582 Creating custom arrowheads in Illustrator

- Hey gang, this is Deke McClelland, welcome to Deke's Techniques. Now today's episode I think will prove of great interest to anyone who uses Illustrator. And it doesn't matter which version. Arrowheads, which is what we're going to be talking about, date back to Illustrator 6.0. So here's the idea, unbeknownst to you perhaps is a file on your hard drive called Arrowheads.ai and it contains every one of the 39 arrowheads that are available to you these days inside the stroke panel. Well, guess what? You can modify this document and any arrowheads you add will appear automatically inside your stroke panel.

And this is a global modification, meaning that you can apply your arrowheads to any open document. And so I'm going to show you how to create three examples right here. And notice that they automatically conform to any other stroke attributes, including line weight, color, or in CS6 and later gradient. Here, let me show you exactly how they work. Now the toughest thing about creating custom arrowheads inside Illustrator is finding the arrowheads file. I can't swear that it's going to be at this location, Adobe has a habit of periodically rearranging its support files, but as of today if you're using Windows you want to bring up a folder window, by which I mean this guy right there, and then you click inside of it, and then you want to enter this string.

So if you've got this file just copy this text right here, and then paste it into that path field, and press the Enter key and it'll take you right to it. If you're using a Mac go to the Finder and choose the Go To command from the Go menu, and then type in this string right here. Notice that we've got backslashes for the PC, forward slashes for the Mac, and hit the Return key. Now the only thing that might vary is if you're working in a different country with a localized version of Illustrator then this last subfolder will not be en US, it'll be something different.

And the name of the file we're looking for is Arrowheads.ai. Now because you're modifying this file you also want to make sure that you don't have any permissions problems, so on a PC you want to right-click on the file and choose the Properties command, and then make sure this Read-only checkbox is turned off. And if that doesn't do it for you you're going to have to seek out some help from somebody who knows more about this stuff than I do. On the Mac you right-click in the file and choose the Get Info command, or you can just press Command + I, then drop down to Sharing & Permissions, turn this lock off, at which point you'll be prompted for your credentials, and then set all the privileges from Read to Read & Write.

Alright, so I'll go ahead and bring up that folder window and I'll double-click on the Arrowheads.ai file. Now you can read the directions up here if you like, but basically what it's telling you is you can add things to this file, but don't change anything that's already here. I wouldn't even change the fact that it has two layers, one named Layer 1 and the other named Layer 5, I would just leave that alone. And now I'll just go ahead and move down to the bottom of this artboard. Notice that it's not tall enough. You can expand the artboard if you want to by select the Artboard Tool, which you can also get by pressing shift + o, and then you want to select the top left point in this little reference point matrix.

And now just go ahead and click in the height value and enter plus 100, let's say, to add an extra 100 points to the bottom of the artboard. Then you can press the Escape key to exit the artboard mode. Now the arrowhead that most closely matches what I'm looking for is Arrow 3 right here, but I hate that it has this corner right here at this location, I wish it was smooth instead. So I'm going to go ahead and grab that arrow and its text, just like so, and then I'll press Control + C or Command + C on the Mac to copy it. And then I'll go ahead and scroll down the list and I'll press Control + V or Command + V on the Mac in order to paste a copy of that guy down here at the bottom.

Now it doesn't really matter where you work physically inside the document. As we'll see, it matters where you put the arrowhead in the symbols panel. But for now I'm just going to align this point text with the text above it. And if you want that to work then your Smart Guides need to be turned on. Alright, and then I'll just go ahead and drag this guy down, like so. And I'll press the t key to select the Type Tool, and I'll call this guy Custom 1. You can be as imaginative as you like. And incidentally, it's not essential that you even have any text here at all.

It's just a label for your benefit. Alright, now I'm going to go ahead and zoom in on this guy, so that I can see it bigger on screen. And now notice, if I select it we can see that it's a Static Symbol over here on the far left side of the control panel. If you double-click on it Illustrator will ask you if you want to edit the Symbol definition. That would be a bad thing, because you would change Arrow 3, which is not what we want to do. So I'm just going to Cancel out. And I'll go up here to the control panel and click Break Link in order to break the link with the original symbol.

Alright, now notice over here in the Layers panel that we end up with a new sublayer. You really don't need that, so just go ahead and twirl that guy open and click on the top item, Shift + click on the bottom one, and drag them out of that sublayer. And then you can click on that Arrow 3 item right there, that's the duplicate sublayer, the one we don't need, and just go ahead and drag it and drop it onto the trash icon. Alright, I'm going to zoom in further still here. And I'm going to click on that arrowhead to select it, and I'm going to change it's color to a light shade of gray, just so I can better use it as a kind of tracing template.

And now I'll grab my Pen Tool and I'll press ctrl + shift + a or cmd + shift + a on the Mac in order to deselect that arrow, and I'm going to zoom in farther still, and I'll drag from this point right here, and I'll drag from this point as well in order to create a nice, gently curving line. And then I'll press the alt key or the opt key on the Mac and drag from that last end point and drag here again in order to create another gently curving line. Alright, now I'll press the v key to switch back to my black arrow tool, and I'll click on this half a path to select it, I'll change its color back to black up here in the control panel, and then I want to flip this guy by clicking and holding on the Rotate Tool and selecting the Reflect Tool from the flyout menu, and then I'll just Alt or Option + click at the tip here in order to bring up the Reflect dialog box.

