Overview of the Panels

Quick reference

• 00:03 Now that we've covered our toolbar on the left hand side,
• 00:06 it's time now that we take a look at our panels.
• 00:08 And the panels can be found on the opposite side of the window over
• 00:11 here on the right.
• 00:12 Now similarly to our toolbar, you have the option to either kind of minimize or
• 00:17 expand this into a different view.
• 00:19 Just by clicking on these arrows up here on the top and
• 00:22 you'll see as I hover my cursor over it, it says Expand Panel.
• 00:25 So when I click, you can kind of get an expanded view of all of the panels that
• 00:29 you have open at the moment.
• 00:31 But, similarly also to our toolbar,
• 00:33 you'll see that these are kind of divided up into sections.
• 00:36 I don't know if you guys can tell, because a line here kinda breaking these and
• 00:39 dividing each of these groups up.
• 00:42 So let's start at the top.
• 00:44 First we have our color panel here which you can kind of toggle through and
• 00:49 these other tabs here are the other options just below.
• 00:53 So you'll see we have our color guide.
• 00:55 And as I click on that,
• 00:57 it actually switches to the color guide icon over here.
• 01:00 And if I were to click on the color themes, that also changes the tab up top.
• 01:06 Now these are grouped together for a reason and these are all kind of similarly
• 01:12 useful things but let's start with the color guide here, all right?
• 01:18 If I click on this little grid on the bottom you'll see that you have all
• 01:21 different kinds of color presets, so if you wanted to choose Art History,
• 01:25 you have these ancient color palettes that you can use here.
• 01:28 You've got shades and tints available to you, but you also have some other
• 01:33 default swatches, kind of dark, and cool, and light themes as well.
• 01:39 And you can kind of just explore and
• 01:40 see what some of these different themes are like.
• 01:42 They can be really helpful if you're trying to create or go for
• 01:46 a specific look.
• 01:48 Now, one of the ones that I use the most is probably color books, because you'll
• 01:53 see that you have all of these different Pantone books and categories here, and
• 01:57 if you guys remember earlier on, I was talking about color modes.
• 02:00 I was saying one of the other useful colors,
• 02:02 especially when you're working in print is Pantones.
• 02:05 So this is, kind of the category that I use a lot, especially if I'm trying to
• 02:08 print and match colors because you'll want to use, kind of, a universal antone color.
• 02:13 All right, and
• 02:14 that's really helpful if you're trying to get something printed to ensure accuracy.
• 02:19 So moving on down, we have this panel here for our swatches.
• 02:23 Now this may look a little bit similar to our color guide, except that swatches
• 02:29 allow us to save presets or gradients, solids, any kinda colors that we want.
• 02:35 So this is a great way to be able to just kind of
• 02:38 have one place where you have a folder of colors or
• 02:41 commonly used palettes that you like to use in your projects.
• 02:46 And it also allows you to kind of create new folders.
• 02:50 So if I wanted to create a new color group,
• 02:52 I could click on this folder here and just call it something like Custom Folder.
• 02:58 And then I am just going to add colors to it, that's really helpful.
• 03:02 And you can also add individual new swatches, you can choose the color type,
• 03:07 if you want to process or spot color.
• 03:09 In this case it's basically referencing our pantone colors,
• 03:12 that's why it's showing up like this.
• 03:15 But if I wanna select one of these other ones and then choose a new swatch, you see
• 03:19 now it's a CMYK color mode and it gives you the breakdown of that color here.
• 03:24 So again, this is the cayenne 100%, magenta 100%,
• 03:29 yellow and black are both set to 25.
• 03:32 So these are the percentages or
• 03:33 intensity of each of those colors used to create this color here.
• 03:39 All right, so those are the swatches, and
• 03:40 those are the things that you should be really pay attention to.
• 03:43 I don't use too many of these other options very often, but
• 03:47 they are very useful if you wanted to show different kinds of gradients swatches,
• 03:51 patterns, and so forth.
• 03:53 So moving on from there, we have our Brushes panel.
• 03:56 And by default, you'll just have a few of these brushes in here but
• 03:59 very similar to our swatches and our color guide, we have presets.
• 04:03 So if I click on this menu on the top right that just look like four lines, and
• 04:08 I come down all the way to bottom,
• 04:10 you'll see that you have this option to open the Brush Library.
• 04:14 Now that's really useful because you could choose from all of these different kinds
• 04:17 of preset brushes in Adobe Illustrator.
