Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One

This time, the fi nished piece isn’t really a piece of artwork—more

like a rambling collection of disassociated effects. But I guarantee

you, you now know more about art brushes and advanced methods

for creating type-along-a-path than anyone on your block. My hope

is that this knowledge will serve you well when you need to twist

and distort all manners of objects in the future.

Replicating, Updating,

and Replacing Symbols

Now we shift from the topic of brushes to that other method for

repeating and updating art in Illustrator: symbols. Whereas Illus-

trator presents brushes as creative features, symbols are a means

of effi ciency and automation through and through. Take the detail

from a map of Yellowstone National Park, featured in Figure 9-57.

(This fi le ships with Illustrator. To fi nd it, search for Yellowstone

Map.ai on the hard disk that contains the Illustrator CS5 applica-

tion.) This small detail contains nine repetitions of a picnic table

icon,

, with many others strewn elsewhere inside the map, all of

which are instances of a central symbol. This means I can change

the symbol’s fi ll to green, massage the placement of the table’s top

and benches, and update all instances in one operation, as indi-

cated by the nine updated (and circled) picnic icons in Figure 9-58.

Figure 9-57 . Figure 9-58 .

Details courtesy of U.S. National Park Service staff at the NPS Harper’s Ferry Center ...