Creating center guides

- [Instructor] In this chapter, we'll be creating this icon using the simplest of drawing tools inside of Illustrator, which are the line tools. And I've set up this project so that you can follow along with me even if you don't have access to the exercise files. And I would be delighted if you would follow along from the very beginning to the very end, because that way, you will get the most out of this chapter. In this movie, I'll show you a few different ways to create guides, which are non-printing snapping guidelines here inside Illustrator.

So, the first thing you want to do is go to the File menu and choose the New command, or you can press control + N here on the PC or command + N on the Mac. And I'm going to go ahead and switch to Art & Illustration. And the great thing about this option is that it allows you to create a graphic that might go anywhere. So you could end up printing it, or it might go to the web, or a device, or what have you. And that's because the color mode for Art & Illustration is set to RGB.

Now, you might figure CMYK is better for print, which it is if your final job is bound for a commercial printer. But if you're working with a local printer, by which I mean an inkjet or a laser printer in your home or office, then RGB is the better way to work. Because after all, those kinds of printers expect RGB documents. Alright, now I'll go ahead and name this guy Factory guides, let's say. And then I'll make sure that my units are set to Points, and I'll dial in a Width value of 1008 points and I'll change the Height value to 672.

And the reason I'm going with these values is that they just happen to work very well for our videos and they ensure that everything will work the same for you as well. I'm going to leave the number of Artboards set to 1. We don't need any Bleed, because we're not creating artwork to the absolute edges of the artboard. So all you need to do at this point is click the create button, or press the enter key on the PC or the return key on the Mac. Alright, now notice here on the Layers panel that our Layer thumbnail is extremely dinky. Now, if you went ahead and created the One-on-One workspace, then you should see the Layers panel up on screen.

If you don't, then go to the Window menu and choose the Layers command. But do not choose that command if it has a check mark in front of it, because that will hide the panel. Then what we want to do to make this layer larger is click on this fly-out menu icon in the top right corner of the panel and then choose Panel Options from the bottom of the menu. Now, you could go with Large, but that's still going to deliver a very small thumbnail. So what I prefer to do is select Other and crank this value up to, let's say, 60 pixels, and then click OK, and we get this nice large thumbnail here.

Now I'll rename this layer by double-clicking on its existing name, and then just entering the word guides and pressing the enter key, or the return key on the Mac. And by the way, if you feel like you need a little more horizontal room inside your Layers panel, then you can drag this vertical bar right here over to the left. Alright. Now, you typically create guides by dragging them out of the rulers. And so to make the rulers appear on screen, go to the View menu, choose Rulers, and then choose Show Rulers. Or you have that standard keyboard shortcut of control + R, or command + R on the Mac, which will both show and hide those rulers.

And notice, as soon as you choose the command, you'll display a horizontal ruler up here at the top of the document and a vertical ruler on the left-hand side. Now, you can create a guide just by dragging out of the rulers like so. And as you might expect, dragging from the horizontal ruler creates a horizontal guideline, dragging from the vertical ruler creates a vertical guideline. Now notice these little tick marks right here. If you want to align with a tick mark, then just begin dragging and then press and hold the shift key, and then notice how you go from one tick mark to the next.

And because I'm dragging at a horizontal guide, I'm measuring my ticks on the vertical ruler. Now let's say you want to create a guide at a specific location, and so I'm going to press the control + spacebar keys. That's command + spacebar on the Mac. And I'm going to zoom way in until I get to a zoom ratio of 3200%. And notice that I'm seeing this area between 378 and 381. And so let's say I want to create a guide right there between these two values.

Then I would double-click on the ruler. And if you double-click on the horizontal ruler, you'll create a vertical guide. If you double-click on the vertical ruler, you'll create a horizontal guide. If you want that guideline to line up with one of the tick marks, then press the shift key and double-click. And notice, even though I'm shift-double-clicking slightly to the left of 381, I create a vertical guideline exactly at that position. Alright. Another thing you could do is drag from a ruler, and then, if you press and hold the alt key, or the option key, on the fly, you'll rotate that guideline 90 degrees.

So even though I dragged from the horizontal ruler, because I have the alt or option key down, I'm creating a vertical guide. You can do this same thing by dragging out of the vertical ruler and then pressing and holding the alt or option key to create a horizontal guide. And while that's not something I do on a regular basis, it is an option. And then finally, you can create two guidelines at the same time. And you do that not by dragging from the inner section of the two rulers, because, as you may recall, that's going to change the location of the 0,0 point.

Instead, you press and hold the control key, or the command key on the Mac, and drag from that inner section. And notice that give me both a vertical and horizontal guideline in one fell swoop. Alright. Now if I press control + 0, or command + 0 on the Mac to zoom out, you can see that we've got a ton of very tightly spaced guidelines. That's not a problem, because we're going to get rid of them by going up to the View menu, choosing Guides, and then choosing Clear Guides. And that will get rid of all of the guides inside the document.

Alright, now let's say I want to establish two guidelines, one horizontal and one vertical, right in the center of the artboard. In that case, you would start off by pressing the control key, or the command key on the Mac, and dragging from the inner section of the rulers and dropping two guidelines into place. Doesn't matter where you put them. Then press control + R, or command + R on the Mac, in order to hide the rulers. Now you want to unlock the guidelines by going up to the View menu, choosing Guides, and then choosing Unlock Guides.

If this command reads Lock Guides, then they're already unlocked and you do not need to choose the command. In my case, though, I'll choose Unlock Guides. And then, armed with the black arrow tool up here at the top of the toolbox, I'll marquee these two guides like so, just by dragging around them. And you can see that goes ahead and selects them. Then I'll click on the word Align up here in the control panel, and I'll change this Align to option to Align to Artboard, like so. And by the way, if you have a larger screen, you're going to see your align icons up here in the control panel.

But in my case, they appear in this pop-up panel, at which point I'll click on this icon, horizontal align center. And then I'll click on this guy here, vertical align center, in order to center those guides, like so. Alright. The final step, just to make sure you don't mess things up in the future, is to go up to the View menu, choose Guides, and then choose Lock Guides in order to lock those guides down like so. And now I'll just go ahead and press control + 0, or command + 0 on the Mac, in order to center my document on screen.

And that's how you create two guidelines, one horizontal and one vertical, right through the center of your artboard.