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
Raising the bar with graphs
You can take advantage of the graph feature in Illustrator in numerous ways. Once you’ve created a graph, you can use the Direct Selection tool to select individual parts of a graph and apply different fill or stroke attributes (by default, Illustrator generates graphs using different shades of gray). You can also apply other Illustrator features, such as Live Effects (like 3D or Scribble) or transparency. You can even use graph elements as masks for photographs.
In addition, you can use an Illustrator graph as a guide for more customized artwork. For example, you may want to create an intricate infographic using customized shapes. By creating a simple graph with real data, you can draw artwork in scale to depict numeric data in a visual way (Figure 18).
Figure 18: Graphs don’t have to be boring. Use Illustrator’s feature set and your creativity to create graphs that demand attention.
If bringing data into Illustrator isn’t your cup of tea, you can use Excel to generate a graph, which you can then save as PDF from Excel (if you have Adobe® Acrobat® installed on your computer, you should have a utility called PDFMaker available from within Microsoft Office). Once you’ve created the PDF, open it in Illustrator, where you can customize it as needed (you won’t be able to edit the graph data however).
Where to go from here
For more information about Illustrator, check out the following resources:
- Put Illustrator CS2 to Work for you, by Total Training
- Creating transitions with blends in Illustrator CS2, by Mordy Golding
