How to make a Bar Chart in Illustrator

This lesson is exclusive to members

Course contents
SECTION: 4
Keyboard Shortcuts 14:06

Questions

Course info

104 lessons / 10 hours 33 quiz questions 31 projects Certificate of achievement

Overview

Hey there, I'm Dan Scott, an Adobe Certified Instructor with over 16 years of design experience under my belt, I'm part of the Adobe Expert program, and my online and in-person classes have been attended by more than a million people, just like you! Join me as we dive into the exciting world of Adobe Illustrator Advanced! In this course, you're not just leveling up in Illustrator, you're transforming into an Illustrator SuperHero!

In this course you will work on a bespoke brief designed to ignite your imagination, coupled with immersive course videos, you'll be crafting jaw-dropping graphics in no time. Throughout our journey together, you'll flex your creative muscles and construct projects that will elevate your portfolio to new heights. So, let's dive in and unleash your creativity!

You’ll learn:

  • - How to use artificial intelligence to boost your creativity in ideation. 
  • - The quick way to take hand-drawn sketches and vectorize and color them. 
  • - The building blocks needed to set you loose on a huge variety of beautiful effects and techniques.
  • - To make beautiful charts and graphs for your documents. 
  • - Color mastery to make quick color adjustments, Pantones, and blend it all together beautifully.
  • - How to master images inside of your illustrator workflow. 
  • - To harness all the secret gems that'll help you level up your typography skills. 
  • - All the tricks of the trade for drawing complex shapes easily. 
  • - To double your creativity with the Transform and Distort section. 
  • - To speed up your personal workflow to get the most out of your creative day.

Explore the full course outline for a comprehensive list of topics that will expand your Illustrator prowess beyond imagination.

If you're already comfortable navigating the basics but want to  unlock the true potential of Illustrator, then this Illustrator Advanced course is your ticket to becoming a master of Illustrator! So join me and the ranks of design superheroes and let's embark on this thrilling journey together.

Requirements:

- All you need is a copy of Adobe Illustrator, you can get a free trial from Adobe here to get started.
- A basic knowledge of Illustrator is required. I recommend watching my Illustrator Essentials course prior to embarking on this epic adventure.

Who this course is for:

- Creative adventurers who already have a basic understanding of Illustrator.
- Self-taught Illustrator enthusiasts yearning for structured guidance.
- Graduates of my Illustrator Essentials Course, hungry for more knowledge and skills.
- Visionaries who have developed their own unique Illustrator approach but crave exploration of the vast universe of tools, updates, and time-saving techniques.

What you'll learn:

- How to use Text to Vector Ai
- How to use Text to Pattern Ai
- How to use Generative Recolor
- When to use the Scissor Tool, Eraser Tool & Knife Tool
- Advanced Shape Builder Uses
- The differences between the Pathfinder Vs Shape Builder
- How to use the Join tool & Joining Path Ends
- Advanced Pen Tool Tricks
- Width Tool Advanced Techniques
- The Curvature Tool
- How to master corners with corner widget effects
- How to work with Compound Paths
- The difference between Expand & Expand Appearance
- How to create Graphic Styles
- How to make Symbols
- How to use the Smooth Tool
- Advanced use of Simplify Path
- What Live Shape Effects are for
- How to make Repeating Grids & Concentric Circles
- How to make Random Objects
- Advanced Keyboard Shortcuts in Illustrator
- How to add a Gradient on a Stroke
- How to add a Gradient in Text
- How to use the Freeform Gradient tool
- How to use Advanced Color Swatches
- How to use Global Color Swatches
- What is the difference between RGB vs CMYK color modes?
- How to proof colors
- How to use Pantone Spot Colors
- Recolor Artwork & Changing all colors at once
- How to use Blending Modes
- How to work with Images & Blending Modes
- How to make Black & White Images
- Learn Advanced Workflow Tricks
- All the Super Selection Mastery
- How to use the History Panel
- Advanced Fonts Tricks & Tips
- Use Retype to know what Font is being used
- How to put Text Inside a Letter or Shape
- How to use the Touch Type Tool
- How to add a Connected Stroke Around Multiple Shapes
- How to Offset a Stroke with Text
- How to make a Bar Chart in Illustrator
- How to make a Pie Chart in Illustrator
- Layer Power Moves
- Advanced Artboard & Pages Tricks
- How to Unlink vs Embedded Images
- How to Crop Images Rather than Mask
- How to Mask Inside Text & Multiple Shapes
- How to you use the Puppet Warp Tool
- How to use the Distort Envelope Shape & Type
- How to use the Envelope Mesh
- How to blend lines together
- How to make a Linocut Effect
- How to make 3D Gradient Lettering Blends
- How to spin text into a ring
- How to turn text into a 3D donut shape
- How to make a Duotone image effect
- How to make a Roughen Stamp Vector Effect
- How to make a Neon Sign Glow Effect
- How to use a Halftone Effect using Plugins
- Advanced Exporting Assets Tricks in Illustrator
- How to use the Dimension Tool

