3. Customizing Charts in IllustratorModifying Illustrator graph settings| 00:00 | Now that we have an understanding about
how graphs work inside of Illustrator,
| | 00:04 | let's dive into some of the settings that allow us to
customize exactly how we want a graph to look.
| | 00:10 | So in this movie I am going to start by
creating a new document; Cmd+N here
| | 00:14 | inside of Illustrator. I will just
choose some basic settings here, working
| | 00:17 | with the Letter Size, my Unit is set to Inches
and my Orientation is set to Wide, and I will click OK.
| | 00:23 | Now I want to start by creating a graph
object here, so I am going to go to my
| | 00:26 | Graph tool. I am going to use the Column Graph tool.
| | 00:30 | I am going to click right about over here
and I am going to choose to enter a
| | 00:33 | specific Width and Height for my chart.
| | 00:35 | Now remember, the values that I'm
entering here represent the bounding area
| | 00:40 | for where the chart itself will appear, not the
value or category axes and not the legend either.
| | 00:46 | So I am going to use a Width of 6 and a
Height of 4, I am going to click OK and
| | 00:51 | then I am going to import some data.
| | 00:52 | So I'm going to click on this button
here to Import Data, navigate to the
| | 00:55 | Chapter 03 Customizing Charts and I'll
choose the US_Energy_Production_2011 file,
| | 01:01 | which is again a text file that I exported
out of Excel and I'll choose Open and
| | 01:06 | that data now comes in here.
| | 01:07 | This data does actually have some decimal
points in it, so I am going to choose
| | 01:11 | to specify one digit for my decimals, click OK.
| | 01:15 | It's important to realize by the way,
that the data is still there, even if I
| | 01:18 | don't see the decimal points, this is just a way
for me to display that here inside of Illustrator.
| | 01:22 | And now I am going to click on the
check mark to apply that. Great!
| | 01:25 | So I am going to close the Data window right now.
| | 01:27 | And it's important to realize that what
Illustrator has created is indeed some
| | 01:31 | kind of special object called a Graph.
Basically a whole bunch of groups kind of
| | 01:36 | sewn together into this special kind of an object;
but at the end of the day they are all still objects.
| | 01:40 | I have the ability to use my Direct
Selection tool to select different
| | 01:44 | elements and change their colors, select some
text and actually change some of the text as well.
| | 01:50 | But because Illustrator takes the
trouble to actually turn these into separate
| | 01:54 | subgroups, I can use the Group
Selection tool inside of Illustrator to make it
| | 01:58 | easier to modify some of these settings.
| | 02:00 | Like for example, if I want to change
the color of the Nuclear bars inside of
| | 02:05 | this chart, you will notice that if I take
my Direct Selection tool and I hold
| | 02:10 | down the Option or Alt key on my keyboard,
that toggles the Group Selection tool.
| | 02:15 | I can keep that button down, the Option
or the Alt button, and click once on
| | 02:19 | the square here in the legend.
| | 02:21 | If I click it second time, it now selects
everything else in the upper group.
| | 02:25 | So now I can see to that both of these
are currently selected and now I could
| | 02:29 | change my color to something else,
maybe like this orange color and let's
| | 02:32 | actually set the Stroke to None.
| | 02:35 | Now I haven't ungrouped this graph. I can
still modify the data and the color will stay.
| | 02:40 | So for example, maybe I want to change
the color of the Renewables section.
| | 02:44 | Maybe I want that to be green.
| | 02:45 | I can again, Opt+Click or Alt+Click
on this box right here in the legend,
| | 02:49 | click again to now select all the
other parts in that series, and then choose
| | 02:53 | some kind of a green color.
| | 02:55 | I can also set its stroke to None as well.
| | 02:57 | So I have the ability to modify colors
very easily just like I would any other
| | 03:01 | object inside of Illustrator.
| | 03:03 | If I want to change the text for example,
I'll hold down the Option key and
| | 03:06 | select the word Nuclear, but then I will
basically click on it again and now you
| | 03:11 | can see that all the other text elements,
all the labels that appear for this
| | 03:15 | legend right here becomes selected.
| | 03:17 | So now I can change this to for example,
maybe Chaparral Pro and change the point
| | 03:23 | size to maybe 18, and maybe change the Fill Color
of that to something, maybe a dark blue or purple.
| | 03:29 | So you do have a tremendous amount of
creative freedom when working with graphs
| | 03:34 | inside of Illustrator. But let's actually
go into the Graph Settings themselves
| | 03:37 | and see how we can make some other adjustments.
| | 03:39 | I am going to use my Selection tool and
I am going to select the entire graph.
| | 03:44 | Next, I am going to go up to Object menu.
I am going to scroll down to where it
| | 03:48 | says Graph and I am going to
choose this option here called Type.
| | 03:52 | This brings up a dialog box and, as I
had mentioned previously, unfortunately
| | 03:55 | there's no preview button here inside
of this dialog, so it's just not as easy
| | 03:59 | to experiment with these.
| | 04:00 | Now first of all, right off the bat,
you can see that I have an option for all
| | 04:04 | the different types of graphs.
| | 04:06 | So if I wanted to actually view this
information or this data as a pie chart
| | 04:10 | instead of as a column chart, I can simply
click on the Pie Chart right here and click OK.
| | 04:15 | Notice by the way, that the colors and
the typefaces that I have chosen, that
| | 04:19 | still stays the same, but I've now
visualize this data using a different chart type.
| | 04:23 | Let me go back over here to Object>Graph>Type.
| | 04:27 | Again, remember I have to keep
going back to this dialog box. You
| | 04:31 | may find it useful, if you do this
kind of work a lot, to assign a custom
| | 04:35 | keyboard shortcut to the Graph Type
command. That way you can very easily
| | 04:39 | bring this dialog box back up.
| | 04:41 | Let's switch back here to the Column Chart.
You'll see that I have here some
| | 04:44 | options where it says Style.
| | 04:46 | I can Add a Drop Shadow, which by the way I
will tell you doesn't really help at all.
| | 04:50 | It's not a real soft drop shadow that
you might be used to seeing inside of
| | 04:54 | Illustrator. This feature was added
way before Illustrator had the ability to
| | 04:57 | create those nice soft drop shadows.
| | 04:59 | So you may find it more useful simply
that when you're done creating a chart to
| | 05:03 | apply the regular drop shadow effect
that you may be used to.
| | 05:06 | However, I do have the ability
to add a Legend Across the Top.
| | 05:10 | If I do that you will see the legend now appears
across the top of my chart not along the side.
| | 05:15 | Once again, I am going to go back to
the Object menu, choose Graph>Type.
| | 05:20 | You'll see that over here where it says
Value Axis, which you remember is this
| | 05:24 | axis over here, currently appears on
the left side, but I can choose to have
| | 05:28 | Illustrator display it on either
the right side or even on both sides.
| | 05:32 | Now let me actually go over here to the top
where we see this setting here called Graph Options.
| | 05:37 | If I click on that I can see that
I have the ability to specify individual
| | 05:41 | settings for the Value Axis, which again
is this axis right here, or the Category Axis,
| | 05:47 | which is the one that appears across the bottom.
| | 05:50 | Let's start by first focusing on the Value Axis.
| | 05:53 | Notice over here where it says Tick Marks.
Right now the Length is set to Short,
| | 05:57 | and that's what these little lines here represent.
| | 06:00 | I can turn them off so that they don't
appear at all, or I can choose Full Width.
| | 06:05 | Full Width will actually extend these lines
all the way across the chart.
| | 06:09 | I also have the ability to Add Labels, and I
have something called the Prefix and a Suffix.
| | 06:14 | Let's say for example, these
values represent something like money.
| | 06:18 | I could set a prefix that has maybe a
dollar sign, and if I were to go ahead
| | 06:22 | now and choose OK, I can see now that a $
sign has been added in front of all these values.
| | 06:28 | Maybe these numbers represent a percentage.
| | 06:30 | Well, I can again go back to the
Object menu, choose Graph>Type, go back to
| | 06:37 | Value Axis and get rid of the Prefix
but add a Suffix of a % sign.
| | 06:43 | Now when I click OK, I'll see that a % sign
is added towards the end of the value.
| | 06:48 | Of course, you could have both
a prefix and a suffix as well.
| | 06:52 | And a suffix doesn't have to be a single
character, for example, if each of these
| | 06:56 | represented millions of dollars I could
have a prefix of a dollar sign and then
| | 07:00 | I could have a suffix of actual word 'million.'
| | 07:03 | You can also see how the tick marks
now extend all the way across the chart.
| | 07:07 | Let's go back because I want
to show you one other setting.
| | 07:10 | I am going to go to Object>Graph and then choose Type.
| | 07:13 | Notice over here where it says Options,
I have something here called a Column
| | 07:16 | Width and a Cluster Width.
| | 07:18 | I can modify these values to control how much
space each of these columns actually take up.
| | 07:23 | For example, if I set my Column Width to 50%
I can click OK and I have much narrower columns.
| | 07:30 | Just be aware that you are not limited
to only going to 100% for these columns.
| | 07:34 | So for example, if I go back to Object>Graph>Type,
I can choose a Column
| | 07:40 | Width of 150% and click OK. And now
I can see that they actually overlap.
| | 07:45 | It's this setting specifically, while
when I go to the Object menu and choose
| | 07:50 | Graph>Type that I also have a setting
for First Row in Front and First Column
| | 07:54 | in Front because that will allow me to
specify which of these columns should be
| | 07:59 | displayed in front or behind each other when they overlap.
| | 08:02 | By the way, the same settings that we have been working
for the Value Axis also apply to the Category Axis.
| | 08:08 | Now there is one other setting here, if I go back
to the Value Axis, which is something called Tick Values.
| | 08:14 | This is actually a very important setting
when working with graphs, especially
| | 08:18 | when working with multiple graphs.
| | 08:19 | In fact, I feel that it's so important it
warrants its own movie talking about it.
| | 08:24 | So for now, I am going to click on the
Cancel button and we are done with talking
| | 08:29 | about how we might modify some of the
settings for graph elements inside of Illustrator.
| | 08:33 | In the next movie we are going to focus on exactly
what the Tick Values actually do to a chart in Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Defining the value scale for a chart| 00:00 | Okay, so in this movie I want to focus
on a very specific setting that applies
| | 00:05 | to working with charts and graphs inside
of Illustrator, and that's defining the
| | 00:09 | scale for the Value Axis.
| | 00:11 | So let's actually start by creating a brand-new
document here, Cmd+N for New Document.
| | 00:16 | I use Letter, set to Inches, and again Wide here
just to make it easy to format at the screen.
| | 00:21 | I am going to go ahead now and create a chart.
| | 00:23 | Let's go over here to select the Column
Graph tool. I am simply going to go
| | 00:27 | ahead now, just click anywhere in the
screen here and let's actually set a Width
| | 00:30 | of 2 inches and a Height of 2 inches
and then I am going to click OK.
| | 00:35 | So really kind of a small chart here,
but remember that the actual bounding
| | 00:39 | area that I define for my chart refers
to where those values are actually
| | 00:44 | plotted; it doesn't include the Value Axis,
the Category Axis or the Legend and so on and so forth.
| | 00:49 | But I am just going to punch in
some pretty simple numbers right here.
| | 00:52 | Maybe we will do something like 10, Tab, 30
and let's go down to 20, and then
| | 00:59 | let's go to 50, then let's go to 40
and then let's go to 100.
| | 01:03 | So I am just going to resize this Graph
window a little bit so you can see the
| | 01:05 | values that we're dealing with here.
Pretty straightforward.
| | 01:09 | I am actually going to get rid of the
decimals here, so let's click on this
| | 01:11 | button for Cell Style, change the
Number of decimal digits to 0, click OK.
| | 01:16 | So I'm basically working with very simple
numbers here 10, 30, 20, 50, 40 and 100.
| | 01:21 | Now I am going to go ahead and click to apply those.
| | 01:24 | Now I actually want to see this chart formatted
as a line chart, not as a column chart.
| | 01:29 | So let me close the Data window here.
Go to the Object menu, choose Graph,
| | 01:34 | choose Type and change it to a Line Chart,
now I am going to click OK.
| | 01:39 | Now because of the way that I've
currently formatted the data here,
| | 01:43 | it's showing the series in this visualization format,
but I really want to see it charted as a line.
| | 01:49 | So let's switch back here to my regular
Selection tool, choose Object>Graph>Data,
| | 01:55 | Transpose my data and choose to Apply it
and now I see this plotted as a line on my chart.
| | 02:01 | Let me actually move this over here to
the side and I will zoom in just a little
| | 02:06 | bit here, let me close the window.
| | 02:08 | Let's choose Save to make sure
that the data gets applied correctly.
| | 02:11 | Let me zoom in a little bit closer here on this chart.
| | 02:14 | So it's pretty straightforward here.
I have things that currently go from 0% to 100%
| | 02:18 | and that's because of some of the
settings that I already have, which have
| | 02:22 | been assigned to this chart. So
let's change some of its settings.
| | 02:25 | Let's go to the Object menu, let's
choose Graph and then I am going to choose
| | 02:29 | Type and then at the top here where it
says Graph Options, I am going to choose
| | 02:35 | Value Axis. You can see that over
here I have a Suffix which is the % sign.
| | 02:38 | Let's actually delete that.
| | 02:40 | We'll actually leave the Tick Marks
set to Full Width because that let's us
| | 02:44 | actually see where these values are actually being plotted.
| | 02:48 | If we click OK for a moment here,
I can now see the values that appear along
| | 02:53 | the Value Axis; it goes from 0 all the way to 100
and Illustrator breaks it down into six steps.
| | 03:00 | So basically I see it in increments of 20.
| | 03:03 | Now I didn't specify that. That's something
that Illustrator just chose on its
| | 03:07 | own based on the numbers that I'm
currently using in my chart. So let me explain.
| | 03:11 | Let's kind of move this over to the side just a little
bit here, and let's go back to the data of my chart.
| | 03:17 | I am going to go to Object>Graph>Data.
| | 03:20 | So I have here this window. I currently have values
that go from 10 to 30 to 20 to 50 to 40, 100.
| | 03:27 | That's basically what I'm seeing here;
10, up to 30 back down to 20, up to 50,
| | 03:35 | down to 40 and then all the way up to 100.
| | 03:37 | So Illustrator has seen those values
and has decided to break it up into six parts,
| | 03:42 | starting at zero and then going all the way to 100.
| | 03:46 | But if I were to say you know what,
maybe the top value is not 100,
| | 03:50 | but the top value is maybe 150.
| | 03:53 | I will hit the Tab key to accept that
value right over here, and then if I
| | 03:57 | choose to apply that you can see that Illustrator
now has adjusted the values in the Value Axis.
| | 04:04 | My chart itself has stayed in a 2 inch by 2 inch
square but Illustrator has
| | 04:09 | changed what those numbers actually represent.
| | 04:12 | It did so because it needed to keep
this number here within the bounds of my charts.
| | 04:17 | So basically everything had to kind of
be squeezed within that specific area.
| | 04:21 | Let's change this back to 100 for a
moment here; highlight the field, type in 100
| | 04:26 | and hit Tab and then choose to apply that value.
| | 04:29 | You can now see that Illustrator updated this.
| | 04:32 | Let's say I want this value to actually
extend beyond the edge of this chart.
| | 04:37 | What I can do is I can specify exactly how
Illustrator should determine what these values are.
| | 04:43 | So for example, if this number here
were 125, I will hit the Tab key and apply
| | 04:48 | that value, but I still want
the values to be from 0 to 100.
| | 04:52 | What I'm going to do now is close the
Data Window, go to Object>Graph>Type,
| | 04:59 | I am going to switch over here from
Graph Options to Value Axis so that now
| | 05:03 | I can focus on changing these settings.
| | 05:05 | I'm going to override the calculated values.
| | 05:09 | You see Illustrator determined what these are
by itself, but I'm now going to override that.
| | 05:14 | I want the Minimum value to stay at 0,
so I want the chart to represent 0 here at the bottom.
| | 05:19 | But the Maximum should be 100, not 150.
| | 05:24 | Maybe I only want there to be four divisions,
so like every 25 it should
| | 05:28 | create another tick mark, so I am
going to type in four divisions.
| | 05:32 | Now when I click OK, watch what happens.
| | 05:34 | Remember that I defined my chart to
only be 2 inches by 2 inches square.
| | 05:39 | That's what this point to this point represents.
| | 05:42 | Within those 2 inches I've now specified
how Illustrator should calculate those values.
| | 05:48 | I want it to be split into four parts,
and I want it to go from 0 to 100.
| | 05:53 | Now this data point, which happens to
have been 125, obviously exceeds the bounds
| | 05:58 | that I've already defined for that chart, which
is why this data point goes outside of that area.
| | 06:03 | So I have the ability to control the
scale that each of my charts are using.
| | 06:08 | Now I can go both ways here as well.
For example maybe I want my chart to start
| | 06:13 | over here at 25 and I only want
it to represent from 25 to 100.
| | 06:18 | So let's go back to the Object menu,
choose Graph and then Type.
| | 06:23 | Let's view the Value Axis options
and set my Minimum value for 25.
| | 06:29 | I still want there to be four divisions,
actually now that I think of it,
| | 06:33 | let's make it 3 divisions, click OK.
| | 06:36 | Now you can see that my chart
starts plotting things down here outside the
| | 06:40 | bounds of that graph, because within
the bounds of the graph only represent
| | 06:44 | values that started 25 and go to 100.
| | 06:47 | This is very helpful when you're actually
plotting multiple charts and you are
| | 06:51 | placing them against each other and
you want the scale to be the same.
| | 06:55 | So in this way you control exactly
what the scale is; how many different
| | 06:59 | subdivisions in the tick marks there
are. When you plot the data it will
| | 07:03 | always be true and representative when
you are comparing multiple data points.
| | 07:07 | So remember, if you don't specify exactly
what that scale represents, Illustrator
| | 07:13 | will just kind of figure it out on its own.
| | 07:15 | But if you have very specific needs
for your chart, remember to go into the
| | 07:19 | Graph>Type Options dialog box and modify the
Tick Values using a Minimum, a Maximum value
| | 07:26 | and how many divisions you want it to have.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Defining a design for Illustrator charts| 00:00 | One of the really nice things about
working with Illustrator is that it is
| | 00:04 | possible to modify the appearance of
graphs and charts without having to ungroup
| | 00:08 | them, or breaking them apart.
| | 00:10 | Now we've already seen that you have
the ability to change colors of bars and
| | 00:14 | lines for example, but Illustrator also
has a feature called Graph Design that
| | 00:20 | allows you to take a certain part of
a graph, and replace it with a graphic
| | 00:24 | that's far more complex than
what Illustrator uses by default.
| | 00:27 | So for example, if I take a look at
these two charts right here in this file
| | 00:32 | called to design_01, I have a simple
line chart and in each of the data points
| | 00:36 | are represented by these little rectangles here,
and I also have a bar chart, or column chart here.
| | 00:41 | Again, simple basic rectangles
represent the amount of data here.
| | 00:45 | Now what I can do is define something as
a graph design. In doing so, I will have later,
| | 00:52 | the ability to replace these basic objects
like squares and rectangles
| | 00:57 | with the ones that I define as a design.
| | 00:59 | Now in this case here say this chart
was something about solar energy and this
| | 01:03 | was something about electricity; I can
replace these plain little simple boxes with,
| | 01:08 | for example, the image of a sun.
Or I could take these simple columns here,
| | 01:13 | and replace them with something
that looks like a battery.
| | 01:15 | We'll also have several options that we
can explore within each of the settings so, the
| | 01:20 | first thing we need to do is actually define a graph design.
| | 01:24 | So first, let's talk about working with a line chart.
| | 01:27 | Now yes we know that by default,
Illustrator uses these little squares to
| | 01:32 | represent the data points on that graph.
| | 01:35 | The official name for these little boxes
is something called a marker.
| | 01:39 | So what I can do is, I can define a
graph design and then later I can tell
| | 01:43 | Illustrator to use that graph
design in place of the markers.
| | 01:47 | We already know that these are called
Columns, so later on we will be able to
| | 01:52 | replace the columns with a specific graph design as well.
| | 01:55 | So first let's focus on how to actually define
a graphic that I want to use as a marker.
| | 02:00 | I am going to start by switching to my
Direct Selection tool and I'm going to
| | 02:04 | Option+ or Alt+Click on one of these little squares.
| | 02:07 | I am going to copy it and paste it over here.
| | 02:09 | Let me move it right down about over here.
| | 02:11 | The reason why I'm doing this is because
Illustrator internally will always use
| | 02:16 | that little rectangle, or that little square as the marker.
| | 02:19 | But what I can do is I can create a
piece of artwork that will appear on top of that.
| | 02:24 | This marker will always appear at this size.
| | 02:26 | So whatever size that I use for my artwork
simply needs to be in proportion to that square.
| | 02:32 | So for example, if I were to take the
sun as it is right now, you can see it's
| | 02:36 | much larger than this box, which means
that when I use it as a marker I am going
| | 02:41 | to get a really large graphic.
| | 02:42 | I don't really want to be that big,
so I am going to select the sun graphic
| | 02:47 | right here, and I'm simply going to resize it
to be a little smaller, say about that big.
| | 02:52 | Next, I am going to take this rectangle
right here and select it, and I need to
| | 02:57 | fill it with None, and I need to
set it Strokes to None as well.
| | 03:01 | If you've ever worked with defining a
pattern inside of Illustrator you know
| | 03:05 | that the back most object of repeat is
usually a no fill, no stroke rectangle.
| | 03:09 | So now that I have that rectangle with
no fill and no stroke created, I am also
| | 03:14 | going to hold down the Shift key
and select the sun graphic.
| | 03:17 | So now both of these are selected, and
I also want to go ahead and center them
| | 03:21 | both upon each other.
| | 03:22 | So I am going to click a second time
on the Sun, that's going to define this
| | 03:26 | sun as a key object meaning the sun
won't move, but just this square is going to
| | 03:31 | move to the center of the sun here.
| | 03:33 | I will go to the Align panel, and I'll choose
Horizontal Align Center and also Vertical Align Center.
| | 03:38 | Now I am going to zoom in a lot closer here
and I am going to click on the sun
| | 03:43 | because I want to make sure that the
sun is going to be at the top of my
| | 03:46 | stacking order. Remember that rectangle
that I created there that has no fill
| | 03:49 | and no stroke has to be the
bottom-most object in my selection.
| | 03:52 | So I'm going to go to the Object menu,
I am going to choose Arrange, and then I am
| | 03:56 | going to choose Bring to Front, okay.
| | 03:59 | I'm now going to go ahead and
marquee select both of these objects.
| | 04:01 | You can see here that the no fill, no stroke
rectangle is selected, and it is indeed behind the sun.
| | 04:07 | Now I'm going to go to the Object menu,
scroll down to where it says Graph, and
| | 04:12 | I am going to choose a Design, because
I want to now define this as a design.
| | 04:16 | I am going to choose to create a New Design
and now I am going to Rename it and
| | 04:20 | I am going to call this one Marker-Sun.
I am going to click OK. So now if I
| | 04:25 | click OK, I've successfully defined that design.
| | 04:29 | Let's zoom out here and let's focus now on the column.
| | 04:33 | So I want to define this piece of artwork
as a design that I can use for a column.
| | 04:38 | Now before I do that, I just want to point out
that there are several ways to make a column work.
| | 04:43 | In the chart, let's say I want to replace
these graphics here these regular plain
| | 04:47 | boxes, or rectangles with the battery.
| | 04:49 | Well, how is that going to happen?
| | 04:51 | I can set it so that the battery
simply repeats itself multiple times.
| | 04:55 | So for example, I am just going to take
this and just create a copy of it. And I
| | 05:00 | may have multiple batteries stacked on
top of each other to indicate how high
| | 05:04 | each of these columns are. But I am
going to press Undo here for a second,
| | 05:07 | Cmd+Z or Ctrl+Z because there
also is a way for you to create something
| | 05:11 | called a sliding graph design
| | 05:13 | Basically I can indicate to Illustrator
where I want this piece of graphic to
| | 05:18 | actually stretch and that way it'll stretch
without kind of adjusting, or
| | 05:23 | changing the proportions of this piece of artwork.
| | 05:26 | Because I don't want to actually take this
piece of artwork and simply stretch it
| | 05:29 | so that everything looks distorted.
That would be bad. But I could determine a
| | 05:33 | certain area where Illustrator should
basically expand or kind of stretch the design.
| | 05:38 | So the way that I do that is I actually
create a line which I turned into a guide.
| | 05:43 | So I am going to take my regular Line
tool here and I am going to start let
| | 05:48 | say right about over here click and drag
with the Shift key to right about over here.
| | 05:52 | So I've created a line and it's right
here kind of towards the bottom part of
| | 05:55 | the graphic, and I am going to press
Cmd+5 or Ctrl+5, which is the keyboard
| | 06:00 | shortcut to turn artwork into a guide.
| | 06:02 | If I deselect it right now you'll see
that I've now created that guide.
| | 06:06 | Now you'll also have to make sure when we are
about to define this as a design that I
| | 06:11 | need to make sure that my guides
are not locked. I can do that by just
| | 06:14 | right-clicking on a blank area and
making sure that Lock Guides is not checked.
| | 06:18 | Alternatively, you can go to the View menu,
go down to where it says Guides and
| | 06:22 | again, make sure that Lock Guides is not checked.
| | 06:25 | Now what I can do is and select this
piece of artwork, and I can go up to
| | 06:29 | the Object menu, go back to Graph, and
then Design and choose to Define a New Design.
| | 06:36 | I am going to Rename it, and
I'll call this Column - Battery.
| | 06:41 | Now I am going to click OK, and then
once again click OK. I've been able to
| | 06:46 | successfully now define two graph designs
inside this document; one for the sun
| | 06:52 | which I am going to use as a marker;
one for the battery, which I am going to
| | 06:55 | use as a column design.
| | 06:57 | I am going to go ahead now and save
this document I am going to choose
| | 07:00 | File>Save As and I'll call this one design_02,
click Save, and then click OK.
| | 07:05 | And in the next movie we're actually
going to apply these designs to the graphs
| | 07:09 | that appear in this document.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying a chart design to a column| 00:00 | Okay, so in this movie we are going
to take the battery that we've already
| | 00:04 | defined as a design and we are going
to use it to take the place of these
| | 00:09 | columns in this chart right here.
| | 00:10 | I am going to start by just selecting
the chart itself and I am going to go to
| | 00:15 | the Object menu. I am going to scroll
down to where it says Graph and then
| | 00:20 | I'm going to choose Column.
| | 00:21 | I am not going to choose Design,
because we used that option to define the
| | 00:24 | artwork that we want to use for a design.
But we use the Column setting here to
| | 00:29 | apply that design to a column inside of my chart.
| | 00:32 | So I am going to choose Column,
I am going to scroll over here to decide.
| | 00:36 | Unfortunately there's no preview
setting here but I'm going to choose
| | 00:39 | Column - Battery that's what we defined before.
| | 00:42 | Now you can see for Column type,
I have different options. Vertically scaled
| | 00:46 | will simply stretch the artwork, which I don't want to do.
| | 00:49 | But if I click on this pop-up here,
I can choose Repeating, which means the
| | 00:53 | battery will just repeat itself over and over again.
| | 00:56 | But because I did define this artwork
with that little guide inside of it, I can
| | 01:00 | choose to create a Sliding chart.
| | 01:02 | Now when I click OK, you'll see that the
rectangles that I had there before have
| | 01:08 | now been replaced by batteries, and
the batteries are stretching very nicely.
| | 01:12 | Basically everything that appeared
below remains the same on that guide.
| | 01:17 | Everything above the guide remains the
same; and Illustrator is simply repeated
| | 01:21 | that one area where the guide is
and stretched that one area.
| | 01:24 | That's really how easy it is to define a column
design and apply it to a chart inside of Illustrator.
| | 01:31 | Now what about the marker? Well we will
do that in the next movie. Before we do
| | 01:36 | that, let's just save our progress.
I am going to the File menu I will choose
| | 01:39 | Save As, let's change the name of this
file to design_03, click Save, click OK.
| | 01:46 | In the next movie we will work with the sun.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying a chart design to a marker| 00:00 | In the previous movie we took a battery
design that we've created, and we used it
| | 00:04 | to replace the columns in a Column chart.
| | 00:07 | Now let's take a look at a line chart
where we already know that these little
| | 00:10 | squares are called markers.
| | 00:12 | But we've already defined another design,
which actually shows the image of a sun,
| | 00:16 | and we want to use that sun graphic instead
of these little squares here for the markers.
| | 00:21 | So to do that I am going to a select
this graph right here, I am going to go to
| | 00:26 | the Object menu, scroll down to where it
says Graph and now I am going to choose
| | 00:30 | Marker, because I want to apply a marker to this graph.
| | 00:33 | In order for me to do this, just
remember that I must have first defined my
| | 00:37 | design using the Design Setting.
| | 00:40 | So I am going to click on Marker,
now I am going to choose Marker - Sun, and
| | 00:44 | click OK, and now you can see that wherever
those data points are, the sun now appears.
| | 00:49 | By the way just so you are aware, if
you have several different data series
| | 00:53 | inside of a chart, you may want to have
one graphic as a marker for one data series,
| | 00:57 | but a different graphic or a different design
applied as markers for another data series.
| | 01:02 | If you're working with that you can't
just select the entire graph, because
| | 01:06 | Illustrator won't know, which
data series to apply that marker to.
| | 01:10 | So what you end up doing is switching
to your Direct Selection tool, and then
| | 01:15 | simply clicking with the Option or Alt key
down to basically select that entire series.
| | 01:21 | All you're basically doing is selecting
all the squares or rectangles for just
| | 01:25 | one data series, and then you would choose
the same options, go to the Object menu,
| | 01:28 | go to Graph, and then choose Marker,
and then when you do that the
| | 01:34 | Marker that you define will only be applied
to the specific data series that you have selected.
| | 01:39 | So you can see how easy it is to modify the
appearance of graphs and charts inside of Illustrator.
| | 01:45 | I am going to go to the File menu here,
and choose Save As; let's call this one design_04.
| | 01:51 | Go ahead and click OK.
| | 01:53 | The beautiful thing about working this way
is that I didn't have to ungroup the graphs.
| | 01:58 | That means that each of these graphs
are connected to live data.
| | 02:02 | Should I ever modify that data, for example,
replace the data with something else, or
| | 02:06 | copy and paste new information from Excel into Illustrator,
| | 02:10 | the graph will simply update to reflect those changes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding numeric values with column designs| 00:00 | So we've modified our graph designs here.