You want the Axis to be set to Horizontal and you can turn on the Preview checkbox to make sure that's what you want, and then click on on the Copy button in order to copy that path. Now I'll press the V key to switch back to my black arrow tool, and I'll Shift + click on that top path to select it, and then I'll join these two paths together by going to the Object menu, choosing Path, and then choosing Join, or you can just press ctrl + j or cmd + j on the Mac. Alright, now i no longer need that gray path, so I'll click on it and press the Backspace key or the Delete key on the Mac to get rid of it.

Alright, as long as we're in here let's create a couple of variations by marqueeing these items, like so, and then I'm going to drag it down while pressing the shift key and then before I release I'll press and hold the alt key or the opt key on the Mac, and that will create a duplicate, and then I'll just press ctrl + d or cmd + d on the Mac to repeat that duplication. Alright, now I'll press the T key to get my Type Tool, and I'll change the 1 to a 2, and I'll change this 1 to a 3. Alright, now let's go in here and modify this second arrow by pressing the a key to get my white arrow tool, and I'll select this bottom anchor point and I'll press the Backspace key or the Delete key on the Mac to get rid of it, and then I'll marquee this segment right here, so I can see the control handles, and I'll drag this guy upward, like so, so that we have a little bit of a wave, and then I'll click on this segment, and I'll drag this control handle slightly to the left.

Obviously, you can go your own way, do whatever you want. Now I'll press the V key to switch back to my black arrow tool, I'll click on this path to select it, and I'll grab the Reflect Tool once again, and then I'll Alt or Option + click on this tip point, and I'll once again click the Copy button, then I'll press the V key to switch back to my black arrow tool, I'll Shift + click on this top path, and I'll press Control + J or Command + J on the Mac to join those two paths together. Alright, and let's make one more. And by the way, even if you're totally ignoring me right now and you're just drawing your own arrowheads be sure to stay tuned in about a minute to how we turn these into the proper kind of symbols.

Alright, so once again I'm going to trace this path, but this time I'm just going to click with the Pen Tool, so I'll grab the Pen Tool, and I'll click right about there, just a little high, so we have a flat tip, and then I'll click right about here, I'll click over here, so we have another flat edge, and then I'll click down here at this location. Alright, now I'll press the V key to grab my black arrow tool, I'll click on the path to select it, I'll press the o key to grab my Reflect Tool, and I will Alt or Option click at this anchor point here, because after all this one's not going to be coincident, so we want to click at this anchor point, and then inside the Reflect dialog box I'll once again click on the Copy button.

Alright, now I'll press the V key to switch to my black arrow tool. We need to get rid of this arrowhead, the old one right there, so I'll just press the Backspace key or the Delete key on the Mac to get rid of it. I'll click on this top path to select it, Shift + click on the bottom one, press Control + J or Command + J on the Mac in order to fuse these two points right here together. That still leaves a gap at the top, and so I'll press Control + J or Command + J on the Mac again in order to connect these two end points with a straight segment. Alright, that's all the drawing. Now I'll just go ahead and zoom out.

And let's turn these guys into symbols by going up to the Window menu and then choosing the Symbols command, which will bring up the Symbols panel. And notice that we're seeing all of the arrowheads, Arrow 1 through and including Arrow 39 in the order they appear in the stroke panel. And so I'll just go ahead and grab this guy, and you want to grab all the pieces. There's this outside invisible rectangle, there's this stroked line, and there's the arrowhead that we drew, and so go ahead and marquee all of them, and drag them and drop them at the end of the list.

And then go ahead and give this guy a name, and this is what matters, the fact that it's named Custom 1 here. So whatever you want the real name to be you need to name your Symbol accordingly. Then you want to select Static Symbol. Dynamic Symbol might work, but we just don't need the overhead. And you don't need to worry about anything else, just go ahead and click OK. And now I'll marquee this group of objects right here and drag it and drop it at the end of the list. Call this guy Custom 2, select Static Symbol, and click OK. And then select this guy, drag it and drop it, and then I'll call this guy Custom 3, select Static Symbol, and click OK once again.

Alright, now all we need to do is save our changes. Now if you're smart and you're worried about something going wrong then you probably want to backup this Arrowheads file, so that you don't mess it up, but I've already done that in advance, so I'm just going to go up to the File menu and choose the Save command, or of course, you could press Control + S or Command + S on the Mac. Now that doesn't immediately do the trick, and that's because the arrowheads are loaded as you launch Illustrator. And so I'm going to go ahead and close the program and Clear the Clipboard, and then I'll just go ahead and relaunch the program by once again double-clicking on this file.

Alright, so here we are back inside Illustrator. And now I'm going to grab my Line Tool and I'm just going to draw a line at any old angle, like so, and then I'll crank the line weight value up to let's say 12 points, and then I'll click on the word Stroke, and I'll click on this second Arrowhead item, and I'll scroll down the list and notice right here at the bottom after Arrow 39 I have Custom 1, 2, and 3. And so Custom 1 is going to look like that, Custom 2 is going to look wavy, like a knight's helmet or something, and then Custom 3 is all together polygonal.

And if you want to swap the arrowhead to the other side then you can just click on this icon right there. And if you want to scale the arrowhead along with the line weight then you can increase or decrease the line weight. And of course, if I were to click on the Stroke item again you can Scale the arrowhead independently of the line as well by, in my case, changing the Scale value to let's say 50%. And that folks is how you create a custom arrowhead using just about any version of Illustrator out there.

The real trick is finding that Arrowheads.ai file. Alright, if you're a member of lynda.com I have a followup movie in which I show you how to take everything I've taught you so far and apply it to the task of creating custom line caps. And given what you know it might seem like a no-brainer, but it actually requires a little bit of extra finesse. Deke's Techniques, each and every week, keep watching.