Illustrator Workshop

Tomorrow I have my second Adobe Illustrator workshop. I really enjoyed the last one, we covered the basics like using the pen tool to create bezier curves and shapes etc. I've been using Illustrator for a couple of years now, however there are skills I know I must learn that I've not already covered. Last week I learned lots of valuable skills and techniques, for example the extent of ways you can actually manipulate the pen tool to have complete control.

We didn't actually cover this in last weeks session, but I stayed behind for a couple of minutes because I wanted to learn a technique that I knew was possible, but just couldn't find out how to do; it'd been bothering me for a while previous to this.

By using the 'create outlines' tool, you can convert a piece of Type into a directly editable glyph. This is something I was familiar with, but using the 'pathfinder' tool was not.

By using the pathfinder, one is able to directly edit shapes and glyphs by adding or subtracting numerous shapes. This technique is going to be absolutely essential when it comes to developing our letterforms later on in the project. There are other options too, you're able to subtract, divide, and much more. I'm looking forward to familiarising myself with these functions.