We've done some pretty cool stuff
| | 00:04 | using something called a Marker
and something called a Column.
| | 00:07 | However, there is one thing missing here,
which you may kind of be familiar with
| | 00:11 | when using a program like Excel for example.
| | 00:13 | Which is that right now, if I look at
this chart for example, take a look at all
| | 00:17 | of these columns, I don't know what
the actual value of each of this are.
| | 00:21 | Now of course, what I could do is I could
take my Type tool and I could manually
| | 00:25 | enter the values here, but that also means
that every time I change my data,
| | 00:29 | I'm going to have to manually
adjust those values as well.
| | 00:31 | Isn't there some kind of way where I
can get Illustrator to display the values,
| | 00:35 | kind of at the top or somewhere on this chart?
| | 00:38 | The answer is you can, but it's kind of the hack.
| | 00:41 | It's a feature that's buried deep inside
of Illustrator and the actual way that
| | 00:45 | you implement it doesn't really make that much sense.
| | 00:47 | But bear with me on this one.
| | 00:49 | I think you'll find that it'll be well worth it.
| | 00:51 | Basically we're going to do is we're going to redefine
a new graph design for use with the columns.
| | 00:58 | We're going to keep the same battery design,
but we're just going to modify it in one way.
| | 01:02 | I'm going to come over here to my Tools panel
and I am going to choose my Type tool
| | 01:06 | and I'm going to click over here
and I'm going to type in a very special code,
| | 01:10 | which is a % sign, followed by 00.
| | 01:14 | I'll explain that in just a moment,
but I first want to style it, so I'm going to
| | 01:17 | switch to my Selection tool. I want to
align it centered, I'm going to the
| | 01:22 | Character panel here and choose Chaparral Pro,
and let's make it Bold and maybe
| | 01:27 | make the point size maybe 16 points.
That looks pretty good.
| | 01:31 | I'm now going to take this and drag it here,
so that it kind of snaps at the center.
| | 01:36 | I want it to be just kind of right above
the guide that we created.
| | 01:40 | You can't really see black on the black background,
so let's change this color to something like yellow.
| | 01:46 | So now I have that value there.
| | 01:48 | First of all what did we just do?
| | 01:50 | Well, the % sign is a special code that
tells Illustrator if there is some text
| | 01:55 | inside of a graph design, and if it starts
with a % sign, that means display the
| | 02:00 | actual value of that particular
data series within the graphic.
| | 02:05 | The first zero that appears there
indicates the Illustrator how many characters
| | 02:09 | or how many numbers you want to
appear before the decimal point.
| | 02:12 | The second zero tells Illustrator how many numbers
you want to appear after the decimal point.
| | 02:17 | So for example, if I go to type in %11,
Illustrator will use the value, but
| | 02:23 | it will only display one number before the
decimal point and one number after the decimal point.
| | 02:28 | The zero was a special character.
That tells Illustrator 'display as many
| | 02:32 | characters as you need to show the entire value.'
| | 02:35 | So for the most part you are usually going
to go ahead and choose % sign and 00.
| | 02:40 | Now the truth is I can place this anywhere that I want.
| | 02:43 | If I want the number of this data
point to appear on top of the battery,
| | 02:48 | I'm going to position my text right above it
and in this case it probably would
| | 02:51 | color it black or something else that's more visible.
| | 02:54 | I'm going to press undo, because I really want
the value to appear inside the top part of the battery.
| | 02:59 | Now I'm going to select all this;
now basically I'm selecting the battery
| | 03:03 | artwork, the guide which defines where
the sliding area is and also the text.
| | 03:09 | Now I'm going to the Object menu. I'm
going to choose Graph, and then I'm going
| | 03:14 | to choose Design, because I wanted to
define this as a design. Let's create a New
| | 03:18 | Design I'm going to Rename it, I'm going
to call it Column - Battery with Number,
| | 03:26 | click OK and then click OK again.
| | 03:29 | Now let's use this Graph Design for this chart.
| | 03:32 | I'm going to go ahead now and select
the chart itself I'm going to go up to the
| | 03:36 | Object menu, scroll down to where it says
Graph, I'm now going to choose Column,
| | 03:40 | because I now want to change
the Column inside of this graph.
| | 03:44 | I'm going to choose Column - Battery
with Number, make sure Column Type is set
| | 03:48 | to Sliding, and then I'm going to click OK.
| | 03:51 | Now you can see that at the top of
the battery here, the value for each of
| | 03:56 | those individual data series
now appear inside the artwork.
| | 04:00 | So now you know the secret;
basically the secret code.
| | 04:03 | Inside of your Graph Design just put a
live text object, position it or style it
| | 04:08 | however you like, just to make sure it
has %00 in it and Illustrator will swap
| | 04:13 | out that special code for the
actual value used in that graph.
| | 04:17 | Just to show you, if I take this chart
right now and I choose Object, and then I
| | 04:21 | choose Graph>Data; let's go head
and change some of the data here.
| | 04:26 | For example, instead of 45, let's make
this one 60, click Apply, and now you can
| | 04:31 | see that the 45 has changed
to a 60 here, inside the chart.
| | 04:35 | It's a powerful way for creating stylized
charts and graphs here inside of
| | 04:40 | Illustrator, and now you know exactly how to do it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Designing your own chart| 00:00 | As you know, Illustrator has a variety
of different types of Graph tools, things
| | 00:05 | for making like pie charts and column
charts. But what if you want to create
| | 00:08 | something that Illustrator doesn't have?
| | 00:10 | Keep in mind that you always have the
power to create anything that you want.
| | 00:14 | You can use the basic tools that Illustrator
has to create something far more sophisticated.
| | 00:19 | Take this for example. I'm going to create a New
Document, click OK. This really doesn't make a
| | 00:24 | difference what size it is. I'm going
to start by creating maybe a pie chart here.
| | 00:27 | So let me select my Line Graph tool.
Remember I can actually create just
| | 00:31 | about any type of chart from anything, so it
doesn't make a difference which one I choose.
| | 00:35 | But I normally create a pie chart,
so let's choose Pie Graph here.
| | 00:39 | Let me click once and maybe make it 3 x 3,
click OK. I'll import some data here.
| | 00:45 | From my exercise files in Chapter 3,
I'm going to choose this
| | 00:49 | US_Energy_Production-2011 and click Open.
Let me apply that and now I have this here.
| | 00:56 | Let me close this for a moment.
| | 00:58 | Let's say I want to create a
doughnut chart and not a pie chart.
| | 01:02 | Illustrator doesn't have a doughnut
chart tool, but if you think about it,
| | 01:05 | all a doughnut chart is, is a pie chart without the middle.
| | 01:08 | In other words, I can simply take this
and ungroup it. Cmd+Shift+G or
| | 01:12 | Ctrl+Shift+G allows me to ungroup something;
so I'll go ahead and I'll ungroup it.
| | 01:17 | Let me get rid of the Legend that I have here.
| | 01:19 | I use my Direct Selection tool and just
simply select all those and delete it.
| | 01:23 | Next, I'm going to take a simple
Ellipse tool, start from the center and
| | 01:28 | Opt+Shift+Drag outwards.
| | 01:31 | Now I'll take both of these elements,
and I'll press Shift+M for my Shape
| | 01:36 | Builder tool and I'll Opt+Click+Drag
on these middle areas to remove them.
| | 01:42 | So now I've created my doughnut chart.
| | 01:45 | I started with a simple pie chart and ended up
with the effect that I was looking for.
| | 01:49 | What about if you want to create
something like a custom shape?
| | 01:52 | Well how about this?
Let me delete this for a moment.
| | 01:55 | Let me create like a Polygon shape.
| | 01:57 | I'll choose the Polygon tool and I'll click and drag,
and let's say I want to use a triangle.
| | 02:02 | I'm going to tap the down arrow on my keyboard
while my mouse button is still down.
| | 02:06 | And that allows me to create a triangle.
| | 02:08 | I'll hold down the Shift key and that
will give me a nice straight triangle
| | 02:12 | right here, and I want to split this up
proportionately according to the data
| | 02:16 | that I might have inside of a graph.
| | 02:18 | So I'm going to start by creating a graph.
In this case I'll use a Stacked Bar
| | 02:23 | Graph tool, and I'll click once. Again,
it doesn't really make a difference
| | 02:27 | what size I am dealing with here, but I'll choose
a Width of 3 inches and maybe a Height of 2 inches.
| | 02:33 | Once again, I'll import the same data as before, that
| | 02:35 | US_Energy_Production_2011 data.
| | 02:39 | Let's go ahead now and map that.
You can see that basically this is now
| | 02:43 | showing 100% split up proportionally
into the areas based on my data.
| | 02:48 | So I can now take this and
use it the way that I want to.
| | 02:51 | I'm simply going to go head now and ungroup
this, choose Object>Ungroup, click Yes.
| | 02:57 | I use my Direct Selection tool to basically
take just this part of the data which I want.
| | 03:03 | I'm going to hold down my Option key here,
and I'm going to basically hold down
| | 03:07 | my Shift key and drag across all these.
So right now I'm holding that
| | 03:11 | Opt+Shift or Alt+Shift. That selects these.
I'm going to press Cmd+X to
| | 03:15 | put them on my clipboard.
| | 03:16 | Now I am going to delete everything
else here, and then paste this back again.
| | 03:22 | I can stretch this anyway that I
want to. It's always going to be in
| | 03:25 | proportion to what I created.
| | 03:27 | I really just want to do this to get
an idea about how I should split up my
| | 03:30 | triangle. So I'm going to resize is to
match the width of my triangle and then
| | 03:35 | I can press Cmd+R or Ctrl+R to show
my Rulers. Then I could drag Guides
| | 03:40 | out that will, again, snapped to the boundaries
of each of the steps inside of this chart.
| | 03:45 | Well, it's actually no longer chart anymore.
| | 03:48 | But in doing so, I can now actually
see how I can split up or basically break
| | 03:54 | apart my triangle to match the proportions
of the data that was in my chart.
| | 03:59 | So as you can see, Illustrator just
simply as a Graphic Design tool has this
| | 04:03 | incredibly powerful graph feature.
| | 04:05 | But you don't have to feel pressure
that you have to actually wrangle with the
| | 04:08 | graph feature itself. You can use it to
create some very basic artwork and then
| | 04:12 | simply use it to generate your own
artwork to your own specifications.
| | 04:17 | Let your creativity run wild.
Don't try to force the Graph tool to do
| | 04:21 | everything. Rather, use it for your
own evil purposes and create the most
| | 04:26 | beautiful graphics that you always knew that
you are capable of, here inside of Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Project: Create an InfographicThe data, the story, and the sketch| 00:00 | So for the project for this course
I thought it will be fun to put together an
| | 00:04 | infographic about Renewable Energy.
It's a pretty hot topic these days.
| | 00:08 | I also thought it will be easy to find information
about Renewable Energy, all over the Internet.
| | 00:13 | So together we're are going to create
this really cool infographic here that has
| | 00:17 | many different data charts and
interesting facts about renewable energy.
| | 00:20 | There are even some layers here
inside of Acrobat that let you interact
| | 00:24 | with that data so you could actually turn on and
actually view different elements here of these graphs.
| | 00:30 | Now we're going to build this together,
but of course I want to take you way
| | 00:34 | back to the beginning, where I first started with this.
| | 00:37 | Can I give you little bit of insight
into my thought process behind this, and
| | 00:41 | the steps that I took to get to this stage.
| | 00:43 | So I'm actually going to start
off here going to Microsoft Word.
| | 00:46 | What I first did was I started ask myself some questions.
| | 00:49 | Just opened up a Word document and started
typing out questions, anything that popped into my mind.
| | 00:54 | Things like, which countries are using renewable energy?
| | 00:56 | How does renewable energy compare
to other sources of energy?
| | 00:59 | I wanted to know; are there certain types of
renewable energy that are more popular than others?
| | 01:04 | Now it's true that the list of my questions
was actually a lot longer than this.
| | 01:07 | But as I was asking more and more of
these questions, again, not really worried
| | 01:11 | about what the answers are yet.
| | 01:12 | It will just give me a better
idea of the some kind of focus.
| | 01:16 | After all renewable energy is just a
massive field. I mean, there's so many
| | 01:19 | different angles, and approaches that you can take to this.
| | 01:22 | I kind of needed to ground myself, first understanding
what direction do I want to go in?
| | 01:25 | What specific story about renewable energy
do I want to tell through my infographic?
| | 01:31 | Now you notice here at the bottom also,
I asked two other questions: What are
| | 01:35 | some interesting facts about wind energy?
| | 01:37 | And what are some interesting facts about solar energy?
| | 01:40 | Now I did not have those questions
in my list when I first started.
| | 01:43 | That's because I didn't even know that wind
and solar were different types of renewable energy.
| | 01:48 | But as I started doing my research and
getting some answers, those answers then
| | 01:52 | spurred additional questions.
| | 01:54 | For example I started finding out that, hey!
| | 01:56 | Wind and solar are the fastest-growing
types of renewable energy.
| | 02:00 | So I wanted to find out more
about those specific technologies.
| | 02:03 | So I started going back to my question list
and adding some more questions about that.
| | 02:07 | You know you're doing well when you
start asking yourself more questions after
| | 02:11 | you've already gotten some answers.
| | 02:13 | So once I've had my list of questions here,
I started going out and getting some answers.
| | 02:18 | Well, how did, I do that?
| | 02:19 | Well I switch over here to my web browser
and I started out with Google.
| | 02:23 | Just typed in stuff like for example,
renewable energy statistics or something.
| | 02:27 | And you get some information here and you can
start to kind of dig through these different articles.
| | 02:32 | There's an organization called the IEA,
which has information about renewable energy.
| | 02:36 | I've also found that many of the
world's largest energy companies also
| | 02:40 | publish lots of information. For example,
I have some information here from BP.
| | 02:44 | I've also found out that many governments also
publish information about renewable energy.
| | 02:49 | For example, I discovered that there is
an organization called the NREL or the
| | 02:53 | National Renewable Energy Laboratory,
which publishes a tremendous amount of
| | 02:57 | data about renewable energy.
| | 02:59 | They have many reports and many
additional resources available online,
| | 03:04 | where I could find more information about renewable
energy and about specific types of renewable energy.
| | 03:09 | I found a lot of great information at energy.gov;
was able to download some reports;
| | 03:13 | and find lots of useful data about
the infographic that I was trying to create.
| | 03:18 | And like I said before, I was also
able to go to some of the larger energy
| | 03:22 | companies of the world, like Exxon Mobil,
for example. In their Energy and Technology
| | 03:26 | section they actually have an outlook
for energy and predictions about
| | 03:29 | what's going to happen with energy moving forward.
| | 03:32 | These are all reports that you can download for free.
| | 03:35 | You could us these reports and this additional
information to start getting answers
| | 03:39 | to the questions that you've already started asking.
| | 03:42 | So let's go back to Microsoft Word for a
second here. I have another document
| | 03:46 | here called Answers; this is where I started
taking information that I've learned
| | 03:50 | and bring them into this document.
| | 03:52 | For example, which countries are using Renewable Energy?
| | 03:55 | Well I found this chart in one of the different
reports that I was able to download
| | 03:58 | and I simply took a screenshot of it,
and just dumped in it to Microsoft Word.
| | 04:02 | Again that's all I'm really trying to do.
I'm trying to bring as much information that I find
| | 04:06 | and just bring this into context by saying, hey!
| | 04:08 | That answers the question that I had already asked.
| | 04:12 | How does renewable energy compare
to other energy resources?
| | 04:14 | I found this great chart in one of the reports.
| | 04:16 | That just spoke about the breakdown.
In fact, when I looked at this I'm like wow,
| | 04:20 | that's a really interesting data point,
like just being able to know
| | 04:24 | how much of the energy that a certain country produces
is actually produced via renewable energy sources.
| | 04:29 | What I found really interesting about
this specific chart, is that it showed me a
| | 04:33 | breakdown of all of all of the other different
types of energy, comparing it to renewable,
| | 04:37 | but then it took a step further
and it broke down how all the
| | 04:41 | renewable types of energy make up that one number.
| | 04:44 | As you scroll through rest of this
document you'll see that I just started
| | 04:48 | adding additional information. It wasn't always
graphs and charts that I was kind of putting into here.
| | 04:52 | Sometimes it was just interesting paragraphs
or sentences that appeal to me.
| | 04:56 | For example when I saw this information here,
about what the most popular kinds of
| | 05:00 | renewable energy are, I realized that
solar and wind are far more popular than
| | 05:05 | the others and they are growing the most
so I try to dig a little bit deeper
| | 05:10 | to find out more about these specific types of energy.
| | 05:12 | If I scroll down a little bit further here,
when I was doing some more research
| | 05:16 | about solar energy, it was interesting
to see how much of an increase there
| | 05:20 | has been inside of solar energy.
| | 05:22 | But then if I scroll down further here,
I found some really interesting information.
| | 05:26 | For example, even though solar energy
is growing at such a high rate, it still
| | 05:30 | only represents a very, very small
part of the electricity that's produced.
| | 05:34 | On top of that I also found out that,
solar energy really isn't that efficient.
| | 05:40 | With the current technology in place today
the solar panels only capture very
| | 05:44 | small amount of energy that comes from the sun.
| | 05:47 | These things all kind of come together
and help contribute to the story that I want to tell.
| | 05:52 | I'm already starting to get an idea in
my head about what is interesting.
| | 05:56 | You know, how popular and how important is
Renewable Energy and really, how much of
| | 06:00 | our power that we create comes from renewable energy?
| | 06:03 | And hey, there are two types of energy
that seems to be more popular than others,
| | 06:07 | solar and wind, somebody focus
on telling those stories as well.
| | 06:10 | So at this point I've asked myself questions.
I've done some research.
| | 06:15 | That research has then triggered more questions.
I then answered those as well.
| | 06:20 | And now really have a solid idea in my head
about at least where I want to go;
| | 06:23 | the direction that I want to go in this case.
| | 06:25 | So then I started sketching this out.
I'll switch back to Acrobat here for a second.
| | 06:30 | I'll change to a different document called Sketches.
| | 06:33 | This is kind of where my mind was going
when I was putting this together.
| | 06:35 | I knew that I wanted to have some information,
some large information basically
| | 06:38 | about just the percentage of renewable
energy that's being produced inside of
| | 06:43 | the country, in this case, the United States.
| | 06:45 | I wanted to focus on solar and on wind.
| | 06:48 | I thought it was really interesting
to provide some details about what
| | 06:52 | percentage of renewable energy is produced
amongst all of other sources of energy.
| | 06:56 | And then specifically what types of
renewable energy within that are
| | 07:00 | the most popular or at least contribute most
to the energy generation in the country.
| | 07:04 | So you can see that I kind of envision
some kind of a bar over here, where we
| | 07:08 | would highlight the renewable energy part.
Then go into detail about that,
| | 07:11 | and focus on solar and on wind.
| | 07:14 | I was trying to find different ways to visualize that;
maybe I should have the bar
| | 07:17 | kind of across one across the top.
| | 07:19 | You know at one point I was thinking about,
hey this represents 100% of energy,
| | 07:22 | maybe I should use a pie chart.
| | 07:24 | But I though it would be a lot easier
to create a bar chart in this way.
| | 07:27 | I also started getting ideas about how
I might want to present solar and wind energy.
| | 07:31 | This progressed through even another way
where I might be able to lead a reader's eye
| | 07:35 | for information about renewable energy;
what percentage it is across other sources of energy;
| | 07:40 | and more detail about renewable energy itself.
| | 07:43 | Then I could focus on interesting facts like,
for example, how much does it cost
| | 07:47 | to install solar energy panels in a home?
| | 07:49 | How does it compare in a chart to wind energy?
| | 07:53 | My final sketch kind of resulted into
something like this where I was going to
| | 07:58 | focus on basically all the different
types of energy; how renewable energy
| | 08:01 | contributes to all the different energy that's produced;
| | 08:05 | how other countries are producing energy as well;
| | 08:08 | and more detailed information about how
solar energy works and how wind energy works.
| | 08:14 | That's what last to this final infographic, one that
we are going to build together in the following movies.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reviewing the infographic document| 00:00 | So the infographic that we're going to create
together is all about renewable energy
| | 00:04 | and it's going to end up looking like this.
| | 00:07 | Now in the previous movie we've already
gone through the most important part,
| | 00:10 | which is actually developing the story
and finding the data that we're going to use
| | 00:16 | inside of this infographic.
| | 00:17 | Now what I'd like to focus on are the
important parts about building this infographic;
| | 00:21 | kind of what's different about this
than building any other Illustrator document.
| | 00:25 | You might find it helpful to actually
print out this document and use it
| | 00:29 | as a reference as we're working along.
This file is called renewable energy.pdf
| | 00:32 | If I switch over to Illustrator here
I have this document open
| | 00:38 | called renewable_energy_start.
| | 00:39 | Now in this document I've already added
certain information; either things like
| | 00:44 | that are in the background that we
don't really need to worry about how we
| | 00:47 | created them because you
already know how to do that.
| | 00:50 | Or I have an added in some other
raw information, so don't have to worry
| | 00:54 | about typing it in later.
| | 00:55 | Now I want to take you through a few
things inside of this document to help set
| | 00:57 | the stage for the rest of the project.
I'm going to go ahead and expand this
| | 01:01 | dock over here, and let's go to my layers for a moment.
| | 01:04 | Notice I have already created a layer
here called Chart. Inside of that I
| | 01:09 | have many other different groups that I
have created for these different areas.
| | 01:13 | We're going actually create new content
and make sure that they are actually
| | 01:16 | appearing inside of the groups they belong in.
| | 01:18 | So I have already started to setup
some structure inside of this document.
| | 01:22 | Of course on your own when you're
creating your own infographics, this is
| | 01:25 | something that you can do much later in the process.
| | 01:27 | In fact I really kind of built this
entire infographic first and then kind of
| | 01:32 | started creating different groups and layers
to see how we want to separate that content.
| | 01:36 | You'll even notice that inside the Layers panel
some of these are actually locked.
| | 01:40 | That's so that they don't get in our
way as we work. For example, things like
| | 01:43 | in the background, so we don't have to
worry about like accidentally selecting
| | 01:47 | the background then moving it, because
I have already locked those elements.
| | 01:50 | I've also set things like the main header
across the top and even some of the
| | 01:54 | main headlines which we're using in the story.
Basically we want to draw the user's
| | 01:58 | attention to two main things.
| | 02:00 | First of all, how much energy is actually
derived from renewable sources
| | 02:05 | and then focusing on two main areas inside of
renewable energy: both solar energy and wind energy.
| | 02:11 | I have also already chosen the colors
that I want to use inside of this graphic.
| | 02:15 | You can see that I've organized some
color groups inside the Swatches panel.
| | 02:19 | I created a group called Energy and I've
name these swatches Nuclear, Renewable,
| | 02:24 | Petroleum, Coal and Natural Gas, because
those are the different types of energy
| | 02:28 | that we're going to be displaying inside of this infographic.
| | 02:31 | I've also created a secondary group here
of colors that are focused specifically
| | 02:35 | on the different types of renewable energy.
You can see that these are Wind,
| | 02:38 | Hydropower, Solar PV (which stands for
Photovoltaic), Biomass and Geothermal.
| | 02:43 | Now I've also created a third set of colors
that I'm basically using in my
| | 02:47 | background or for text and these are
just different shades of green I felt well,
| | 02:52 | renewable energy, let's focus on using
some kind of green colors. So I created
| | 02:56 | one here simply called Base Greens and
I basically have a Light Background, a
| | 03:00 | Dark Background and a really Dark Green.
| | 03:02 | So throughout the project it's just
going to be a lot easier to work with these
| | 03:06 | colors that I've already created.
| | 03:07 | Notice by the way, that these colors
are also already set as global process colors.
| | 03:11 | That means now if I double-click
on these you can see that the
| | 03:14 | checkbox here is set to identify this is a
global color. I am going to I click Cancel here.
| | 03:20 | Now of course, one of the benefits of
working with global process colors is that
| | 03:24 | I can modify these colors at anytime and
that'll automatically update throughout
| | 03:27 | my entire documents. But more importantly
in this case here, where I really want
| | 03:31 | to stick with these colors that I'm working with,
it'll giving you some more flexibility,
| | 03:34 | because a global process color allows you
to define a tint value for each of those colors.
| | 03:39 | Now I'm going to have lots of overlapping
art work here, so I really don't want
| | 03:42 | to rely on transparency to make certain
colors appear lighter than others.
| | 03:47 | So I may want to define tint values and that's going
to come in handy later on throughout this project.
| | 03:51 | Now to make things easier as well,
I've also define some text styles and
| | 03:55 | some character styles, so that I can
easily set text and have it match and
| | 03:59 | be consistent throughout the entire
document. I'm going to go over here to
| | 04:03 | the Window menu, I'll scroll down to where it
says Type and then I'll choose Character Styles.
| | 04:09 | Tou can see that I have already set some
character styles inside this document;
| | 04:12 | some that are going to be use for bar charts
and some that are going to be use for tables.
| | 04:16 | So again, this is just going to make it easier
for us to quickly format type to look consistent.
| | 04:22 | Now before we actually get started in adding
any additional information to this infographic,
| | 04:26 | I want to make one pretty clear.
My goal here is not for you to
| | 04:30 | create an exact replica of the infographic
that I have gone through the trouble to create.
| | 04:34 | I really want you to learn through the process;
| | 04:37 | kind of see the journey that I went through
and create your own journey.
| | 04:41 | You know in the previous movie I spoke
about how I was able to take all these
| | 04:44 | resources that I found on the net to
build my story. We can learn together by
| | 04:48 | creating this infographic, but throughout
the process think about how you might
| | 04:52 | create this infographic.
How would you tell your own story?
| | 04:55 | Learn about the techniques that we're
working on this one but apply it to other ones.
| | 04:58 | In fact, maybe even challenge yourself
and when you're done with this
| | 05:02 | project created entirely new infographic
about renewable energy telling your specific story.
| | 05:07 | I'm saying that now because I really
don't want you to get bogged down in details.
| | 05:11 | You know the goal here is not to
completely create a graphic that is like
| | 05:15 | exactly, precisely the same way that I did.
| | 05:18 | Even if things are generally the same,
you kind of get the point. I want to
| | 05:22 | take you to the process I went through.
I want you to learn from that and then
| | 05:26 | be able to apply that to your own infographics
and your own growth in using Illustrator itself.
| | 05:31 | So if that sounds good to you, what we're
waiting for? Let's get started creating
| | 05:35 | an infographic about renewable energy.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding and customizing a stacked bar chart| 00:00 | If you've been working together with me
using exercise files while watching this course,
| | 00:04 | then now might be a good time
to quit and restart Illustrator.
| | 00:09 | This will actually delete all of Illustrator's
graph preferences, because they
| | 00:14 | don't keep each time you restart Illustrator
and that way it's less likely that
| | 00:18 | you run into problems as you follow
through the rest of this chapter.
| | 00:21 | Okay we are going to begin this project
by creating the chart that appears at
| | 00:26 | the very top of this infographic.
| | 00:27 | Now I am going to switch over to Acrobat here
because we are going to take a
| | 00:30 | look at the finished product.
We are going to see what it is that we are
| | 00:33 | going to create; that is this chart
that appears here across the top
| | 00:37 | that shows the different percentages that make up 100%
of the energy generation in the United States.
| | 00:44 | Now it's split between these five different
types of energy: NUCLEAR, RENEWABLES,
| | 00:50 | PETROLEUM, COAL and NATURAL GAS.
| | 00:51 | We are also going to add these really
cool icons in the middle, which we'll
| | 00:55 | create from scratch together. We'll
style this that it looks just like this,
| | 00:58 | but the first step is to actually
bring this data into Illustrator.
| | 01:02 | So I am going to switch back to Illustrator
here and actually before I do anything
| | 01:05 | I want to save my own version of this document.
| | 01:07 | So I am going to go to the File menu,
I am going to choose Save As and I am
| | 01:11 | going to go to the Project folder
and I am going to rename this file
| | 01:14 | renewable_energy, let's get rid of the
word start and let's change it to _01.ai.
| | 01:19 | Now I want to save this as a native
Illustrator file. When I save this, where
| | 01:23 | it says over the here in the Options to create a
PDF compatible file I'm going to uncheck that option.
| | 01:29 | Now let's understand why I am doing that.
| | 01:32 | Normally when you save an Illustrator
document, Illustrator saves its own
| | 01:35 | native information, which is required
when you want to open up that file back
| | 01:39 | inside of Illustrator again.
| | 01:40 | But it also creates a PDF compatible version of that file;
| | 01:43 | basically it just creates a PDF
that it embeds into that document.
| | 01:47 | This allows for several things.
| | 01:49 | First of all, if I just save my native.ai file
and I open it up inside of Acrobat,
| | 01:54 | I'll be able to view that file inside
of Acrobat because Acrobat will
| | 01:57 | see that PDF file that's inside the file.
| | 01:59 | More importantly, if I'm taking my graphic
and I want to place it into another
| | 02:03 | application like maybe InDesign, InDesign
doesn't know how to read Illustrator's
| | 02:07 | native data, but it does know how to obviously display a PDF.
| | 02:10 | So when I take a regular Illustrator file
and I save it, I may not be aware, but
| | 02:15 | Illustrator is putting a PDF document
of that artwork into my document, so that
| | 02:18 | now when I place it into InDesign, InDesign
sees that PDF and knows how to display it and print it.
| | 02:24 | But the truth is that when I'm working
on an infographic, my intention is not to
| | 02:27 | bring this into InDesign at all. My
intention is to work with it completely
| | 02:30 | inside of Illustrator. I am never really worried
about bringing this into another application.
| | 02:34 | So by unchecking this I am doing two things.
| | 02:37 | First of all, I'm reducing the size of my actual file size.
| | 02:40 | If you think about it, Illustrator's native data
takes up a certain amount of space
| | 02:44 | and creating a full PDF version of that
also takes up a significant amount of space,
| | 02:48 | I would say it's probably almost half.
| | 02:51 | So by un-checking this option I am now
reducing my file size almost in half.
| | 02:56 | Now more importantly, it also means
that when I save my document,
| | 03:00 | Illustrator doesn't have to worry about
re-creating that PDF file anymore.
| | 03:03 | So every time that I save my file, my saving
will actually take twice as fast.
| | 03:08 | So when I know I am working on a document
that's primarily going to be inside of Illustrator,
| | 03:12 | I can be safe in turning off this option.
| | 03:15 | Of course at any time if I decide that I
now need to bring this infographic into InDesign,
| | 03:19 | I could always just open it up inside
of Illustrator and then when
| | 03:22 | I choose Save As, just turn this checkbox
back on again and now Illustrator will
| | 03:27 | rewrite that PDF file into it.
| | 03:29 | So now with that option unchecked I am
going to choose OK, and now it's going to
| | 03:34 | be easy for me to always just continuously
save my documents, so I don't worry
| | 03:37 | about losing any information as I work.
| | 03:39 | Now let's zoom in here at the top of
the document, I am just going to press
| | 03:42 | Cmd+spacebar or Ctrl+spacebar.
