
  • Since we have created a thicker line, we are going to want to move some of the details on the top of the head down slightly to move them away from the edges
  • Use your Selection Tool (V) to click on the shapes along the top of the head while holding the Shift Key so they are all selected at the same time, and then tap them down a few times with the arrows on your keyboard
  • Before moving ahead, lock the BG Layer along with the Live Type, Fonts, and Sketch Layers
  • We can also now delete the Trace layer
  • Select your Artboard Tool from the toolbar and then delete the second artboard leaving only the one with our logo and text
  • At this point we want to select everything else in our file by pressing Command/Ctrl+A
  • From here, copy it by pressing Command/Ctrl+C
  • Make a new layer at the top of your Layers Palette and name it 'Expanded Logo'
  • Then, press Command/Ctrl+F to paste everything in front on your new layer
  • Turn off the visibility of every layer below, except for the BG layer
  • With your main Selection Tool (V), click and drag around the whole logo on your Expanded Logo layer before going to the Object Menu and choosing 'Expand'
  • Make sure that the Fill and Stroke boxes are both checked off and then hit OK 
  • We now have a copy of our whole logo that has been expanded, so at this point we can delete all of the other logo layers all the way down to the BG layer

Hints & tips

  • While it is generally a good idea to keep a back up file with your original layers all separated, it can be helpful to remove them once you have an expanded copy to keep things cleaner and more organized in your files.
  • Expanding your shapes is always a good idea as it converts anything that has a stroke applied to it into a solid shape.
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  • 00:05 So this is the point where we can basically begin expanding everything and
  • 00:08 combining things together.
  • 00:10 So it's a good time to kind of look everything over one more time and
  • 00:13 make sure that we're happy with all of our shapes.
  • 00:16 So the first thing I wanna do here is just grab this red outline
  • 00:19 all the way around our shape.
  • 00:21 And I'm thinking that I wanna make it just slightly thicker, so
  • 00:23 I'm going to click and drag the fill to this stroke and
  • 00:26 then open my stroke panel and maybe just increase this line to about four or six.
  • 00:31 So that's a little bit heavier because remember, like I was saying before,
  • 00:35 I wanna make sure that when you're zoomed out,
  • 00:37 you can still see all of the outline and strokes.
  • 00:41 So what I wanna do now, because I made that a little bit thicker,
  • 00:44 is actually move some of these shapes down.
  • 00:46 So I'm just holding the Shift key, selecting some of these shapes, and
  • 00:50 just tapping them down a couple of clicks, maybe four or
  • 00:53 five times, nothing too drastic, all right?
  • 00:55 And we can even move that one back up a little bit, just to separate it.
  • 01:00 And I think that's looking pretty cool, right?
  • 01:02 So now what I wanna do is basically as you can see, we have a lot of layers here now.
  • 01:08 And we have our Live Type and our original sketch, which we can keep.
  • 01:12 So I've going to move the Live Type and the Fonts and just go ahead and
  • 01:16 lock both of those and turn the visibility off.
  • 01:20 And now everything else in here are shapes that we can expand.
  • 01:23 We can go ahead and delete the Trace layers,
  • 01:25 since we don't really need that anymore.
  • 01:27 And I'm also going to select my art board tool and just delete my second art board,
  • 01:32 so that we can keep everything contained in this one space.
  • 01:36 Okay, so let's go up to the Objects menu and make sure that everything is unlocked,
  • 01:40 which it is.
  • 01:42 And now what we can do is also lock our background layer.
  • 01:45 So that all we have is our main logo, and our text,
  • 01:48 everything that we basically assembled and put together.
  • 01:52 But you can turn on the background just for now, just make sure that it's locked,
  • 01:55 because you don't wanna select it for this part.
  • 01:58 And what we're gonna do is press Cmd+A to select everything, Cmd+C to copy it,
  • 02:03 and then go ahead and create a new layer.
  • 02:06 Now, this should be approximately layer 14, maybe 15 depending on how many layers
  • 02:10 you've got, but we're going to call this layer EXPANDED LOGO, all right?
  • 02:17 And then, we're just going to press Cmd+F to paste everything here.
  • 02:21 And now we can go ahead and turn the visibility off for
  • 02:23 all these other layers except for background.
  • 02:26 Now, we basically have our entire logo as one group on this new layer.
  • 02:32 And what we are going to do is select the whole thing, come up to the Objects menu,
  • 02:37 and expand it.
  • 02:38 So this is going to expand our entire logo, okay.
  • 02:41 And it’s gonna make it easier for
  • 02:42 us to merge everything together and to kind of start separating our colors so
  • 02:47 we can simplify a lot of these points and save on some computer memory.
  • 02:52 So since we’ve got our expanded logo, we can turn it on and off and
  • 02:55 see we don’t really have a need for these other layers.
  • 02:59 But you can save them if you want, but at this point,
  • 03:02 I'm basically just going to scrap them, because we have all other shapes and
  • 03:06 everything else is put together.
  • 03:08 So that's going to help us out quite a bit and saving on space and
  • 03:11 some RAM and memory.
  • 03:13 Now, if you wanted to, you can come in here, and I decided that
  • 03:18 it might take that little shape out right there cuz I don't really need it.
  • 03:22 And, I'm just gonna tweak a couple of things here really quickly.
  • 03:27 And, expanding your shape is always a good idea because,
  • 03:30 if you leave anything as a stroke or an outline, anytime that you resize it,
  • 03:34 it could potentially mess up your logo on the way that it appears.
  • 03:38 So you wanna make sure that everything is looking pretty good, and then go ahead and
  • 03:42 expand your design as we've done here.

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