Today we are going to go over Dynamic art, vector art that isn’t destructive to the vector paths. Basically this keeps things like text editable. Why would you do this? Well for example, if your designing a post card that has variable data and is going out to 10,000 people and you want it so the receiver gets their name printed on the card, but you want it to look designed and not just plain tex, then you need Dynamic text. Kodak, Epson, and Cannon either offer or are working on printers that support Variable data and Dynamic text. Today we will look at designing it so the printers can re-type the text on the fly.

Here is the goal of today’s tutorial.

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Hey everyone, before you blow up the comments about how you already knew this, let me say one thing. Not everyone is an avid user and these little tips are meant to help rid people that are learning Illustrator of some daily frustration with simple answers to simple problems. Today’s question was sent in by Morgan, and it has to do with rulers. Have a watch.

Illustrator 101: Reset Your Rulers from Jay Hilgert on Vimeo.

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This is a quick Illustrator tip, but in my opinion, a priceless one if its new to you. Have you ever been typing in Illustrator and hit the “V” key to select the move tool (or any other tool shortcut for that matter), but instead, Illustrator just types a v? Yeah, it happened to me all the time, until I figured this out. Are you tired of having to click on the move tool, then click on the artboard, then click the text tool, and then click again, just to start another empty text box? It’s truly annoying to be stripped of your tool shortcuts while you’re editing an active text box, but help is only one keystroke away.

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This is a very quick Illustrator CS3 tip that will hopefully save you some time in the long run. I’m sure a lot of you, if not all of you, know how to load a Brush Library. There are 3 ways, actually, but my favorite, and quickest way is the Brush Library icon.

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In this tutorial, I’m going to cover several things that effect the way we use Illustrator brushes. Remember, there are 4 types of Illustrator brushes, and this tutorial will be covering “Art” brushes. There are many things that effect the way your brush stroke will take form, and I hope by the end of this tutorial, you have a better idea of what you can tweak to get the results you’re looking for when using your art brushes.

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