So what're you waiting for? Let's start the course now!
Daniel Scott

Daniel Scott

Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor

instructor

I discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.

Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.

Certificates

We’re awarding certificates for this course!

Check out the How to earn your certificate video for instructions on how to earn yours and click the available certificate levels below for more information.

Downloads & Exercise files

Transcript

Everyone in this video we are going  to take a spreadsheet data  and turn it into a good looking graph in Illustrator. It's really cool. It is uh, got the data built in  so we can go and change it. 50. We can mess with the colors, the fonts. There's a few little like quirks  to using this tool in Illustrator.

But if you wanna be doing relatively simple graphs,  it is a perfect tool. Alright, let's jump in  and look at caffeine in coffee, in bar graph style. Alright, first up I have got a blank document  and we're gonna find this charting tool here, okay? With the graphing tool. If you can't see it, go to window,  go down to toolbar and go to advanced. Okay?

You should be able to see it here. Now I'm gonna do, I said bar graph. It's called a column graph here. Bar graph seems to be going left to right,  but that's what I call a bar graph. I dunno about you and I dunno. So we're technically doing a  column graph, it doesn't really matter.

The same techniques work. Okay, but I'm gonna use this first option here. Now, drawing a graph, uh,  if you click once you get the teeniest tiniest world's  little graph, okay? So you don't want that hit cancel. You wanna click hold and drag it out  to roughly the size you need it to be. You can resize it later on.

It is a little bit tricky though once you've done  a bunch of customizations. So my advice is get it close to  where you need it to be to start with. Now, uh, to input the data,  there is a fancy input data option. Okay? This is called the uh, graph data, okay? Uh, panel.

And this is where we put the data in  to influence this graph here. But importing the data, you can do it. I find most of the time the data that I try  and bring in is corrupted  or at least is not the right format. It's not super clever of processing all sorts of data. So, um, just look at my one. So exercise files, I've got one called charts bar.

This is an Excel document. Okay? And click open and it goes, what the heck is this? And freaks out. Okay? So I find pretty much every time I do this,  there's always something wrong with that import.

So what I tend to do is either open  that exact same file in Excel, okay? On my Mac here I have something called numbers, um,  which is the same thing, okay? Or open it up in say Google Sheets, okay? Whatever one you have access to and just copy and paste it. Um, when you are copying  and pasting it, I know if I pasted all of this into Excel,  it would go, oh, that's probably the title. This is probably the um,  you know the heading for the columns.

Illustrator's not that smart. It will do column headings, okay? And all the data in those columns. So I just find copying the stuff I need. So I want the column headings and all the data in it. So I'm holding shift and just kind of clicking it all.

I'm gonna go to copy and I will type that in afterwards. The heading. So then an illustrator, okay,  just make sure I'm gonna click on this  and hit delete whatever's in the top right. Okay. And in this, sorry, top left. Okay.

And I'm just gonna paste it in. And then the magic bit is, doesn't seem to do anything. You've got to remember to click this little plus button. Okay? I said plus, but I mean tick. Okay, it says apply.

That's kind of really big for this one. Sometimes it can just, you just like nothing's working. It's because this data panel here needs the little tick done  and you're like okie dokie, whatever you need. Okay? Just remember that little applied tick. Mine is a bit big even though I totally said don't make it  too big or too small.

Resizing it. It's a good point. So like resizing it, you notice if I click on it  with my black arrow, this is not the bounding box on the  outside, it's in this like weird state  that I am this special thing called a graph. You can see my properties funnel. I am graph, I have nothing, no width or no height. It's a funny old one.

