Welcome

The next page, Paths, will focus on Bezier curves and the structure of paths that are created with the Pen tool. The Pen tool is the most revealing and powerful way to create paths, but it is also the most difficult to use. Ai provides easier ways to create paths, but you cannot really understand them without knowing how you create paths step-by-step with the Pen tool. The following page, Appearances, will focus on the mechanics of adding appearances to a path's structure. Subsequent pages will follow the steps in a typical work-flow:

1. Managing paths with containers and selecting paths that are inside containers.
2. Using productivity tools to create paths more quickly and accurately than using the Pen tool.
3. Working with Illustrator's color features.
4. Modifying paths that you created with productivity tools to efficiently create richer figures that go beyond basic shapes.
5. Combining objects to create more complex objects.
6. Adding Text.
7. Using the facilities of Illustrator's interface to work more productively.

I observed the following guidelines in constructing these notes:

• Because the Layers panel and Appearance panel are so important in understanding the state of a document and because changes in the state of these panels is so critical to understanding how tools and procedures work, it makes sense to work with these panels open. Therefore, when there are several ways of accomplishing a task, the ones that make use of the Layers panel and the Appearance panel are given preference.
• Similarly, these notes do not burden the reader by attempting to document every possible method to accomplish a given task. When there are many ways to do something, I focus on the methods that use the panels listed in the Window menu.
• When operations use menu commands, I will typically include the entire menu path of the command, rather than simply giving the name of the command or just the shortcut. A typical step in a set of instructions might read: "Execute the Object > Paths > Join command (Alt + Ctrl + j).
• Rather than litter explanations with redundant instructions for both Apple and Windows, I have assumed that most Mac users can translate readily from an instruction written for a Windows user.
• Similarly, I have focused on scenarios and instructions intended for the Web rather than for Print.
• Text in bold is intended to highlight a keyword phrase that uses a term of art. Text in bold and italics is intended simply for emphasis.
• For nouns (such as Group, Layer, Stroke, or Appearance) that have a special meaning in Illustrator, especially when using it for the first time or to emphasize that I am using the term in its special sense, I capitalized the term. For example when referring to objects that are inside of a container, I might say that they are "in a Group," but to refer to objects that have the same style, I might simply refer to "the group of flowers in the foreground."
• Illustrations are intended to go well beyond screen shots. They are designed to illustrate principles and techniques and will often show how operations on the Artboard and in the Layers and Appearance panel correlate with one another. I have tried to apply the principles of Edward Tufte, especially those that encourage:
  • Using side by side comparisons, or an array of small figures, to enforce important comparisons and contrasts.
  • Avoiding large areas of vibrant colors that visually convert negative spaces into objects.
  • Making diagrams information rich to entice the viewer to explore them.
  • Avoiding the use of using numbers or letters rather than names in a diagram, and referring to the numbers in explanatory text, and thereby forcing the viewer to make distracting cross references, which become more difficult as the distance between the text and the diagram increases.