14 Most Important Tools to Learn in Adobe Illustrator for Beginners

If you are just starting out to learn Adobe Illustrator, then you will really get yourself into a lot of confusions and overwhelmed by all the tools that are presented to you. As a matter of fact, you only need to learn some important tools to get yourself ready for some illustration.

Below are the 14 most important tools that you will be using all the time:

1. You must first understand well the differences between  the Two Arrows above. One is to select and move an object, while the one is to select an anchor point of an object. You can also use them to scale and modify an object.
2. The Pen Tool is the most used tool in Adobe Illustrator. You use to draw everything.
3. Type Tool. You use this to insert text into your illustrations.
4. Primitive Object Tool, to draw basic shapes such as rectangle, circle, star, and etc.
5. The color swapping feature. Do understand that every object contains background color + stroke color. The 3 small options below is for you to have more options on how you want to feature the object, either with or without a stroke/background and gradient color (shading).
6. Stroke Menu. This is to manipulate how your stroke looks like.
7. Gradient Menu. To create color shadings.
8. Transparency Menu. To create opacity or alpha color, so that your object can be seen through.
9. Color Menu. As mentioned.
10. Path Finder Menu. This is one of my favorite tool. This is to combine or dissect two or more objects. Do experiment with this tool and you will know how useful it is.
11. Layers Menu. To put your object on above or below another object.
12. Character Menu. To modify your text.
13. Transform Menu. To see the details of an object such as the location and size.
14. Align Menu. Another favorite tool of mine. Use this to make alignment between two or more objects easier.