That's going to give me my Zoom tool.
| | 03:46 | I can now see that I am right now looking
very close to this part of my file.
| | 03:50 | I want to create a chart.
| | 03:52 | Now according to the sketch that I've created
I know that I want to create a stacked bar chart here.
| | 03:57 | Now the truth is, I could always switch
between different types of charts
| | 04:00 | so this doesn't really make a difference.
| | 04:01 | But since I know what I'm doing here,
I am just going to go over here to my
| | 04:04 | Graph tool, click and hold,
choose the Stacked Bar Graph tool.
| | 04:08 | Then I'm going to click and drag just to define an area here.
I don't need to really worry about how big it is.
| | 04:14 | We are going to resize all that later; we
just want to get this data into Illustrator.
| | 04:18 | Now I can go one of two ways here,
I can either bring some text data into Illustrator
| | 04:23 | or I can go to Excel and just copy and paste that data.
| | 04:26 | So throughout this project we'll actually
explore two different ways of doing that.
| | 04:30 | For now I am going to import the data.
| | 04:32 | So I am going to go to this little button
over here inside of the Graph Data Window
| | 04:35 | called import data; I am going to click on that.
| | 04:37 | I'll go to my Project folder inside of my
exercise files and I'll click on the Data folder.
| | 04:43 | I have provided all the data in
both text-based format and also as a native
| | 04:47 | Excel document in case you
wanted to choose your preference.
| | 04:50 | I am going to choose here the Text option
because when you're placing data into Illustrator,
| | 04:54 | you cannot place a native Excel document.
It has to be either a comma delimited
| | 04:58 | or a tab delimited text document.
| | 05:01 | So if I expand my window here, the
data that I am looking for right now
| | 05:04 | is something called US_Energy_Production_2011.
I'll click Open and we can now
| | 05:09 | see that that information has come in.
| | 05:11 | Now it has two decimal places for this.
I really only need one decimal place.
| | 05:15 | So I can click on this button right here
where it says Cell Style and
| | 05:19 | I could change Number of decimals to 1, click OK
and now I see that those zeros have disappeared.
| | 05:24 | So I have 10.6% for Nuclear, 11.7 for Renewable,
15.4 for Petroleum, 28.4 for Coal and 33.9 for Natural Gas.
| | 05:34 | If I click the check mark over here to
apply those settings, I'll now see that
| | 05:39 | that one long bar has been split now
into these five sections, proportional based
| | 05:43 | on the values that are here.
| | 05:45 | This is the beauty of working
with Illustrator and with Graphs.
| | 05:47 | Now if you look over here to the far
right of my screen you can see that a
| | 05:50 | legend has been created that identifies
what each of these bars represent.
| | 05:54 | I am actually going to scroll over here
just a little bit so you can see that.
| | 05:58 | You can see Natural Gas, Coal, for example.
| | 06:01 | But I don't really need this because I am going to be
creating icons and adding some text on my own.
| | 06:05 | So I can really kind of just focus on
what I'm seeing right here.
| | 06:09 | I don't need to have that information.
| | 06:11 | Now there are two ways for me to get rid of it.
| | 06:12 | One way is to just simply ungroup
my graph and delete the elements.
| | 06:16 | But I just want to show you that you
can also work with the data itself.
| | 06:19 | So if I don't include these text-based labels
over here for example, Nuclear and
| | 06:24 | Renewable Energy, then Illustrator
does not create a legend for it.
| | 06:28 | Obviously it can't, because it doesn't know
what those numbers actually represent.
| | 06:31 | Since I already know that and I have
the data to work with on my own,
| | 06:34 | I can simply delete this text from the data window.
| | 06:37 | Now I could delete it, but then it have
an extra space over here, so let me just
| | 06:41 | show you the easiest way about working
in this what I might call a primitive
| | 06:44 | dialog box inside of Illustrator.
| | 06:46 | I am simply going to click over
here to highlight the 10.6 value.
| | 06:50 | Then I'll Shift+Click over here at the end
to basically select these five different cells.
| | 06:54 | I'll press Cmd+X or Ctrl+X to cut that data,
then I'll simply click once here
| | 06:59 | to select this cell and I'll hit Cmd+V
or Ctrl+V to paste and now that
| | 07:04 | data replaces what was there before.
| | 07:06 | So now when I click OK to update this, you can see that
that legend on the right side here has disappeared.
| | 07:11 | So basically now I have the information
that I need to work with for this chart.
| | 07:16 | So let's go ahead now and make some modifications to it.
| | 07:18 | I can close my data window. I'm going to
switch to my Selection tool and the
| | 07:23 | first thing that I want to do in this case
is I want to ungroup my graph.
| | 07:25 | I no longer need access to the data itself.
I want to start kind of taking what
| | 07:30 | Illustrator has given me here, and I want to make it
format or fit within the design that I intend it to be.
| | 07:35 | So I am going to start by choosing Object>Ungroup.
| | 07:39 | Now Illustrator is going to give me a warning.
It's going to tell me, by the way,
| | 07:41 | as soon as you ungroup this, I won't be
able to modify that data anymore and that's okay.
| | 07:46 | So I am going to click Yes in this case,
and now it's simply a group.
| | 07:49 | Now what I'm going to do is I am going to
double-click on this group to isolate it.
| | 07:53 | Now I'm basically inside the group,
or more specifically, I have isolated this group
| | 07:57 | from anything else in my document.
| | 07:58 | So like, you can see that everything
else is kind of faded back.
| | 08:01 | I can't select anything else. Even if it were
unlocked I would not be able to select it
| | 08:05 | because right now Illustrator only lets me work
with the elements that are here inside this group.
| | 08:09 | I just wanted to show you that inside this group
there are other elements here as well.
| | 08:15 | I can click and drag to select all of
these elements here and I am going to
| | 08:19 | hit Cmd+X to cut it to basically to my pasteboard.
Now I am going to double-click again
| | 08:23 | so that I am out of isolation but
I've just clicked on any area outside that.
| | 08:27 | Now I am now going to click on
these elements here to delete them.
| | 08:30 | I don't need all these elements at all,
you know the value axis and the category axis,
| | 08:35 | because again I'm completely customizing this chart.
| | 08:37 | Now I'll press Cmd+V or Ctrl+V
to paste these elements here before.
| | 08:41 | Now let's go ahead and start styling this and
getting it to fit into the way that I want it to appear.
| | 08:46 | Well first of all I don't want a stroke weight
on any these things, so let's get rid of the stroke on it.
| | 08:50 | So I am simply going to go ahead now
to the top here of my Control panel
| | 08:54 | and I am going to choose None for the Stroke Weight.
So now I'd have no stroke applied to this at all.
| | 08:59 | I can go ahead and deselect that and you
can see now the strokes have disappeared.
| | 09:02 | Now I do want to change the actual size of this.
| | 09:05 | Now if I click on one of these right here,
it doesn't make a difference since
| | 09:08 | this is all a group it all now becomes selected.
| | 09:11 | Here is the beauty about working inside of Illustrator,
| | 09:14 | because I can start to use these mathematical settings
to position this and size it just the way that I want.
| | 09:20 | Now first of all, I want this centered right here on my screen.
| | 09:24 | So I am going to click on this icon right here
inside of my Control panel called Align to Selection,
| | 09:28 | but it's really an icon that lets me choose
what I want this to be aligned to.
| | 09:32 | You can see that right now if I click on this little arrow,
Align to Selection is currently selected.
| | 09:37 | But I want to change it to Align to Artboard.
| | 09:39 | When I do that, Illustrator does something very interesting.
| | 09:41 | It figures, hey, if you want to align something
to the Artboard maybe you now want to align that art.
| | 09:46 | So I now see all the align settings appear
inside the Control panel.
| | 09:50 | They were hidden before, but now they become visible.
| | 09:53 | If I click on the Center button right here,
Horizontal Align Center,
| | 09:56 | Illustrator is now going to align that
group to the center of my Artboard.
| | 10:01 | Now I also want to adjust the size of this.
So I am going to click on the Transform option over here.
| | 10:07 | I am going to make sure that the Proxy button here
is set in the center, what we call the reference point.
| | 10:11 | That means that if I make any changes to my artwork,
they're all going to happen from that origin point.
| | 10:18 | So since I have centered this in my page
and since I now have my reference point set to the center,
| | 10:22 | any adjustments I make are going
to happen from the center of this group.
| | 10:25 | Now I want to make modifications now
to the actual Width and Height of this.
| | 10:30 | So right now the Width is a little bit
more than 10 and a quarter,
| | 10:32 | but I want this to be exactly 10 and a quarter,
because that's actually going to match
| | 10:36 | the width of this bar right here.
| | 10:38 | So where it says Width I am going to
type in 10.25 and hit the Enter key.
| | 10:43 | That's now going to accept that value and it's
now exactly the same width as that green bar.
| | 10:48 | Now I also want to modify the height of this.
So once again I click on Transform.
| | 10:52 | Where it says Height, I'll change
this to 1.25 or one and a quarter inches.
| | 10:57 | I could press Enter to accept that
and now I am starting to really see this bar
| | 11:02 | turn into more of a graphical chart
that I am going to create.
| | 11:06 | I am going to take this right now and just
simply click and drag holding the Shift key.
| | 11:10 | You can see because I have my Smart Guides
turned on it's going to snap right here to that green spot.
| | 11:15 | Let me go head now and deselect this.
What I've been able to do now is use
| | 11:19 | Illustrator's Graph tool to simply create
an object in the correct proportions
| | 11:24 | for me to show the percentage of each of these
different energies as they contribute to the whole.
| | 11:28 | Now I am going to switch to my Direct Selection tool
because I want to start adding some colors here.
| | 11:33 | The first one here was this value
that I have used for Nuclear Energy.
| | 11:36 | By the way, even though I have now
ungrouped this graph, remember I still
| | 11:40 | always have access to the original data
that I've been working with.
| | 11:43 | So I am actually going to switch over
to Excel for a second here, because this
| | 11:46 | is the Excel version of that data that I had.
| | 11:49 | I could always come back and reference this so
I can make sure okay these are what those values were.
| | 11:54 | If you don't have Excel available you can always use
the text-based version that I have provided as well.
| | 11:58 | So let's go back into Illustrator. The
first one is Nuclear and I've already
| | 12:01 | created different colors for these different types of energy.
| | 12:05 | So I'm going to choose the swatch here
called Nuclear for this color.
| | 12:08 | I'll go ahead and select this one;
this is the Renewable Energy one.
| | 12:13 | This one focuses on Petroleum; this one here is
this color for Coal;
| | 12:17 | the last one is this blue color for Natural Gas.
| | 12:22 | So now I've gone ahead and I've applied the colors for this.
| | 12:25 | But I really want to help kind of drive home the fact
that I want to be able to make it easy
| | 12:28 | for people who are looking at this infographic
to identify what each of these different parts
| | 12:34 | of the chart or what each of these colors represent.
| | 12:37 | Sure I can write the words Nuclear
and Renewable and Petroleum for example,
| | 12:43 | but I also want a graphical way
to be able to convey that information.
| | 12:46 | How about if we create some icons that help us identify
what types of energy sources we are talking about here.
| | 12:52 | Well, that's what we are going to cover in the next movie.
| | 12:54 | We'll actually create beautiful icons for
all of these different five energy sources.
| | 12:58 | Before we do that however,
let's remember to save our document.
| | 13:01 | So I am going to press Cmd+S or Ctrl+S
to save my document and
| | 13:05 | now I'm ready to create some really cool icons.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating simple icons for power sources| 00:00 | Okay. So we want to create these really
cool icons that allow people to visually
| | 00:05 | understand what each part of the graph represents.
| | 00:08 | So if we take a look again at the PDF
document, we can see that for each of the
| | 00:12 | areas here inside of the chart, Nuclear,
Renewable, Petroleum, we've added these
| | 00:16 | icons here that indicate visually what those items are.
| | 00:20 | Now there are two ways to get these icons;
| | 00:23 | one way is to go ahead and get them
through some kind of stock art place like
| | 00:26 | maybe iStockphoto, maybe Thinkstock.
| | 00:29 | However, these are simple enough to create on your own.
| | 00:32 | So in this movie, let me show you how.
| | 00:35 | Let's go back to Illustrator here, and I am working
with this document called energy_icons.
| | 00:39 | The first thing I am going to do is
I am going to save a copy of this.
| | 00:43 | So let's go to the File menu.
I am going to choose Save As.
| | 00:46 | Let's call this energy_icons_01, and I will
save this back here into my Project folder.
| | 00:52 | Now again, when I do this, I can
uncheck the Create PDF Compatible File.
| | 00:56 | That will just make life a little bit easy for me
when I am working here because I know
| | 01:00 | this is going to stay inside of Illustrator.
| | 01:02 | Now the first thing that I want to
make sure that I do is that I create all
| | 01:05 | these icons in some kind of uniform way.
| | 01:07 | I want them to all be about the same size,
basically have the same visual weight to them.
| | 01:11 | I also want a really easy way to create them.
| | 01:14 | So the first thing I am going to start doing is
create some guides here inside of this document.
| | 01:19 | So I currently have my rulers visible on my document.
You can press Cmd+R or Ctrl+R to toggle those on and off.
| | 01:25 | I am going to click over here in the ruler,
and drag out a guide.
| | 01:29 | If you hold down the Shift key, they kind of snap
to the tick marks that appear inside of your ruler.
| | 01:33 | Now this is 5 inches, this would be 5.5 inches,
which is the center of an 8.5 x 11 document.
| | 01:40 | I am also going to go ahead now and click
on this ruler, and then drag out a guide.
| | 01:44 | This doesn't really make any difference
where it's going to go.
| | 01:46 | I will just put it right about over here.
| | 01:48 | The reason why I've done this is because
I want to be able to have some area
| | 01:51 | that I could always reference as the center of my icon.
| | 01:54 | So now that I have created both a
vertical and a horizontal guide,
| | 01:57 | I'm always going to have a center mark that I can work with.
| | 02:00 | Now I want these icons to all be sized basically the same.
I am going to choose an arbitrary value, maybe 1.5 inches.
| | 02:07 | I try to work with something that is
just easy to divide into multiple parts,
| | 02:11 | so that I can work with those icons as I create them.
| | 02:15 | So I am going to go to my Shape tools here,
I am going to choose my Rectangle tool.
| | 02:19 | I'm simply going to Opt+Click on the center right here.
| | 02:23 | You can see that I have my Smart Guides turned on.
When I move my cursor, you can see that it says Intersect.
| | 02:27 | That means that right now my cursor is hovering
over the intersection of those two guides.
| | 02:31 | If I hold down the Option key or the Alt key on Windows,
and then I click and release the mouse,
| | 02:36 | the Rectangle dialog box will come up, and it will allow me
| | 02:39 | to specify a value for how big of a rectangle I want to create.
| | 02:43 | So I can type-in here 1.5 inches by 1.5
for both the width and the height.
| | 02:47 | Because I've held down the Option key,
Illustrator is going to draw this out from the center.
| | 02:52 | So now when I click OK, I get a rectangle
that's centered exactly on that area.
| | 02:57 | Now the truth is I don't want this
rectangle for drawing purposes.
| | 03:00 | I just wanted to define an area that I know
in my head will be the bounds of all my icons.
| | 03:05 | So I want to convert this into a guide.
| | 03:08 | The keyboard shortcut to convert any
artwork into a guide inside of Illustrator
| | 03:12 | is Cmd+5 on the Mac, or Ctrl+5 on Windows.
So now that I've done that, I've now created a guide,
| | 03:17 | if I go to my Arrow tool over here,
my Selection tool, I can click and drag,
| | 03:21 | and I can see that I can no longer
select those objects, they're now locked.
| | 03:24 | You can right-click with your mouse
anywhere on the Artboard to bring up this
| | 03:28 | contextual menu, and you'll see
that my guides are currently locked.
| | 03:33 | This is also a great way to quickly unlock guides
and relock them as you are working.
| | 03:36 | The key to creating these great icons inside of Illustrator
| | 03:41 | is understanding that you can build these inside
of Illustrator rather than trying to draw them.
| | 03:45 | Of course, you can sit down now,
and kind of mess around with the Pen tool,
| | 03:50 | but these are very basic shapes, and when
I look at them, I can easily recognize
| | 03:53 | primitives like circles and triangles. Or I could kind of
break them down into their mathematical parts.
| | 03:59 | When you do that, you can create
graphics very quickly, and very easily.
| | 04:02 | So let's start over here on the
far-left with the nuclear symbol.
| | 04:05 | I can see two circles and I can see these three
different things that appear around the edges.
| | 04:10 | Really they're just kind of wedges or parts of a circle.
| | 04:14 | So just by working with some circles inside of Illustrator,
I can very easily create that icon.
| | 04:19 | To put these together, I am going to use a
combination of two tools inside of Illustrator;
| | 04:24 | the primary Shape tools, which are these
over here, and they may be a combination of
| | 04:28 | rectangle tools, ellipse tools and polygon tools for example.
| | 04:32 | And then, there is the Shape Builder tool.
| | 04:34 | The Shape Builder tool kind of replaces the
Pathfinder command, and it will allow me
| | 04:38 | to very quickly combine and subtract multiple shapes.
| | 04:42 | So since we are dealing here with the nuclear symbol,
we are going to start off with an ellipse, those are the circles.
| | 04:47 | I'm simply going to go ahead now and
once again put my cursor right here
| | 04:51 | in the center and Opt+Click to bring
up the dialog box, and I am going to
| | 04:55 | start by creating a circle that's 1.5 inches
in diameter, kind of for both the
| | 04:59 | width and the height, click OK. And I will
Opt+Click again to create yet another circle.
| | 05:05 | And this one, I'll do just an eighth of an inch less;
so 1.375, tab, 1.375.
| | 05:11 | You will see again, this goes very, very quickly.
| | 05:14 | I will press the Option key and click
with the Ellipse tool again in the center.
| | 05:18 | This time, I want to create just
a single circle that's exactly a
| | 05:22 | quarter-of-an-inch in diameter and click OK.
| | 05:25 | Now when I'm first laying out these
shapes, I'm usually just drawing them
| | 05:29 | with either white fill and a black stroke,
or maybe even a no fill and a black stroke,
| | 05:32 | just to make it easier to work with.
| | 05:34 | So I will switch to my Selection tool,
and I'll highlight all these shapes,
| | 05:38 | and I will just choose to actually fill them with none.
| | 05:41 | Now what I want to do is I want these
two circles to be combined into one.
| | 05:45 | There are several ways to do that, but
again I want to focus here on a really fast way,
| | 05:50 | which is using the Shade Builder tool.
So I am going to select these two shapes right here.
| | 05:54 | I am going to switch to the Shape Builder tool
by pressing the keyboard shortcut Shift+M,
| | 05:58 | again, we going to try to remember that here.
| | 06:00 | I am simply going to click and drag here so that
just the outside part of the circle becomes highlighted.
| | 06:06 | When I release the mouse, these
two areas have been combined into one.
| | 06:09 | By the way, if I want to remove this
part here, I can just simply Opt+Click,
| | 06:13 | and that will subtract that area right there from the middle.
| | 06:16 | Now, I am going to switch back to my Selection tool.
| | 06:19 | You'll see that now if I change the Fill to Black
and I change the Stroke to None,
| | 06:24 | I've now created this outside part of the circle right here.
| | 06:29 | Now if I click on this center circle, I can do
the same thing, but here's a keyboard shortcut;
| | 06:33 | Instead of me having to switch between
the Fill and the Stroke indicators,
| | 06:37 | I can see that right now my Fill is None, and my
Stroke is black, and I really want it to be the reverse.
| | 06:42 | I want to have a black fill and no stroke.
| | 06:44 | So the keyboard shortcut for that is Shift+X.
Shift+X will swap my fill and my stroke.
| | 06:49 | Now my object is filled black and has no stroke applied to it.
| | 06:52 | I now have two parts that I need
to create this part of this icon.
| | 06:57 | Now in order to create this shape over here,
we're going to do the following:
| | 07:00 | I am going to take my Ellipse tool once again,
I'm going to Opt+Click on the center,
| | 07:03 | and I am going to create a circle
that is 3/8th of an inch in diameter,
| | 07:08 | that's 0.375, and 0.375, click OK.
I am going to hit Shift+X so that
| | 07:12 | I can now see exactly what that looks like.
It has no fill and a black stroke.
| | 07:17 | Once again I am going to position my cursor right here
in the center on those crosshairs and Opt+Click.
| | 07:21 | Now I create a circle that's one-and-a-quarter
inches by one-and-a-quarter inches, click OK.
| | 07:28 | Now I have those shapes as well. So this is now
going to create the bounds for these shapes.
| | 07:33 | But I kind of need to split this into those segments.
I need to create those wedges.
| | 07:38 | Now if we look at that, right now
I have three areas; one, two, three.
| | 07:42 | That also means that there are three negative areas.
| | 07:45 | So that means that I have six pieces
in total that I need to create.
| | 07:49 | So what I'm going to do is I am going
to take my Line tool, just click right
| | 07:53 | here in the center, and drag it out like this.
| | 07:55 | It doesn't make a difference how far I go.
I just want to create something.
| | 07:58 | Let me actually zoom in a little bit closer here
so we can see what we are doing.
| | 08:00 | I'm now going to switch to my Rotate tool.
I am going to Opt+Click on the center again.
| | 08:06 | This allows me to define an origin point.
| | 08:10 | Let's say I am really bad at math,
and I know I need to create six segments,
| | 08:13 | I know a circle is made up at 360 degrees.
How do I get the value for 6 pieces out of 360?
| | 08:19 | The beauty of working with Illustrator is that
I can actually use each of these fields as a calculator.
| | 08:23 | So for my Angle, I could type-in 360, the forward slash,
which is actually a division sign, and by 6 (360/6).
| | 08:31 | I can click on the Preview button to see what that
looks like, and I don't want to click OK
| | 08:35 | because that will rotate just that one line.
I want to keep that line.
| | 08:39 | I want to create a copy of it.
So I am going to choose copy.
| | 08:43 | Now I have two of them.
| | 08:44 | I am going to press Cmd+D or Ctrl+D to repeat that
transform, press it again, again, and one more time.
| | 08:51 | So now I have created all the regions that I need.
| | 08:54 | Here is what I am going to do.
| | 08:55 | I am going to take my Selection tool,
I'm going to select all these areas.
| | 08:59 | But I'm going to deselect this outer circle right here
and I am going to deselect the inner circle here.
| | 09:04 | So all I have selected right now
are these two circles that I created,
| | 09:08 | and all the lines that I've just now drawn.
| | 09:10 | Now the reason why I am deselecting
those other circles is because when I am
| | 09:14 | using the Shape Builder tool inside of
Illustrator, the Shape Builder tool only
| | 09:17 | works on artwork that's selected.
| | 09:18 | So basically, by deselecting those other areas,
I'm protecting those areas
| | 09:22 | from being affected by any adjustments.
| | 09:25 | Now I am going to press Shift+M
to bring up my Shape Builder tool.
| | 09:28 | I am going to hold down my Option key,
and you will see that little icon now
| | 09:32 | changes to a minus sign, again,
that will be the Alt key on Windows.
| | 09:35 | I am simply going to remove the parts that I don't need.
I can just Opt+Drag across these parts.
| | 09:41 | This is the part that sticks out.
I don't need those.
| | 09:42 | I don't need the areas in the middle,
so I can kind of drag right through till here.
| | 09:47 | I don't need this part right here,
so I can drag through to the middle.
| | 09:50 | I don't need this part so I could drag through to the middle.
| | 09:53 | I also don't need these little areas that are right here.
| | 09:56 | So if I start clicking and dragging
and then holding down the Shift key
| | 09:59 | in addition to the Option or the Alt key,
I could create a marquee, which selects
| | 10:03 | all three of these center areas at once and removes them.
| | 10:07 | So now I have these three areas right here.
I am going to switch to my Selection tool to select them.
| | 10:11 | I am going to press Shift+X to swap my fill and my stroke.
| | 10:15 | If I zoom out, I now see that I've
created that nuclear icon. Fantastic!
| | 10:21 | I am going to select it, I am going to hit Cmd+G to group it,
and then I am going to move it off to the side.
| | 10:26 | Next, let's focus on making the oil can.
| | 10:29 | Since I am dealing with rectangles here, I am going
to go ahead now and switch to my Rectangle tool.
| | 10:32 | Again, Opt+Click on the center here.
| | 10:35 | Now I want this to be 1 inch wide, but I want
it to be the full 1.5 inches tall, click OK,
| | 10:41 | and that's the base shape that I am working with.
| | 10:43 | Now let me zoom in closer here
just to see what I'm dealing with.
| | 10:47 | I am going to take my Line Segment tool here,
and I am just going to click right over here
| | 10:51 | on this anchor point, again, Smart Guides
will allow me to snap through it very quickly,
| | 10:54 | click and drag over here to the far-right.
| | 10:57 | I have just now created a line right here.
It has no fill and no strokes.
| | 11:01 | I am just going to press D on my keyboard.
| | 11:03 | I will switch to my Selection tool, and
I am going to take this shape right now,
| | 11:06 | grab it, and hold down my Opt or Alt key,
and my Shift key as I drag it down.
| | 11:13 | The reason why I am holding down Opt or Alt
is because I am creating a copy of this.
| | 11:16 | The reason why I am holding the Shift key down
is because it's dragging it straight down
| | 11:19 | untill it snaps to the bottom of the shape.
| | 11:21 | Now I have the ability to select all three shapes,
but then Shift+Click on the rectangle to deselect it.
| | 11:28 | So now, all that's selected are the line on the top
and the line on the bottom.
| | 11:31 | Now I want to create two more lines.
I want them to be evenly distributed here.
| | 11:36 | So an easy way to do that is to simply create a blend.
| | 11:38 | I am going to go to the Object menu,
choose Blend, and then choose Make.
| | 11:43 | Next, I am going to choose
Object>Blend>Blend Options.
| | 11:48 | I am going to choose Specified steps because I know
that I really only want to have two additional lines here.
| | 11:53 | I will click on the Preview button, and I'll choose a
specified number of steps of 2. Then I will click OK.
| | 12:00 | Now I want access to these objects that
I have just created inside of the blend.
| | 12:04 | So I am going to go to the Object menu,
choose Blend, and then choose Expand.
| | 12:09 | So now you can see that I have additional lines
that I have created through that blend
| | 12:12 | and they're also perfectly distributed as I need them.
| | 12:15 | Now I am going to change the Stroke Weight
here to 5 five points.
| | 12:19 | I am also going to click on the word Stroke,
and turn on the Round Cap option.
| | 12:23 | The Round Cap option is going to make it look like
they're kind of extruding a little bit here on the sides.
| | 12:28 | In fact, I see that I really want the
top and bottom to be a little bit bigger.
| | 12:32 | So let me go ahead now and deselect these two.
| | 12:34 | I am just going to switch to my Direct Selection tool
and select this line right here.
| | 12:39 | I am actually going to Opt+Click on it;
that's going to select the entire object.
| | 12:42 | Again, Alt+Click if you are on Windows.
| | 12:44 | I am going to change the Stroke Weight here to 10 points.
I will do the same with the bottom one over here;
| | 12:48 | Opt+Click on it, change the Stroke Weight to 10 points.
I just really want to make a small adjustment here.
| | 12:54 | I want to move this up so that it fits
within the bounds that I've defined.
| | 12:58 | So I am just going to tap the up arrow
five times; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
| | 13:03 | Now the reason why I've done that is
because the keyboard increment, by default
| | 13:06 | inside of Illustrator, is set to 1 point.
| | 13:07 | Now since I've created a 10-point stroke and
because Illustrator distributes the weight of a stroke
| | 13:12 | along the centerline of a path,
my path was exactly on that bound.
| | 13:18 | So when I gave it a 10-point stroke weight,
that means that it was kind of bleeding over
| | 13:22 | the outside of that 5 points.
| | 13:23 | So by tapping the up arrow five times, it moved
it up precisely now within those bounds.
| | 13:27 | I can do the same thing for the top one here.
| | 13:29 | Opt+Click over here to select the entire object,
and tap the down arrow five times.
| | 13:35 | Later on, we will actually see that we can actually
change the keyboard increment as we need to,
| | 13:39 | to make it easier to move objects around in our document.
| | 13:42 | I am going to switch to the Regular Selection tool now.
| | 13:44 | I am going to deselect everything by clicking on
a blank area, and I am going to click on
| | 13:47 | this one line to select them all. I am going
to choose Object>Path>Outline Stroke.
| | 13:54 | Now I always do this when I am creating icons
because I really don't want to be in a situation
| | 13:58 | where I can create a piece of art that later on might
be modifiedin a way that I don't want it to be.
| | 14:03 | In Illustrator, there is a setting that allows you
to control whether or not stroke weight is scaled
| | 14:08 | as you make adjustments.
| | 14:09 | If I forget to turn that option off
or I have it on the wrong setting,
| | 14:12 | I may get some kind of weirdness, or scaling that
happens with my strokes, that is unintentional.
| | 14:18 | So I always try to make sure that I expand all
my strokes, and I convert them to filled objects.
| | 14:22 | I could then use my Selection tool to
go ahead now and select everything here.
| | 14:25 | Press Shift+M to get my Shape Builder tool,
click and drag with the Shift key down
| | 14:30 | to highlight everything and turn it into a one big shape.
| | 14:33 | Now I will switch to my Selection tool, fill it black.
