Tag Archives: graphics

Adobe Illustrator Symbols

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What about Symbols?

Adobe Illustrator’s Symbol Libraries are like turn signals in Michigan: Everyone has them but few people use them.
They are very useful and easy to access, but are largely overlooked and ignored by most folks, just like turn signals. Illustrator comes with a few Symbols Libraries built right in as kind of a primer to give users an idea of what they are and what they can do. However, the Symbols that ship with Illustrator will do more harm than good for getting users interested as they are kind of ugly and useless; like my Durango. There are a couple libraries that are actually worth looking at though, so I encourage people to explore all of them despite their obvious shortcomings.

The real value in the Symbols is how they can be used for quick access to your frequently used graphics such as common icons and buttons, or logos. The Symbols are geared towards the Flash users and are perfect for importing vector art into Flash for movies and animations, but I use them more often to save time searching for graphics that I use every day.

Lately, the bulk of my work has been iOS GUI design, which is largely dependent on buttons and icons for navigation. Over the past 3 years I’ve designed, created and collected a ton of little button icons that would be impossible to manage easily without the use of Illustrator’s Symbol libraries. As I create and gather these little graphics, I save them into one common Symbol library that I’ve given the wildly imaginative name of “iOS Icons-Buttons.ai”. This makes it easy to locate if it’s not already open. And while we’re on the subject, libraries such as my Icons-Buttons that I use every day are always open by setting the specific symbol library to “Persistent” in the Symbols Panel Prefs (upper right corner). With the library set to Persistent, it launches right along with Illustrator and is always right at your fingertips.

The Symbols libraries can be used for a lot more than just simple icons however, and another example of my own saved libraries that are always open include Logos (my own as well as client logos), Textures that I frequently use, Borders, and I even have one with complex vector illustrations that I use occasionally. You can even put embedded Photoshop images in your libraries if that’s what you’re into. Hey, I’m not here to judge.

The Possibilities Are Endless

Figure A (Break Link To Symbol)

Another awesome thing worth mentioning about Symbols is that they aren’t permanent… if you don’t want them to be. What I mean by that is if you’ve converted one of your special little graphics into a symbol but then decide later that it needs further tweaking, or you just need a part of the graphic, or whatever the case may be, you can change it right back to vector art at will! *POOF!* No more symbol! To do that, all you have to do is drag a symbol to your art board, if you haven’t already, select and right click (to pull up contextual menu), select ‘Break Link To Symbol’ (see Fig.A)

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Graphics: A Freebie for You

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textures

ChicagoStreets Textures/Graphics

This is a sample of the latest batch of Vector Textures from my most recent trip to Chicago. I spent 80% of my time shooting manhole covers, storm drain grates, and other utility service portals. Some would say I’m nuts. I say maybe.

Whatever.

Anyway, I’ve cleaned up and saved this little group just for my friends that took the time to join my ProjectPIXL Facebook app. Sadly, some of my friends have about as much use for these graphics as Stephen Hawking does welding equipment, but I’ve posted it all the same. For those who have no use for them, maybe I’ll post some nice high res photos from one of my trips through the Alps or something. I hate to leave anyone out! Next time maybe I’ll upload a Speedglass Welding helmet for Stephen.

Go ahead and click right here or click on the photo to begin downloading the zipped PDFs. The .ZIP file you will download contains 3 Adobe Illustrator based files saved as PDFs and are fully editable in Illustrator or Photoshop. Do what you want with them, they’re yours now!

I have about 50 other great shots of Chicago’s coolest manhole covers and storm drain grates, as well as some interesting building and street textures that I am in the process of converting to vector art. As soon as I get them processed, I will have them available to everyone on the downloads part of my site. I’ll keep you posted.

Update to Free Graphics

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Symbols-radialgraphics

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Ai Symbols Radials

1.0 Categories:
vector

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After my post about the Adobe Illustrator Symbols earlier today, I decided to give away a couple more. Actually, they are on my Graphics Downloads page, but for the sake of making things easier on my friends that don’t like to click much, I am adding links to the downloads right here. You can download the Radials Symbols zipped file by clicking here or just click on the image.

One of the libraries is a set of Illustrator Symbols. I created a whole bunch of radial designs one day while trying to come up with something else entirely for a client project. In the process I ended up with a series of different radial graphics that actually make interesting little pieces of art on their own, and with a little help from some other designer who sees things from a different perspective, they could become something really interesting. They are symbol instances, so use them as I described in my earlier post and do with them what you want! Break the symbol link (control + click on a simple that’s on your artboard, select the “break link to symbol” option) and they are fully editable vector graphics that you can pick apart, rearrange, merge into other stuff, or whatever. Knock yourselves out.


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Ai Swatches Carbonfiber

Categories:
Patterns

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The next one, as long as I’m in a generous mood, is a bunch of patterns that I created for my website backgrounds. Several of the patterns look like a carbon fiber texture (same as the background pattern of my site), some are dot patterns of varying frequencies, and there’s a diamond plate pattern also. Here’s the link to the zipped file: Patterns, or click on the image to get the download.
The same process applies for installing the pattern swatches into Illustrator: just drop the .ai file (after you’ve unzipped it of course) into your Illustrator app folder > Presets > en_US > Swatches. Notice the only difference is that it goes into “Swatches” rather than “Symbols”. You can also drop it into your User > Library > Application Support > Adobe > Adobe Illustrator CS4 (or CS3, or CS2) > en_US > Swatches. Activate it by going to your Menu > Window > Swatch Libraries > Patterns or User Defined (depending on which folder you put them in), and you’re good to go.

One more time in case you missed it; to get into all of my free vector graphics, vector textures, photo textures, and Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator Presets, just jump over to my Graphics Downloads page and take what you want. It’s all free. One day I’ll have enough money to pay the extra fees to get my ecommerce shopping cart active on my site and I will be charging actual American dollars for some of the more complex stuff. If I were you, and obviously I’m not, I would loot the whole damn page while I’m still mentally ill.
Who knows when I’ll come to my senses? It could be tomorrow (but the improbability factor there is very high), or it could be next month. Don’t be like me; do it before it’s too late!