PPOL 646 - Data Visualization Updates with Illustrator

The Illustrator layout is made up of several areas, some can be modified depending on what type of project you are working on. 

1. The Menu bar (at the very top) shows the File, Edit, and other menus that give you access to a variety of commands, adjustments, settings, and panels.
2. The Tools panel (on the left) contains tools for creating and editing artwork. Similar tools are grouped together. You can access them by clicking and holding a tool in the Tools panel.
3. Panels (on the right) include Properties, Layers, and other panels that contain a variety of controls for working with artwork based on what you have selected. You can find a full list of panels under the Window menu. 
4. The Document window (in the middle) displays the file you’re currently working on. Multiple open documents appear as tabs in the Document window. You can zoom in and out of your document by either using the magnifying glass in the tools panel or pressing Command (macOS) or Control (Windows) and + or -. This will allow you to Zoom in and out. Holding down the Spacebar will temporarily activate the Hand tool which will allow you to move around. 

Layers Panel - Layers provide a way to manage all the items that make up your graphs. Think of layers as clear folders that contain artwork. If you reshuffle the folders, you change the stacking order of the items in your artwork. You can move items between folders and create subfolders within folders. You can also see what items belong to what specific groups, clipping masks, and clipping groups. 

1. Visibility column: turn on and off the visibility of an object, group or layer.
2. Edit column: lock or unlock an object, group, or layer. 
3. Target column: Indicates whether items are targeted for application of effects and edit attributes in the Appearance panel.
4. Selection column: Indicates whether an object is selected. 

Because of the complexity of the graphs exported from R, I would recommend having your Layers Panel open and expanded at all times. 

All elements in your document can have color. There are two aspects that can be colorized, the item's fill, and its stroke. A fill is a color, pattern, or gradient inside an object. A stroke can be the visible outline of an object, a path. You can think of it as the outline -- the color around the edge of an item. You can control the width and color of a stroke. 

Note: In order to save yourself time and frustration, be sure to exclude strokes in R Studio before exporting your graphs.

Select the Type Tool (shortcut T) from the Toolbox. Single clicking within your document will put placeholder text in your document. Copy and paste or type in your new text over this. Use the Character or Paragraph choices in the Options Bar or the Type menu.

Text can be rotated by using the Selection Tool and hovering your cursor over any of the corners until the icon turns into a rotation icon. Hold the Shift key while rotating to rotate in increments of 45 degrees. 

Grouping will allow you to combine several objects into a group so that the objects are treated as a single unit. You can then move or transform them without affecting their attributes or relative positions. For example, you might group all of your points on a scatter plot in order to click on one point and change the color of all of them at once. Or if you want to group all of your text in order to change the font of all of them at once. 

• Select the objects to be grouped or the group to be ungrouped.
• Select either Object > Group or Object > Ungroup.

Clipping Masks are a grouping of layers to which a mask is applied. The bottom-most layer, or base layer, defines the visible boundaries of the entire group. 

When you first open up your graph export from R you will notice in your Layers Panel many objects will be combined in a clipping mask or clipping group. Use the Direct Selection Tool (white arrow tool) to select these objects independently within the mask or group.