As part of the January event of STC’s Intermountain Chapter on visual communication, I demonstrated my favorite things about Adobe Illustrator. The idea was that you don’t have to be a graphic designer to use Illustrator for some decent graphics. Since the attendees were stuck watching me, I’m posting these items for them to go back and refer to.

Here are the main things I talked about. (Warning: I may not be using standard Illustrator terms here.)

I use Illustrator CS4 at work, so my demo and this post also use that version.

Gradients and Gradient Tool

Gradients give a nice three-dimensional look to graphics without a lot of effort. To get a gradient:

1. Draw an object.
2. With the object selected, click the gradient fill in the toolbar.

   

3. Change the colors in the gradient using Gradient palette. Click and drag colors from the Swatches palette into the handles in the Gradient palette.

   

4. Add handles by clicking just underneath the gradient slider in the Gradient palette.
5. Change the way the handles affect the gradient by clicking a handle (bottom) or a location point (top) and dragging it horizontally.

   

6. Remove a handle by clicking it and dragging downward.
7. Toggle between a linear gradient and radial gradient using the dropdown box in the Gradient palette.
8. Change the direction or severity of the gradient by selecting the Gradient Tool in the toolbar  and then either clicking and dragging on or around the object or manipulating the bar that appears on the object. 

   

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Tom Johnson of I’d Rather Be Writing interviewed me about Don Moyer’s STC 2010 Summit presentation on using drawing in tech comm. (You may want to turn up the sound—I’m a soft-spoken kind of guy.)

Thanks to Paul Pehrson, cameraman.

Tom’s other videocasts from the STC conference are posted on his site. He does a great job coming up with thought-provoking questions and conducting the interviews.

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