Discover how to create dynamic, visual interest in your digital designs by adding a frame and shapes to your artboard. Learn the art of utilizing guides, creating new layers, and adjusting shapes to enhance your layout and achieve a more polished, professional design.
Key Insights
- Using guides can help align your design elements accurately. By creating guides at specific measurements, such as at the top of the artboard, you can ensure your title, frames, and shapes are placed correctly and consistently.
- Creating new layers for different design elements, like the center, left, and right diamonds in this example, allows for more control and ease of adjustment in your design process.
- Rotating and resizing shapes while maintaining the correct ratio is crucial for a balanced design. The use of the move tool and maintaining a 45-degree rotation for diamond shapes are specific techniques explained in this tutorial.
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 adding a frame and shapes to our artboard.
Let's begin by creating a few guides. The first guide we’ll want is right at the top.
We’ll drag from the top ruler and place it at 8 inches.
If we hold Shift, we’ll release it when we reach 8 inches.
This top guide will serve as a guide for our title.
We’ll want to adjust the position of our title.
We can select the title and move it up while holding Shift to ensure it’s centered.
We’ll ensure that the title is placed within the top portion of our guide.
Next, let’s create another guide at 10 inches.
Hold Shift and release it at 10 inches.
This provides a little space between our title and where the frame and shapes will go.
In the center, we’ll place our worker-adjusted photo along with some shapes to highlight it.
Let’s add another guide to limit the bottom of this area.
Drag it down and release it at approximately 33.5 inches.
Release at 33.5.
This will define the area where we’ll create our frames and shapes.
Hit CTRL + S to save our work.
Now, let’s begin creating shapes and a frame for our center image, where the construction photo will go.
We’ll create three diamonds, with the middle diamond containing the construction photo.
Let’s begin.
The first step is to create a new layer.
Let’s rename this layer 'Center Frame' and hit ENTER.
This center frame will contain our center square.
Select the Rectangle Tool from the far left-hand side.
Click and drag to create a square.
Hold Shift to maintain a square ratio, rather than a rectangle.
The size isn’t crucial at this stage, as we’ll rotate and adjust it to fit the guides.
Release, and now we have the beginning of our diamond.
Next, we’ll rotate it using the Move Tool.
First, select the Move Tool.
Now we can rotate it as a shape.
Press CTRL + T to rotate. When we hover over a corner, we’ll see two arrows and can begin rotating.
Hold Shift until the rotation reaches 45 degrees.
Press ENTER, and we’ll see that the square has transformed into a diamond.
Let’s now center this diamond.
We’ll need another guide to do this.
Select Artboard One. Drag from the left-hand side.
Release it at 18 inches, halfway across the artboard.
Now, let’s move the diamond to the center.
Select 'Center Frame.'
Drag it over to the left.
Adjust the size using CTRL + T.
Drag it to the bottom and hold Shift to maintain the correct ratio.
Drag it to the guide, holding Shift again.
This will center the image and align it with the top and bottom guides.
Press ENTER to commit this transformation.
Now, let’s zoom in.
We can see that the diamond is now centered within the artboard.
It also touches the top and bottom guides.
Let’s now create two additional diamonds.
One on the left-hand side and one on the right.
To do this, we could create additional squares and rotate them.
Or we can duplicate our center frame.
Drag it into a new layer.
Press ENTER.
Title this layer 'Left Diamond.'
Create one more layer.
Title this one 'Right Diamond.'
Press ENTER.
With the 'Right Diamond' selected, click and drag it to the right, holding Shift.
With the 'Left Diamond' selected, click and drag it to the left, holding Shift.
Drag it to the left, then zoom out.
We now have three diamonds.
Although they’re currently not aligned, we’ll create additional guides to fix this.
We want the top of our diamonds to be four inches from the left.
And four inches from the right.
To do this, we’ll create two more guides.
Drag a guide over.
Hold Shift and release it at 4 inches.
Do the same on the right-hand side.
Release it at 32 inches.
Now, move the left and right diamonds so they’re flush with these guides.
Zoom in and first select the left diamond.
Drag it over, holding Shift until it snaps to the guide.
Now, drag the right diamond over, holding Shift until it snaps to the guide.
Release it.