Now I've created the icon that I need for Petroleum.
| | 14:41 | So let's zoom out here for a minute here,
and bring it over here to the side.
| | 14:44 | So now we have three more icons to create.
| | 14:48 | Let's focus on renewable energy.
| | 14:50 | I am going to use some circles for this,
I am going to use my Ellipse tool.
| | 14:53 | I am going to Opt+Click here in the center.
| | 14:55 | I use a circle here about one-and-a-quarter
inches; this is perfect.
| | 14:58 | I will press Shift+X now so that I can,
again, have no fill and a black stroke.
| | 15:02 | I will Opt+Click again, and type-in here 0.75 for my circles.
| | 15:08 | Now I have two circles that I am going to work with.
| | 15:10 | But I also want to create like these arrows here.
| | 15:13 | If I kind of take a quick look at them,
they look like triangles to me.
| | 15:16 | I can use triangles to create that.
| | 15:18 | Let's go ahead now and zoom in a little bit closer here,
| | 15:21 | so we can get to see like both of them here
on the screen at the same time.
| | 15:24 | Now I want to create some triangles.
| | 15:27 | Well, what's the fastest way to create
a triangle inside of Illustrator?
| | 15:29 | If I look at my Primitive Shape tools here,
I have a Rectangle tool, and I have
| | 15:33 | an Ellipse tool, a Star tool, but I don't
really have a Triangle tool.
| | 15:37 | Well, you can actually use the Polygon tool.
| | 15:38 | That's the best way to create a triangle inside
of Illustrator; choose the Polygon tool, click and drag.
| | 15:44 | You will notice right now that it has
more than three sides that we need.
| | 15:47 | But as I am drawing this, I am not
letting go of the mouse, I am going to press
| | 15:50 | the down arrow on my keyboard
until I can't really go anymore.
| | 15:54 | The minimum number of sides for a polygon
is going to be 3 which is a triangle.
| | 15:57 | So I now have three sides.
| | 15:59 | I am going to hold down the Shift key so that it now
basically constraints it so that it's nice and straight.
| | 16:03 | It doesn't make a difference what
size this triangle is going to be
| | 16:05 | because I'm going to go into adjust this
afterwards for the same way that I need it.
| | 16:09 | So I just want to create that triangle.
| | 16:11 | Now I will switch to my Selection tool; just kind of move it
over here so we can kind of take a better look at it.
| | 16:15 | I am going to go to my Transform panel and I want
to change the width of my triangle to a half-an-inch.
| | 16:21 | Now keep in mind, I want the height
to also change to match this.
| | 16:24 | But the height and width of a triangle
is not like a perfect square.
| | 16:29 | You can see here that the height
is 1.3 and the width is 1.5.
| | 16:33 | So when I make the width to be exactly 0.5,
I want the height to change proportionately.
| | 16:38 | Now I could click on this little lock icon here to do so.
| | 16:41 | However, this is a toggle button, which means
that once I turn it on, it stays on until I turn it off.
| | 16:45 | I'm always kind of making adjustments inside of Illustrator.
| | 16:48 | So for me, I just want to show you a quick little shortcut.
| | 16:50 | It's a lot easier for me to basically tell
Illustrator when I want my scaling
| | 16:55 | to actually be proportionate and
when I don't want it to be proportionate.
| | 16:58 | So for the width, I am going to type-in 0.5.
I am not going to hit Enter. I am going to hit Cmd+Enter.
| | 17:05 | When you hit Cmd+Enter or Cmd+Return,
Illustrator takes the single value that you've created
| | 17:10 | and automatically make sure that
the other value is changed in proportion.
| | 17:15 | So now, I'll take this triangle right here,
| | 17:17 | and because I have Smart Guides turned on,
I could snap right into this location.
| | 17:21 | I am going to Opt+Drag over here
another copy, right over here.
| | 17:24 | I am going to use the Rotate tool. The R key
is the keyboard shortcut for the Rotate tool.
| | 17:30 | I am simply going to go ahead now
and click and drag with the Shift key,
| | 17:32 | so my triangle is now the opposite direction,
and I will snap it in right about over here.
| | 17:38 | Next, I am going to use my Line Segment tool here.
| | 17:40 | So just click on this little point right here
and drag down. You can kind of see
| | 17:45 | I am trying to match the same angle as
that triangle is, which is right about over here.
| | 17:49 | I will simply hit my right arrow key
five times; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
| | 17:55 | Then I'll take my Selection tool here,
Opt+Drag it right over here so that
| | 17:59 | it snaps to this part of the triangle.
Then again use my left arrow key;
| | 18:03 | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 to create some separation there.
| | 18:06 | Now I have all the elements that I need to create this icon.
| | 18:09 | I am just going to go ahead now and select all these
elements, Shift+M to activate my Shape Builder tool.
| | 18:15 | I'm going to click and drag across
these three elements to combine them,
| | 18:20 | click and drag against these
three objects to combine them.
| | 18:23 | I could also combine these
two shapes and these two shapes.
| | 18:27 | And then I will use my Option key to get rid of this,
to get rid of the areas in the middle,
| | 18:32 | get rid of that little one as well, Opt+Drag across that,
and simply remove these other areas here.
| | 18:41 | Now I am left with the shapes that I want.
| | 18:45 | I will go ahead and select them with my Selection tool,
Shift+X colors them black with no stroke.
| | 18:49 | And now we have created three of the icons.
Let's go ahead now and drag this one out over here.
| | 18:54 | We are ready to focus on the icon for Natural Gas.
This one is actually really easy to create.
| | 19:00 | Let me go ahead and zoom in just a little bit over here.
Again, we are going to start with a circle.
| | 19:05 | So I am going to go ahead and choose my Ellipse tool.
| | 19:07 | I am going to Opt+Click here in the center, and
let's create a circle that's exactly 1 inch in diameter.
| | 19:12 | Shift+X will go ahead now and give you that nice little
no fill and black stroke object, so it's easy to work with.
| | 19:17 | I use my Selection tool, and I will drag it down so it
snaps to the bottom over here of my bounding area.
| | 19:24 | Next, I am going to switch to my Direct Selection tool,
and I am going to click on just the anchor point here
| | 19:29 | to top of a circle. You know a circle
is made up of four anchor points.
| | 19:32 | So I am just going to select this one and
then hold down my Shift key and drag it
| | 19:36 | so that it snaps here to the top of the bounding area.
| | 19:39 | Now I kind of have this weird egg shape thing going on.
But I want it to come to a point.
| | 19:43 | So what I am going to do is I am going
to go over here to my Pen tool,
| | 19:46 | click and hold and change to my Convert
Anchor Point tool, and simply click once
| | 19:50 | on that anchor point to turn it into our corner point,
so that now my flame kind of comes to a point.
| | 19:55 | Let me go ahead now and switch back to my Selection tool.
I will select the entire shape, and I want to scale this.
| | 20:01 | So I am going to hit the S key for my Scale tool,
and I'm going to Opt+Click on the bottom of this.
| | 20:06 | This does two things.
| | 20:07 | A, it allows me to bring up this dialog box
that allows me to scale by specific number.
| | 20:12 | But because I've clicked on that bottom point,
I set the origin point for the scale
| | 20:17 | to be at that bottom point of the flame.
| | 20:19 | Now I want to scale this 70%
and I want to create a copy of it.
| | 20:23 | Then I will press Cmd+D or Ctrl+D to do that again.
Now I can select these three objects with my Selection tool.
| | 20:30 | Hit Shift+M to get my Shape Builder tool,
and I can basically click once here
| | 20:35 | to create a shape, once here to create a shape, I can
Opt+Click in the middle to actually delete that area.
| | 20:41 | Now if I switch to my Selection tool and
I select it and I press Shift+X on my keyboard,
| | 20:46 | I now have that beautiful flame to
work with as an icon for Natural Gas.
| | 20:51 | I will move this over here to the side.
Now let's focus on making the last one here,
| | 20:56 | which is the coal icon, which again it seems a little bit
more complex, but again, it's made up of basic shapes.
| | 21:01 | I'll start by creating the wheels.
So I am going to go over here to my Ellipse tool.
| | 21:06 | I am just going to go ahead now and click over here,
it doesn't make a difference really where.
| | 21:09 | I want my wheels to be maybe about 3/8th
of an inch, 0.375 x 0.375, click OK.
| | 21:17 | I'll go ahead and just position them
over here so they kind of snap to the lower
| | 21:20 | left-hand corner here, the bounds of that.
| | 21:23 | I am going to Opt+Drag so that I now see that
on the other side, so now I have a copy of that.
| | 21:27 | I just want to nudge these in a little bit.
| | 21:29 | So I will move them over say 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,
6, 7, 8, 9, 10, how about that?
| | 21:34 | Let's do that. Let's move it over 10 points;
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Beautiful!
| | 21:39 | Next, I am going to go ahead now, switch to
my Rectangle tool, Opt+Click on the center here,
| | 21:45 | and you create a rectangle that's
1.5 inches wide and 0.875 tall.
| | 21:52 | Now I want to align this better, so I am
going to switch to my Selection tool.
| | 21:56 | Let me zoom in just a little bit here,
so we can kind of see what we are doing.
| | 21:59 | I am going to drag down until you can see
where it intersects with the center of that circle.
| | 22:03 | I am also going to change to my Direct
Selection tool, click on this anchor point,
| | 22:07 | and move it in also about 10 points;
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,
| | 22:12 | Click on this anchor point and move that in;
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
| | 22:17 | Now I want to cut out some wheel wells for this.
| | 22:19 | So I am going to switch over here to my
Ellipse tool, and I will come over here
| | 22:25 | and I want to find the intersection of
that circle, and again, the Smart Guides
| | 22:28 | turned on will easily identify that area.
| | 22:30 | I am going to Opt+Click because I want
to draw out from that that center, and
| | 22:34 | I am simply going to create half-inch circles.
| | 22:38 | I can even switch to my Selection tool here,
grab the center point,
| | 22:42 | Opt+Shift or Alt+Shift and drag so it
intersects with the other circle here.
| | 22:48 | Now I am going to select these two bigger
circles, and this rectangular shape here,
| | 22:52 | it's more of a trapezoid now,
Shift+M gives me my Shape Builder tool,
| | 22:56 | Opt+Drag to get rid of this part,
Opt+Drag to get rid of that part.
| | 23:00 | I now have the base that I need for this coal icon.
| | 23:04 | Now I want to create the mounds of coal inside of this.
So I am going to create a rectangle for that.
| | 23:09 | Let me choose the Rectangle tool here.
I am just going to do Opt+Click right here
| | 23:12 | in the middle, and create a rectangle that is 1 inch square.
| | 23:16 | I will switch to the Rotate tool, which
is the R here in my keyboard,
| | 23:20 | and I will click and drag while holding the Shift key
down to rotate it exactly 45 degrees.
| | 23:25 | Now I want this to snap over here to the top,
so I am simply going to drag it up
| | 23:28 | so it intersects with the top part of that bounding area.
| | 23:30 | I want to move this a precise amount.
Now there are two ways that I can do this.
| | 23:34 | I can either double-click on the Selection
tool itself to bring up the Move dialog box,
| | 23:39 | or, like I was mentioning earlier, I can
also change my keyboard increment.
| | 23:43 | I am going to press Cmd+K or Ctrl+K. That's the keyboard
shortcut to bring up your Preferences dialog box.
| | 23:48 | But it also immediately highlights the Keyboard
Increment setting as you can see right here,
| | 23:53 | and by default, that's set to 1 pixel to 1 point.
| | 23:56 | I am going to change it to 0.125 inches,
and then simply click OK.
| | 24:00 | Now if I hold down my Opt or my Alt key and
then press the right arrow,
| | 24:05 | it's going to create now a copy of that shape.
| | 24:08 | I am going to let go of the Option key. I am
going to press the arrow key one more time.
| | 24:11 | I actually want to create two more of these, so I'm
going to press Option+Right-arrow to create a copy,
| | 24:16 | and then adjust the right-arrow to move it over.
| | 24:19 | One more time, Opt+Right arrow and
then just right-arrow again.
| | 24:22 | Now I have these four pieces in place.
| | 24:24 | I'm also going to take both this shape right here
and select this shape here and move them down one.
| | 24:30 | So now I have created kind of this little mountain
that I am going to use for the top of the icon.
| | 24:34 | So I am simply going to go ahead now and deselect
and click and drag to drag across all these.
| | 24:40 | I am going to press Cmd+G to group them all together.
| | 24:42 | The reason why I've done that is because
I want to quickly align it to the center of this icon.
| | 24:46 | Now if I just go ahead now and I choose to
center it, it will center it to the artboard.
| | 24:50 | But I want to center it to this shape right here.
| | 24:53 | So I am going to hold down my Shift key, so now
I have the group, and this kind of rectangle,
| | 24:58 | or this trapezoid shape here selected, and then,
without holding down the Shift key,
| | 25:01 | I am going to click on that trapezoid shape again.
| | 25:04 | That's going to highlight it or what Illustrator
refers to as setting it as a key object.
| | 25:08 | Because now when I click on the Align
button and I choose to align by center,
| | 25:11 | it will align it to that shape.
| | 25:13 | So now, what I am going to do is I am simply
going to go ahead now and deselect everything.
| | 25:16 | I am going to draw a line, a little bit
higher over here, just simply right across here.
| | 25:22 | With that line selected, I am going to now
hold down my Shift key and
| | 25:26 | also select all those rotated squares
that I've created, and once again use the
| | 25:29 | Shape Builder tool, Shift+M, to just
simply hold down my Option key.
| | 25:34 | I am going to start dragging and also the Shift key
and drag across all these shapes right here.
| | 25:39 | Try to get rid of everything, Opt+Drag across
these extra points right here.
| | 25:43 | Then just hold down the Shift key without the
Option key to combine all those into one shape.
| | 25:48 | Change to my Selection tool, select it,
fill it black, and I am going to select
| | 25:55 | all these elements now and group them together.
| | 25:58 | So now, if I zoom out, I've created these five beautiful
icons all using very primitive shapes inside of Illustrator.
| | 26:05 | All I have to do now is bring these into my other
document and I could use them inside of my infographic.
| | 26:10 | Before we do that, I am just going
to go ahead now and save my file.
| | 26:13 | I will press Cmd+S or Ctrl+S and
we'll move these into the infographic in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Finalizing the total energy chart| 00:00 | So we've created these icons that we need
for the infographic and now we want
| | 00:04 | to move them over into the infographic.
| | 00:07 | So I am just going to go ahead now and
select these to make sure that they are grouped.
| | 00:09 | This one is grouped; this one looks like
it's grouped; lets select that one; that's a group.
| | 00:15 | This one here, no, that's not a group.
I am going to press Cmd+G or Ctrl+G
| | 00:18 | to make that a group and I will do the same for this one.
| | 00:21 | By the way when I select this where I am
looking to find that if it's a group or not,
| | 00:24 | is right above here on the upper
left-hand corner of my screen where
| | 00:28 | Illustrator identifies what it is that is my target right now.
| | 00:31 | If it says Path, that means I don't have
a group, so I am just going to press
| | 00:34 | Cmd+G to make that into a group.
| | 00:36 | Now I am just going to go ahead now
and arrange these over here.
| | 00:39 | If you have Smart Guides, you can kind of see
how they can kind of snap to their centers.
| | 00:43 | But because they're all groups I don't care
the much about it. I am just going to go ahead now,
| | 00:46 | and just reorganize them, kind of how
I need them like this, and drag
| | 00:51 | to now select all these with my Selection tool.
I will use my Align tool here to
| | 00:56 | just align them all by their vertically aligned centers.
| | 01:00 | Now there is one thing that's important
to note is that when I bring this now
| | 01:03 | into the other document, they are going
to go against the colored background.
| | 01:07 | So I am going to want to change their color,
so right now they are all filled with black.
| | 01:10 | I am simply going to go ahead now
and change their Fill color to white.
| | 01:14 | Let me go ahead now with them all selected,
choose Cmd+C or Ctrl+C to copy it.
| | 01:19 | Let's switch now to the renewable_energy_01
document that we saved earlier
| | 01:23 | and press Cmd+V or Ctrl+V
to paste them into this document.
| | 01:27 | Now the icons are pretty big. I really
want them to be about a half inch tall.
| | 01:31 | So I am going to open up my Transform panel,
and where it says Height, which is right now
| | 01:35 | --remember we created them at one
and a half inches--I want them to be a
| | 01:38 | half an inch so I am going to go ahead
now and double-click on the height value.
| | 01:41 | Press 0.5 inches and then, remember
Cmd+Enter to make sure that it now
| | 01:47 | proportionally scales it to be that new size.
| | 01:50 | So I am going to go ahead now and drag them
up over here, so you can kind of see here
| | 01:53 | how it intersect using Smart Guides so I know I kind of
have it right now centered with all these rectangles.
| | 02:00 | Now I am simply going to go ahead now
and drop them into position.
| | 02:03 | So I am going to click and drag on this one
and again using Smart Guides,
| | 02:07 | I know that I can kind of snap it to the
center of this shape. I can use this shape
| | 02:11 | right over here to the middle of this one.
The renewable energy icon is going to
| | 02:15 | go right here, the coal icon is going
to go right here, and the natural gas one
| | 02:21 | is going to go here as well. Beautiful.
| | 02:24 | Now they are kind of in your face, I mean
they are white against these dark backgrounds.
| | 02:28 | So maybe I just want to kind of soften
that just a little bit, so I am going to
| | 02:31 | select all of these and let's
change the Opacity value to about 40%.
| | 02:38 | That's going to give me like that
tinted look into each of these,
| | 02:41 | So now I get this really nice refined look.
| | 02:43 | I kind of right now know what each of
these boxes are starting to represent.
| | 02:47 | The color kind of hints it in
one way, but so do the icons.
| | 02:51 | Now to finish off this chart, I want
to make sure that I add the values.
| | 02:54 | Remember, we want people to understand exactly
what the data is. You want to be able to show it to them
| | 03:01 | visually but if they want to read that data,
we need to provide that as well.
| | 03:03 | So the first thing I am going to do is
I am going to start adding some labels.
| | 03:06 | I will take my Type tool--I am just going to click
right about over here--to get a blinking cursor icon
| | 03:12 | and the first one of the left is nuclear, so I am just going
to type in nuclear, select it with my Black Arrow tool.
| | 03:20 | I will make sure that the center option
is here, click to Align Center for the
| | 03:24 | Paragraph setting. And to make sure
that it's styled correctly, I am going to
| | 03:28 | go over to the Window menu, I am going
to scroll down to where it says, Type.
| | 03:31 | Then I am going to choose Character Styles,
and I am going Option+Click on the Bar Chart Label.
| | 03:36 | That's a style that I created for the label
for this chart, so I am simply
| | 03:40 | going to go ahead now and click on this and snap
it over here into the center right about there.
| | 03:45 | Now I am going to Opt+Shift+Drag over here
to this one and I will do the same
| | 03:50 | for all these as well, so that I kind of have
that text in the position that I need it to be.
| | 03:54 | We don't need this here, just a moment,
lets move that down, kind of drag this over here.
| | 04:01 | I am now going to take my Type tool
and just change the text in these areas.
| | 04:05 | So this one is now going to say RENEWABLE,
this one is going to say PETROLEUM,
| | 04:13 | this one is going to say COAL,
and this one will say NATURAL GAS.
| | 04:21 | So we have the labels in place.
| | 04:23 | I actually see that maybe the icons can
move up just a little bit, so I am going
| | 04:26 | to go ahead now and just select
these icons, and kind of nudge them up.
| | 04:32 | Now remember, look how they are kind of
jumping up as I nudge them. Why is that happening?
| | 04:35 | Because we changed our keyboard increment before.
| | 04:38 | So let's go back and remember to
kind of bring it back, Cmd+K.
| | 04:41 | Op1 will set it back to 1 point, or 1 pixel and click OK.
Now I can go ahead now and
| | 04:47 | choose to nudge it in small increments again.
| | 04:49 | So now we need to add the values themselves
underneath this, again, which is text.
| | 04:53 | I am going to start by taking this value right here,
NUCLEAR and Opt+Drag it.
| | 04:58 | I will also hold down the Shift key down
to right about over here.
| | 05:02 | Now what was the value for this?
| | 05:03 | We quickly jump over to Excel
and see that nuclear was 10.6.
| | 05:07 | So let's go back to Illustrator.
| | 05:09 | I am going to go ahead now and double-click
on that so that now it activates
| | 05:13 | and highlights my text for me and I
will type in 10.6% and switch to my
| | 05:18 | Selection tool, and with that selected I am
going to come over to my Character Styles panel.
| | 05:23 | I am going to hold down my Option key or my
Alt key, I am going to click on Bar Chart Value.
| | 05:28 | See how that makes that much bigger right now.
See it's actually little bit too high,
| | 05:31 | let me nudge it down just a little bit
and that looks pretty good.
| | 05:35 | Now the % sign is much bigger than it needs to be.
| | 05:38 | So I am going to take my Type tool,
highlight the % sign and I actually
| | 05:41 | want that to be superscript. I can
do that very easily by clicking on the
| | 05:45 | word Character in my Control panel and then
choosing the Superscript option right here.
| | 05:50 | Now one thing to note also--and working
with numbers, especially ones that have
| | 05:54 | decimal points here--it's going be
really important to make sure that my kerning
| | 05:57 | is set correctly so that is easy to read this.
| | 06:00 | I am just going to simply press
Cmd+A or Ctrl+A to select all that text,
| | 06:04 | because my cursor was already inside the Text box.
| | 06:06 | I am going to hold down my Option key
or Alt key on Windows and then tap the
| | 06:09 | left arrow key to kind of reduce the tracking
so now my numbers are much closer to each other.
| | 06:15 | Now that I have done that, I am going to
switch back to my Selection tool;
| | 06:18 | click on that little center point right there;
hold down the Option and Shift keys as
| | 06:22 | I drag them here, and again, Opt+Shift to drag here.
| | 06:26 | I am just simply adding these values throughout.
| | 06:30 | Now lets change these values to the way
they should be. Let's go back to Excel
| | 06:34 | for a second. I see at 11.7 and 15.4
and the remainder are 28.4 and 33.9.
| | 06:57 | Of course I can kind of jump into each of these
values individually and to kern them as I need to.
| | 07:00 | Like for example the kerning here looks pretty bad.
| | 07:03 | So I need to kind of adjust the ones and then
bring this 7 in a lot closer.
| | 07:08 | And again I am doing that by putting my
cursor in between the two places that I
| | 07:11 | want to bring close to each other and
then I'm holding down the Option key and
| | 07:15 | then the left arrow to reduce the
amount of kerning or space that appears
| | 07:19 | between those two characters or Option
using right arrow to increase the amount
| | 07:23 | of space that appears between them.
| | 07:25 | For example, you can kind of see that the 7 and
the % sign are kind of just touching each other;
| | 07:30 | Opt+Right arrow will help me solve that problem.
| | 07:32 | Now in reality this graph is done now
as it is. It's wonderful, it's great.
| | 07:36 | It has everything that I need, but I
really want to help kind of bring the viewers
| | 07:40 | eye from this chart into the next one.
I thought it might be helpful to do that
| | 07:44 | by kind of focusing on renewable energy here.
| | 07:47 | Basically, the next chart that's going
to follow is going to talk about
| | 07:50 | what makes up that 11.7% of renewable energy.
| | 07:53 | How is that distributed amongst
wind for example and solar power?
| | 07:57 | I want to kind of draw the readers eye
out of that. And if we take a look at what
| | 08:01 | our PDF document looks like, you can see
that I have kind of added an arrow down here.
| | 08:05 | I have made the icon for renewables
larger and I have kind of brought the
| | 08:10 | value into this arrow to help draw the
reader's eye down into the next chart.
| | 08:14 | It also kind of reads as a nice sentence where it now
says 11.7% comes from renewable sources.
| | 08:20 | So let's go ahead and do that.
| | 08:21 | I am going to switch back now to the Illustrator document.
We don't need this right now, so let's go ahead and close that.
| | 08:27 | I am going to start off by creating that
little arrow down here.
| | 08:30 | The easiest way to do that is just to draw
some basic shapes. Draw a rectangle;
| | 08:34 | again smart guides are really helpful here.
| | 08:36 | I can start by clicking and then dragging, it will
automatically will snap to the same width of that.
| | 08:41 | I am going to come to about, let's say, right here.
| | 08:44 | I am going to press D because I want to
fill that object with a default setting.
| | 08:47 | I actually don't want to stroke on it,
but I do want to fill it with that same
| | 08:50 | green color that I am using for renewable energy.
| | 08:54 | Now I need to create a triangle.
| | 08:56 | Remember the easiest way to draw a
triangle inside of Illustrator? Take a Polygon tool,
| | 09:00 | click and drag and make sure that's only using three sides.
Hold down the Shift key, kind of draw it to about this big.
| | 09:07 | Now what I am going to do is I am
going to center these two; I am going to
| | 09:10 | hold down this triangle, and select it, hold
down my Shift key and select this rectangle.
| | 09:15 | Then I am going to release the Shift key and then click
on the Rectangle again to define it as the key object.
| | 09:19 | Now when I choose Align and Center, the
triangle is now going to align itself to
| | 09:24 | that rectangle, to that key object.
| | 09:27 | Let's go ahead and deselect that and
I am now going to click on this triangle.
| | 09:31 | I am going to simply take the top of this triangle
and drag it down to kind of resize it, something like that.
| | 09:37 | Now I will hold down the Shift key and
drag it up, now I see how they nice --
| | 09:40 | they touch each other here; in fact I
want to bring this down into the chart.
| | 09:44 | I am just going to go ahead now and nudge this down
just a little bit, maybe like that for example.
| | 09:49 | Then simply take this rectangle, drag
it so it kind of touches here to resize it.
| | 09:53 | Maybe even give it some breathing space
so you can see it kind of detaches from that.
| | 09:57 | I will select these two shapes,
Shift+M from my Shape Builder tool
| | 10:02 | and then go ahead, hold down the Shift key and
drag across them both. Remember, because
| | 10:06 | those are the only two objects selected, only those
are affected, they now get joined into one new shape.
| | 10:12 | Let's go back to my Selection tool; let's now take
the 11.7% and drag it down into this area.
| | 10:17 | I am going to bring it to the front
by going to Object>Arrange>Bring to Front;
| | 10:21 | maybe nudge it over just to the right
a little bit just to optically align it.
| | 10:25 | Now I want to make this icon bigger, so I simply
select it, tap the S key for my Scale tool.
| | 10:31 | I am going to click and drag outwards
with the Shift key to kind of enlarge it,
| | 10:35 | and then use my Down arrow key to nudge it into position.
| | 10:39 | And now I have gone ahead and created
this beautiful chart that now describes
| | 10:44 | the breakdown of energy generation in US.
| | 10:47 | I have also successfully been able to help lead
the viewer's eye down into the next chart.
| | 10:52 | Now before we do anything else,
I really want to make sure that this is now
| | 10:56 | being structured correctly inside of my document.
| | 10:58 | Remember this is going to be a complex
infographic with lots of information.
| | 11:02 | I want to make it easy to work with inside of Illustrator.
| | 11:04 | Until now I have not really been paying attention
to the layers inside of my document.
| | 11:08 | So what I am going to do is
I am going to take my Arrow tool right here;
| | 11:14 | click and hold and then drag
across all these new shapes that I have created;
| | 11:16 | and I am going to look at right now
inside of my Layers panel, if I go
| | 11:19 | ahead now and I collapse my little
Chart icon right here, I see they are all
| | 11:23 | inside of one layer. But if I click on
the little arrow here again, and I scroll down,
| | 11:28 | I see that there are other layers that I have created.
| | 11:32 | In fact, to make it easier to see, let me go ahead
now and drag this Layers panel out, make it larger.
| | 11:38 | We go ahead now and expand this as well,
and you can see that I have a whole
| | 11:42 | bunch of elements that I have just created.
Those are all indicated by these little red selection squares.
| | 11:46 | But if I scroll down I do see that I have
something called the Total Energy Chart.
| | 11:51 | So what I really want to do, I want to
take all the elements that I just now
| | 11:55 | had selected, that I have created and
I want to put them into this layer.
| | 11:57 | The first thing we are going to do is I am
going unlock the Total Energy Chart layer.
| | 12:02 | Next I am going to scroll upwards over
here and I am going to take this little
| | 12:05 | dot right here from the top; I am
going to click on it and I am going to
| | 12:09 | drag it and then I am going to place it
right over here where it says Total Energy Chart.
| | 12:14 | It should turn blue because that's the color of that layer.
| | 12:17 | When I release the mouse, all those
elements now were put into that layer.
| | 12:21 | So if I now go ahead and relock that
layer again--let's go ahead and drag layers
| | 12:25 | back now where it belongs
into this little area right here.
| | 12:28 | You can see that I cannot go
ahead and select these elements.
| | 12:30 | I've now put them onto that layer and I can very
easily toggle the visibility of that layer as well.
| | 12:37 | So we've now successfully created
the top part of this infographic.
| | 12:39 | Let's go ahead now and save this file.
| | 12:41 | I am going to go to the File menu and
choose Save As because I want to save a
| | 12:45 | copy of this and I am going to
rename it as Renewable Energy O2.
| | 12:49 | We will save that into my Project folder,
click OK. And now we are ready to
| | 12:53 | start looking at the next part of this infographic,
which is the chart that's going to go right here.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding and styling a line chart| 00:00 | So we're now ready to create a line chart
that's going to help us understand exactly
| | 00:05 | what types of renewable energy are used in the U.S.
and how those have been growing over the years.
| | 00:11 | So, I'm going to switch over to the Acrobat
file just to kind of see exactly what this
| | 00:16 | final chart is going to look like.
| | 00:17 | You'll see by the way when I'm started my original sketches.
I thought that this would be one nice chart to work with.
| | 00:22 | However, I realize after I kind of started to do
my initial sketches that Hydropower is really
| | 00:28 | completely almost off the chart, literally, than the others.
| | 00:32 | That's what inspired me to put the
country list right there in that space in
| | 00:36 | the middle, which we'll get to later on.
| | 00:38 | But I also wanted there to be some kind of
way where we can make this almost interactive
| | 00:42 | in the final version of the PDF, where
perhaps I can start to compare the growth of some
| | 00:46 | of these renewable sources of energy; like
for example, only display solar and wind,
| | 00:51 | so I can clearly focus on just those two.
| | 00:54 | So again later on in the project, we're
going to come back and see how we can use layers
| | 00:58 | inside of Illustrator, and also layers inside of Acrobat
to help create that type of interactive PDF document.
| | 01:04 | But for now, we actually want to get started creating
this chart so, I'm going to switch back to Illustrator.
| | 01:10 | The first thing I'm going to do
is actually start creating my chart.
| | 01:13 | So here inside the tools panel, I'm going to click over here
where it says the Graph tools; all the Graph tools are here.
| | 01:18 | I'm going to scroll down to where it says Line Graph
tool, because that's the kind that we want to create.
| | 01:23 | And keep in mind by the way, if you decide
later on to change your mind, remember
| | 01:26 | that you can always change between
different graph types inside of Illustrator
| | 01:29 | and the data will update accordingly, as
long as you don't ungroup your graph.
| | 01:33 | I need to define an area or a size
for the chart that I want to create.
| | 01:37 | Now, I already have created this background here.
| | 01:39 | It's actually go from 0 over here, all the way up
to three hundred thousand, which is this part here.
| | 01:44 | So, I want my chart to be basically from here to here
in a vertical fashion; but on a horizontal fashion,
| | 01:50 | I kind of want to start right about over here.
| | 01:53 | But, I want to leave some room here on
the right side for me to put my labels.
| | 01:59 | So, I'm going to start by drawing a rectangle.
