Hi everyone. Uh, in this video we're gonna look at  something called symbols. Okay? We are going to create symbols  and then be able to drag lots  of multiple versions of them out. It's like a big copy and paste. The nice thing about them though, is if I make an edit  to one, they all update.

They can be really useful in some situations. And some situations though, CC libraries, which is kind  of the same, might be better. So I'm gonna show you the, so I'll show you the pros  and cons between symbols  and CC libraries at the end as well, a little bonus. But first, let's jump in and get started with symbols. Alright? So open up the file called symbols  in your exercise files.

Uh, I've got a map here  and a thing that kind of looks like a location marker. And we are going to create our first symbol. So go to window and go down to your symbols, uh,  panel right down the bottom of your windows. Okay? And there's my symbols. I've got some defaults in there.

The default seems to change every now and again. These seems to be the random  ones that are in there at the moment. Um, so to make a symbol, let's select it. And the interesting thing is, is that whatever size you want  to be using the symbol, okay, you need  to drag it in there at that size. You can resize it afterwards,  but it's a pain if you have to do it every single time. So, um, for our map here, I'm gonna grab it  with my black arrow hold shift, okay?

And drag one of the corners till it's kind  of like an appropriate size. Okay? Um, also just a side note from really zoomed out,  I've got these giant anchor points. It's hard to move it, but if you click off  and then just click once  and drag it, you can get  around those giant kind of handles in the corner. So in terms of size wise,  let's say that I'm happy with this size. It's kind of an important marker  and we want it to be nice and big.

It's our location of our donut shop. Actually, it's make it, I don't know,  I've been to Grenada once. I can't remember all the good places. Let's say that that is the best place for a donut shop. So what I'm gonna do is to make it into a symbol. I've got it selected and I can hit this plus button, okay?

And it will add a symbol or I can just click hold  and drag it into the symbols library. It doesn't matter. Okay? You can give it a name. Nobody gives it a name, but I probably should. Okay?

And the export type, don't worry about, um,  this is old flash, remember? Uh, Adobe flash, rest in peace, Adobe flash. Uh, this used to be important there. I always switch it to graphic just in case, doesn't matter. Um, and dynamic and static. Old style symbols, new style symbols.

Pretty much always do a dynamic one. I'll show you the difference in a second. Don't worry about nine. Slice scaling. Again, that's something that used to happen in flash  where you could stretch things out. It's unrelated to what we're doing here in Illustrator.

Let's clear. Okay, now it's telling us here that  that compound shape that I made  before, okay, is too complex for  what the symbol needs to be. So it's gonna say, would you like to, uh, expand it  before turning into a symbol? I'm gonna say, okie dokie, thank you very much. Now what's happened, let's zoom in on this. This one here now is what's called  an instance of the symbol.

So this is the symbol and if you drag out instances of  that symbol, okay, that's what these are,  these are instances, this is the symbol. So what we've done here is basically copy and pasting. The perk for it though is that, let's say  that I've got different locations I'm gonna be working on  is I drew this really quickly. Um, if I wanna go  and change it, I can either double click the symbol in the  symbol library or I can do it here on the page. It's double click it and it says, Hey, you're about  to enter the symbol definition, okay? We're gonna go inside and update it  and it's letting you know that it'll update all of them.

You go, okay, it's fine. And this guy here, these are all grayed out. Can you see I can't use these. So just this one is available. I'm gonna zoom in a little bit. I'm gonna grab  my white arrow.

I'm gonna click on this point at the bottom  and go, okay, just to change it, I'm going to  go up the top here. Okay, can you see exit symbol editing mode? So you kind of like dive into it,  just like isolation mode came to get out of it. Either double click the background  or click that arrow that was in the corner up there. And what's happened is, can you see all his buddies updated? Okay.

So that's the perk of the symbol. You can create it once, keep it in this library,  drag it out when you're ready and you can update it  by double clicking and going inside. Not with the white arrow. Turns out black arrow. I'm gonna leave this on you, click  that off, don't show again. Okay, I'll leave it on.

'cause I'm a teacher  and I need to keep showing people that. Now I'm gonna draw something real quick  or should I draw, it's gonna make a simple  star that I want use. Okay, I'm gonna give, it's gonna fill no stroke. Good work. Okay? It's give it a feel.

This thing, I'm gonna leave it like that. Okay? I want this to be a symbol,  but I'm gonna do that classic symbol. Okay? So I'm gonna go you, you, you dynamic,  sorry, not classic. It's static symbol.

Static just means the old style ones. This is kind of a newish thing for illustrator. And the only difference is, can you see in the panel here,  this one's got a little plus  next to it and this one doesn't. So if I drag out a few instances of this,  the difference is is that, see this one here, I can grab it  with my white arrow, okay? And I can do some simple things like this one here. I can select and say fill  and I can fill it with a different color.

