Design Center Tutorial
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
The anatomy of a graph
Before we get into the specifics of creating and editing graphs, let’s first explore how Illustrator constructs them.
A graph itself can be made up of several different elements, including the chart itself, a value and category axis, and a legend. These elements are each created as individual groups so that they can be managed easily. A graph in Illustrator is a special kind of parent group that comprises the individual groups shown in Figure 2. Depending on the settings that you use, a graph can have all or just some of these groups. As long as the elements are contained by the special parent group, you can make edits to the graph data or the settings of the graph itself, and Illustrator updates the graph accordingly. However, if you remove the parent group (by choosing Object > Ungroup), the individual elements act like regular vector objects, and you can no longer edit the graph data. (See the section “Ungrouping a Graph,” later in the chapter, where we discuss under what circumstances you would want to ungroup a graph.)
Figure 2: A graph in Illustrator is made up of many different parts.