• 04:20 Some that I like to use are the Bristle Brush library, or
• 04:23 the general Artistic Library, where if you select any of these,
• 04:27 you can see that it will give you some more cool brushes to play around with.
• 04:32 And these are all available to you right off the bat in Adobe Illustrator.
• 04:35 So they're really great and a fun way to kind of add some personality and
• 04:39 life to your illustrations, right?
• 04:42 Even anything, even vector artwork, logos or
• 04:45 anything else that you wanna create, right?
• 04:48 So aside from just our brushes, we have these other things too called Symbols.
• 04:52 Now Symbols allow us to just easily kind of drag and
• 04:54 drop things directly onto our workspace, and it can be a good time saver if you're
• 04:59 gonna be using something over and over again.
• 05:03 All right, and you also have a Symbol Library here, similar to our Brushes,
• 05:07 where you can choose from some fun presets such as Retro.
• 05:11 And what else do we have here?
• 05:13 We have things like Tiki, Regal Vector Pack, Primitive, Logo, Elements, and more.
• 05:20 So some of these things are a little clip arty but
• 05:23 you kinda always add to these or save some presets as you go.
• 05:28 All right, so that's our second group.
• 05:30 From there, we have Stroke and
• 05:32 this is basically referring to a stroke meeting in line.
• 05:35 So these points are basically going to determine the thickness or
• 05:39 the weight of our lines.
• 05:41 And we also have our gradience where we can choose custom gradience or
• 05:45 we can click in here and double click on these colors to make our own.
• 05:51 And by default, it will probably be set to a linear gradient but
• 05:54 you'll also have the option to create a radial gradient which you can see changing
• 05:57 here in the preview.
• 05:59 And one other thing to point out is that you can always reverse the gradient to
• 06:03 have it go the opposite way by clicking here or you can apply the gradient
• 06:08 to an outline and it doesn't only have to be exclusively for a fill color.
• 06:11 You can also apply gradients to a stroke, and then you have a few more options here
• 06:16 to apply gradient to within the stroke, along the stroke or across the stroke, and
• 06:20 each one of those will produce a different looking result.
• 06:24 And from there, we have transparency.
• 06:26 Now, this is great because we have a lot of these blending mode options here
• 06:30 under transparency, kind of similar to Photoshop, where you get different looks
• 06:34 depending on the order of elements in a given design or project.
• 06:41 So if you we're over lapping some colors on top of an illustration or
• 06:44 something like that, you're playing around this button most can produce some cool and
• 06:48 interesting results.
• 06:50 And just as the name implies transparency you can also play around the opacity
• 06:54 of any object, type, shape and so forth.
• 06:58 For there we have the Appearance panel.
• 07:00 Now the Appearance panel is something we're gonna get into a little bit later,
• 07:03 but it's a great way to kind of set styles.
• 07:05 Like if you wanted to put a glow or a drop shadow on something you can set that up
• 07:10 here so that you can easily reuse it on other elements in your design.
• 07:14 And we also have Graphic Styles which can be handy for things like buttons.
• 07:19 So if you wanted to have different kind of a glossy button or
• 07:23 a style set up here, you can save that and you can choose from these presets.
• 07:29 So be sure to try and play around with some of these different presets in here,
• 07:33 check them out, browse through the folders and just try to
• 07:36 take a look at some of the things that are available to you right after that.
• 07:40 You've got some for type effects and
• 07:43 all kinds of different graphic styles in here that you can experiment with.
• 07:47 So many of these panels on the right side come with a bunch of presets already.
• 07:52 But remember, you can always edit, modify and save your own as well, okay?
• 07:58 And then, from graphic styles, we also have the export option, which
• 08:04 I don't use too often, but if you ever wanted to save an element for web, you can
• 08:08 choose here if you want it to be standard size, double, three times its size, or
• 08:12 even a custom size, along with the type of file that you would like to export.
• 08:17 So this is a little bit different from just saving it for web, but
• 08:20 it's kind of a quick and easy way to do it right here from your panels.
• 08:24 From there, we just have our Layers panel, which I can just click on here and
• 08:28 you'll see we don't really have any layers set up right now.
• 08:31 But when you do have that, you can toggle the visibility on and off, and
• 08:34 you can also choose to lock or unlock a layer.
• 08:37 And lastly, you also have the art for its panel.
• 08:42 So that's kind of a general overview of the panels.
• 08:45 But again, I encourage you guys to go in here.
• 08:47 Check some of these out.
• 08:48 Take a look at the presets.
• 08:50 And have some fun with them.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.