Learn the valuable skill of aligning objects to an artboard for creating professional and consistent looking designs. This article discusses how to center icons on a 30 by 30 pixel artboard, ensuring each icon is perfectly aligned for visual consistency.
Key Insights
- The article details the process of aligning an icon to a 30x30 pixel artboard, using the control bar and selecting 'align to artboard' to initiate the process.
- Options for alignment include bottom, top, right, left, horizontal center, and vertical center. For icons, the article recommends aligning both horizontally and vertically to the center for optimal visuals.
- Perfect alignment is emphasized for the sake of consistency, particularly when exporting icons and viewing them together. The article also highlights the importance of saving your work regularly during the alignment process.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
In this video, we’ll be discussing aligning objects to the artboard. So, let’s begin by first selecting our network icon.
As you may remember, we can do this with the Selection Tool, either by selecting the object itself or clicking to the right of "Network" in our Layers panel. With "Network" now selected, it's time to align it to the artboard. To align it, we’ll go up to our Control Bar, use the "Align to Selection" dropdown menu, and instead select "Align to Artboard."
From here, we’ll see different alignment icons, giving us options for how we want to align it. For example, if we want to align it to the bottom, we’ll see that it snaps to the bottom. To the top, right, and left.
However, for these icons, we’re going to want to align them to the center. Therefore, with the group selected, we’ll simply select "Horizontal Align Center" as well as "Vertical Align Center." With both selected, our icon is now perfectly centered within our 30 × 30 pixel artboard.
So, let’s move on to align our other icons. I’ll hold CTRL on the keyboard as I scroll up with the mouse, and next, we’ll be aligning our magnifying glass. To do this, we’ll select the object, then go to the Control Bar, and select "Horizontal Align Center" and "Vertical Align Center."
Next, we’ll move to the left with our download icon, select it, and choose "Horizontal Align Center" and "Vertical Align Center." Finally, we’ll do this with our last icon, the arrow, by clicking it and aligning it horizontally and vertically. While it may not be crucial to be a pixel or two off, it is helpful when we export each of our icons. As we zoom out and view them all, it’s beneficial to have consistency and have them centered within our artboards.
So, let’s now save our work using CTRL + S on the keyboard, and in the next video, we’ll be working on our cloud icon.
See you there!