Use stock Illustrator symbols to quickly show clients (or your friends!) what a logo or image would like on clothing.

Go to your symbol libraries (if you need help with this refer back to PART ONE: “A Quick Introduction to Illustrator Symbols”), choose the Fashion Library and add the desired pieces of clothing to your Symbols Palette.

Drag and drop the symbol(s) to your artboard. For this quick exercise I am going to add our logo to a hat and a t-shirt, so I have dragged one of each symbol into the document.

I am using a single instance of each symbol here, so I can simply Expand (Object > Expand) the shape if I want to update the color or add a stroke. (I will go over how to edit the actual Symbol in a subsequent part of this series.) Then just add the art or text that you want to appear on your clothing item and you are done!

You’ve been busy creating a beautiful illustration using all the colors in your favorite blanket from when you were a kid.  When you mom finally sends it to you in the mail you realize the shade of purple that you were remembering was was actually brown!  It would take you hours to go back and change all the little details you made in the wrong color.  Here is an easy way to select multiple object that share common characteristics, such as color.

We start with a simple design with a few colors used repeatedly throughout the design.

Choose one color that you would like to change.  I am going to update the purple dots in the design above and make them brown.  Select any object that has the fill color that you want to update.  Once it appears as the fill color in your toolbox, go to Select > Same > Fill Color.

Now all of the object that are your chosen fill color should be selected.

 Now all you have to do is select a new fill color from your Color Palette and, VIOLA….all of the selected objects will be updated!

You can use this simple methond for selecting objects with the same fill color, stroke color, stroke width and even opacity.  A very handy tool indeed!        

So that we can practice what we have gone over so far in the Simply Symbols Series, this tutorial goes over how to make a simple illustration using standard Illustrator symbols along with the skills and tools covered in Parts 1 & 2.

Let’s illustrate an outdoor scene of a house and a yard.

First, go through the Symbol Libraries and add these symbols seen below (or something similar) to your Symbols Palette.  If you need help adding symbols to your Symbols Palette, refer back to PART ONE: An Intro to Illustrator Symbols”.

Next, create a background of sky and grass on the artboard.

Now drag the house symbol from the Symbols Palette onto the artboard. Using the Symbol Sizer Tool, scale the house to the desired size. For a review of the Symbol Tools, go back to PART TWO: “Symbols Tools”.

Drag some instances of the tree symbol into the yard position them here and there. You can use the Symbol Sizer, Symbol Stainer and Symbol Screener tools to make some of your trees diminish in size, color and opacity to give the scene some perspective.

Next, let’s add a garden at the base of the house by dragging some flower and grass symbols onto the artboard.

Perhaps a few bushes around the perimeter of the house.

Now, drag in some butterflies fluttering around in the yard.

Finally, add some clouds in the sky. Create more lifelike clouds by using the Symbol Sizer and Symbol Screener to make the various sizes with a low opacity.

There you have it. A complete and detailed illustration using only standard Illustrator symbols. Has the potential to make life much easier, doesn’t it?

Stay tuned, PART FOUR will go through the steps for Creating Custom Symbols….

This is a introductory tutorial for beginner level users of Illustrator. I am using Illustrator CS2.

If you are not familiar with the definition and use of symbols, you may want to refer back to PART ONE of this series, “Simply Symbols PART ONE: An Intro to Illustrator Symbols”.

There are several symbol tools in your Illustrator toolbox. They can be found midway down on the left hand side of your toolbox, as seen to the right. These tools let you create and modify SYMBOL SETS. Once you have a set of symbol instances, you can change color, size, location, transparency and style of the symbols within that set. If you click on the small black triangle in the corner of the symbol tool button and hold it down, a flyout menu containing the whole collection of symbol tools is visible. You can pull the tool set away from the toolbox by dragging your cursor out to the little black triangle which should now appear on the outside edge of the tool set.

The Symbol Tool Set can be seen below:

I will go through the tools one at a time, providing an example of what the tool does.

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Symbol Sprayer
You create a SYMBOL SET using the Symbol Sprayer tool. Simply spray the desired amount of symbols onto the artboard in the general shape that you want them to appear. You can spray them one at a time or as dense coverage. The entire symbol set is a single object.

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Symbol Shifter
The symbol shifter is used to move the instances in the symbol set.

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Symbol Scruncher
The symbol scruncher moves the symbol instances closer together or farther apart.

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Symbol Sizer
The symbol sizer resizes symbol instances.

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Symbol Spinner
The symbol spinner rotates symbol instances.

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Symbol Stainer
The symbol stainer changes the color of symbol instances.

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Symbol Screener
The symbol screener controls the opacity of symbol instances.

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Symbol Styler
The symbol screener applies styles to symbol instances.
           

This is a Illustrator tutorial for beginner level users of Illustrator. I am using Illustrator CS2.

Symbols are a very handy tool in Illustrator and can make the life of a designer quite a bit easier. This introductory tutorial will go over Symbol basics and show you where to find the menus and commands you will need to start using symbols in your artwork.

1. What is a symbol?

A SYMBOL is basically a prepackaged art object that is stored in the Symbols Palette. Symbols can be used multiple times throughout your artwork without having to recreate or duplicate the object. Each time a symbol appears in a document is considered an “instance”. Each instance is linked to the same object in the Symbols Palette. Similar to style sheets, this allows you to edit the symbol within the palette and all instances of that symbol will be updated. This can save loads of time and reduces file size greatly.

2. Locate the Symbols Palette

In the default workspace, the Symbols palette appears bundled alongside the Color Swatches and Brushes palette. To open the Symbols palette, go to Window > Symbols. While the palette shown below does not contain any symbols, the default palette will usually contain a few standard symbols.

3. Finding Symbols in Illustrator

Illustrator comes with pre-loaded Symbol Libraries containing a wide variety of art objects that you may find useful. To access the Symbol Libraries go to Window > Symbol Libraries > Pick a Library. For the purpose of this tutorial I have chosen the Flowers library.

4. Adding Symbols to your Symbols Palette

Clicking on a symbol in the Flower Library will automatically add it to my Symbols Palette. You can also select mulitple flowers and select Add to Symbols from the drop down menu at the top of the library window.

5. Placing Symbols onto the Artboard

There are a few ways to add a symbol to your document. The easiest way is to select the symbol in the Symbols Palette and drag it to where you want it to appear on the artboard.

You can also place the symbol by selecting it in the palette and click on the Place Symbol Instance button at the bottom of the Symbols Palette.

The last way is to select the symbol and choose Place Symbol Instance from the Symbols Palette menu.

6. Using Symbols in your Artwork

There are lots of benefits to using symbols in Illustrator. For instance, by using symbols and the symbol tools you can:

Create detailed illustrations rapidly

Make revisions and changes quickly and easily

Reuse artwork again and again

Build custom art object libraries

Reduce file sizes

The subsequent parts of my “Simply Symbols” tutorial series will go over each of these benefits and how to effectively use symbols. Some of the most important reasons to use symbols are listed above, but as you become more familiar with these powerful tools and how to use them you will likely find you own reasons to dig symbols!

Look for part of “Simply Symbols”  2 coming next week!