| Creating Brushes in Illustrator CS | |
Illustrator Tutorial By Sara Froehlich
(If you arrived at this page from a search, you can start the tutorial on page one.)
Shamrock Symbols
Symbols are graphics you might want to use later and not have to recreate. Even graphics with gradient fills or gradient meshes can be saved as a symbol for use later. To save a graphic as a symbol, simply grab it and drag it to the symbols palette and drop it. It's now a symbol and you can use any of the symbol tools on it. To save the symbol to be loaded later, however, there are a couple rules you have to follow.
- Drag the symbol to the page from the Symbols palette to use it. Like the brush, it has to be used on the page to be saved.
- Delete all unused symbols, graphic styles, brushes, and swatches as you did when you saved the brush.
- Delete the symbol and any other artwork from the page.
- Go to File > Save As and save the file. I recommend using the word 'symbol' (or something like sym that you know means 'symbol' in the file name (shamrock_sym.ai) so you know at a glance it's a symbol file. Save it in Illustrator/presets/symbols or anywhere on your hard drive or an external drive to be loaded later.
- When you want to use them, symbol files are loaded in the same manner as brushes.
- Because symbols are vector, they can be resized as desired with no loss of quality.
Last time we made a gradient mesh shamrock with text. You can even make a symbols of text, or combinations of objects and text. Symbols can be used for any graphic you use frequently, like a company logo or holiday designs.
You can download my St. Patrick's Day symbols in a zip file here. Unzip the file and place it in your Illustrator/Presets/Symbols folder.
©2005 Sara Froehlich
