In this short tutorial, I'll walk you through how to use artboards in Adobe Illustrator, what they are, how to manage them, and how to export your designs efficiently.
Understanding what artboards are and why they matter
Artboards are like pages.
They let you design multiple layouts, like variations of a logo or different sizes of a graphic, all within a single Illustrator document.
For this document, I'm using the Essentials Classic Workspace.
Artboards determine the area that can be printed.
They can be of different sizes and orientations.
Viewing and navigating between artboards
To view the active artboard, choose Fit Artboard in Window or Fit All in Window to see all artboards.
You navigate artboards using the Properties panel or with the buttons at bottom-left.
If you're in the Artboard Tool, pressing Option or Alt and the down or up arrow activates the next or previous artboard.
You can create multiple artboards when starting a new document,
Creating, resizing, and duplicating artboards
or add them later with the Artboard Tool.
Resize by dragging the handles, choose a predefined size or enter exact dimensions on the Control panel.
If your artwork and artboards are of different sizes, you might want to choose Object, Artboards, Fit to Selected Artwork.
To duplicate an artboard, hold Option or Alt and drag or hold Option or Alt and click the + symbol.
To copy the artwork along with the artboard, make sure the Move artwork button is selected.
Note that hidden or locked items will not be copied.
That is, unless you change this preference.
Check Scale artwork to scale artboard and artwork together.
Hold Shift to scale proportionally.
Press Command or Control D to repeat the transformation.
Organizing artwork across multiple artboards
The Artboards panel helps you stay organized.
Name artboards, reorder them by dragging, double-click to the right of the name to center the artboard in your workspace or choose Rearrange.
You can design across artboards easily.
Copy and paste in place, to paste content to the active artboard.
Or choose the Artboard Tool, then Shift-click to paste to multiple artboards.
You can also paste on all artboards, which could be useful if your artboards are the same size.
Exporting artboards efficiently for different outputs
When it's time to export your work, choose File, Export, Export for Screens...
Here you can export selected or all artboards, choose file formats, and set different sizes.
If you've renamed your artboards, Illustrator uses those names for the file names.
In the Prefix dropdown, you can also add a prefix to make it easier to organize your files.
Artboards make it easier to experiment with multiple iterations and to keep the different parts of a project together in a single document, allowing a clean and efficient Illustrator workflow.
The Illustrator team would love to hear what you think about this and other core workflows.
You can give feedback on the Illustrator UserVoice page.
I'm Nigel French.
Thanks for watching.
What you’ll learn
Get comfortable with artboards
Discover how artboards function like pages, helping you design multiple layouts in a single document.
Customize, copy, and organize
Resize artboards, duplicate with or without artwork, and rename or rearrange them for better organization.
Export like a pro
Use Export for Screens to output selected or all artboards, with custom formats, sizes, and filenames.
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