Graphing numerical data

- [Instructor] Alright, just so you have a sense of where we're headed. We're going to go ahead and compare the performance of the top five social media platforms including LinkedIn. Now the thing about this graph is it's entirely fake. That is to say we're not relying on any real data that's out there as warranted by the fact that these years down here at the bottom of the graph are currently in the future. Alright, but Illustrator does allow you to work from specific numbers as we're about to see.

So I'll go ahead and switch over to the Starter document and I'll turn off the headline layer here inside the layers panel and then I'll click on the graph layer to select it. Alright, now what you want to do is drop down to the graph tool which by default is going to be the column graph tool which allows you to create vertical column graphs. You also have the option of creating horizontal bar graphs. You can create line graphs, area graphs, pie charts, and so forth. And obviously, you can experiment with those tools as much as you want.

I'm going to start off by creating a horizontal bar graph. Although it doesn't ultimately make that much difference where you start because you can always change your mind later as we'll see in a future movie. Alright now once you've selected a tool, you want to drag with it as if you're drawing a standard rectangle and this is going to allow you to define the size of the bounding box. The thing is it's very difficult to predict how this is going to work because as you're about to see, the graph itself will appear inside this bounding box, but the legend or the key, if you prefer, which is going to tell you what each one of the bar graphs means is going to appear outside the bounding box.

I'll make my bounding box about this big, but in truth, you just kind of have to wing it at the beginning. Now as soon as you release, Illustrator will display this floating spreadsheet window at which point you can enter some data. So I'm going to start by changing this first value to x and then I'll press the tab key to advance to the second cell and change it to y and then I'll press tab again and enter z into the third cell. Alright now I'll click in the first cell in the second column and I'll just enter some arbitrary data here. I'm going to change the first value to three, then press the enter key or the return key on the Mac to advance to the next row and I'll change that cell to four and the next guy to five, and then I'll click in the first cell in the y column and I'll change it to five and then I'll change the next guy to seven and the value after that to nine.

And then I'll click in the first cell in the z column. I'll change it to seven. I'll change the next one to nine and I'll change the final cell to 11 at which point you can go ahead and graph that data by clicking on this check mark which indicates the Apply button. So we'll go ahead and click on apply and you can see that the graph appears inside that rectangle that I drew just a moment ago. And this legend over here up here is outside the rectangle. Alright now you can just go ahead and close the spreadsheet so we can better see what we're doing.

And now imagine, instead of these boring gray values, you'll want to add some color to your bar graph. In that case, you'll need to switch to the white arrow tool and the reason is because notice here on the layers panel if I twirl open the graph layer, that I have a new object simply called graph. It does not have an twirly triangle in front of it, meaning that you can't expand this object the way you can when you're working with a group or a clipping path or a compound shape. And so what you have to do instead is dig inside the object using the white arrow tool.

And so I'll switch to the white arrow just by pressing the A key, and then I'll click off the graph to deselect it, and now let's say I want to change the color of these medium gray bars, then I would press the alt key, or the option key on the Mac, so that I see a plus sign next to my cursor and I would click on this bar to select it. Now if you want to select all three of the bars, you would alt or option click on that first bar a second time like so. And notice that goes ahead and selects all of them and then if you also want to select this gray bar in the legend, then you go ahead and alt or option click a third time.

And now that I have all of my bars selected, I'll click on this first swatch on the far left side of the control panel, and I'll select this shade of yellow. And of course you can select any color you like. Alright now let's say I want to change the color of these light gray bars. There's a slightly simpler way to work which is to alt or option click on the bar inside of the legend. And so notice the first time I alt or option click, I go ahead and select this rectangle inside the legend, and then if I alt or option click a second time, I will select all of the light gray bars inside the graph after which point I'll click on that first color swatch once again and select this light shade of blue in order to create this effect here.

Alright now notice that the thumb nail for the graph object here inside the layers panel has not updated automatically. If you want to see it update, you need to twirl the layer closed and then twirl it back open like so. Alright now let's say you want to modify the data associated with this graph, and just go ahead and press the V key to switch back to the black arrow tool. Click on any shape that's not currently selected to select the entire graph, and then right click anywhere inside the document window at which point notice this central section starting with Type and ending with Marker, all five of those commands are designed specifically for modifying graph objects here inside Illustrator.

I'm' going to go ahead and choose the second of these commands data in order to revisit that spreadsheet and now I'll just go ahead and click on the number seven right here in the Z column and I'll change it to a nine. Now let's say for whatever reason you regard that as a mistake, you don't want to graph that data. Then you would go ahead and click on this second icon from the right, revert in order to restore that data you entered just a moment ago. Alright, but I do want to modify these values and so I'll change the first Z value to nine.

I'll set the second one to let's say 12 this time around, and then I'll change the third one to eight, and I'll press the enter key or return key on the Mac to make those changes. And I'll go ahead and move this guy over a little bit and this time I'll click on the check mark in order to apply my changes like so. And then assuming that you're done, you can just go ahead and close that floating spreadsheet. And that's how you use any one of the nine graph tools to chart numerical data here inside Illustrator.