You have to use this scale tool,  which is this one over here  and I'm gonna click hold and drag. Okay? And I'm gonna hold shift so it kind  of goes down so it fits in there. It's a weird old tool, you can break it  apart later on, okay? Um, and do a lot more like regular customization. But you want to kind of keep that data connection so  that you can update the graph for next week, next month.

So it is handy to try  and do workarounds to keep this thing a graph. Now I closed down that data panel, okay? How to get back to the data panel. So with a black arrow, have it selected, okay? And over here in your properties, down the bottom here,  you might have to twirl down the text vector. There is graph data.

That's the little panel there. Okay? You can close it down, open it back up  or you can go to object. And there's a whole section of graph here. The same thing. Go to data.

Data. I'm a data guy. Cool. And what I can do now is I can say, all right,  instant coffee for the next month. I dunno. Let's say the average milligrams of caffeine has  on average gone up in the last 10 years or whatever it is.

You can change it. All I did was hit enter on my  keyboard or you can hit the tick. All right? Now to customize it  'cause all being black, no fun, I'm gonna leave that open. Let's grab the uh,  direct, actually let's do the fonts first. Okay?

So to change the fonts,  all you do is select on it with the black arrow. And over here in the fonts you can say I'm gonna put  MEO 500. Can you see they all changed? You can do them individually  by using the direct selection tool. So the a key, okay, uh, I'm going  to click on just this one here, okay? With my direct selection tool.

And now I can say you are like a bold version of that. Alright? So that's the fonts, colors, okay,  we wanna change the colors. So what I'm gonna do is same thing,  the direct selection tool. I can click on this, okay? And I can go pick colors.

Now one thing I noticed is like I picked some  library colors for this video. I was like, oh do some library colors. I just assumed that would work. It doesn't, okay? Some reason the color themes don't come through. I don't know why.

So what I had  to do was in my libraries when I found these colors on color  adobe.com, I had to right click  and say, uh, let's add this color theme to the swatches. Okay? 'cause it works. If I go to properties  and click on this one, go to fill. You can see there as a swatch, they come  through some reason not a library. This might be different on your version, it's kind of a bug.

Um, I only just discovered it. I'm not sure how long it's been around. Probably forever. Um, yeah. So you just go through,  select them, pick your colors. Alright, um, mine, we've all got strokes.

I'm gonna hold shift and click them all  and say all of you guys have a new stroke. Alright, so that's how to customize it. We've done fonts, we've done colors in terms  of the actual structure. Okay? There is a little bit of play you could do. So with the black arrow, have it selected.

Over here there's graph data. There's something called graph type. Okay? If you click on that, we're on this column type. Remember you can play around in here, have a look through,  you can play with the con widths. Add the legend across the top.

Okay? At a drop shadow, it's my favorite one. Okay? So that's a drop shadow. I'm not sure why that that counts as a drop shadow. There's limited stuff you can do without breaking it apart.

But I guess we want to try  and avoid breaking it apart as long as we can. Especially if we wanna reuse this. If you do wanna break it apart,  just make sure you make a duplicate of it. So you've got one you can go back to and change. And then what you can do is you can, uh,  it's weird if I got an object  actually with this open, nothing happens. Let's close it on the data.

Oh,  let me just quickly expand it. Okay? It's, the only thing in all  of it is Australia that won't expand. Okay? For some reason we need to ungroup it. Okay?

Um, it's gonna give you the warning saying, Hey,  by ungrouping it, you can't mess  with all the data panel or the graph type. Okay? It's gonna become just shapes  and look a little handles come back  and now we get to mess with it as we remembered before. And ungrouping, it's kind of ungrouped part of it. Often there's a lot of ungrouping to be done. If you want to really get into it  or remember our isolation mode, double click to go inside.

Alright, I'm gonna undo,  before I got back there, the one thing I want you  to remember before you leave this video is um, just  to make sure that little tick box that gets me all the time,  I'm messing around with stuff and it's not updating  or I'm missing with any of these other features. Okay? And the little tick box hasn't been hit. Okay? So there you go. Look at that.

We made a graph. It kinda looks cool and it's not hard to kind of,  I don't know, stretch this video out  because there's a lot of gotchas  and hopefully we've kind of avoided a few of those. But yeah, look at us. We made a bar graph,  a KAA column graph, Dan. Alright, that is it my friends. I will see you in the next video.
  • Powered by Marvin
  • Terms of use
  • Privacy policy
  • © Bring your Own Laptop Ltd 2025