I'm going to start right about over here.
| | 02:02 | Again, it doesn't make a difference exactly where you are.
| | 02:04 | We can always position and adjust this later on;
but I'm somewhere here around the
| | 02:08 | quarter of an inch in from the edge over here.
| | 02:10 | If you look at my little cross hair in the ruler,
I'm about 3 quarters of an inch and
| | 02:15 | I'm right about over here.
| | 02:16 | So, I'm going to go ahead now and click
and then drag to define the area of my chart.
| | 02:21 | I'm going to bring it to about 9 inches right here.
| | 02:23 | I am going to go ahead and let go and that brings
up my Data Window and I want to import some data.
| | 02:28 | So, I click on the button over here to import data;
I am going to navigate to the _DATA
| | 02:33 | folder here inside my exercise files.
| | 02:35 | Now remember, when I'm placing data inside
of Illustrator, I can't use a native Excel document,
| | 02:40 | so I'm going to click on the Text folder
and I'm going to click on this file here
| | 02:43 | called US_ Renewable_Energy_Generation.
| | 02:46 | I'm going to click Open and that data
now gets pasted here inside of my file.
| | 02:51 | These numbers actually represent millions of
kilowatt hours, which I already have written
| | 02:55 | out inside of this chart; and you can see
that I've also put the years that appear on the
| | 02:59 | left side in quote marks, meaning that I
don't want these to be interpreted as values.
| | 03:03 | I want those to be actually added to the axis along
the bottom of my chart, so those should be the labels.
| | 03:09 | Of course, these labels here are actual letters
not numbers, so Illustrator is automatically
| | 03:14 | going to know that those should be charted as labels as well.
| | 03:19 | There is a single decimal point here.
| | 03:20 | I really don't need to have decimal point
in this chart so, I'm simple going to click
| | 03:24 | on this button right here, Cell Style; change
number of decimals to 0, click OK.
| | 03:30 | By the way, if some of these numbers are really
larger, I can also go back here and just increase
| | 03:34 | the Column Width to say support maybe 10 digits.
| | 03:37 | And that way, I'm just sure that there's enough room
and that nothing is getting truncated.
| | 03:42 | Now that these values are here, I'm going
to click on the check mark to go ahead and
| | 03:45 | apply those settings to my chart.
| | 03:47 | So I have what I need here.
| | 03:48 | I'm going to close my Data Window, but you can see
a couple of things here that are just really not working.
| | 03:53 | First of all, obvious this styling doesn't
look at all what I want it to look like; and
| | 03:57 | we'll start to take steps to improve that momentarily.
| | 03:59 | But I first want to get the scale correct.
| | 04:01 | I'm going to go to Outline mode for a second
because Illustrator is using some default
| | 04:05 | grayscale settings for the text here, which is on
this background, so it's hard for me to read it.
| | 04:10 | I'm just showing you that if you look over
here across the bottom, you'll see all the
| | 04:13 | correct numbers of the years; but also if you
look on the left here, because Illustrator
| | 04:17 | automatically chose the values that appear
along this side of the chart or along this access,
| | 04:24 | it goes from 0 all the way to 350.
| | 04:26 | Now it's doing that because Illustrator is
simply taking the next larger number than
| | 04:31 | the highest value in the chart,
which is right about over here.
| | 04:33 | But remember, we can define our own.
| | 04:35 | So, I'm going to go back and hit
Cmd+ Y or Ctrl+Y to go back into Preview mode.
| | 04:40 | Next, I'm going to go to the Object menu.
| | 04:42 | I'm going to choose Graph, and then I'm going
to choose Type, because I want to modify some
| | 04:47 | of the settings inside the chart.
| | 04:49 | For the menu over here where it says Graph
Options, I'm going to click on that, and I'm
| | 04:52 | going to choose Value Axis. Here where it says Tick Values,
I'm going to choose Override the Calculated Values.
| | 04:59 | Now, the Minimum is 0 and I wanted to stay at 0,
but I don't want to Maximum to go to 350000,
| | 05:05 | which is more than the existing setting inside this chart.
| | 05:09 | In fact, let me just take you back for
a second here I'm going to click Cancel.
| | 05:13 | Let's go back Object>Graph>Data.
I'll show you over here where it
| | 05:20 | says Hydropower; and I look at the last date, which is
2011, which is representing this value right over here.
| | 05:27 | You can see that that is the largest
number inside the chart, 325 and change.
| | 05:33 | And that's why Illustrator chose to go all
the way to 350000 so that is room inside the
| | 05:38 | chart to display all these values.
| | 05:40 | But what I am going to do is I am actually
going to choose a value that's smaller than that.
| | 05:43 | That's going to force that value to like stick out
of the graph; to go higher
| | 05:47 | than the graph itself; to exceed the
boundaries that I've already defined for that graph.
| | 05:52 | That will make that value stand out.
| | 05:54 | So for example, I may choose 300000.
| | 05:55 | So, let me close this window here.
| | 05:57 | Let's go back to Object>Graph and choose Type.
| | 06:02 | Let's choose Graph Options and choose Value Axis.
| | 06:05 | I'm going to Override my Calculated Values.
| | 06:07 | I'm going to leave the Minimum setting at 0, but
I'm going to change the Maximum value to 300000.
| | 06:14 | I'm also going to change the number of Divisions
to 6 so that they're distributed evenly.
| | 06:20 | Basically every 50,000, I want there to be another
line or another Tick Mark and I'm going to click OK.
| | 06:26 | So now by the way, if you take a look over
here on the left side, you can start to see
| | 06:29 | that the tick marks inside of this chart are lining up
to the ones that already exist in the background.
| | 06:35 | You can also see that the value that up here
is all the way to the top for Hydropower,
| | 06:40 | actually jumps outside the bounds of the chart.
| | 06:43 | Notice over here, the chart kind of ends
right here but, this goes outside of it because
| | 06:47 | I've now defined what those values are.
| | 06:49 | Again, if I go into Outline mode by pressing
Cmd+Y or Ctrl+Y, you can now see that
| | 06:54 | I've basically overridden those tick mark
values and I've told the Illustrator to start at 0
| | 06:59 | and then use 50000 increments basically
to get to 300000 and because this number is
| | 07:05 | somewhere around 325000, it basically
jumps outside the bounds of the chart.
| | 07:10 | I find that it's visually appealing
and it kind of adds a dimension.
| | 07:13 | It almost makes this kind of jump out
at you and lets you know that hey!
| | 07:17 | Hydropower is obviously very important and it's growing.
| | 07:20 | I'm going to press Cmd+Y or Ctrl+ Y to
back to Preview mode, and let's actually start
| | 07:25 | to style this chart now as well.
| | 07:26 | So, I'm going to switch to my Direct Selection tool;
and in reality there's two ways to do what I'm about to do.
| | 07:32 | I can use the Group Selection tool and
I can also use the Direct Selection tool.
| | 07:37 | I'm actually going to start with the Group
Selection tool first, but then I'm going to
| | 07:40 | show you, how you can also use
the regular Direct Selection tool.
| | 07:43 | I'm going to click on this blank area to deselect everything.
| | 07:46 | Now what I want to start doing is actually
stylizing the lines inside of this chart.
| | 07:51 | So, since I have the Group Selection tool
selected right now, I can start by clicking
| | 07:56 | in the legend area to help me
select other parts of the chart.
| | 08:00 | So for example, I'm now going to click once on this line
right here and that's simply going to select this one line.
| | 08:06 | But if I click now a second time, you can
now see that this line representing the data
| | 08:11 | for the Hydropower series has now also become selected.
| | 08:14 | So, the way the Group Selection tool works is,
it allows to click on one object and
| | 08:18 | then the second time you click on it, it basically moves
one step up and selects everything else inside of that group.
| | 08:23 | So the first thing I'm going to do is
I'm going to change Stroke Weight.
| | 08:26 | Right now, you can see the Stroke Weight is set to 2 pt.
| | 08:28 | I'm going to change that to 4 pt in weight,
so it's a much thicker stroke.
| | 08:32 | I'm also going to click on the word Stroke right here
| | 08:34 | to opens the Stroke panel. I just want to
make sure that the Cap Setting is set to Round Cap.
| | 08:39 | That just makes the areas where the joins appear,
meaning between each of these segments,
| | 08:44 | just seems to be a lot smoother.
| | 08:46 | Now, I also want to change the color of this
to match the color that I've set for Hydropower.
| | 08:51 | So I'm going to click on the actual Stroke icon
right over here that brings up all my Swatches.
| | 08:58 | I've defined the color group for the
renewable energy charts and because
| | 09:01 | right now I have the Hydropower line selected,
I'm going to choose the Hydropower color right here.
| | 09:07 | So let's do the same thing now for Wind.
| | 09:09 | I'm going to come over here and basically
deselect everything; just click on a blank area.
| | 09:14 | I'm going to click once on this line for
Wind and again, I can see that it's Wind.
| | 09:19 | If I go into Outline mode, I can see the word
Wind here just in case the colors are hard to read.
| | 09:23 | Again, I click once on that line to select
that line and I click another time on that
| | 09:28 | line to select the entire series.
| | 09:31 | I change the Stroke Weight to 4 pt and then
I change the Stroke Color to the Wind color.
| | 09:36 | Now, for the remaining 3, I'm going to show
you the other method for selecting this v
| | 09:41 | by using the regular Direct Selection tool
and not the Group Selection tool.
| | 09:45 | The reason why I'm showing this to you
because, most likely and day-to-day use inside
| | 09:49 | of Illustrator, you're switching back and forth
between the Selection tool and the Direct Selection tool.
| | 09:54 | So having to also every once in a while select the
group selection tool is just another tedious thing to do.
| | 10:00 | So there is a keyboard shortcut or modifier key
that will allow you to access the Group
| | 10:04 | Selection tool or more specifically, it allows
you to specify that the Direct Selection tool
| | 10:09 | behaves like the Group Selection tool.
| | 10:12 | The way that you do that is you press and hold down
the Option key while the Direct Selection tool is active.
| | 10:18 | So just to show you here if I click and hold
on the Direct Selection tool, you see the
| | 10:22 | Group Selection tool has basically the
same arrow, but with a plus sign next to it.
| | 10:26 | Well, if I have my Direct Selection tool
active right now, but I hold down my Option key,
| | 10:31 | on Windows that will be the Alt key,
you'll see the plus sign up here.
| | 10:34 | This means that now, my Direct Selection
tool behaves like a Group Selection tool.
| | 10:38 | So, here's what I do.
| | 10:39 | I move over here and I hold down my Option
or Alt key and I click on the line for Biomass.
| | 10:44 | I then click a second time and
now that selects the entire series.
| | 10:48 | Now, I'll change the Stroke Weight of 4 pt, hit the Tab key.
| | 10:53 | And then I'll change the color here to the Biomass color.
| | 10:56 | Let's see that to the final two series here.
| | 10:58 | I'm going to click on the empty space here
to basically deselect everything; hold down
| | 11:01 | my Option or Alt key, click once, twice.
| | 11:05 | I've now selected the series for Geothermal.
| | 11:08 | I'll change its Stroke Weight to 4 pt and
I'll change the color to the Geothermal color.
| | 11:14 | Finally, again click on a blank space here,
deselect everything, Opt+Click or Alt+Click
| | 11:19 | on the line for Solar PV, click once, click another time again.
| | 11:24 | Notice here the series has now become selected down here.
| | 11:27 | Change Stroke weight to 4 pt and change
the Stroke Color to the Solar PV color.
| | 11:33 | So, we've now been able to successfully add
a line chart to our document here inside of Illustrator,
| | 11:39 | and we've also colored all the lines for this series.
| | 11:42 | But, I tell you that all these little squares that
appear here for the actual data points, look pretty ugly.
| | 11:47 | We want to replace them with something
that looks nicer with our design.
| | 11:51 | So in the next movie, we're going to define
something called a Marker for these charts,
| | 11:56 | and replace all of these ugly little squares
with pretty little circles.
| | 12:00 | So, let's go ahead and choose File>Save As.
| | 12:03 | We want to save our work where we're right now.
| | 12:05 | Let's change this to Renewable_ Energy_03,
click Save to save this in our Exercise Files.
| | 12:11 | Click OK after this dialog comes up, and
now we're ready to create our markers.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding custom markers to the line chart| 00:00 | So at this point we've added this data to
our documents, we've created some colored lines,
| | 00:05 | but now we want to change the markers or
the actual data points inside of the chart.
| | 00:10 | Right now they're being represented by
these squares, each of them filled with different
| | 00:14 | shades of gray for the different data series.
But if we switch over to the PDF for moment,
| | 00:19 | you can see that, in the final version of the
chart, we want to create these more pleasant
| | 00:23 | looking circles that have a little white center
inside of them to help highlight these data points.
| | 00:29 | So let's switch back to Illustrator and see how we do that.
| | 00:32 | Now the first step we're going to do is we're actually
going to define the markers that we're going to use.
| | 00:37 | In other words, we're going to create a
graphic to replace those little rectangles. Because
| | 00:41 | we have five different series here inside
of this chart, we're going to be creating
| | 00:46 | five different types of markers, because
we want each of the markers to match up with
| | 00:50 | a color for each of the data series.
| | 00:52 | So the first thing we're going to do here
is we're going to kind scroll over here.
| | 00:55 | I'm going to pan over here, I'm using the spacebar
to change to the hand grabber tool. I'm just
| | 00:59 | going to kind of move over just a little bit.
I'm going to start by using my Direct Selection
| | 01:03 | tool, that's the hollow arrow, and I'm going
to click on any of these rectangles right
| | 01:07 | here; I just need to select one of them.
| | 01:09 | The reason why I need to work with this
is because I need to know the size of this
| | 01:13 | rectangle. That's because the markers are always
going to be defined by that size. I'm going
| | 01:19 | to press Cmd+C. because currently right
now that square is part of the chart, meaning
| | 01:24 | it's embedded inside of that group. So by
pressing Cmd+C or Ctrl+C on Windows,
| | 01:29 | I have now copied that to the clipboard.
Now I'm going press Cmd+V or Ctrl+V to
| | 01:33 | paste it. I'm simply going to go ahead
now and move it just off the art board right
| | 01:38 | over here; doesn't make a difference where
it is; but I need to have it, because this
| | 01:42 | defines the bounds or the size for my marker.
| | 01:47 | Now the important thing to realize is that
I can make things that are bigger or other
| | 01:50 | sizes, but this is exactly how this
is going to be sized and positioned.
| | 01:54 | So what I'm going to do is I'm going to do
is I'm going to take that square, I'm going
| | 01:56 | to choose to give it no fill and also no stroke.
Let me zoom in just a little bit closely here
| | 02:03 | on this area, so we can kind
of see what we're dealing with.
| | 02:06 | Now I want to create a circle, which is
going to be used as the marker, so I'm going to
| | 02:10 | switch to the Ellipse tool here. I'm
just going to click here on the artboard.
| | 02:14 | If you click once it brings up a dialog box you can
type in a specific value. I want to create
| | 02:19 | a circle that's exactly an eight of an inch
by eight of an inch, so that's .125 inches
| | 02:25 | for both the width and the height;
click OK and now I have created that circle.
| | 02:29 | Now I want to change some of it's attributes,
so I want to change the fill color of that
| | 02:33 | circle to white, I'm going to change the
stroke color. Let's kind of start over here with
| | 02:38 | the hydropower, that was the one that was the
top of the chart. So the stroke is now styled
| | 02:42 | using that hydropower color. If you
remember we also change the stroke weight of the lines
| | 02:48 | inside of the chart to 4 points, so we want
to change the stroke weight of this circle
| | 02:52 | to match to be also 4 points.
| | 02:55 | So now I'm going to go ahead and now and
take my Selection tool and I want to select both
| | 02:59 | of these elements right here. We're just
going marquee select, meaning I'm going to click
| | 03:03 | and drag, so that now both the circle and
that rectangle are now selected. I want to
| | 03:09 | click on the rectangle and that's going to
basically lock or set that rectangle as a key object.
| | 03:15 | I'm going to click on the Align tab right here
and choose to align these horizontally
| | 03:21 | by their center and vertically by their center.
| | 03:24 | So basically I now have a circle, which is
really what I want my marker to be. But if
| | 03:29 | I select both of these you can see that the
rectangle of the square is behind it, and has
| | 03:34 | no fill and no stroke. Illustrator is
going to use that rectangle to basically put this
| | 03:38 | piece of artwork in the same position as
all the other rectangles inside of the chart.
| | 03:43 | So now that I've done this--this is simply
for the hydropower marker--but I now need
| | 03:47 | to create markers for the other four as well.
I'm going to take this piece of art--just
| | 03:52 | simply click and drag to marquee select it,
because I want both of those elements to be
| | 03:56 | selected--and I'm going to basically grab
this center, hold down my Opt+Shift,
| | 04:01 | on windows that'll be Alt+Shift, I'm just going to drag
here to the right to create a copy or a duplicate of that.
| | 04:06 | I'm now going to press Cmd+D, or Ctrl+D
like David, and I'll do that three times so
| | 04:12 | that I now have five circles to work with.
I'll click this one right here, I'll change
| | 04:17 | it's color to the Wind color. Let's click
on this circle here, let's change it's color
| | 04:25 | to the Biomass; let's click on this one
here, change it color to the Geothermal; and then
| | 04:31 | finally the last color here, the stroke color--
remember I'm not changing the fill color here,
| | 04:36 | I want them all to be filled white--
I'm going to change that to the Solar PV.
| | 04:40 | So now I've defined the artwork that
I'm going to need for each of my markers.
| | 04:45 | Now let's go ahead and define them.
Let's select the first one, which is Hydropower.
| | 04:49 | Click and drag to marquee select these two
objects. I'm going to go to the Object menu,
| | 04:55 | choose Graph, and then I'm going to choose Design.
| | 04:59 | Now this document already has these defined,
but since we're creating them from scratch,
| | 05:04 | I'm going to go ahead and delete them.
I'm going to choose to select Marker - Wind
| | 05:08 | and choose to delete that design; Marker -
Solar PV delete that design; Marker - Hydropower
| | 05:14 | delete it; and the same for the
Geothermal; and for the Biomass.
| | 05:19 | Now if I move this dialog over here, you can see that
the artwork on the art board here is still selected.
| | 05:24 | So I can now click on this button here to
create a new design. You can see now that
| | 05:29 | artwork has been pasted here into the preview.
I could choose to click on Rename,
| | 05:34 | so I can give it a better name,
I don't want to just call it new design.
| | 05:37 | So I'm going to call it Marker and I'm going
to put a hyphen here. I'm going to call this
| | 05:40 | one Hydropower, now I'm going to click OK,
and then click OK again to accept that value.
| | 05:47 | Now I need to do this four more times to define
markers for the other four that appear right here.
| | 05:51 | This is wind, I'm going to marquee select,
so I have this circle and the square both selected;
| | 05:57 | go to the Object menu choose Graph>Design,
remember I'm not ready to go to marquee
| | 06:04 | yet, because I first need to define the artwork.
| | 06:07 | Let's create the new design; see here that it
gets previewed. Let's rename it, let's call
| | 06:12 | it Marker - Wind, click OK. Let's go ahead now
and select the next one.
[00:06:201.68]
Object>Graph>Design>New Design, Rename,
Marker-Biomass, click OK and then OK again.
| | 06:33 | Let's select the one for geothermal.
Object>Graph>Design>New Design, Rename, Marker-Geothermal,
| | 06:45 | click OK and then OK. Then finally highlight
the last two elements here,
| | 06:51 | Object>Graph>Design; let's create a new design;
let's rename it Marker - Solar PV, click OK and then OK.
| | 07:03 | And now we've define markers that
we can now use inside of our chart.
| | 07:06 | In fact we don't even need this artwork anymore.
we can simply select all these and delete them
| | 07:11 | from my document. I'll press the spacebar again
to pan over to this part of the document.
| | 07:16 | We are really zoomed in close, so it'll zoom out
just a little bit here. I'm using Cmd+Minus
| | 07:21 | or Ctrl+Minus on my keyboard to zoom out.
| | 07:25 | Now let's go ahead and apply those markers to this chart.
| | 07:29 | Now similar to the way that we styled the lines
where we started off by selecting elements
| | 07:33 | inside of the legend, we're going to do the
same thing here. I'm going to use my Direct
| | 07:37 | Selection tool, but I'm going to hold down
the Option key on my keyboard. I'm going to
| | 07:42 | click once on the square for hydropower
right here, and then click again to now select all
| | 07:47 | of those markers in that series. I am going
to go over to the Object menu, scroll down
| | 07:52 | toward it says Graph, and now I want
to change the marker for that series.
| | 07:56 | So I'm going to choose Marker.
| | 07:58 | I'm not going to choose Marker - Hydropower,
that's the one that we currently have selected,
| | 08:03 | and click OK. Now if I deselect my chart
you can now see that the rectangles or the
| | 08:08 | squares that were on this series here have now
been replaced with the circles that we've defined.
| | 08:13 | So all we need to do right now is simply repeat
for the other four data series; so Opt+Click
| | 08:19 | or Alt+Click on the square once and then twice,
go to the Object menu scroll down to where
| | 08:25 | it says Graph, choose Marker, this is the
data series for Wind, so we'll choose
| | 08:30 | Marker - Wind, click OK, deselect the chart.
| | 08:33 | Again, hold down my Option or Alt key, so that
now I activate the group selection functionality
| | 08:38 | for my Direct Selection tool, click once and
twice on the Biomass data series.
| | 08:45 | Object>Graph>Marker, choose Marker - Biomass, click OK,
deselect, Opt+Click or Alt+ Click once,
| | 08:56 | twice for geothermal. Object>Graph>Marker,
let's go ahead now and choose Marker - Geothermal,
| | 09:05 | click OK. Then finally deselect Option
click once, twice for Solar PV, choose Object,
| | 09:14 | choose Graph, go down to where it says Marker,
choose Marker-Solar PV and click OK, deselect
| | 09:22 | our chart . Does that not look beautiful? Look at that!
| | 09:25 | So we now have added the customized markers
for this chart, it's really starting to come together.
| | 09:29 | Let's go ahead and now choose File>Save As
to save our work.
| | 09:34 | Let's rename this file as 04, click Save and then again
click OK and we're just about done creating this chart.
| | 09:40 | In the next movie we'll just basically clean up
the text a little bit make it look a little bit better.
| | 09:44 | Make sure that the values are correct
and we'll have successfully added a
| | 09:48 | second chart of data to our infographic.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Finalizing the renewable energy chart| 00:00 | So, the line chart for renewable energy generation
is almost done. We just need to do a few things
| | 00:05 | to clean it up and make sure the text looks great.
| | 00:08 | In fact let's start with the dates or the years
that appear across the bottom of the chart.
| | 00:12 | If I press Cmd+Y or Ctrl+Y, this takes me
to Outline mode. I can now see all the
| | 00:18 | dates that appear across the bottom.
| | 00:20 | I want to select these, so with my Direct
Selection tool, I can hold down my Option key,
| | 00:25 | and again that activates the Group Selection
functionality. I can click once on 2011 and
| | 00:30 | then I am going to click again.
| | 00:32 | Now if you click too fast, what might happen
is Illustrator will toggle to the Text tool.
| | 00:37 | If that happens just switch back to
your Direct Selection tool and then once again
| | 00:41 | just click, pause for a second, and then click again;
that will select this entire group of all these numbers.
| | 00:47 | Now I am going to press Cmd+Y or Ctrl +Y
to go back into my Preview mode.
| | 00:51 | I am going to press Cmd+T or Ctrl+T
to bring up my Character panel.
| | 00:55 | Now I want to set this typeface to Chaparral Pro,
but I want to use Regular; and I want
| | 00:59 | to change the point size here, to 11.25, 11.25 points.
I'll hit the Tab key here, and the
| | 01:07 | Leading here should really be set to Auto as well.
| | 01:10 | I'll make sure that the tracking is set to 0.
I want it to be easy to read.
| | 01:14 | And I am also going to click on this little
triangle button here to expand the Character
| | 01:18 | panel all the way, because I see that
right now it's set to a Superscript.
| | 01:22 | So, I want to turn that toggle off so now
it appears as regular characters.
| | 01:27 | It's simply set this way because the last time
that I set something it had those settings,
| | 01:31 | so we are simply picking it up from last time.
| | 01:33 | And finally, I want to change the Color of
the text to this Renewable green color,
| | 01:37 | which is inside of the Energy color group.
| | 01:40 | The second one here called Renewable.
Now I've styled the text the way that I want
| | 01:44 | to for the years that appear across the bottom.
| | 01:46 | Let me go ahead now and click on the blank
area to deselect this. I really have to
| | 01:51 | style some things further. There are also
parts of this chart that I really don't need
| | 01:54 | right now. So, for example I am going to
close the Character panel here for just a moment.
| | 01:58 | I really don't need to have these lines
appear for the axes, because I've kind of
| | 02:02 | defined my own here in the background
within the art of my infographic.
| | 02:06 | So all I really want are the data series
lines and the circles. I want the years across
| | 02:11 | the bottom, and soon I am going
to modify these labels as well.
| | 02:14 | So in order to modify these elements or remove them
basically, I can do one of two things.
| | 02:19 | I can either select them or then set their
fill and stroke to None, which means they
| | 02:23 | just won't be visible, but they're there.
| | 02:25 | But in doing so it allows me to keep my graph
in an active state; I wouldn't have to ungroup
| | 02:30 | my graph. That way if at any point I
needed to modify the data, I can do so.
| | 02:34 | But I don't have any intention here of modifying
the data. Later on in our project, I am
| | 02:39 | going to want to put each
of these data series in their own layers.
| | 02:42 | So I can choose to hide and show them at will.
| | 02:45 | So really I am going to ungroup this graph,
and that way, work with it as regular artwork.
| | 02:50 | So I am going to switch to my Selection tool,
and click just on really anything inside of
| | 02:54 | the chart to select the entire group.
| | 02:56 | I am now going to go to the Object menu
nd choose to Ungroup.
| | 02:59 | Now Illustrator is going to give me a warning
saying that I currently have a graph selected
| | 03:02 | and if I now go ahead and I ungroup this, I'm not
going to be able to modify the data anymore,
| | 03:07 | which is totally fine because I know what I'm doing here.
| | 03:09 | I am going to click Yes. Now I basically
have a group, but it's not a graph.
| | 03:14 | So, I'm going to deselect this for a moment.
| | 03:17 | I am going to go back to my Direct Selection tool.
I am going to go start getting rid of some of these elements.
| | 03:22 | Now there's some text here along the side,
but remember I've created my own here,
| | 03:25 | so I don't really need this anymore.
| | 03:26 | I am going to hold my Option key, click
once on the text, pause for just a second and
| | 03:31 | then click again, and that it's now going to
select all the elements inside of that group.
| | 03:35 | I am going to press Delete, we don't need that anymore.
| | 03:38 | I am now going to hold my Option key, click
once on this line right here to select it,
| | 03:42 | and then click a second time to select all
the tick marks, and again press Delete,
| | 03:46 | because we don't need that part of the chart.
| | 03:48 | Let's come over here to this side. We don't
need these lines either, so again, Opt+Click
| | 03:53 | on the bottom line, and then Opt+Click again to
select all the tick marks, and then delete that group.
| | 03:58 | Finally, I have these elements here on the
right side. Now I really don't need these
| | 04:02 | lines whatsoever so I am going to hold down my Option
key and I am going to marquee select all them at once.
| | 04:08 | Click over here and drag straight down, I
just want to make sure that I'm basically
| | 04:12 | overlapping both the lines and the circles,
release the mouse so they all become selected.
| | 04:17 | I just want to make sure I am not going far
enough to the right where the text is also
| | 04:21 | selected, because I don't want to delete the text.
| | 04:23 | So, I just now have the lines and the Circle
selected and I'll hit the Delete for that as well.
| | 04:28 | And now I am going to go ahead and style this
text. I'm going to Opt+Click and drag down
| | 04:33 | here to select all of these five text elements,
press Cmd+T. Let's modify some of the settings.
| | 04:39 | Now first of all it's currently set to the Superscript.
| | 04:42 | Let's go ahead and turn that toggle off, in
this case I do wanted to stay Chaparral Pro
| | 04:46 | as Bold, but I am going to set the point size to 16 points.
| | 04:49 | I'll hit the Tab key, and I'll click on this
little triangle here to bring the pop-up menu
| | 04:54 | to set the leading to Auto.
| | 04:56 | I also want the tracking to be set to 0,
and I'll close the Character panel.
| | 05:01 | Now to make it a little bit easier to read and identify,
| | 05:04 | I would like to match the color of the text
with the color of each of the data series.
| | 05:08 | So, for example for Hydropower I am just
simply going to use my Direct Selection tool here,
| | 05:13 | and select that Text Element and change its color
and go to the Renewable Energy group
| | 05:19 | and choose Hydropower.
| | 05:21 | Let's do the same thing here for Wind; select
Wind, choose the Wind Color; select Biomass,
| | 05:29 | changes the Biomass color.
| | 05:31 | Let's do the same for Geothermal
and finally for the Solar PV as well.
| | 05:40 | Now what I like to do is align the text here so that
it kind of matches up we're these little circles are.
| | 05:45 | So, I am going to make sure that my Direct
Selection tool is currently selected, and
| | 05:50 | let's go a head and deselect so
that nothing is selected here.
| | 05:52 | I am going to hold at my Option key and click once,
pause for a second, and then click again,
| | 05:57 | because all of these text elements are within the same group.
| | 06:00 | And I'm simply going to drag it over here so
that it is closer to where these dots actually are,
| | 06:04 | but they are out of order.
| | 06:06 | So, I am going to deselect and then I just
simply take Solar PV, click and drag and hold
| | 06:11 | the Shift key down, and drag it down to about
here, let's click drag with the Shift key down here.
| | 06:17 | I am going to click and drag on Hydropower
and drag all the way up over here, click, drag
| | 06:25 | and then hold the Shift key down to bring Biomass here.
| | 06:28 | Other way if I keep the Shift key down,
and now I click on the Wind, I am going to get
| | 06:32 | both Biomass and Wind selected I don't want that to happen.
| | 06:35 | So, I am always going to click first, and
then as I start to drag I am now going to
| | 06:39 | go ahead and hold on the Shift key and that will
constrain movement to either vertical or horizontal.
| | 06:45 | And now I have put that position as well.
| | 06:47 | Of course you can select these and just kind to nudge
them at the position using the arrow keys as needed.
| | 06:52 | But we've now been able to successfully style
the chart the way that we wanted to appear
| | 06:56 | in our final infographic.
| | 06:58 | Now the one thing that I want make sure
that they were doing also is ensuring that our
| | 07:01 | layer structure is correct.
| | 07:03 | So, at this point what I am going to do is,
I am going to click and drag our Layers panel
| | 07:07 | out here; make it little bit narrow so we can actually
see something that's going on here in our document.
| | 07:15 | I am going to use my Selection tool to click
and drag across all the elements that we just
| | 07:19 | created here, so they all become selected.
| | 07:22 | Now you'll notice that already have a layer
here called Renewable Energy, so I want to
| | 07:25 | move all the elements that are
currently selected out into that layer.
| | 07:28 | I'm going to look at the Chart layer at
the a top here, where I see the small square
| | 07:33 | that represents all the elements selected.
