Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One

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BRUSHES AND SYMBOLS

CLIP-ART ASIDE, there is a real value to prefab repeat-

able art. Consider for a moment the modern miracle of digital type

as made available to and exploited by a run-of-the-mill computer

application. When you select a font—True Type, OpenType, the

standard doesn’t matter—you’re actually selecting a library of hun-

dreds or thousands of character definitions, every one of which is

a compound path drawn using a program like Illustrator. By way

of an example, Figure 9-1 shows three of the more exotic char-

acters included with Adobe Caslon Pro. Figure 9-2 shows these

same characters detailed as compound path outlines, with hole-

cutting subpaths in blue crosshatch and

tiny square anchor points throughout.

Amazingly, all you have to do to call up

these simple graphics is bang away at

your keyboard. If you later change the

font, your application swaps out all the

original graphics for new ones. In a very

real sense, your operating system draws

your words, sentences, and punctuation

marks from pieces of prefab art.

Illustrator doesn’t yet permit you to

draw and export your own fonts. (I

wish it did.) But it does let you create,

replicate, and update pieces of artwork

using a couple of panels and a handful of

tools. And instead of entering characters

from a keyboard, you paint with them.

This lesson demonstrates two variet-

ies of such repeatable, updatable art:

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