Introduction to Adobe Illustrator Lab

The purpose of this week's lab was to start learning how to use Adobe Illustrator to better prepare our maps for public consumption.   I haven't used this tool before so it still feels a bit awkward but hopefully that will get better with practice.

Here are my deliverables for this week's lab.  

First is the map that I created using Adobe Illustrator:

And here is my Process Summary:

     Process Summary Description

1.       Printed the “Tools Panel Overview” for Illustrator for future use

2.       Started Illustrator and experimented with some of the tools presented (I have no experience with Adobe Illustrator)

3.       Worked with the “Fill” and “Stroke” tools

4.       Learned how to constrain proportions by use of the Shift Key

5.       Learned how to resize shapes

6.       Learned to rotate shapes (and identify anchor corner)

7.       Learned how to set more options for shape tools

8.       Learned about the Pencil Tool and preferences

9.       Experimented with the Pen tool to see how it differs from the Pencil Tool

10.   Worked with Layer Tool (Note:   There is a problem with the graphic on the top of page 11 of the Lab Exercise)

11.   Experimented with arranging layers.   Similar to other programs I have used, so not totally foreign

12.   Learned about the Text tools

13.   Amazed by the “Type on a Path” tool.   (It doesn’t take much to amaze me).

14.   Extracted Lab Data out to S:\Cartography\Illustrator\cities_feb04

15.   Extracted Lab Data out to S:\Cartography\Illustrator\cntbnd_jun11

16.   Started ArcMap

17.   Added the Cities and County Boundaries to the map

18.   Switched to Layout View and zoomed to extent

19.   Inserted Neatline with a border width of 3

20.   Added a Scale Bar and set it to show “useful” delineations (50, 100, 200)

21.   Added a Legend as instructed

22.   Modified the symbology to show “Cities” and “County Boundary”

23.   Added a border to the Legend.   Seeing the “gap” function there answers a question I had about how to do that in previous labs.

24.   Exported the map out to an Adobe Illustrator file

25.   Saw the following message

26.   Selected “Update”

27.   Selected “Fit On Screen”

28.   Opened Layer Tool

29.   Named the Neatline

30.   Added the “Legend” and “North Arrow” Layers

31.   Moved the North Arrow to its layer

32.   Moved the Legend related items to the “Legend” Layer

33.   At this point my Layers look like this:

34.   Renamed the “City Group” and the “County Group” and changed their color

35.   Moved the Cities Group and the Scale Bar Group to be under the County Group.  Looks like this will definitely take some practice in future labs

36.   Deleted the non essential layers (Cites, Scale Bar, and “Other 2”)

37.   After rearranging the layers and renaming them for clarity.   My layers now look like this:

38.   I tried to do the direct selection tool and resize, but didn’t have any success

39.   I posted a message in the discussion forum to see if anyone else was having a similar problem so I could learn from them.

40.   After checking the forum I determined how to properly resize the boundary

41.   Added the Text Elements and put it in the proper layer in Illustrator

42.   Exported out to Jpeg and updated Blog and DropBox

And finally here is my metadata:

Layer	Data Type	Publication Information: Who Created The Data?	Time Period Data Is Relevant	Spatial Horizontal Coordinate System	Attribute Values
Cities_feb04	Point	UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA GEOPLAN CENTER	revised version of the December 2003 map layer	Albers Conical Equal Area (Florida Geographic Data Library)	1116 Attributes
Cntbnd_jul11	Polygon	FGDL	June 2011 (update of the FGDL Version 2003 County Boundaries dataset)	Albers Conical Equal Area [Florida Geographic Data Library]	67 Attributes