When working with this industry-leading program it’s important to feel confident with the various tools, panels and menus of the Illustrator workspace. Getting familiar with a few keyboard shortcuts will also help speed up your workflow and efficiency. These are topics which are covered in our one-day Illustrator Basics courses.
There are four main elements to the Adobe Illustrator interface: first of all, the image itself. You can have one or many images open at a time. Later we’ll look at how to zoom and pan the image, and how to examine the image size.
The second element is the Toolbox or Toolbar on the left. If you hover your cursor over any of these tools, a small tooltip will appear reminding you of the function of the tool. Also notice the keyboard shortcut in brackets. These are useful for the more commonly used tools. Some of the tools have a small arrow on the bottom right; this indicates that if you click and press down on that tool, other related tools are available behind.
In other posts we’ll look at the last two elements of the Illustrator interface, the Control and other palettes.
Our Illustrator courses are ideal for the beginner, providing easy and relevant introductions to using the software in the workplace. For many tips and useful leads to working in the industry, have a look at the Australian Graphic Design Association.
You can also see many examples of our clients’ work on our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/DesignWorkshopSydney
Other related Illustrator Blog Posts:

• Creating shapes
• Illustrator basics