Preparing for Launch

Quick reference

• 00:04 The first time you open up Adobe Illustrator,
• 00:06 this is what the interface looks like.
• 00:08 Now for the purposes of this video series, I will be using Adobe Illustrator CC2017.
• 00:14 Now yours will probably look something like this if you've been using one or
• 00:19 two versions before, hopefully, nothing too much older than CC 2015, or CS5.
• 00:25 But upon opening up the Adobe Illustrator,
• 00:27 you'll see that the first thing you may notice are these thumbnails.
• 00:31 Now, these from my recent files that I've been using as indicated by this
• 00:34 little line, and the white text up here.
• 00:37 So these are files that I've just been using recently and working on.
• 00:40 But if I wanted to change those from thumbnails to a list,
• 00:43 I can just click on these lines and it'll basically just change it to
• 00:46 a list of the names of all of the files that I've been working with.
• 00:50 All right, you also have a few other options over here, it's called CC FILES,
• 00:54 MOBILE CREATIONS, New, Open along with a bunch of other stuff.
• 00:59 Now, I know it may seem like there's a lot going on right away, but don't worry.
• 01:03 I promise you, it's not as daunting or as bad as it seems.
• 01:07 Now on the bottom here, you have the ability to search for stock images and
• 01:11 you also have the ability to watch a short three minute video
• 01:14 to see what kinds of things you can create with the program.
• 01:17 But up top here, you'll notice that you have a few more options,
• 01:20 including this one that says Start.
• 01:23 And all this is doing is indicating the work space, or
• 01:25 the interface that you're currently viewing.
• 01:28 So if I click this down arrow, you'll see that I have some other options here,
• 01:31 called Automation, Essentials, Layout Etc.,
• 01:34 and those are just the different types of work spaces that you can use.
• 01:38 So if I were to change this to Essentials,
• 01:41 it's basically showing me the default setup for my tools.
• 01:46 If I change to Layout, you'll see that now all of a sudden,
• 01:48 I have slightly different tools.
• 01:50 And depending on what kind of things I would like to achieve in the program,
• 01:55 it's going to change the workspace a little bit.
• 01:59 But by default, it's always going to come to the start workspace.
• 02:02 And if you don't wanna show the start workspace,
• 02:05 you can click on this little gear right here on the upper right hand corner and
• 02:08 it'll tell you to hide the start workspace.
• 02:11 All you have to do is go to Preferences > General, and
• 02:13 uncheck the box that says show start workspace.
• 02:17 And you've also got this little question mark here in case you have any questions
• 02:20 along the way.
• 02:22 But moving along, let's say that I wanted to come over here to New and
• 02:25 create a new document or I could open an existing file.
• 02:29 But for now we're gonna go ahead and hit New.
• 02:32 Now this next screen is going to pop up.
• 02:35 And you'll see right here, again these are recent items.
• 02:38 So these are the sizes that I use the most frequently,
• 02:41 the most common ones that I have been working with.
• 02:43 And along with some distress patterns down here.
• 02:47 Now these are just something that I had loaded up from Adobe stalk to play
• 02:50 around with.
• 02:51 But aside from these thumbnail elements just here,
• 02:54 you'll see on the right hand side there's a column.
• 02:57 Now this is basically where you can set up your work space, determine the height and
• 03:00 width of your document, along with changing the units of measurement.
• 03:04 So you can change it from points to to centimeters and so forth.
• 03:08 I like sticking with inches.
• 03:10 You can also change the orientation, whether you want portrait or landscape.
• 03:14 The number of art boards which we'll get to a little bit later, along with things
• 03:17 like bleed and color mode, which we'll be discussing in the next video.
• 03:21 But you also have some more settings down here,
• 03:24 which are essentially pretty much the same options in a different interface.
• 03:28 But if I wanted to come over here to my saved tab, you'll see that I have some of
• 03:32 those distress patterns that I mentioned which I loaded up from Adobe Stock.
• 03:36 You also have what are called mobile,
• 03:38 where you'll see that you had some default mobile presets.
• 03:41 These are just blank documents that will allow you to jump in and start creating
• 03:45 depending on what kind of device or mobile file that you like to create.
• 03:50 So you'll see that if I expand that menu, I can now not only choose from iPads and
• 03:56 iPhones, but also a Surface, Android, Apple Watch, and a Nexus.
• 04:00 If I scroll down even further, you'll see that not only do we have those presets
• 04:04 above, but we also have 13 templates to choose from.
• 04:08 Once your art is set up with some colors and graphics, so
• 04:11 we can jump in right away and start creating.
• 04:14 So aside from mobile, you also have basically the same thing for web,
• 04:18 where you've got this default or standard web sizes and
• 04:21 you can view more by choosing this option here that says view all presets.
• 04:25 When you do that, you'll see a bunch other standard sizes here as well.
• 04:30 And again, you also have templates for web, which you can use and
• 04:33 jump in to start playing around with,
• 04:35 such as these laptop effector mock ups, landing page wire frames, and more.
• 04:41 As we go on, you'll see that you have the same things for print, for film and
• 04:45 video, and art and illustration.
• 04:48 So there's a lot of blank documents and presets and
• 04:51 templates in here that you can use and play around with.
• 04:54 If you just wanna jump in and start moving stuff around and
• 04:56 playing with some of these graphics.
• 04:58 And that can be a great way to get familiar with some of these projects and
• 05:02 the way that they're constructed.
• 05:03 But in the next video, I would like to talk to you guys about something a little
• 05:06 bit more simple as we dive into the color mode and
• 05:10 talking more about what kind of color settings you wanna use for your projects.

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