Master the art of organizing elements in layers by renaming and distributing them across different layers within a panel. Deepen your understanding of manipulating elements within your file for better access and organization as you continue to add more to your art and illustration.
Key Insights
- The article offers a systematic guide on how to rename elements and assign them to appropriate layers within a panel for better organization and accessibility.
- Creating and naming new layers such as 'titles', 'logo', 'menu graphics', and 'background' facilitate the distribution of elements in an orderly manner.
- Further, the article highlights the importance of stacking layers appropriately. For instance, the 'background' layer should be moved to the bottom to maintain clarity in the artboard.
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In this video, we're going to assign each of the elements we've created to the appropriate layers within the Layers panel. So let's begin by renaming Layer 1 within the Layers panel.
To do this, we'll double-click Layer 1 and retitle it 'Titles, ' then hit ENTER. Additionally, we want to create a couple of new layers, so let's add a few new layers by selecting the 'Create New Layer' icon on the bottom-right-hand side of our Layers panel.
We'll create three additional layers and retitle them by double-clicking on each of them.
We'll double-click Layer 2, give it the title 'Logo, ' and hit ENTER.
We'll double-click Layer 3, give it the title 'Menu Graphics, ' and hit ENTER.
Finally, we'll retitle Layer 4, giving it the title 'Background, ' and hit ENTER.
From here, we need to distribute all of the elements found within our 'Titles' layer by clicking the dropdown and moving them into their appropriate layers.
First, we'll select our shopping cart and move it into 'Menu Graphics.'
We can then rename this item by clicking the dropdown, retitling it 'Shopping Cart, ' and hitting ENTER.
Next, we'll double-click the group for our search bar, type 'Search Bar, ' and hit ENTER. Then, we'll move our search bar by clicking and dragging it into 'Menu Graphics.'
Next, let's move our logo items. To do this, we'll select both 'Logo' and, holding Shift, also select 'Ellipse.'
We'll click and drag them into the 'Logo' layer, then release them within that layer.
We'll select the first guide and drag it into 'Background.' Then, clicking the top guide, we'll hold Shift, select the bottom guide, and ensure all four are selected. Finally, we'll click and drag them into 'Background.'
While it may not seem important to have everything organized when we can clearly see it on our artboard, as we continue to add to our art and illustration, we'll want to keep things organized so we can easily access and manipulate all of our various elements within the file.
Finally, as we discuss stacking, each of these layers is stacked on top of the others. Therefore, we’ll want to move our 'Background' layer to the bottom. We can do this by clicking the layer and dragging it so that our 'Background' layer is at the bottom.
Let's now save our work using CTRL + S on the keyboard, and in the next video, we'll begin adding text to the middle of our website wireframe.
See you there!