I am going to use that square to move
| | 07:37 | the artwork into the layer that I want,
which is the Renewable Energy layer,
| | 07:41 | which by the way is currently locked.
| | 07:42 | So let me first choose to unlock it, grab
a little square, drag it into the Renewable
| | 07:48 | Energy layer, release the mouse, and
then I'll choose to lock that layer again.
| | 07:53 | Let's move the Layers panel back into where it was
before right here, and we've completed this chart.
| | 07:59 | Let's go a head and save our work, I am
going to go to the File menu and choose Save As,
| | 08:02 | we want to create a copy here, change 04 to 05,
Save, hit OK and our infographic is really
| | 08:10 | now starting to take shape.
| | 08:12 | Now as I was creating the sketches originally
for this infographic, I realize how large
| | 08:17 | of a gap there was between Hydropower and Wind.
| | 08:20 | So, rather than just have an empty space here,
I thought I would take some extra data that
| | 08:24 | helps us better understand not only how
renewable energy is being used in United States.
| | 08:30 | But how does that compare with
global use of renewable energy as well?
| | 08:33 | So in the next movie we are going to focus
on adding a table that adds that information
| | 08:38 | in this blank area that appears
at this part of the infographic.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding a table using threaded text| 00:00 | So we're now ready to add a table to this
infographic and it's going to go right here
| | 00:05 | in this position where I've
created already a background for it.
| | 00:09 | Just to see what the final result is going
to look like, let's jump over to the PDF file
| | 00:13 | here and see exactly what we're trying to do.
| | 00:16 | We want to create like this table; we want
the colors to match the same way we've been
| | 00:20 | using the colors in the other chart.
| | 00:22 | So that basically for every type of renewable energy,
we can see which countries have the most capacity installed.
| | 00:29 | So let's return back to Illustrator, I'm working
in this document that we have save before
| | 00:33 | renewable_energy_05. I'm going to zoom in just
on this part of the document, so Cmd+spacebar
| | 00:38 | or Ctrl+spacebar, click and drag around just
this rectangle, so that it fills our screen.
| | 00:44 | Now in previous movies, what we've done is
we've simply added some artwork to our document
| | 00:48 | and when we're done we then dragged or move
those elements into the correct layer, but
| | 00:53 | if you already have layers setup like we do
have inside of this document, it is possible
| | 00:58 | to indicate to Illustrator which layer
you want new artwork to be put into.
| | 01:03 | So if I look at my Layers panel, the layer
for this chart over here is called Global
| | 01:08 | --and I can actually double check that by
toggling the visibility of it on and off--and you can
| | 01:12 | see that currently right now it's locked.
| | 01:14 | So I'm going to unlock that layer and
then I'm going to click on the layer.
| | 01:18 | By the way, take a look over here on the far
right side of this layer and it's got a little
| | 01:22 | triangle that appears in the upper right-hand corner
that indicates that any new artwork
| | 01:27 | that I create is going to be drawn on this
layer. Just to show you if I click now on
| | 01:32 | this layer here called chart, you can see the
triangle now moves here; this again indicates
| | 01:36 | to me that if I start creating a new piece of
artwork, it's going to now go on that layer.
| | 01:41 | So I'm going to click on Global and that any
artwork that I create will be added to this layer.
| | 01:47 | Now by unlocking a layer that also means
that I can select other elements on that layer,
| | 01:52 | which may get in the way.
| | 01:53 | So I don't want that to happen, so I'm going
to actually toggle open the layer. I can
| | 01:58 | see that now there is a single group on that
layer. I'm simply going to click over here
| | 02:01 | on this blank area to lock the elements or lock that group.
| | 02:05 | So now I can click over here and it won't
allow me to select those objects and that
| | 02:09 | means that I'll have an easier time adding the table now.
| | 02:12 | But because this layer currently has that
little triangle in it that means that any
| | 02:17 | new piece of artwork are going to appear within
this layer. So let's get started adding the table.
| | 02:23 | I'm going to be pulling the text from this
table from a separate Microsoft Word file.
| | 02:27 | So if I actually go over here to Microsoft
Word, you can see that I have all the text here.
| | 02:31 | I'm basically going to copy and paste it from here.
| | 02:35 | The file itself actually appears in the exercise files,
so if you're not going to be using Word,
| | 02:40 | you can place it directly from there.
| | 02:42 | The way that you do that is simply go to the
File menu, choose Place, go to the Copy folder
| | 02:48 | and then there you have this top_countries_list
file, which you can now place into Illustrator.
| | 02:54 | If you click OK it will appear as a new
frame basically a text inside of the document,
| | 02:59 | which you see right here.
| | 03:00 | But I'm going to go ahead now and delete that,
because like I said before, I'm going to be
| | 03:04 | copying and pasting it directly from word.
| | 03:06 | So I'm going to start off with creating a box.
| | 03:08 | Now in reality there are several ways to
create a table that looks like this, but I'll also
| | 03:13 | be the first person to tell you that probably
the best application to use for creating anything
| | 03:17 | around tables is going to be Adobe InDesign.
| | 03:20 | InDesign has a fantastic table feature
and it is incredibly powerful.
| | 03:25 | However, we're building this inside of Illustrator,
so we'll try to do is best as we can.
| | 03:30 | You want to be as efficient as possible.
| | 03:31 | There is a way to simply take a rectangle,
I'm just going to simply click and drag and
| | 03:35 | draw a rectangle here, and go to the Object
menu, go down to where it says Path and choose
| | 03:42 | something here called Split Into Grid.
Here I have the ability to specify a number
| | 03:46 | of rows, let me click on the Preview button here.
| | 03:48 | So for example for this grid I would want
six rows and I would want five columns.
| | 03:54 | I can specify exactly how much space
should appear and the gutter here between them.
| | 03:59 | I'm going to leave it set to for 0 right now
and I can click OK and that goes ahead now
| | 04:03 | and creates all the separate boxes.
| | 04:05 | However, it's going to be harder to manipulate
this later on in the workflow. I'll press
| | 04:09 | Delete here for a moment. I can start again
with a rectangle. I can then select my Type
| | 04:15 | tool and I can click basically right on the path.
You can see that little circle appears
| | 04:21 | around my icon and when I do that this rectangle
now becomes area text object where I can actually
| | 04:26 | put text inside of it.
| | 04:28 | For example, I can start typing some words
here that is happened to be colored a very
| | 04:31 | light gray color. I'm actually going to
hit Cmd+A or Ctrl+A to select all my text
| | 04:36 | and change the color here to black, just so
you can see that I have typed in some lovely
| | 04:39 | letters here. But if I switched to my Selection tool,
| | 04:42 | now this area text object is selected, I could
go to the Type menu and choose something called
| | 04:48 | Area Type Options and here I can again specify a number
of rows, so for example maybe 6 rows and 5 columns.
| | 04:57 | Once again I have the ability to also choose a gutter.
| | 05:00 | But if I click on the Preview button, I can
see that it kind of breaks at apart here.
| | 05:03 | The selection color is yellow for this layer,
so that's why it's little hard to see.
| | 05:08 | My problem here is that I haven't created
distinct objects, so I've created basically
| | 05:13 | the closest thing to a table that Illustrator
will allow me to create, but that means I
| | 05:17 | won't be able to actually select any of
those as individual objects, so I can give them
| | 05:21 | different colored backgrounds,
which is what I really want to do.
| | 05:24 | So I'm going to click the Cancel, I'm simply
going to hit Delete to get rid of that object.
| | 05:28 | I'm basically going to create a set of
different boxes. I'll try to create them
| | 05:33 | in an efficient way, which I can then kind
of sew together, so that I can easily float
| | 05:37 | text across it all, but then I also have the
ability to modify their colored backgrounds
| | 05:42 | to give me the effect that I'm looking for.
| | 05:44 | So I'm going to start by simply creating a
rectangle. I'm going to click over here on
| | 05:48 | the Rectangle tool. I'm going to right
about over here, again it does make a difference
| | 05:51 | at this point what the final position of it
is going to be, because I could always move
| | 05:55 | it later. I'm simply going to click once with the
mouse to bring up the Rectangle dialog box.
| | 06:00 | I want to create a rectangle that
is going to be 1.25 inches in width.
| | 06:06 | I'll hit Tab key, this will bring me to
the height field and I'll type in .25
| | 06:09 | or quarter of an inch for the height and simply click OK.
| | 06:14 | Don't worry about what color it is,
because we're going to change that later.
| | 06:17 | I'm going to need a lot more of these rectangles.
If I jump back here to the PDF for a second
| | 06:22 | what I'm really focused on here is the first set.
So we're going to be talking about hydropower here.
| | 06:26 | So I really want to focus on this set
of rectangles and as you can see the top one
| | 06:31 | is a darker color while there is kind
of lighter shade background for these.
| | 06:34 | So I'm going to focus on first creating the
first set of rectangles that I need,
| | 06:38 | then I'm going to go ahead now and simply
duplicate that for all the others.
| | 06:41 | I also want to point out that there is a
little bit more space between the first box,
| | 06:45 | which is a darker one and the other ones. The
same thing applies also between each of the sets.
| | 06:50 | There's actually two points of space between
these areas and only one point of space here.
| | 06:55 | So I'm going to switch back to Illustrator
and let's go ahead and create that.
| | 06:58 | I'm going to take this tool right here, the
Selection tool, and I'm going to hold down
| | 07:02 | the Cmd key or Ctrl key.
| | 07:04 | Now the reason why I'm showing this to you
is because right now I have the bounding box
| | 07:08 | option turned on. That does make it easier
to work inside of Illustrator under many
| | 07:13 | circumstances, but if I want to grab this particular
rectangle by its corner, doing so will actually resize it.
| | 07:20 | But what I really want to do is I want to
create a duplicate of this, but I want it to
| | 07:23 | snap based on the area that I selected. So that's
why hold down the Command key, which temporarily
| | 07:29 | gives me the Direct Selection tool, and
when you're using the Direct Selection tool the
| | 07:33 | bounding box is not applied.
| | 07:34 | So I just want to show here's really
quick way of working inside of Illustrator.
| | 07:38 | You don't have to really worry about constantly
moving between the Selection tool and the
| | 07:42 | Direct Selection tool, because whenever you
hold down the Cmd or Ctrl key on your keyboard,
| | 07:47 | Illustrator simply toggles to the other. So
right now my Selection tool is active Cmd
| | 07:51 | or Ctrl actually changes to the Direct Selection tool.
Should I have the Direct Selection tool
| | 07:56 | active and I really want to access the bounding box,
pressing and holding the Cmd key
| | 08:01 | switches me temporarily to the Selection
tool and now the bounding box is active.
| | 08:05 | But in this case here I find myself usually
working now with the Selection tool, so I
| | 08:09 | want to make sure that I can grab just
a corner here and move it not resize it.
| | 08:13 | So again with my Cmd or Ctrl key down,
I'm going to click on this point right here
| | 08:17 | and I'm going to start dragging down.
| | 08:20 | You'll find that Illustrator smart guides
will kind of force the cursor to snap and
| | 08:24 | you can see over here I've kind of moused
over this anchor point here. That indicates
| | 08:29 | to me that right now this object that I'm
dragging is going to be right here snapping
| | 08:33 | to the very bottom of the first shape.
| | 08:35 | But what I want to do here is not just
move the shape, I actually want to copy it.
| | 08:39 | Before letting go of the mouse, I'm also going to
hold down my Option key. You can see now
| | 08:43 | that my cursor has doubled; this means
that I'm now taking a copy of my object.
| | 08:47 | And just to be sure by the way, you can just
kind of get use to this, also hold down the
| | 08:51 | Shift key, because that allows me to constrain
or move this down perfectly in a vertical fashion.
| | 08:56 | So basically what I have right now down on
the keyboard are my Cmd, Opt, and Shift
| | 09:02 | keys that's on a Mac, if you're on a Windows
that would be the Ctrl, Alt and Shift keys.
| | 09:07 | Now I'm going to let go the mouse and
I've created a duplicate of this object.
| | 09:11 | I'll move my mouse away here for a second.
I really need to have six boxes in total;
| | 09:16 | one serves as the header and then it list
five different countries underneath it.
| | 09:20 | I've created two of the six. I need four
more. I want to basically do the exact same thing.
| | 09:24 | I'm going to use the keyboard shortcut
in Illustrator called Cmd+D or Ctrl+D.
| | 09:29 | An easy way to remember that is D stand for
do it again and I'm going to press it four
| | 09:34 | times; so Cmd+D once, twice,
three times and then four times.
| | 09:39 | So now that I have created all the boxes that
I need, I'm going to click and drag to marquee
| | 09:43 | select all them. I want to ensure that I have
exactly one point of space in between each of these.
| | 09:49 | Now I could start nudging them around then
moving them, but I want to show you a nice
| | 09:53 | little feature that is kind of buried inside
of the Align panel. It can help you focus
| | 09:57 | on aligning objects with a certain
amount of space in between them.
| | 10:02 | I'm going to go to the Window menu and I'll choose to
open the Align panel, let's kind of move it over here.
| | 10:08 | By default when I look at the Align panel,
I'm looking at something called Align Objects
| | 10:12 | or Distributes Objects.
| | 10:14 | When you're working with the Align panel you
usually focused on objects, meaning take all
| | 10:18 | these objects and align them to the left or center them.
| | 10:22 | But actually I don't want to align the objects
I want to align the space between the objects.
| | 10:26 | I want to make sure that there's a
consistent amount of space between these objects.
| | 10:30 | If I click on this little up and down triangles
to the left of the word Align that toggles
| | 10:35 | the various states of the Align panel.
If I click on it twice I will now see that
| | 10:39 | there's a new setting here at the bottom
called Distribute Spacing, not Distribute Objects,
| | 10:44 | but Distribute Spacing. That means that I can have
focus on the amount of space between these elements.
| | 10:50 | Now the important thing to realize with this
feature is that many people kind of see that
| | 10:53 | this area is grayed out, so it doesn't
make a lot of sense; it seems non-intuitive.
| | 10:57 | Well, let's think about this for a moment.
| | 10:59 | I want to make it so that there is exactly 1 point
of space between each of these objects.
| | 11:04 | So that means that one object is going to
stay in the same location that it's at right now,
| | 11:08 | and all the others are going to adjust accordingly
so that there is now that added space.
| | 11:13 | The problem is that because I have
multiple objects selected, Illustrator doesn't know
| | 11:18 | which of those objects should be the stationary one,
which is going to stay where it is.
| | 11:22 | So what I need to as a user is somehow give
Illustrator a clue. I have to define what's
| | 11:27 | called the key object, meaning this is the
object that's going to remain stationary and
| | 11:32 | all other objects are now going to move, so that
they now have the exact amount of space in between them.
| | 11:39 | So with all these objects selected I'm now
going to simply click on the top object.
| | 11:44 | I haven't held on the Shift key when
I did that, I simply click on it.
| | 11:47 | And notice now it has the much brighter or
darker outline around it indicating that this
| | 11:51 | is now a key object. When I've done that this
field that now becomes highlighted or available.
| | 11:57 | I am going to type in a value; basically
I want to type in the amount of space that
| | 12:02 | I want to appear between each of my objects.
I'm going to basically click on this and
| | 12:05 | type in 0p1, hit the Tab key to accept it,
Now I'm going to choose this option here.
| | 12:12 | I want to vertically distribute the space.
Click on it once and now all the objects have
| | 12:17 | exactly one point of space between them.
| | 12:20 | I am going to close the Align panel, because I
don't need it anymore and actually I'll deselect this.
| | 12:25 | I really want two points of space to appear
between the top one and all the others.
| | 12:30 | I'm simply going to select this one and
just hit the Up arrow once to move it an extra
| | 12:34 | point up. I can do that because my keyboard
increment, and I can see that by pressing Cmd+K
| | 12:39 | or Ctrl+K, is currently set to one pixel or
one point--it's pretty much the same thing--
| | 12:43 | but of course you can always change that
if you need it. So I'm going to click Cancel.
| | 12:47 | I've basically created the first set here.
| | 12:50 | Now there are five types of renewable energy,
so I need four more sets that look just like this.
| | 12:54 | I'm going to go ahead now and select
these six of them right now just by marquee
| | 12:59 | selecting them. I am pretty much going
to repeat what I did before. I am going to
| | 13:02 | hold down my Command key, I'm going to click
on this anchor point right here and I'm going
| | 13:07 | to drag over to the right and while I do so I'm going
to add now on my keyboard the Opt and Shift keys.
| | 13:14 | So again I'm holding Cmd+Option+Shift
on the Mac or Ctrl+Alt+Shift on Windows.
| | 13:20 | Now I'm going to snap it right here
to this anchor point, let go the mouse.
| | 13:23 | I want there to be two points of space, so
I'm simply now going to hit the right arrow
| | 13:28 | two times and then I'll repeat this Cmd+Click,
add the Option and Shift keys, so it snaps
| | 13:35 | to the right side here, let go over the mouse,
let go over the Cmd+Option+Shift keys,
| | 13:40 | Tap the right arrow two times and let's do
this two more times; bring it over here and
| | 13:47 | then bring this over here.
| | 13:48 | I am now simply going to select all of these
and just use the arrow key in my keyboards
| | 13:55 | to optically center it kind of in
this box right here, that looks great.
| | 14:00 | So now what I need to do though is convert
all of these to text frames. In Illustrator
| | 14:05 | we have two kinds of text objects; we have
point text objects and we have area text objects.
| | 14:12 | The beauty of working with area text objects
that you can create something called a thread.
| | 14:17 | That means that you can have multiple objects,
but you can have a single story of text that
| | 14:21 | flows through all of those different text objects.
| | 14:24 | So we can actually accomplish this in one
fell swoop by going over to the Type menu
| | 14:29 | and choosing Threaded Text>Create.
| | 14:32 | This is now going to do two things; it's going
to convert all these elements into area text objects,
| | 14:37 | it's also going to define a thread.
So that I can easily flow text from one shape
| | 14:42 | to the next. So I'll choose here Create
and you can see that Illustrator now has also
| | 14:47 | turned this to be filled with no stroke and
no fill; that's just default behavior whenever
| | 14:51 | you turn a shape into an area text object.
| | 14:54 | Let's actually go ahead now and put the text
into this. I'm going to deselect it. I'm going
| | 14:58 | to head over to Microsoft Word here for a second.
| | 15:00 | I am simply going to go ahead now and place
my cursor here and press Cmd+A or Ctrl+A,
| | 15:05 | Cmd+C or Ctrl+C to Copy. Let's switch back to Illustrator.
| | 15:08 | I can't really see where those are. I can
kind of mouse over them with smart guides.
| | 15:12 | If I do that, I can also press Cmd+Y
or Ctrl+Y to go into outline mode.
| | 15:18 | But let's kind of stay here.
The yellow is not too hard to see.
| | 15:20 | I'm going to use the Type tool here to mouse
over the first object and click on it.
| | 15:25 | That's going to now select it and I am simply going to
press Cmd+V or Ctrl+V to paste my text in here.
| | 15:30 | Now the text itself is not centered perfectly
inside the boxes and it's also not styled
| | 15:35 | exactly the way that I wanted to look,
so first let's change the font.
| | 15:38 | I'm going to click on the word Hydropower
right here, so I get a blinking cursor.
| | 15:42 | I'm going to press Cmd+A or Ctrl+A to
select all my text. Because this is now a thread,
| | 15:47 | I could very easily select all my text in this way.
I already have a character style
| | 15:52 | that I defined in this document. So I
could make it really easy for me to just simply
| | 15:56 | change the text the way that I want it to look.
| | 15:59 | So let's go to the Window menu, scroll down
all the way to the bottom where it says Type
| | 16:03 | and then choose Character Styles. I have a
style here called Table-Header and Table-Text.
| | 16:09 | I'm going to hold down my Opt key or the
Alt key and I'm going to click on Table-Text.
| | 16:13 | By the way, the reason why I'm holding down the Opt
key is because that allows me to clear any overrides.
| | 16:18 | Let me move the panel down here for just a
moment, because in my Word document I actually
| | 16:23 | had some extra returns that appear between
each of these and I don't need them.
| | 16:27 | So I'm actually going to put my cursor
right here right before the letter G. I can use
| | 16:31 | my little arrows in my keyboards to move back
and forth. I'm simply going to press Delete
| | 16:36 | or the Backspace key to get rid of that extra return.
| | 16:39 | Again I can use my down arrow to navigate down
here in the list, right before the word wind;
| | 16:43 | kind of delete that space that appears
before it as well. Let's kind of move down
| | 16:48 | again before the word Solar PV, let's delete
that space. Then do that before Biomass as well.
| | 16:54 | So I have styled the text correctly, but I
also want to text to kind of sit more towards
| | 16:58 | the middle of this. I'm going to accomplish
that by defining something called inset.
| | 17:03 | This is something that you can do with area text.
It does not work with point text, because
| | 17:08 | obviously we don't have a shape to apply the inset to.
| | 17:10 | But I'm going to switch to my Selection tool.
I'm simply going to click and drag here
| | 17:14 | to select all these elements. I'm going to
go to the Type and choose Area Type Options.
| | 17:20 | Where it says Offset there's a value here
for Inset Spacing, which I'm going to click
| | 17:25 | on up arrow once to set it to basically a
16th of an inch, which would really be .0625;
| | 17:31 | but Illustrator only displays three decimal points,
so it's kind of rounded up to 063 and I'll click OK.
| | 17:38 | So now we see that the text is actually sitting
more towards the center of each of the frames.
| | 17:43 | Now let's go ahead and apply the color.
| | 17:45 | I am going to switch now to the Direct Selection tool,
I'm going to click over here to deselect.
| | 17:51 | Here's the thing about working with area text objects;
| | 17:54 | when you normally select an area text object
by clicking on the text, that one object is
| | 17:59 | now selected. However, Illustrator assumes
that I want to change the color of the text
| | 18:04 | not the frame that it's in.
| | 18:06 | If I wanted to change just a frame fill color, I would
need to deselect and click only on the path itself.
| | 18:13 | Now I want to do several of these at once.
What I'm going to do is I am going to position
| | 18:16 | my cursor right over here, I'm going to
hold down my Opt key or the Alt key to
| | 18:21 | turn it into the group selection tool. and
click and drag down basically. just like this.
| | 18:26 | That's going to select all the frames
for each of these objects, but not the text.
| | 18:31 | You can see over here that my fill and
stroke indicator are currently set both to None.
| | 18:35 | So I know right now that the right parts of
my objects are selected. Because this is
| | 18:41 | hydropower, I'm simply going to change the
fill color here to that Hydropower color, which
| | 18:45 | is inside the renewable energy group. Let's
do the same thing for the others. I'm going
| | 18:49 | to go ahead now and basically position my
cursor right about over here, hold down my
| | 18:53 | Opt key, click and drag down, basically
just select all of these change, their fill
| | 18:59 | color to geothermal. I'll repeat for
the Wind, Solar PV and Biomass as well.
| | 19:04 | If you're not really sure where to start
dragging, smart guides is really helpful as
| | 19:08 | you kind of mouse over where the shape is, you
kind of see where the end is. Kind of position
| | 19:12 | your cursor right above over there and
then Opt+Drag down to select them.
| | 19:16 | Let's change the fill color here to Wind,
let's do the same here for Solar PV.
| | 19:26 | Then finally for the Biomass one, this is
actually easier to do, because I can actually move
| | 19:30 | that over here, Opt+Drag, select
all those, change the color to Biomass.
| | 19:37 | Now what I would also like to do is change
the tint value of the boxes that are listing
| | 19:42 | the actual countries themselves.
| | 19:44 | So I'm just going to go ahead now and
click and drag to select just these.
| | 19:48 | I don't want to click on the text, I just
want to select the actual frames themselves.
| | 19:53 | Inside the Color panel, let me go ahead now
and toggle this a few times, so I can see all
| | 19:57 | the settings. Because this a global color
I can assign a tint value.
| | 20:01 | I'll choose a tint value of 50%, hit the Tab key
and I'll do the same for the other
| | 20:06 | colors here as well. I'll go ahead now and
select these, specify the tint value of 50%.
| | 20:13 | Let's do this for other ones as well. Do
this for Solar PV and for the Biomass one.
| | 20:29 | We are almost done here. All I'd really like
to do is kind of again find some way to make
| | 20:37 | the actual headers stand out a little bit more.
I've already accomplished that somewhat
| | 20:41 | by tinting back to color of all the countries themselves.
| | 20:46 | So I'm going to put my cursor here in the word
Hydropower. I am actually going to double-click
| | 20:49 | to select the entire word. Then in the
Character Styles panel I'm going to Opt+Click
| | 20:54 | on Table - Header. I'll do the same for the
other ones, double-click on the word Geothermal
| | 20:59 | Opt+Click on Table - Header, double-click
on the word Wind, again choose Table - Header.
| | 21:05 | Now if I just double-click on the word Solar,
only the word Solar becomes selected. So it's
| | 21:11 | important to realize that when you just
basically use the Text tool to click once it places
| | 21:15 | the cursor wherever you clicked.
| | 21:17 | If you double-click it means that it selects
that word; but if you triple click it actually
| | 21:21 | selects that entire line. I'll go ahead
now and Opt+Click on Table-Header and then
| | 21:28 | double-click on the word Biomass, assign the
Table-Header character style to that as well.
| | 21:33 | We can close the Character Styles panel,
switch to my Selection tool, let's deselect this
| | 21:39 | artwork, and zoom out just a bit, and see that
we've created now a beautiful table in this
| | 21:46 | part of the infographic.
| | 21:47 | On top of that, if I go over here to the Layers
panel, I'm just going to double-click to open it,
| | 21:51 | all the elements that I created are already
on this layer. I can actually just close it.
| | 21:57 | Click on the icon here, it's actually lock
that entire layer and I'll go to the File
| | 22:01 | menu choose Save As, let's change the number
here to 6, click Save, click OK on this dialog box.
| | 22:10 | The entire top portion of our infographic is now complete.
| | 22:15 | At this point, we're ready to focus on the bottom half.
We'll start doing that in the next movie.
| | 22:20 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a solar-panel-pattern background| 00:00 | So, now we are ready to focus on the lower
half of the infographic. As you can see
| | 00:05 | it focuses on two specific areas,
Solar Energy and Wind Energy.
| | 00:09 | Now I am going to toggle to the final PDF
here for a moment, because you can see that
| | 00:13 | behind the Solar Energy and Wind Energy
boxes there is this nice little background.
| | 00:18 | For the Solar Energy one I have what looks
like a solar panel; and then for the Wind
| | 00:22 | Energy one we have some waves.
| | 00:24 | So in this movie we are going to
cover how we can add both of those.
| | 00:27 | The Solar Energy one is one that we are
going to create on our own from scratch.
| | 00:31 | The Wind Energy one is one we are going to take
from some of the patterns that ship with Adobe Illustrator.
| | 00:35 | Again, when you are using Illustrator it's
really important to realize that to be efficient
| | 00:40 | you don't always have to create your own artwork.
| | 00:43 | It's very easy to take or repurpose either clipart
or some sample art that comes with the program.
| | 00:49 | So let switch back to Illustrator and get started.
| | 00:51 | Now the first thing I want to do is I want
to create the Solar Energy background.
| | 00:55 | That's basically taking a solar panel,
and putting them into a background.
| | 00:58 | I have a pretty good idea about what a solar
panel looks like, but just to be sure, I actually
| | 01:03 | went online. I went to Google search and I
typed in solar panel and searched on images.
| | 01:08 | It gave me some good reference
materials to know how it should look.
| | 01:11 | Again in this case here, I'm using
it as a graphic in the background.
| | 01:14 | So even a general idea is going to be good
enough for me, but it's always helpful to
| | 01:17 | do some research to know how something it actually looks.
| | 01:21 | Now in older versions of Illustrator, meaning CS5
and prior, creating a pattern required
| | 01:26 | you to first create your artwork and then
drag it into the swatches panel. You had
| | 01:30 | to visualize how it was going to repeat.
| | 01:32 | So quite often you were doing that process
over several times until you got it right.
| | 01:35 | But with Illustrator CS6, Adobe added a
pattern definition feature, which makes it really
| | 01:40 | easy to create patterns.
| | 01:42 | So I am going to go over here to the Object menu,
I am going to choose Pattern, and then
| | 01:46 | I'll choose Make and two things happen.
| | 01:49 | First of all, Illustrator gives me this
dialog box, telling me that a new pattern has been
| | 01:52 | added to the swatches panel.
That's great, I am just going to click OK.
| | 01:56 | But you can see now that everything else in
my document seems to have disappeared.
| | 02:00 | This is because I'm now in some kind of an isolation mode.
| | 02:04 | I am defining a pattern.
| | 02:05 | So, everything else in my document
seems to temporarily go away.
| | 02:09 | Even if you take a look at my Layers panel,
you can see that I am now in isolation mode,
| | 02:13 | dealing specifically with this pattern.
| | 02:15 | Another panel also opened up in my screen
called the Pattern Options panel.
| | 02:19 | This is going to allow me to specify certain
options when working with my Pattern.
| | 02:23 | Now you can see that I have this blue box
over here, this outline that appears in the
| | 02:27 | middle of my screen. That defines
the repeat area of my pattern.
| | 02:31 | I am going to go to my Pattern Options panel.
| | 02:33 | I am going to make a few settings here.
First of all I am going to change a name of this.
| | 02:36 | Since these are the cells, I am
actually going to call this one Solar Cells.
| | 02:40 | Next I wanted to find the exact repeat area of my own.
| | 02:43 | I am actually going to use a value of 1 and 8 inches,
so that's 1.125, I'll hit the tab key,
| | 02:49 | and type in 1.125 and tab again.
| | 02:53 | Now I want to draw a rectangle, so I
am going to take my Rectangle tool.
| | 02:56 | I am going to click over here, and I want
to create an exact 1 inch x 1 inch squares.
| | 03:00 | So, let's type in 1 inch, 1 inch, and click OK.
