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Symbols

2:44 with Ashley Burke

A symbol is an art object that you can create in a document and reuse multiple times. Adobe Illustrator allows you to create your own symbols for use in your projects.

Another huge time saver is if you go to Window Symbols, 0:00
we can create symbols, and these are some symbols that are already here. 0:07
I'm just gonna trash these for now. 0:11
To create a symbol all you need to do is drag the art into the symbol's panel, 0:16
and a new symbol will be created. 0:22
And this is for Flash, so that's fine. 0:26
You can ignore all this and hit Okay. 0:29
So now you can drag an instance of this symbol 0:31
into your document as many times as you need. 0:35
And because it's a movie or graphic clip, 0:39
it's saving space in your document cuz 0:44
it's not recreating this artwork any time, 0:49
it's just an instance of the same thing. 0:55
And these can be really helpful, so 1:00
if you've already created of elements that you wanna reuse over and over again, 1:01
you can create libraries like this using symbols. 1:04
If I wanted to, well I know I want a symbol here so 1:05
I'm gonna drag one down here. 1:06
Kind of line it up. 1:07
Perfect. 1:11
And if I knew that I wanted to change this symbol. 1:15
I can double click it. 1:19
And it's asking me, are you sure you want to edit the symbol definition. 1:22
I'm gonna say Okay. 1:24
And now I could. 1:26
And if I changed it here, it would change it in all the other instances. 1:31
So in this way, this is a huge time saver cuz if I just change this one, 1:33
it's going to change all of them. 1:37
So let's see. 1:39
So if I said okay, great, that's what I want. 1:46
See, it changed this one too. 1:49
All instances were changed. 1:50
I'm gonna hit Cmd+Z or Undo cuz I really do want it to say more info. 1:58
[LAUGH] And then click off. 1:59
Okay. 2:04
If I wanted to change this, but did not want to affect the other symbols, 2:18
I could click it, and then hit unlink, and that would make it back to regular art, 2:21
not a symbol. 2:24
I'm gonna hit undo. 2:24
Also if you wanted to create another instance of the same symbol and 2:28
then change it, you could select it here, drag in, and create a new one like that. 2:29
Edit it and then start using it that way. 2:30
So the symbol panel is really helpful and 2:38
can really speed up your work flow while you're working. 2:39
Remember to save. And next we're going to be organizing our 2:40
layers. 2:43

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