Managing Artboards in Illustrator
Managing artboards in Illustrator are essentially the digital equivalent of a canvas or drawing space. They enable you to create multiple compositions in a single document and are ideal for working on multiple versions of a project visually side by side. They also control how your work is cropped when exported.
In this video we go over the basics of working with Illustrator artboards including resizing, setting up multiples, and settings. The transcript for this tutorial is included below.
Managing Artboards
When you start a new document you can see this white area surrounded by dark grey, which is called an artboard. It is essentially like your paper if you were creating a drawing and only what is on the artboard will be visible in your final file. Art boards are great for creating iterations, testing designs, working on multiple versions within the same file, and many other uses.
When creating a new document Illustrator sets you up with one artboard, but you can add more simply and even adjust the spacing and columns for multiple artboards.
Adding More Artboards
If you have already started a document and want to add more artboards you can use the Artboard Tool (Shift O) to draw new ones. You can also Click Alt Drag to copy existing artboards and their contents.
Resizing Artboards
Resizing is easy with the Artboard Tool. You can manually drag the sides or corners just like when creating a new one, or you can enter in the dimensions.
Once you have your artboards set you can choose to Show Center Mark, Show Cross Hairs, Show Video Safe Areas, and access the full panel for more granular adjustments.
Uses
Now artboards are great because you can create multiple iterations or versions of the same project all in the same document. For example if you wanted to see how this design looks with a different color or typeface, I can duplicate the artboard and use that one for all changes.