A few things have happened here.
| | 03:06 | First of all Illustrator will automatically put
my square right now in that little repeat area;
| | 03:11 | That blue box does not actually print,
its just identifying what the repeat area is.
| | 03:16 | But Illustrator has also created multiple copies,
so that I can preview how my pattern
| | 03:20 | is going to look when it steps and repeats
over and over again in the background.
| | 03:23 | I am actually going to change the Fill color of this
to be Black and the Stroke should be set to None.
| | 03:30 | You can see that the copies that Illustrator
is creating are dimmed back. They are currently
| | 03:35 | set to be Dim back 30%. I think the default
value is 70% inside of Illustrator. I would
| | 03:40 | like to use a lighter color so I can easily
make a difference between what I am actually
| | 03:45 | working on, what my artwork is, and the ones
that Illustrator is just previewing for me.
| | 03:49 | By the way, where it says, Copies here is
currently set to 5 x 5; that's Illustrator showing me
| | 03:55 | 5 x 5 is the background, again
almost like 5 repeats of my pattern.
| | 04:00 | I can change that by clicking over here on these options.
If I do 1 x 1, all I'm really seeing is my artwork itself.
| | 04:06 | So I am actually going to use this setting for now,
because I want to focus purely on my artwork.
| | 04:11 | I don't really care about the repeats yet.
I'll be using that preview a little bit later
| | 04:15 | to make sure that what I'm creating
does create the pattern that I intend.
| | 04:19 | Let me zoom in a little closer in this artwork.
| | 04:21 | I am just going to press Cmd+ spacebar
or Ctrl+spacebar, and zoom in on this.
| | 04:27 | The first thing that I want to do, is I want
to kind of chisel off some of the corners here.
| | 04:30 | I'm going to do that by creating another rectangle.
I'm actually going to Opt+Click on the
| | 04:34 | center point right at this rectangle.
| | 04:36 | I am going to create a rectangle that measures
one and a quarter inches square.
| | 04:41 | Then I'm going to double-click on the Rotate tool
and rotate it 45 degrees, and click OK.
| | 04:47 | Next I'll switch to my Selection tool and
I'll marquee select both of these rectangles.
| | 04:52 | I basically want to chop off the corners here
and get rid of the parts that I don't want.
| | 04:56 | I would be using the Shape builder tool
on the normal circumstances, but the shape
| | 05:01 | builder tool doesn't actually work
when you're in pattern definition mode.
| | 05:05 | So I am going to have to resort
to the regular pathfinder Command.
| | 05:07 | I am going to go over to the Window menu,
I'll scroll down to where it says Pathfinder
| | 05:12 | and I'll choose the Divide option. That will
kind of chop everything up into visual pieces.
| | 05:17 | Now I could use my Direct Selection tool to
go ahead and select these elements and delete them.
| | 05:28 | So now--so with last one here--that leaves
me with a shape that I'm looking for.
| | 05:33 | There is one more thing I want to do.
| | 05:34 | I want to create two vertical lines that go
though the middle; and again, by looking at
| | 05:38 | Solar panels in my Reference Material,
I know that that's how they appear.
| | 05:42 | So I am going to take my Line Segment tool,
I am going to start here. Because I have Smart Guides
| | 05:46 | turned on, it's easy to snap to this anchor point here.
| | 05:49 | I am going to click and drag down holding the
Shift key until it snaps to the second anchor point.
| | 05:55 | Now I am going to change the Stroke color here to White.
| | 05:57 | I am also going to change the Stroke weight to 2 points.
| | 06:00 | Now I want to nudge it over just a little bit from here.
| | 06:03 | I know that my keyboard increment is set to
1 pixel or 1 point, so I am just going to tab
| | 06:07 | the right arrow key in my keyboard
a few times to move it over.
| | 06:10 | I'm going to keep count of it, remember
each time that I tap its 1 point;
| | 06:14 | so, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
That actually looks pretty good.
| | 06:18 | So I'll take my Selection tool here, I'll press
Command, click on the anchor point, hold
| | 06:23 | down my Option and Shift keys, drag them over
to that right side of this over sort of here
| | 06:28 | so it snaps to this anchor point, release
the mouse, let go with the modifier keys,
| | 06:33 | and then tap my left arrow the same
number of times 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
| | 06:38 | I am actually going to select both of these
right now and I am going to choose to go to
| | 06:43 | the Object menu, Path and Outline the stroke
and this converts those two lines that I've
| | 06:49 | created and converts them to filled objects.
| | 06:52 | I can also combine them into one shape by going to the
Object menu, choosing Compound Path, and then Make.
| | 06:58 | Now the reason why I've done that is because
I can now select this background object.
| | 07:02 | So now I've basically have two objects selected.
I can go back to the Window menu and open
| | 07:07 | my Pathfinder panel and I could choose
this option here called Minus Front.
| | 07:11 | By doing that I now basically, get rid of these
areas right here so they are filled with None.
| | 07:17 | At this point I am just going to click over here
to deselect my pattern. I am going to
| | 07:20 | zoom out just a little bit here.
| | 07:21 | So I can see more of my screen. Now I want to
turn those Copies back on, let's go back to 5 x 5.
| | 07:28 | Now I can preview how that pattern is going to look
when I use it as a fill inside of some kind of a shape.
| | 07:34 | So, well actually it looks great.
| | 07:35 | I'm happy with the way that it looks.
| | 07:36 | I can now go to this gray bar here at the
top of my window, and I can choose Done.
| | 07:41 | So there, that's all it was.
| | 07:43 | I now have defined a pattern inside of Illustrator.
If I look in my Swatches panel, I can see
| | 07:47 | over here that I have the Solar Cells Patterns Swatch.
| | 07:50 | So I am going to zoom out just a bit here,
Cmd+Minus or Ctrl+Minus. I want to
| | 07:55 | select this shape right here, which is the border
around the Solar Energy part of the infographic.
| | 08:01 | What I'd like to do is put the pattern fill into this shape.
| | 08:03 | So I am going to go over here to Fill icon and
choose the Solar Cells patterns for this shape.
| | 08:10 | Now I actually defined this pattern as black.
So why does it not appear that way right now?
| | 08:15 | In fact in your screen it may appear as black.
| | 08:17 | So, let's take a quick look at the Appearance panel.
| | 08:19 | I'm going to double-click on the Appearance panel.
| | 08:21 | I'm going to actually drag it out there,
so we can take a better look at it.
| | 08:25 | And you can see that right now this object
here has a full strength stroke, but it has
| | 08:31 | a fill which I just defined, but that fill has
its own Opacity, which is set to 5% and Multiply.
| | 08:37 | I am actually going to go ahead now and
click on the word Opacity, set its Opacity back
| | 08:42 | to 100 and set its Blend mode back to Normal.
| | 08:46 | So this might be how you actually see this
when you apply it, but in any case, I just
| | 08:52 | want you to learn how to be able to do this,
because what I'm basically focusing on here
| | 08:56 | is the ability to actually color a
Fill and a Stroke completely different.
| | 09:00 | You see I want my stroke to be full strength,
I want it to be a nice solid orange. But the
| | 09:04 | background should be tinted back. I don't
want it to get in the way of everything else.
| | 09:07 | It makes everything else hard to read.
| | 09:09 | So in my Appearance panel I can basically
toggle the button here for the Fill to see
| | 09:13 | the Opacity setting, click on the Opacity setting,
and of course anything that I change
| | 09:17 | now applies specifically to the Fill not to the Stroke.
| | 09:21 | So I want to change my Opacity to 5% and I am
going to change the Blend mode to Multiply.
| | 09:27 | So now I can move my Appearance panel back over
here where it belongs next to the Graphic Styles.
| | 09:33 | I have successfully been able to add a
pattern background for the Solar Energy.
| | 09:37 | Now let's focus on the Wind Energy part.
| | 09:39 | You know as I said before, you don't have
to feel pressure to always create everything
| | 09:44 | from scratch inside of Illustrator.
| | 09:46 | Being an efficient designer is all about trying
to find ways to repurpose things or to customize
| | 09:51 | them the way that you might need.
| | 09:52 | I'm going to go to the Swatches panel because Illustrator
actually ships with many libraries of sample patterns.
| | 09:58 | If I click on the Library icon right here, I can
see that there are different color swatches.
| | 10:03 | There are also patterns here, things for
Basic Graphics or Decorative, and I look through
| | 10:08 | a few of these and there are actually some
interesting patterns that might work well
| | 10:11 | for Wind Energy inside the Decorative Legacy library.
| | 10:15 | Just to show you by the way, there is also an
entire library here called Vonster Patterns.
| | 10:20 | These are actually created by Von Glitschka,
who has a course here at lynda.com called
| | 10:24 | Drawing Vector Graphics.
| | 10:25 | If you haven't seen it, I highly
recommend you that take a look at it.
| | 10:29 | But in our case here for our example
his patterns don't really fit that well.
| | 10:32 | So I am going to choose the Decorative Legacy library.
| | 10:36 | Now this is an external library, meaning that
these swatches now are not part of my existing
| | 10:40 | document. But if I click on any of these swatches,
for example there's one here called Waves Smooth Color.
| | 10:47 | If I click on it, you can see that Illustrator
now adds it to my Swatches panel.
| | 10:51 | So now I can close it. I don't need this anymore.
I can select this object right here, and for
| | 10:57 | its Fill, I can now choose that Wave Smooth Color pattern.
| | 11:01 | Again, if I look at my Appearance panel now,
I can see that the fill has its own Opacity setting.
| | 11:05 | It's set to 20% Opacity and also set to Multiply.
| | 11:08 | So again, it lets that nice waves pattern
fade to the background and it doesn't get
| | 11:13 | in the way of everything else.
| | 11:14 | So at this point we've been able to create
two pattern backgrounds to add a little bit
| | 11:18 | of extra flavor to this part of the infographic.
| | 11:21 | We created a Solar panel from scratch, and
we used some of the sample patterns to help
| | 11:26 | us be a little bit more efficient as well.
| | 11:28 | So let's go ahead and go to the File menu
and choose to save this document. I am going
| | 11:32 | to choose Save As, let's name this one 07,
click on the Save button, and then in the
| | 11:37 | dialog, click OK. We are ready to start adding
some charts that cover both Solar and Wind Energy.
| | 11:43 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding graphical data points for wind and solar| 00:00 | As we discussed earlier in this course, there
are times when it's probably best to not display
| | 00:05 | data in some kind of a chart or graph, but
to focus on one specific data point and then
| | 00:10 | apply some kind of graphical treatment
to it to help draw the eye to it.
| | 00:15 | If we switch back to the final version of
infographic, the PDF document, you can see
| | 00:19 | that after SOLAR ENERGY I've kind of
focused on here what the Average cost might be to
| | 00:23 | install a Solar PV system in a home.
I also called out this data point for WIND ENERGY,
| | 00:28 | how California is leading the US in that department.
| | 00:31 | So let's see how we can create these
graphical data points in our own infographic.
| | 00:36 | I am going to switch back to Illustrator
and let's start with the solar aspect of it.
| | 00:40 | So I'm going to zoom in a little bit closer
here on this part of the document.
| | 00:43 | The first thing I want to do is I want to change
the type treatment here. I want to kind of
| | 00:47 | raise the level of how much the cost actually is.
| | 00:50 | So I'll switch to my Type tool and I'm
going to triple-click one, two, three to select
| | 00:54 | basically that entire line, Cmd+X or Ctrl+X to cut it
and I'll just click on a blank area right here
| | 01:00 | with the Cmd key to deselect that text object.
| | 01:04 | Then click to define a new text object
and Cmd+V or Ctrl+V to paste.
| | 01:09 | There is an extra line here;
I'm simple going to delete that.
| | 01:12 | I'll switch to my Selection tool, drag it over here
into the house and change its color to white.
| | 01:21 | Now I want to increase the point size on this, I'm
going to use the keyboard shortcut Cmd+Shift+>
| | 01:25 | and or Ctrl+Shift+> if you're on Windows.
| | 01:30 | So make it nice and big, around that big.
| | 01:32 | I'm going to switch to my Text tool and just
highlight the dollar sign and open up my Character
| | 01:37 | panel and specify that should be a superscript.
| | 01:40 | I actually see that I have some more room
to make this text a little bit bigger,
| | 01:45 | so I'll go ahead now and select the whole thing
and click again on the Character panel here
| | 01:49 | and change the point size to may be 38 pt.
| | 01:52 | Yeah, that should be just fine.
| | 01:54 | The letter k does not need to be bold or as big,
so I'm simply going to highlight the k,
| | 01:58 | change its typeface from Bold back to Regular
and maybe change that to about 30 pt.
| | 02:05 | That looks pretty good.
| | 02:07 | I can actually just optically nudge it so
that it fits nice inside of that little house;
| | 02:12 | maybe just bring it up just a drop here.
| | 02:14 | I still want to add something little bit more to this.
| | 02:17 | Doesn't really have a border around this,
but I want something to be able to lead the
| | 02:20 | eye to this graphic and kind of
define almost a border in itself.
| | 02:24 | I thought you know, initially, houses
have a white picket fence around it, but
| | 02:28 | I wanted to do something little
bit more interesting than that.
| | 02:31 | So I went perusing through some of the libraries
that Illustrator comes with in regard to symbols.
| | 02:37 | So I'll go ahead to the Symbols panel and you
can see that I have a symbol here called Grass 4.
| | 02:42 | I actually found that in one of the
libraries that come with Illustrator.
| | 02:46 | Again if you click on the Library icon
right here, you can choose Nature. In Nature
| | 02:51 | if you scroll through you'll see that there
is one here called Grass 4 and I basically
| | 02:56 | just added that by clicking on it to this document.
| | 03:00 | Now that I have this symbol here, I can actually
just take it and drag it out onto the Artboard.
| | 03:05 | Now I'm going to switch to my Selection tool here
and I'm simply going to create several copies of this.
| | 03:10 | I can click basically and drag while holding
the Shift key and also the Option key.
| | 03:15 | Because I have Smart Guides on
it will snap right here to the end.
| | 03:19 | Then once I've created one of them, I can
now press Cmd+D or Ctrl+D a few more
| | 03:23 | times so now that I have a total of 6 copies.
| | 03:27 | I'm actually going to select all of these 6
copies right now by Shift+Clicking on them all.
| | 03:31 | Cmd+G or Ctrl+G to group them and now
I'll go ahead and just nudge it into position.
| | 03:38 | That looks kind of nice.
| | 03:39 | I'm actually going to take this text right here,
kind of bring that down just a little
| | 03:43 | bit so that it's kind of on the
same baseline as the 20k value.
| | 03:47 | I just want to make sure that all of these elements
are grouped together. So an easy
| | 03:51 | way to do this by the way, instead of Shift+Clicking
on each of the individual objects is to Marquee
| | 03:55 | select everything, but just
remember that my background is not locked.
| | 04:00 | So if I were to start dragging from right
about here and click and drag across all these,
| | 04:05 | then all of these elements plus
the background become selected.
| | 04:08 | So now I can hold down my Shift key and then
click on the background to deselect that.
| | 04:12 | Now only these elements are selected. I can
press Cmd+G or Ctrl+G to turn this into a group.
| | 04:19 | Now I've created a beautiful graphic
focused on this one data point.
| | 04:23 | Let's move over here to the Wind section and focus
on how we'll do this with the state of California.
| | 04:29 | Now this image of the state of California is
actually something that I got through clipart.
| | 04:33 | So what I'm going to do is have the text kind
of wrap around the state. This kind of works
| | 04:38 | really nice over hear that I have this
type of shape on the inside part of the state.
| | 04:42 | So I want to create something called a text wrap.
That's just going to make it easier, so
| | 04:46 | that I don't have to actually physically
go ahead and indent or adjust the type.
| | 04:50 | So I'm going to start by taking the actual
type itself by selecting it, and I'm also going
| | 04:55 | to hold down the Shift key and select this
background, and I'm going to click it then,
| | 05:00 | hold the Shift key down to constrain it
and move it over to the left.
| | 05:03 | But you can see over here that the text
falls behind the state of California. I want to
| | 05:08 | text to basically wrap around this side of the shape.
| | 05:11 | So the way that you work with text wraps
inside of Illustrator is that you select a piece
| | 05:15 | of art that you want to have the wrap applied to it.
| | 05:19 | Basically I want to create some kind of force field
around this object right here, so that
| | 05:23 | text can't overlap this image.
| | 05:25 | The first thing I have to make sure is that
this image itself, or this piece of artwork,
| | 05:28 | is currently sitting higher in a
stacking order than the text itself.
| | 05:33 | So for text wraps to work in Illustrator, the
image has to be above the text in the stacking order.
| | 05:38 | That's the case right here, so now I'm going
to go to the Object menu. I'm going to scroll
| | 05:42 | down to where it says Text Wrap and I'm going
to choose Make. Now you can see that there
| | 05:47 | is this invisible border that now appears around
the shape and the text can't go within that border.
| | 05:54 | Now I just want to modify the text somewhat
because it doesn't look that great right now.
| | 05:57 | So I'm simply going to select the text, and
because this is an area text object, I could
| | 06:02 | simply click on this handle right here
and drag it so that the text reflows.
| | 06:05 | So I'm going to choose to maybe bring it
in just a little bit more, just like that.
| | 06:10 | I like the way that breaks appear right now,
but I want to adjust the blue background to
| | 06:14 | match, so I'm going to select the blue background,
make it a little bit wider maybe down to about
| | 06:20 | here, and then bring it in just like this.
| | 06:24 | Once again, I want to group all of these elements
together, so I'm going to click and drag to
| | 06:27 | select all of these elements, deselect the
background by Shift+clicking and then I'll
| | 06:32 | press Cmd+G or Ctrl+G to go ahead and group that.
| | 06:35 | So now let me go ahead and zoom out a little bit here.
| | 06:38 | In a few short steps we've been able to take
some data points that may have been uninteresting
| | 06:43 | to read before, but now with these graphical
treatments they really stand out and they
| | 06:47 | draw the eye right into them.
| | 06:49 | Let's go ahead and save our work.
I'm going to go to File menu, choose Save As.
| | 06:54 | Let's call this one 08, click Save and then
click OK. We're getting really close now
| | 07:00 | to finishing up our infographic on renewable energy.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding a sliding column chart for wind power| 00:00 | All right, so we're ready to start adding
some charts to both the Solar and Wind Energy
| | 00:05 | areas of this and infographic.
| | 00:07 | Now let's jump over to the final PDF for a
moment to see what we're going to be creating here.
| | 00:11 | We're going to focus in this movie on creating
this chart for Wind Energy where we have
| | 00:15 | all these beautiful turbines that help us
identify how much wind energy is generated
| | 00:20 | in the United States over the past couple of years,
and we can kind of see how that number has grown.
| | 00:25 | Likewise if you look to the left here you'll
see that we're also going to create chart
| | 00:28 | for Solar Energy generation.
| | 00:30 | Now it's pretty evident from here that the
amount of Solar Energy that's being generated
| | 00:34 | is nowhere near the amount of
Wind Energy that's being generated.
| | 00:38 | But I'll tell you that when I first started sketching
out the data, that wasn't readily apparent to me.
| | 00:43 | So let's jump back to Illustrator and let
me show you exactly what I mean by that
| | 00:47 | and how we have to be really careful when you
create charts that are near each to other
| | 00:50 | to make sure that they're using the same scale.
| | 00:52 | So let's go back to Illustrator here and I'm
going to be creating the wind chart here and
| | 00:56 | the solar chart over here.
| | 00:58 | But I am actually going to create a brand
new document here for a moment just to show
| | 01:01 | you the difference in scale between these
two graphs. But more importantly how if you
| | 01:06 | don't kind of clue Illustrator in on what you're doing,
Illustrator may not help you understand that.
| | 01:12 | In fact, Illustrator may kind of
give results that look deceiving.
| | 01:15 | So I am going to press Cmd+N
or Ctrl+N to create a new document.
| | 01:19 | Just create a Print document here, let's
make it wide instead of tall and click OK.
| | 01:24 | Now I really want to create two column charts here.
I'm going to go over here to Illustrator's
| | 01:30 | Graph tools, click and hold
and choose the Column Graph tool.
| | 01:33 | I'm going to click over here and create a
graph that's about 4 inches by 4 inches square
| | 01:39 | I want to import some data for this.
So I am going to click on this button to import the data.
| | 01:44 | Let's go to the _DATA folder inside of my
Exercise Files folder, I'll choose Text because
| | 01:49 | remember we can't place native Excel documents here.
| | 01:52 | And I'll choose the Wind_ Energy_Generation first.
| | 01:55 | Click Open, click on the checkbox over here
to apply those values and that looks great.
| | 02:01 | Notice the values that appear here on
the left side of this axis; this is the Value Axis.
| | 02:06 | It starts at zero and it goes up to 300000.
| | 02:10 | This is happening because previously at
the top of our infographic we created a graph
| | 02:15 | that was a line graph and we specified
those values for what the tick mark should be.
| | 02:21 | So let's actually go over to the Object menu,
choose Graph and then choose Type, and where
| | 02:26 | it says Graph Options I am going to choose
Value Axis and you can see that the last setting
| | 02:31 | that we used in Illustrator was to
override those calculated values.
| | 02:35 | I'm actually going to go and uncheck that box
and click OK so that that way Illustrator
| | 02:39 | can use its own default settings.
| | 02:41 | So basically it sees the value inside of
this chart and it fills up that 4 inches using
| | 02:47 | whatever values it decides to calculate.
| | 02:49 | So now let's say we want to create another chart.
| | 02:51 | I still have my Column Graph tool selected.
I'm going to click here and again the same
| | 02:56 | 4 inches by 4 inches click OK. Now
let's import the values for the Solar data.
| | 03:01 | Click on the Import button, go to US_ Solar_Generation,
click Open, apply those settings and then close this.
| | 03:10 | Now let's kind of line up these two charts side by side.
| | 03:13 | I have solar here on the right
and I have wind here on the left.
| | 03:18 | Now when I'm immediately looking this, they
look pretty similar, in fact, it looks like
| | 03:21 | solar has really being growing a lot
and is almost the same that wind is.
| | 03:26 | But if I'm not paying close attention to
the values here on the Value Axis, I see that
| | 03:30 | this maxes out at 8000, while this maxes out at 120000.
| | 03:34 | In other words, the highest value on this chart
over here doesn't even come close to
| | 03:40 | the first value that I see on this chart.
| | 03:42 | But because Illustrator is automatically scaling
my chart to fit within that bounds of 4 inches
| | 03:47 | by 4 inches, my eye immediately
perceives these two as almost equals.
| | 03:52 | So I really need to make sure that both of
these charts are playing by the same rules.
| | 03:56 | So I can select this chart here for wind, go to
the Object menu, choose Graph and then choose Type.
| | 04:03 | I'm going to switch over here to the Value Axis
and now I do want to Override the Calculated Values.
| | 04:09 | I'm going to leave the Minimum set to 0,
but I'm going to set the Maximum to 100000.
| | 04:17 | I'm also going to specify that there should
be 10 Divisions, so basically one for every
| | 04:21 | 10000 and now I'll click OK.
| | 04:24 | Now I just need to make sure that the chart
on the right, the solar chart, is using those
| | 04:29 | same values as well.
| | 04:30 | So I'm going to click on this option right here,
again go to Object>Graph>Type, switch
| | 04:37 | to the Value Axis, Override the Calculated Values,
choose a Minimum of 0 and a Maximum
| | 04:43 | of the same that I used before, which is 100000,
and then use the same 10 Divisions, and click OK.
| | 04:50 | Now you can see that the scale of values
are the same across both charts.
| | 04:57 | You could see that there is a really a huge
difference between solar and wind energy.
| | 05:01 | It was only when I started to do this, that
I realized, I needed to change my design and
| | 05:06 | accurately display the difference between solar and wind.
| | 05:10 | Yes, both are growing very quickly, but
that doesn't mean that they are equal.
| | 05:15 | So by displaying data in this way, I'm making sure
that I'm telling an accurate story through my infographic.
| | 05:21 | Now the first chart that we want to
create is actually the one for wind.
| | 05:25 | So I have that right here, I'm actually
going to go ahead now and select this chart.
| | 05:30 | I'll actually select both of them and I'll copy them.
Let's switch back now to our document
| | 05:36 | which is renewable_energy_08 and paste them in.
| | 05:39 | I'm just going to take this solar one
right now and move of to the side. I'll take
| | 05:44 | the wind one and bring it right about over here.
| | 05:49 | Just nudge it over just a little bit so the graph is
kind of centered, that looks pretty good right here.
| | 05:54 | What I'd like to do is actually style this chart
so it looks a little bit more interesting.
| | 05:58 | Considering what those wind turbines look like,
I thought it might be cool to use that
| | 06:02 | as a design for this graph.
| | 06:04 | In fact, it's pretty easy to create a sliding
graph design so that I can make this chart
| | 06:09 | a little bit more interesting.
| | 06:10 | So let's go ahead and do that.
| | 06:12 | I didn't want to bother drawing one of those
wind turbines from scratch, but it was pretty
| | 06:16 | easy to find one on a stock image
site like Thinkstock, for example.
| | 06:20 | I'm going to go to the File menu and choose Open.
Inside the exercise files folder
| | 06:26 | for chapter 04, if I scroll down,
I'll see a file called wind_turbine_art.
| | 06:32 | I am going to go ahead and Open up that document.
I'll see this error that I don't actually
| | 06:37 | have the font that's using that document,
which is fine because we're going to change it
| | 06:40 | so I'm going to choose Open.
| | 06:42 | I am going to press Cmd+0 to center this
on my screen. I want to show you what this
| | 06:46 | piece of artwork is actually made up of.
| | 06:48 | I have the wind turbine itself, but I also
created a gray box here that's actually filled
| | 06:54 | with a 20% gray. If you look at my Opacity panel
you'll see that that object is set to Multiply.
| | 06:59 | So basically it's going to darken any
background that it appears on top of.
| | 07:05 | Just above it here, I've also created a gradient that goes
from 20% gray to none, and this too is set to Multiply.
| | 07:12 | So that now when this stretches it will appear
as if that bar kind of fades to none,
| | 07:16 | but it will multiply with its background.
| | 07:19 | I've also created a line here or a guide.
| | 07:22 | This guide is going to indicate to Illustrator
what the sliding point is in this piece of artwork
| | 07:28 | so that when this is stretched from top to bottom,
Illustrator knows where to stretch it from.
| | 07:33 | Now I've also added some text here and
remember this text will allow Illustrator to display
| | 07:38 | the actual value of the chart here.
| | 07:39 | If I click on, you can see it's now aligned right.
| | 07:42 | But as we noted before because we had a font error,
we need to replace it with a font that we have.
| | 07:47 | So I just want to show you, you don't actually
have to do this manually by clicking on the typeface.
| | 07:51 | There is a really powerful feature inside of Illustrator
that lets you replace fonts in your document.
| | 07:57 | I'm going to go to the Type menu, again I
have nothing selected, I'm going to choose
| | 08:00 | Find Font, and Illustrator is going to let me
know that there is a font called ChaparralPro Capt,
| | 08:04 | but I don't have that typeface.
| | 08:07 | So I have the ability to replace it with something else.
| | 08:11 | So where it says Replace With Font From,
I'm going to choose let's replace it from some
| | 08:15 | font that's existing in my System.
| | 08:17 | So for example, I have something
called Chaparral Pro; this is regular.
| | 08:20 | So I'm going to click on this option, basically
what I'm telling Illustrator to do is wherever
| | 08:24 | you see ChaparralPro Capt in this document,
replace it with Chaparral Pro, which is what
| | 08:30 | I do have installed on my system.
| | 08:32 | I can now choose Change All and now you can
see that what fonts are currently in my document,
| | 08:37 | just Chaparral Pro.
| | 08:38 | I basically removed the font that I don't have.
| | 08:41 | Now I'm going to click Done and I'm going
to take my Selection tool, marquee select
| | 08:46 | this entire piece of artwork right now, and I
realize that the Guide is not being selected
| | 08:51 | and that's because my Guides are currently locked.
| | 08:53 | I need to make sure that Guide comes along
because that is key for identifying what the
| | 08:58 | sliding point of my artwork is.
| | 09:01 | So I'm going to right-click and choose to
unlock my Guides, or you can of course, go to
| | 09:05 | the View menu, go down to Guides and
then choose to unlock them from here.
| | 09:11 | Now once again I'll go ahead and select all of
this artwork, now I see the Guide is selected.
| | 09:15 | I'll copy then switch back to my renewable
energy document and I'll paste it. Right now
| | 09:21 | it's the only piece of artwork that's selected.
| | 09:23 | I'll go to the Object menu go down to where
it says Graph and choose Design, because I
| | 09:28 | want to define this as its design.
| | 09:31 | Now this document already has that defined
here for a Column - Wind, so I am simply going
| | 09:36 | to go ahead now and select it and choose to Delete it.
| | 09:39 | Now I'm going to use the new piece of
artwork that I just created so let's create
| | 09:42 | a new design. Let's go ahead now and rename it,
let's call it Column - Wind and I'll click OK.
| | 09:51 | Now when I click OK, I don't need this artwork
anymore so I'm simply going to go ahead now
| | 09:55 | and hit Delete. There is no more
need for me to have it in this document.
| | 09:59 | So at this point I would like to specify that
Illustrator use that piece of artwork or that
| | 10:04 | design for the columns in this chart.
| | 10:07 | So I'll select the chart. We only
really have one series of data here.
| | 10:11 | So I could simply go to the Object menu, scroll
down to where it says Graph and then choose Column.
| | 10:17 | Here I'm going to choose Column - Wind, and
for Column Type I'm going to choose that we
| | 10:22 | want it to be Sliding and now I'll click OK.
| | 10:25 | So now you can see that that piece of artwork
has now been added to this chart, but they're
| | 10:29 | really very small and narrow.
| | 10:31 | So I want to modify how it looks inside of this chart.
| | 10:34 | I'm going to over here at to the Object menu,
I'm going to choose Graph, then I'll choose Type.
| | 10:38 | Over here for Options I'm going to change
my Column Width to 125%, hit the Tab key,
| | 10:45 | and then change the Cluster Width also to 125%.
| | 10:50 | Now when I click OK I can see that
those turbines have gotten much bigger.
| | 10:53 | You can also clearly see that the numbers
now appear here as well, so the values for
| | 10:58 | each of these data points are now appearing here.
| | 11:01 | But upon closer inspection you can see that
the turbine here, even though it extends into
| | 11:06 | the next one here, is being covered over
by the background for this.
| | 11:10 | So I basically want the first data series to
kind of be at the front, not the last data series.
| | 11:16 | So I'm just going to select my chart right
now, go back to Object>Graph>Type and
| | 11:22 | I'm going to choose First Row in Front and click OK.
| | 11:26 | Now I just want to do a few things here
to style this graph a little bit better.
| | 11:29 | Because I have the values that appear next to it here,
I actually don't need to see the Value Axis at all.
| | 11:35 | But if I were to ungroup this and delete them, I wouldn't
be able to come back later on and change the data.
| | 11:39 | Unfortunately, there is no way just to instruct
Illustrator to not display the Value Axis.
| | 11:45 | So the way that I'll make it "disappear"
is by setting its fill and stroke to none.
