Category: Article

Chapter 99. Generating Layers And Moving Objects 5:34

  • Two workflows in AI
    • Path of logic and order
      • Watch what you are doing
      • Organize the document up front
    • Having fun with the journey
      • Don’t watch what you are doing logically
      • End up with complicated document in one layer
  • Layers → Properties → Flatten Artwork
    • Flatten all layers
    • Cool!
  • In the Layer panel you can expand that layer to show all of the objects that live inside of it
    • Groups are containers so they are expandable
  • If you aggressively utilize Groups for all of you Objects then even if you did place everything in one layer you can easily pull out group(s) of objects into a new layer.
  • For each layer you choose a color of the bounding box for when you select something in that layer
    • This helps you make sense of making selections in a multi-layer document
  • When you make selections in one layer a little filled square appears on the right side of the layer. If you drag that box into a another layer that will move those objects into that layer.
  • Paste-in-place → many uses
  • Cannot wait to set up the keyboard using AI

Chapter 98. Layer Basics 4:31

  • Layers useful but more critical for raster programs
  • Layers are for control
  • Visibility shows and hides objects
  • Locks enable and disable ability to select objects in layer
  • Objects have stacking order
    • Object → Arrange → Send to Back
    • Control Z-Order in layer itself
  • Next order is panel itself: panel stacking order in layers Panel

Chapter 89. Adding Fonts With TypeKit 4:54

  • TypeKit Fonts
  • Fonts create the mood for the word
  • There are thousands of fonts and yet people are always looking for more
  • New feature of AI is to access the TypeKit Fonts (TKF)
  • Adobe Garamond is based on Garamond
    • Adobe Garamond Premier Pro is based on Robert Slimbach visited a museum, looked at Garamond’s metal punches and type designed, and based on that refined the existing Garamond. That is the difference.
  • TypeKit gives you access to all Adobe fonts. Wow.
  • Inexhaustible source of fonts for any medium

The Ultimate Meditation Hack

A lot of us meditators feel like we can’t get our feet off the ground when it comes to our meditative practice. Typically it goes something like this:

  • Meditate thirty minutes per day
  • For seven days
  • Then, never meditate again for six months
  • Finally, the beginning and try again

Actually, that is fine because practice is practice. There is an easier way though that I call the ultimate meditation hack.

Continue reading “The Ultimate Meditation Hack”

Chapter 88. Converting Type To Outlines 6:28

  • When you convert text to outline you lose control of it as a font but gain more features
  • Envelope Distort
    • V
    • Select Text
    • Option-Shift-Command-W
    • Preview On
  • Now that you converted the text to an outline and modified it with envelope distort you can’t modify it as text but you can modify it using the envelope distort tool itself
    • Object → Envelope Distort → Edit Contents
    • Envelope Release shows you the mask because it separates the path and the Text
    • Say you can’t print to a four color press so you select the object and Expand it. Now as press can handle it. Is this an issue for keycaps?
      • Now it is no longer text, can’t fix any of it.
  • Type → Create Outlines : Turns anything into an outline
  • You can do a lot of things on text without converting it to an outline
    • But if you are going to press you gotta convert it to outline

Chapter 87. Adding Text To A Circle 6:52

  • Doing two things
    • Put text on circle
    • How in AI do you put two different kinds of text going in two directions on the same physical path?
  • One way is to use two circle, simple
  • Split the circle, add text, center it, click on the handle and center it for real
  • Pull up on the handle to put the text on the opposite side of the path
  • Great demo of baseline shifting

Chapter 86. Text And The Eyedropper Tool 5:18

  • When an Object is selected and you click something with the Eye Dropper tool you will change the strong of the selected object
  • Many tools show their options you double click them
    • You can configure it to copy or not and apply or not both Character Style and Paragraph Style
  • Command turns the pointer into Selection Tool so you can use it to select stuff and then release it to return to the selected tool. This is helpful for using the Eye Dropper tool.
  • Option-Eye-Dropper change’s it’s behavior
    • No-Option-Eye-Dropper is PULL IN from object
    • Option-Eye-Dropper is PUSH OUT to object
      • In other words you don’t have to select something to perform that modification
      • T-Over-Eyedropper
        • Can reproduce this with text

Chapter 84. Creating Character And Paragraph Styles 7:42

  • DRY
  • Perhaps
    • Can I automate the insertion of all the character pretty close to where they should be on their own layers
    • Apply a character style to everything on that layers Have all of the work done automatically?
  • Create a paragraph style based on the formatting that you performed on a paragraph
    • Same for characters
    • Extracting types from selected text
    • Develop styles that mean something to you
  • Do I configure text via style or via the entire layer?
    • Put in KQS
  • Can Load (Import) Character styles from another document
    • Perhaps create a document just to store all of those Styles for use by other files?
  • Can change styles globally
    • As you would expect

Chapter 83. The Character And Paragraph Panels 9:02

  • Always show options
    • Access in a panel the more thing and you see everything
    • Do this for all Typography stuff
  • Suitcase lets you only show fonts that you are working with per app
    • Helpful because in my keycaps I only use a few
    • $120USD
    • RightFont seems to do the same thing for $50USD
    • Emailed both to see if they have the right tool for what I want
  • What style should I use for the keycaps?
    • Is Bold easier to read?
  • Leading is the amount of the space between lines of text
  • New reading size for fonts is 11
  • Kearning is the space between individual letters V/A<-
  • Tracking is the spae between whole words <-VA->
  • T: Vertical scale
  • T: Horizontal scale
  • Baseline shift: raise up the word higher or lower
    • Super and subscript?
    • There is a setting for that
  • Rotate character
    • Thinking of rotating the Ekeman faces
    • Thinking of rotating the Emacs meta keys to make them clearly something new
  • Small bold and everything
  • Paragraph settings
    • Just have to be in the paragraph to change its attributes
  • Styles let you automate all of the customization that you made in one paragraph so you can do the same thing to another