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3 Illustrator Features That Will Make You More Productive

Joshua Heath
3 min readMar 4, 2021

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Photo by ruben daems on Unsplash

Adobe Illustrator has been the standard in vector graphics since 1986. Although, now there are many drawing applications like Affinity Designer and Procreate. Illustrator is still a workhorse when it comes to your vector art and logo design workflow. It has the tools to be as simple and complex as you want it to be.

Like many things, there are so many ways to do the same thing within Illustrator. There is the menu bar way, the tool bar way, or there are hotkeys, the properties panel, and actions. If you want to speed up your workflow when designing then it’s important to learn these simple tips and tricks.

The Properties Panel

The properties panel is your friend. This recently added feature creates a tool panel that changes by the current tool you’re using. Instead of having the stroke, pathfinder, align, appearance, and transform panels cluttering your workspace; you can now have one panel that changes as you work. Yes there are times where the actual panel is necessary for certain tasks, but for the most part you’re good with this one simple panel. When nothing is selected you get access to document settings, when shapes are active you can use the stroke and fill, and when more than one shape is selected the align and pathfinder options become available. When working on a laptop…

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Joshua Heath
Joshua Heath

Written by Joshua Heath

I am a graphic design and content marketer living in the Pacific Northwest

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