Put the “art” in chart with Illustrator
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- The anatomy of a graph
- Creating a graph in Illustrator
- Choosing a graph type
- Specifying graph data
- Customizing graphs
- Raising the bar with graphs
Creating a graph in Illustrator
Creating a graph in Illustrator is a two-step process. First, you specify a size for your graph (much like drawing a rectangle), and second, you specify the data for the graph.
- To create a graph, choose one of the nine Graph tools in the Toolbox (Figure 3) and click once on your artboard. This brings up the Graph dialog where you must first specify the size for the graph and then click OK. Alternatively, you can click and drag with the Graph tool on the artboard to generate a size for the graph on the fly.
Figure 3: The nine different Graph tools are grouped together in the Toolbox.
The size that you specify is the area that is enclosed within the value and the category axis (or the X and Y axis). This size won’t necessarily be the final size of all of the elements in the graph because items like values and legends will appear outside of the boundaries of the two axes.
- Once you’ve specified the size of your graph, Illustrator opens the Graph Data window, in which you can enter the data for your graph. Refer to the options in the “Specifying Graph Data” section for detailed information about the different settings in the Graph Data window and the different ways you can format your data.
- When you’re done, click the Apply button and close the Graph Data window.
