Discover how to finalize a three-panel display by adding borders, adjusting strokes, and manipulating width profiles for a unique aesthetic appeal. This guide takes you through a step-by-step process in creating visually appealing designs using Adobe's tools.
Key Insights
- Creating a border requires the creation of a rectangle around the edges, which is then changed from a black fill to a black stroke. By adjusting the stroke to 0.125, an eighth-inch stroke can be achieved.
- Guides can be hidden but remain functional, providing a clean aesthetic while still providing necessary design scaffolding. This is particularly helpful when creating designs with specific dimensions or measurements.
- Stroke width and color can be modified to provide a more appealing design, with Adobe offering a wide range of color themes to choose from. The width profile can also be varied to create different visual effects, allowing for a high level of customization in the design process.
This lesson is a preview from our Illustrator Certification Online (includes software & exam). Enroll in this course for detailed lessons, live instructor support, and project-based training.
In this video, we'll be finalizing our three-panel display. Let's begin by right-clicking and hiding our guides.
This way, we can see our artboard. Next, let's close our *Symbols Panel* and get a better view of our entire artboard. Here we have our symbol up top, as well as some text describing it, on a panel layered with the symbols.
In addition to this, let's also add a border. To do this, we can create a rectangle border around the edges. Let's create a new layer for this, double-click to title it *Border*, and hit ENTER.
From here, we can simply drag a rectangle, and let's swap it from a black fill to a black stroke. In addition, let's change our stroke width by double-clicking the stroke and setting it to 0.125, then hit ENTER. We now have a one-eighth inch stroke.
If we are creating this for an online image or something that doesn't have a bleed, we might want to adjust our stroke. Rather than extending off the edge, we would change our *Align Stroke* setting to *Inside* so it fits neatly within the area. However, for print with bleed, we’ll want it to extend one-eighth inch out as well. To do this, let's create a guide one-eighth inch out and, holding Shift, we'll release.
As we can see, this guide has disappeared because our guides are currently hidden. When we re-show our guides—by hitting V on the keyboard for the *Selection Tool*, then right-clicking on the artboard and selecting *Show Guides*—we’ll see that we now have a guide here. Therefore, just because guides are hidden doesn’t mean we can’t create them; it simply means we can’t see them.
Next, let's extend our border all the way to the edge of the bleed, as well as to the first one-eighth inch within our artboard. We'll go to *Stroke*, and from here, rather than using 0.125 inches, we'll simply multiply it by two and hit ENTER. We'll also change our stroke alignment to *Align to Center*. This way, we have one-eighth inch extending outside and one-eighth inch inside the artboard.
From here, let's change the color of our stroke to make it more appealing. We'll go to *Adobe Color Themes*, and making sure that we have our stroke selected and on top, we’ll change the color within *Adobe Color Themes*. Feel free to choose whatever color you prefer.
For me, I like the look of this blue. Next, let's make our stroke a little more interesting. We can go to the top and vary our *Width Profile* by selecting from various options, and as we can see, we get different effects based on the profiles we choose. We can also use the *Width Tool* by selecting it and clicking and dragging to customize our stroke.
I'll hit CTRL+Z and CTRL+Z, and for this *Width Profile*, I'm simply going to select *Uniform*. For your version, feel free to make any custom profile you like by using the *Width Tool* or selecting any of the variable width profiles. We've now completed our three-panel display, complete with a first panel featuring an icon, as well as a text panel below.
Let's now save our work using CTRL+S on the keyboard, and in the next video, we'll go over our midterm project. See you there!