Discover how to finalize a three-panel display by adding borders, adjusting strokes, and manipulating width profiles for a unique aesthetic appeal. This guide takes you through a step-by-step process in creating visually appealing designs using Adobe's tools.
Key Insights
- Creating a border requires the creation of a rectangle around the edges, which is then changed from a black fill to a black stroke. By adjusting the stroke to 0.125, an eighth-inch stroke can be achieved.
- Guides can be hidden but remain functional, providing a clean aesthetic while still providing necessary design scaffolding. This is particularly helpful when creating designs with specific dimensions or measurements.
- Stroke width and color can be modified to provide a more appealing design, with Adobe offering a wide range of color themes to choose from. The width profile can also be varied to create different visual effects, allowing for a high level of customization in the design process.
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In this video, we'll be finalizing our three-panel display. Let's begin by right-clicking and hiding our guides.
This way, we can see our artboard. Next, let's close our Symbols Panel and get a better view of our entire artboard. Here we have our symbol up top, as well as some text describing it, on a panel layered with the symbols.
In addition to this, let's also add a border. To do this, we can create a rectangle border around the edges. Let's create a new layer for this, double-click to title it Border*, and hit ENTER.
From here, we can simply drag a rectangle, and let's swap it from a black fill to a black stroke. In addition, let's change our stroke width by double-clicking the stroke and setting it to 0.125, then hit ENTER. We now have a one-eighth inch stroke.
If we are creating this for an online image or something that doesn't have a bleed, we might want to adjust our stroke. Rather than extending off the edge, we would change our Align Stroke setting to Inside so it fits neatly within the area. However, for print with bleed, we’ll want it to extend one-eighth inch out as well. To do this, let's create a guide one-eighth inch out and, holding Shift, we'll release.
As we can see, this guide has disappeared because our guides are currently hidden. When we re-show our guides—by hitting V on the keyboard for the Selection Tool*, then right-clicking on the artboard and selecting Show Guides*—we’ll see that we now have a guide here. Therefore, just because guides are hidden doesn’t mean we can’t create them; it simply means we can’t see them.
Next, let's extend our border all the way to the edge of the bleed, as well as to the first one-eighth inch within our artboard. We'll go to Stroke*, and from here, rather than using 0.125 inches, we'll simply multiply it by two and hit ENTER. We'll also change our stroke alignment to Align to Center*. This way, we have one-eighth inch extending outside and one-eighth inch inside the artboard.
From here, let's change the color of our stroke to make it more appealing. We'll go to Adobe Color Themes*, and making sure that we have our stroke selected and on top, we’ll change the color within Adobe Color Themes*. Feel free to choose whatever color you prefer.
For me, I like the look of this blue. Next, let's make our stroke a little more interesting. We can go to the top and vary our Width Profile by selecting from various options, and as we can see, we get different effects based on the profiles we choose. We can also use the Width Tool by selecting it and clicking and dragging to customize our stroke.
I'll hit CTRL+Z and CTRL+Z, and for this Width Profile*, I'm simply going to select Uniform*. For your version, feel free to make any custom profile you like by using the Width Tool or selecting any of the variable width profiles. We've now completed our three-panel display, complete with a first panel featuring an icon, as well as a text panel below.
Let's now save our work using CTRL+S on the keyboard, and in the next video, we'll go over our midterm project. See you there!