| | 11:51 | So I'll switch to my Direct Selection tool,
I'll hold down my Option key and click once
| | 11:55 | on this value, pause for a second, and then
click again and that's now going to select
| | 12:00 | all of those values, and I'll change its fill color to None.
| | 12:03 | Next, I'm going to click on one of these
tick marks right here, using the Option key that
| | 12:09 | selects one of them, and then again I'll click
again with the Option or Alt key pressed down.
| | 12:13 | And then a third time, that basically
selects everything here and I'll change the Fills
| | 12:18 | to None and also the Strokes to None.
| | 12:23 | So now even though they are there in my document
I don't see them because they have a no fill,
| | 12:27 | no stroke attribute.
| | 12:28 | I actually want to change the way that the
numbers appear here at the bottom, so I'm
| | 12:31 | going to Opt+Click on this one right here
and then Opt+Click again to select all of them.
| | 12:36 | I want them to match the styling of
the letters that appear here in this chart.
| | 12:40 | So I'm going to use my Eyedropper tool, which
is right here; the keyboard shortcut is the letter I.
| | 12:44 | I'm just going to click on that one right here.
| | 12:48 | The only thing that I want this to be the
color of wind, not that renewable green color
| | 12:53 | so I'm simply going to come here now to
the Swatches panel and choose the Wind color.
| | 12:58 | So at this point here I'm going to switch
back to my Selection tool, deselect my artwork.
| | 13:02 | I've now added the chart for wind
to the bottom of my infographic.
| | 13:07 | I'll go to the File menu and I'll choose Save As,
let's call this 09, save my file and click OK in the dialog here.
| | 13:15 | In the next movie, we'll add the chart for
Solar Energy here on this side of the infographic.
| | 13:19 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding a matching-scale chart for solar power| 00:00 | So we're ready to put the final touches on
the Solar Energy chart, and in the previous
| | 00:05 | movie we've actually already created
that chart, which we moved off to the side.
| | 00:09 | So I'm simply going to go ahead now and
select it and drag it over here into its position,
| | 00:14 | kind of center it right here just visually into this frame.
| | 00:17 | I can actually drop this down just a little bit over here
and let's go ahead and make a few changes.
| | 00:22 | Now first of all, I don't want to
see the values here along the side.
| | 00:24 | So I'm going to switch to my Direct Selection tool.
| | 00:27 | Let me deselect everything.
| | 00:29 | Let me hold down the Opt key and click
on one of these tick marks to select it.
| | 00:32 | With the Opt key or the Alt key,
still pressed down, I'm going to click again.
| | 00:36 | That's going to select that entire set
of tick marks and also the vertical line.
| | 00:40 | Then I click one more time to now go
ahead and select also all the text that's there.
| | 00:45 | I'll set both the Fill to None and also the Stroke to None.
| | 00:49 | Now again, the reason why I'm doing this
is because I don't want to ungroup the Graph,
| | 00:53 | because maybe in future versions of this,
I may want to modify the data, maybe when
| | 00:57 | the data for 2012 comes up for example,
I might want to swap that information in.
| | 01:02 | I want to keep the chart as a live chart so that
that way I can always modify that data at a later time.
| | 01:08 | I'm also going to go ahead now and select the chart.
| | 01:10 | I'm going to go up to the Object menu,
I'll choose Graph and then Type and I am going
| | 01:16 | to modify the Column Width
and the Cluster Width just a little bit.
| | 01:19 | I'm actually going to leave the Column Width set to 90%,
but I'm going to change the Cluster Width to be 100%.
| | 01:24 | I'm dealing here with just one series of data,
so I can make the actual columns themselves
| | 01:29 | take up more space.
| | 01:30 | I'm going to click OK. Now you can see they're much wider.
| | 01:34 | I want to do two things here.
| | 01:35 | First of all, I'm going to switch to my Direct Selection tool,
deselect everything, Opt+click or Alt+click
| | 01:40 | on the first value here, wait one second
and then go ahead and click again.
| | 01:45 | All these numbers are now selected.
| | 01:46 | I'm going to tap the I key on my keyboard
to switch to the Eyedropper tool and click
| | 01:51 | on these values right here to match that style.
| | 01:54 | But I'm now going to change the color of it
from that Wind color to the Solar PV color.
| | 01:58 | Now I also want the bars themselves
to change to that same orange color.
| | 02:02 | So let me go ahead here and select the Direct Selection tool.
| | 02:06 | Let me deselect everything, Opt+ click on the
first rectangle here and then once again, click again.
| | 02:12 | Now, they all become selected.
| | 02:14 | I want the Stroke to be set to None, but I want
the Fill to be switched to the Solar PV color.
| | 02:20 | Let me deselect this and now I've gotten the
chart style the way that I wanted. But there
| | 02:25 | is one more thing I need to do here, which
is to actually add the values themselves.
| | 02:29 | You see on the chart for Wind, we included
the numbers within that sliding art that we
| | 02:34 | created, so the values were automatically added here.
| | 02:37 | But I'm not using any sliding art work here for these bars.
| | 02:41 | I'm just keeping it as regular bars as Illustrator comes with.
| | 02:43 | I'm actually going to have to manually modify these numbers.
| | 02:47 | I'm going to start building off of these values right here.
| | 02:51 | With my Direct Selection tool, I'm going
to hold down the Opt or Alt key, click on
| | 02:54 | this number right here then click again to select all of them.
| | 02:57 | I'm going to press Cmd+C or Ctrl+ C to copy
and then I'm going to press Cmd+V or Ctrl+V to paste.
| | 03:04 | Now the reason why I've done this is because
I want this to be pasted outside the group.
| | 03:07 | It's not really a part of the graph itself
and I can switch to my Selection tool here
| | 03:12 | and simply move this here and it
will snap right here to these values.
| | 03:18 | I could just simply nudge them up with the arrows
so that they appear at the top of the tallest bar.
| | 03:24 | I'm actually going to change the color of these to black.
| | 03:27 | That way we know that these are
actually representing the values.
| | 03:30 | What I'm going to do is type in the values themselves.
| | 03:33 | It's a little bit tedious but really it's
the only way for me to do this right now.
| | 03:36 | I can actually go into the chart itself.
| | 03:39 | So, I'll select it, choose Object>Graph
and then I'll choose Data.
| | 03:44 | I can see what the values are right here.
| | 03:47 | Here's what's interesting.
| | 03:49 | I can't deselect this, and you can see now
that this window appears here, but I will
| | 03:54 | be able to select this text to make some changes to it.
| | 03:57 | So I'm going to first highlight the chart.
| | 03:59 | I see the value for 2006 is 1312, so
let me go ahead now and deselect it.
| | 04:05 | Take my Type tool, highlight this value and type in 1312.
| | 04:09 | I can now press the Cmd key to switch temporarily
to the Selection tool and select my chart.
| | 04:14 | Now I can see the next value which is 1718.
| | 04:16 | Now I'll release the Cmd key or the Ctrl key,
highlight this text here. I can actually
| | 04:22 | double-click on it and type in 1718
and then repeat for the others.
| | 04:26 | Let's go ahead now and Cmd+click on the chart, 2208.
| | 04:29 | Let's change it to 2208, Cmd+click on this chart, 2922.
| | 04:39 | Once again, Cmd+click here 4505, and then finally, 7454.
| | 04:46 | So now I've added those values.
| | 04:51 | I'm going to switch to my Direct Selection tool
and simply select just these right here
| | 04:55 | by holding down the Shift key and then nudge
them down so they match a little bit closer.
| | 05:00 | Let me Shift+click to deselect that one,
move this down here a little bit, Shift+click,
| | 05:05 | down just a little bit, Shift+click on that one,
just a smidgen, bring it down there and
| | 05:11 | now I have created basically the values for this chart.
| | 05:14 | I can now close the Data window for the chart.
I don't need that anymore.
| | 05:17 | And let me zoom out over here, for a minute.
| | 05:19 | I could even press Cmd+0 or Ctrl+0 to
fit this all side of my window.
| | 05:24 | I've now been able to complete my infographic.
| | 05:26 | Let's go ahead and save our work.
| | 05:27 | I'm going to go to the File menu and I'll choose Save As.
| | 05:31 | Let's call this one _10, click Save, and then click OK
in this dialog box and we're done.
| | 05:37 | You can have a little mini celebration right now.
| | 05:39 | We've actually created the entire infographic
here inside of Illustrator, but we still want
| | 05:43 | to distribute this for others to see.
| | 05:45 | So in the following movie, we're going to
generate a PDF that we can send to others
| | 05:50 | and maybe we'll even explore different
ways of printing this document as well.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a layered PDF infographic for distribution| 00:00 | So we've completed our infographic,
but we want to distribute this so that
| | 00:04 | another people can actually view it.
| | 00:05 | One of the best ways to do that is via PDF.
| | 00:09 | It's a format that just about anyone
could read on almost any device, and ensures
| | 00:13 | the integrity of your design; but let's
also keep in mind that a PDF can have a
| | 00:17 | certain amount of interactivity inside of it.
| | 00:20 | The nice thing is that when you are
working with Illustrator, you can actually
| | 00:23 | convert your layers from Illustrator
into something called Acrobat layers.
| | 00:28 | That will allow somebody viewing this infographic
on their own, to turn on and off
| | 00:32 | different layers to view different data in a different way.
| | 00:35 | So in this movie we are going to focus
on how to create layers inside of your document
| | 00:39 | that will then translate into a PDF.
We'll also go ahead and adjust
| | 00:43 | some settings inside of Acrobat using Acrobat Pro,
| | 00:46 | to ensure that whoever is viewing your
PDF can see that there are layers inside
| | 00:50 | the document that they can work with.
| | 00:51 | So first let's take a look at this file.
| | 00:54 | It's our last version of the infographic that
we've been working on, renewable_energy_10.
| | 00:58 | If I take a look at my Layers panel, I basically have
one layer at the very top hierarchy of my document.
| | 01:04 | Everything that I have created so far
is inside of this one layer.
| | 01:07 | This is actually a great way to work
inside of Illustrator, because you can have
| | 01:11 | nested layers or layers within other layers.
| | 01:13 | But it's important to realize that
when you're working with Acrobat,
| | 01:16 | not all layers translate from Illustrator into Acrobat.
| | 01:19 | Only top-level layers from Illustrator become Acrobat layers.
| | 01:24 | So if I want to create separate layers here,
for example I'll twirl down this
| | 01:28 | little icon right here to see what is inside of my one layer,
| | 01:31 | I know that I have different sub layers inside of here.
| | 01:34 | Now the one that I care about the most
right now is the Renewable Energy chart.
| | 01:38 | If I click on this little eye ball here to toggle
it on and off, it's this entire chart right here.
| | 01:43 | I basically want to make it so that
when I distribute this, people have an
| | 01:46 | easier time to compare these
different sets of Renewable Energy.
| | 01:51 | So for example, right now it's showing all
five different types of Renewable Energy.
| | 01:55 | But let's say I want to compare specifically Solar and Wind.
| | 01:58 | I really want to hide the others so they don't get in the way.
| | 02:01 | Now I'll be very honest with you, in this specific
example I really only have five sets of data.
| | 02:06 | So it's pretty easy to compare Wind against
Solar PV, because I can see all the
| | 02:11 | others and they really don't get in the way.
| | 02:13 | However, there may be times when you are
working with a very complex set of data,
| | 02:17 | which maybe has even hundreds of
different datasets inside of it.
| | 02:20 | If you really want to focus on just a
handful of them, turning them into
| | 02:23 | layers could make it easy for someone
to actually hide the data that's not
| | 02:26 | important to them at the moment so they
can make data comparisons on their own.
| | 02:30 | In essence, what this really allows you
to do is to distribute a PDF document
| | 02:34 | that allows people to do their own
data visualization on their own,
| | 02:38 | not just look at the data that
you've already presented to them.
| | 02:41 | So I am going to have to do a few things
here first, before I create my PDF.
| | 02:45 | I am going to have to create the
layer structure that I need inside of my
| | 02:48 | Illustrator document. So I am going
be adding some layers here at the top
| | 02:51 | level of my document. Then I am going to need
to move some of that artwork into those layers.
| | 02:56 | So I am going to start by unlocking
the Renewable Energy chart and then I am
| | 02:59 | going to click on the top layer here called Chart,
because I want to create now a new layer above this.
| | 03:05 | The keyboard shortcut for creating a
new layer is Cmd+L or Ctrl+L.
| | 03:09 | I'm also going to want to rename this layer.
| | 03:11 | I want to call it Hydropower, because that's the first
data point that I am going to have here.
| | 03:15 | So I am going to double-click on the
word layer 10, that's going to allow me
| | 03:19 | to change the name of this layer right here
inside the Layers panel and I'll type in Hydropower.
| | 03:26 | I'll hit Enter to except that.
| | 03:28 | Now it need to create layers for the other ones
as well for Wind, Biomass, Geothermal and Solar PV.
| | 03:33 | So once again, I could hit Cmd+L or Ctrl+L
to create a new layer, but I also
| | 03:37 | know that I want to change the names of those layers.
| | 03:40 | So just to save myself and extra step
I am going to hold down Cmd+Option+L
| | 03:45 | or Ctrl+Alt+L and that's going to two things.
| | 03:48 | It's going to create a new layer, but
it's also going to automatically bring
| | 03:51 | up the layer Options dialog box so I could
right away apply a new name to that layer.
| | 03:56 | So this one is going to be Wind, hit Enter,
Cmd+Option+L, Biomass,
| | 04:01 | Cmd+Option+L again for Geothermal
and then one more time for
| | 04:07 | Cmd+Option+L for Solar PV.
| | 04:10 | So now I basically have six total top-level layers.
| | 04:15 | One of them is for the entire chart in general,
and then I have one for each of
| | 04:20 | the different Renewable Energy types
that I'm showing inside of this chart.
| | 04:23 | So now what I need to do is I need to
move the right parts of the information
| | 04:27 | from that chart onto these layers.
| | 04:29 | To make this a little bit easier to
work with I'm actually going to drag the
| | 04:31 | Layers panel out here so I can expand it.
| | 04:35 | I'm going to toggle so I could see everything
inside the Renewable Energy chart,
| | 04:39 | because right now a lot of these things
are separated into groups.
| | 04:43 | So I am going to take my Selection tool,
I'm going to click let's say on the
| | 04:47 | word Wind here and I can see that all these elements
right now are put together into a single group.
| | 04:52 | I am going to need to separate these out on
to separate layers so I want to ungroup that.
| | 04:56 | I want to go to the Object menu and I'll choose Ungroup.
| | 05:00 | Now I have the ability to select each of these individually.
| | 05:02 | I am also going to click on this part of the chart here,
and you can see that all these are grouped together.
| | 05:07 | So I am now going to go ahead and move to the
Object menu and choose Ungroup those as well.
| | 05:12 | So now I see that if I click on the little circles,
that is currently set as one group,
| | 05:15 | if I hold down the Shift key, I can now click on
the lines and select another group.
| | 05:20 | So now I basically have for the
Hydropower data series, the lines and
| | 05:24 | those circles selected I am also going to hold
down Shift key and select the word Hydropower.
| | 05:29 | Now basically, all the elements
that belong together here are selected.
| | 05:32 | What I can do is, I can take the little
square that appears right here in the
| | 05:37 | Renewable Energy chart, and I can move that by
dragging that little square into the Hydropower layer.
| | 05:42 | Now if I toggle the visibility of that layer
you can see that I can, with one
| | 05:45 | click of a button, hide just the Hydropower data.
| | 05:49 | Let's do this for the other ones.
| | 05:51 | I am going to click on the little
circle here to select just the circle, and by
| | 05:55 | the way, you may find it easier to zoom in just a little bit
so that it may be easier to select those elements.
| | 06:00 | So I've selected now the circle, I am
going to hold on the Shift key to click
| | 06:05 | on the line to add the group of the lines,
and Shift+Click on the word Wind.
| | 06:08 | Then I'll take a little box here,
which represents the elements that are
| | 06:11 | currently selected and I'll move that into the Wind layer.
| | 06:15 | Let's do the same for the other three,
click once on the circle, Shift+Click on the line,
| | 06:19 | Shift+Click on the word Biomass, click on the box here,
| | 06:24 | and bring those into the Biomass layer.
| | 06:26 | Click on the circle for the Geothermal series,
Shift+Click on the line, and
| | 06:30 | Shift+Click on the word Geothermal.
Bring that into the Geothermal layer,
| | 06:35 | and then finally for Solar PV, click on a
circle, click on align, click on the word,
| | 06:41 | and then take the little box here
and drag that into the Solar PV layer.
| | 06:45 | Now I can actually close this up and
lock it again. I can also close the Chart
| | 06:50 | layer here, and now I can see that my
document contains six top-level layers.
| | 06:56 | Each of these layers can now translate into Acrobat layers.
| | 06:59 | So I am going to press Cmd+0
so I can now see my entire document.
| | 07:03 | First thing that I am going to do is I am
actually going to save this Illustrator file.
| | 07:07 | I am going to go to the File menu,
I am going to choose Save As and let's
| | 07:13 | call this one renewable_energy_final.
| | 07:14 | I am going to save that right now, I am
going to choose OK and now I also want
| | 07:19 | to save a PDF version that I could send to other people.
| | 07:21 | Once again, I am going to go to the File menu,
I am going to choose Save As,
| | 07:27 | I am going to change the Format from a
native illustrator document to the Adobe PDF format,
| | 07:30 | and I am going to click on the Save button.
| | 07:33 | Now I have the ability here, where it
says Adobe PDF Preset, to choose the
| | 07:37 | Illustrator Default setting.
| | 07:39 | Notice when I do that, the option for Create Acrobat
layers from top-level layers is checked by default.
| | 07:45 | There is also another setting here
called Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities.
| | 07:48 | This will allow you to put a full and native version
of myIllustrator file into the PDF.
| | 07:54 | Truth is, if I'm actually creating a PDF
to distribute to my clients,
| | 07:57 | I don't want them to have access
to my native illustrative data.
| | 08:00 | On top of that putting this native Illustrator data
into my file actually increases the file size.
| | 08:05 | So I am going to uncheck this option.
| | 08:08 | This means I won't really be able to
open up the PDF back in Illustrator and
| | 08:11 | edit it in the same way as I could before.
| | 08:14 | But it also means that there's less of
a chance of a client or somebody else
| | 08:18 | actually opening this file and
changing the data on their own.
| | 08:20 | It also means that the file size,
which I do care about if I am going to be
| | 08:25 | transmitting this over the Internet
or via email, will remain small.
| | 08:28 | So now that I've basically ensured that
the options for this PDF are correct,
| | 08:32 | I am going to choose to save this PDF.
| | 08:34 | Actually right before I do that, let me also
check this button called View PDF after Saving.
| | 08:39 | That's actually going to now create the PDF
and then open it up inside of Acrobat Pro.
| | 08:43 | Illustrator gives me a warning letting me know,
hey, you unchecked Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities.
| | 08:48 | And again, as I explained before, that's fine.
| | 08:50 | I don't want to have that information inside of my file.
| | 08:53 | So I am going to click OK and this
will now open up inside of Acrobat.
| | 08:57 | Now the thing is like this, when I send
this now to a client, they may open the PDF,
| | 09:01 | but chances are they don't even know
that a PDF can have layers inside of it.
| | 09:05 | Now because this document does have layers,
the Layers panel does appear here.
| | 09:10 | I would need to physically click on it,
to be able to see those layers.
| | 09:14 | So let me make this window this little bit bigger here.
| | 09:16 | You'll notice now that I can actually
turn on and off these different layers
| | 09:20 | that I have created inside of Illustrator.
| | 09:22 | But I want to ensure that when my client
opens up this file they can see that information.
| | 09:27 | So there is a setting inside of Acrobat Pro
that allows you to define what
| | 09:31 | state a document is in when you open it up.
| | 09:34 | To control those settings, I am going
to go to the File menu and I am going to
| | 09:39 | choose Properties; the keyboard shortcut
for that is Cmd+D or Ctrl+D.
| | 09:42 | You can see that I the have things like
Description, or I can add a metadata to my file.
| | 09:47 | I have the ability to set some security options.
| | 09:49 | More importantly, is a setting here called Initial View.
| | 09:52 | That means when this file is actually
opened up inside of Acrobat I can
| | 09:57 | determine what is visible in that document.
| | 09:59 | So for example over here where it
says Navigation Tab, it's currently set
| | 10:03 | to page only, but I can actually choose
that the Layers panel and the page are visible.
| | 10:09 | So that means that when my client opens
up this file, when my co-worker opens
| | 10:12 | up this files inside of Acrobat Pro,
the Layers panel here will be visible.
| | 10:17 | They don't have to actually click on it to open it.
| | 10:19 | I can also choose how I want that page layout to be.
| | 10:22 | For default, I am going to choose Single Page,
and for magnification I am going
| | 10:26 | to specify that it should be fitting to the page.
| | 10:29 | In this way they'll actually see the entire
infographic at once on their screen.
| | 10:34 | There is one other option here, which
is kind of nice, which over here, where it
| | 10:38 | says Show, right now it says File Name.
| | 10:40 | So remember we saved this file that
was called renewableenergy_final.pdf.
| | 10:45 | But people use some times really weird
names when they save their documents.
| | 10:49 | So instead of showing the File Name, you
have the ability to show the document title.
| | 10:53 | Now where do you actually set that document title?
| | 10:56 | If you go to where it says Description
you can see right here that you can change the title.
| | 11:00 | So let's say I actually change this to
Renewable Energy Infographic.
| | 11:09 | Now when I choose OK and I choose to
save my PDF by just going to the File menu
| | 11:14 | and choosing Save, you can now see that the top
of the window says Renewable Energy Infographic.
| | 11:20 | No matter what I use for the actual
file name of my file will appear a little
| | 11:24 | bit nicer here at the top of this window.
| | 11:26 | More importantly whenever somebody
opens up this file inside of Acrobat
| | 11:30 | it will automatically display with my entire
infographic resized to fit within their window,
| | 11:35 | and with the Layers panel visible so
that my client or co-worker can now go
| | 11:39 | ahead and toggle on and off those layers
to view the data however they please.
| | 11:44 | It's a great way to take advantage of
all the things that both Illustrator
| | 11:48 | and Acrobat bring to the table.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using multiple artboards for flexible export options| 00:00 | So we've completed our infographic, but I
wanted to leave you with one more tip here,
| | 00:04 | which is how to kind of make
Illustrator art boards work for you.
| | 00:08 | You know an infographic usually is very large,
sometimes like a poster, or a pretty big document
| | 00:14 | that has dimensions that don't always fit to
the piece of paper that you want to print it on.
| | 00:19 | Now of course, when your infographic is completely done,
you'll want to have it all print out on one sheet of paper.
| | 00:24 | However, as you're going through the process of
kind of focusing on each part of the infographic,
| | 00:29 | you may want a way that you can either print
out each of those charts individually on their
| | 00:33 | own, or even send it to a client for review.
| | 00:35 | So how do you easily focus on printing
just individual parts of the infographic?
| | 00:40 | Well that's where artboards can really come in handy.
| | 00:43 | It's also a way for you to create miniature graphics
that you might use for the web, because
| | 00:47 | artboards can be used for that as well.
| | 00:50 | So let me show you how to do that, because I
believe strongly that artboards aren't really
| | 00:54 | pages inside of Illustrator, I like to think
of artboards as smart export regions, allow
| | 00:59 | you to quickly export just the part of the
file that you want for that particular need.
| | 01:04 | So I am going to start by first resting my
workspace here; things have gotten messy since
| | 01:08 | we've been working on that infographic.
| | 01:10 | So I'm going to go over here to the workspace
and I'm going to choose to Reset Essentials.
| | 01:15 | Next, let's open up the last version that
we created, that final version. I'm going to
| | 01:19 | choose Cmd+O or Ctrl+O to open up. In my exercise
files in Chapter 4 if I scroll down to the bottom,
| | 01:25 | where I saved my renewable_energy_final.ai file--
not the PDF version but the Illustrator version--
| | 01:31 | I'll click Open and now that's open inside of my document.
| | 01:35 | I'll also choose to expand the dock here
so I can see my layers and also my Artboards,
| | 01:40 | because right now I only have one artboard.
| | 01:42 | I am actually going to rename this artboard,
so I'm just going to double-click on the name itself.
| | 01:46 | I'm going to rename it as Infographic,
because that's basically the entire Infographic.
| | 01:53 | Now what I really like to do is create
several artboards inside of my document,
| | 01:57 | that will basically encompass various specific areas.
| | 02:00 | One of the most beautiful things about working
with artboards is that they can overlap each other.
| | 02:05 | Again, if you simply think of artboards
as pages, you may never think of a time when
| | 02:10 | you'd want to have pages overlap each other.
| | 02:12 | But if you think of these as export regions,
they could make a lot of sense.
| | 02:16 | So here is what I'm going to do, I am
just going to create a series of rectangles.
| | 02:20 | There is an Artboard tool inside of Illustrator,
but it's not that easy to work with,
| | 02:24 | and I'd much rather just create a
series of rectangles instead.
| | 02:27 | The reason why I'm going to do that is because
there is a way inside of Illustrator to instantly
| | 02:32 | convert all of rectangles into artboards.
| | 02:35 | So for example, let's say there are three specific areas
that I'd also like to be able to focus on individually.
| | 02:41 | That's this table that appears right here
and then I also want to be able to focus on
| | 02:46 | just SOLAR ENERGY and WIND ENERGY individually.
| | 02:49 | So I'm going to take my Rectangle tool here
and just simply click and drag over these
| | 02:54 | areas here to define one rectangle.
| | 02:57 | Let's go ahead and click and drag over this area here.
Again because smart guides are turned on,
| | 03:01 | they snap right to the boundaries of those
areas. I've created now three rectangles.
| | 03:08 | I'm going to switch to my Selection tool
and select the first one and then Shift+Click
| | 03:12 | the second and the third so now all three are selected.
| | 03:15 | Now I'm going to go to the Object menu and
I'll choose Artboards>Convert to Artboards.
| | 03:21 | You notice what I have done here I have taken a
regular Rectangle tool, I have drawn rectangles,
| | 03:26 | which just about everyone knows how to do,
and now I've turned them into artboards.
| | 03:29 | You can see that now in my Artboards panel
I have more artboards that I have created.
| | 03:34 | I don't have to worry about mucking around
with a tool over here that works in a very
| | 03:37 | specific mode or it can sometimes be hard to deal with.
| | 03:40 | If I want to jump to specific artboard, this
is even great for navigation, because maybe
| | 03:44 | I really want to work on just one area
of my infographic right now.
| | 03:48 | So instead of trying to zoom in or out or
get just a right view on my document,
| | 03:51 | I can just come over here and double-click on one
of these artboards. This one over here shows
| | 03:56 | me that table, so I'm actually going to go
ahead and rename this from Artboard 2.
| | 04:00 | I'm just going to double-click on the
word Artboard 2 and change it to Table.
| | 04:03 | For Artboard 3, I'm going to double-click on that.
| | 04:07 | I see that's the one for SOLAR ENERGY, so I'll
double-click over here and call this one Solar
| | 04:10 | and then I'll double-click on Artboard 4
and I'll call that one Wind. Beautiful!
| | 04:16 | I now have four Artboards in my document.
Because that I've given them names,
| | 04:21 | I can also jump to them by clicking on this pop-up
right here and go directly to work on the table
| | 04:25 | or on the entire graphic as a whole.
| | 04:29 | So it's a great way for me to navigate now
within my document, but here is the wonderful thing;
| | 04:33 | If I now want to create let's say just the JPEG
of one of these areas because I want
| | 04:37 | to upload it to be used on a website or my client
wants a quick look at it, so for example
| | 04:41 | maybe just the SOLAR ENERGY area.
| | 04:44 | I can highlight the Solar Energy artboard--
I am not double-clicking on it, so I'm not
| | 04:48 | going to that artboard but I'm just simply highlighting it--
| | 04:50 | now basically I've turned that into the active
artboard so now when I choose File and then
| | 04:57 | choose Save for Web, Illustrator is going
to export just that one part of my document.
| | 05:02 | Even though there is a lot of other information
in my whole infographic, when I create a JPEG
| | 05:06 | or a GIF, it's only going to export that one artboard.
| | 05:10 | I'll click Cancel here for a second. If I decide I want
to export just the table itself, I'll highlight the table.
| | 05:15 | Now that becomes the active artboard.
| | 05:18 | Now when I choose Save for Web, that's
the graphic that's going to be exported as well.
| | 05:23 | Let me click Cancel here for a second, because I also
want to show you this is very helpful when I'm printing.
| | 05:28 | If I go to the File menu and I choose Print,
the option inside of the dialog box here allows
| | 05:34 | me to choose to print all my artboards
or I could choose to print a range of artboards.
| | 05:39 | Now we also know there is an option here at
the bottom for Scaling that's called Fit to Page.
| | 05:43 | I'm going to choose Fit to Page option.
You can now see that Illustrator is going
| | 05:48 | to print four pages or four pieces of paper.
| | 05:51 | This is again where in your head you can
kind of understand the huge difference
| | 05:55 | between the concept of pages and artboards.
| | 05:58 | My document contains four artboards and I can
choose to print them on four different pages.
| | 06:02 | If I click on these little arrows here,
I can toggle between them. I can see that
| | 06:06 | Illustrator now is going to create one
page that only contains this artboard.
| | 06:09 | Now because I have Fit to Page, it's going
to enlarge that to fill on that entire page.
| | 06:13 | So basically with one print command I can
now print a document that shows my entire
| | 06:18 | infographic, but that also allows me to
dedicate a single page to each part of it, so that
| | 06:23 | I or my client or a coworker or maybe a
creative director can markup each of those individuals
| | 06:28 | areas by focusing on just that one part of the graphic.
| | 06:31 | It also means that as a designer, I can choose
to print a range and only go ahead and print
| | 06:37 | pages let's say for example three to four,
which are the parts of my infographic that
| | 06:41 | deals specifically with Solar and Wind energy.
| | 06:44 | If I want to print the entire infographic,
I'll set my Range to only print 1;
| | 06:49 | page 1 contains the entire infographic.
| | 06:51 | So you can see now the value of having overlapping
artboards. It's simply highlighting or referencing
| | 06:57 | different parts of an overall document.
I can choose to print the whole thing,
| | 07:01 | or parts of it, or a combination of those.
| | 07:03 | So hopefully this sheds a little bit of light
on the Artboards feature inside of Illustrator.
Ans perhaps more importantly, how you can use
it to save some work and be more efficient.
| | 07:12 | Remember, Artboards aren't pages,
they are intelligent export areas.
| | 07:16 | Now whether you're exporting to the web or to print,
they offer a powerful way to organize your work.
| | 07:22 |
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