Okay? So it's still connected,  but I can actually do some different stuff. I can add different fills in different strokes,  but I can't change the vectors. But that can be handy. So if you ask me,  just have dynamic symbols, 'cause this one here, watch this. I can select it and I can't go and change the color, okay?

It's kind of stuck. I have to go inside of it, okay? Grab my black arrow, I can  double click it and go and change it. Okay? I'm gonna edit it. Go inside of it, you are now this other color,  they all update.

So I'm gonna go hit that little arrow in the background  or maybe double click in the background. So that's kind of the static one they all update. Whereas these you can update just little bits. Okay? You can say this has got a different color than this one. If I go in and adjust the shape, so it's double click it  to go inside, grab my white arrow, okay.

And mess around with it and then come back out of it  or double click on the background. Can you see they all update? So, uh,  the dynamic ones let you do a little bit  of changing the static ones don't. I'm gonna undo come back out. Now what you'll find is there are some simple libraries  built into Illustrator  and you can download them from the net. So have a little look, let's get a window  all the way down the bottom.

There's one called symbol libraries  and there's a bunch in here  and you might find some useful ones in here. I haven't, okay. I find them all just a bit weird like, like okay,  you know sushi, that's what I need. It's kind of cool. Like these are interesting  but not particularly useful. You know, they're just illustrations,  they're not symbols if you know what I mean.

Same with this one fashion here I looked at,  I was like maybe there's some cool footnote just the  boot arrows. I was like, oh yeah, but the arrows aren't particularly  um, exciting either. But hey, it might be useful enough you can download them  from the internet like we did earlier  with the uh, what did we do it with? Oh we did graphic styles library. Okay. And there are ways of doing it the exact same way though.

Our symbols panel here,  you can go into the little flyout menu  and you can say I would like to open a symbol library  and down the bottom say other library  and you can open one that you've downloaded. My only problem is that it's kind of been surpassed  by creative cloud libraries. I still use symbols, it definitely has its place, but  because it's kind of an older style, uh, of way  of working in Illustrator, you will find the symbol. Libraries online can be a little bit dated,  but creating your own libraries, uh,  for your particular profession can be, you know,  a symbol library can be really good. So you can save your own library. Okay?

File save and then other people can go to open other library  to access it as well and start dragging things out  and they're all connected and you get some consistency. Now a couple of things about symbols is  that sometimes you wanna break the link. You're like, I don't want you to update, okay? I want you to stay as you are. Okay? And what you can do is with it selected here,  you can either top here, you can break the link  or over here say break the link  and say it still looks the same but it's not connected.

When I update this symbol, this one's not gonna update. I'm gonna undo that. What a lot of people do is instead  of breaking the link, which is the official way,  you can just go to object and go to expand. Okay? We learned that earlier. Okay?

Uh, does the same thing. Now I wanna show you symbols  because this is the illustrated advanced course. I use it sometimes it's in this section and it's great. Okay? But often what I'll rely on now instead of symbols,  which does a lot of the same things plus a little bit extra  is the CC libraries. So I've got library,  I've created one called Illustrator Advanced.

What I can do is I'm gonna break the link to this one, okay? And I'm gonna forget about Simples panel, okay? And I'm going to drag this in  and it does the same thing kind of. Okay? So I've got this graphic in this library. The difference is, well I can still bring it out.

Okay? I can drag it out, drag it out, I can go into it  so I can double click it,  go into it opens up in a new document, which is kind  of different from symbols. And if I change this one, okay, I'm not sure what I'm doing. Save it and close it. Can you see it's still updated? Okay.

So this is my little instance of this symbol in my library. So you still get those symbol benefits. The nice thing about libraries though is they're a lot  easier to share. I can just hit share and invite people to the library. And the big difference is once I've shared it with them,  okay, we're accessing the same library. Okay?

Whereas if I save my symbol library, okay, if I go  to symbols and I file, save the one that I've made  and send it to somebody, it's kind  of like this thing on its own. Okay? It's a file that you share with them. So we have two versions of that symbol library. If they update it, I don't  Get to to see their updates unless they send me the file  back and I delete the one I've got and start using it. Whereas this, okay, I share the library.

Okay? And we're both working from the same one. So if I'm working with some of the other designers here at  Bring your laptop, okay, they can make changes to it  or I can give them view only access  so they can't change anything. But I can, I can go through and update the symbol  and it will change on their computer as well. So symbols are good. I rely a lot more on CC Libraries,  but sometimes symbols are just great  to find an existing set of symbols.

There's just some situations  where some companies can't use CC Libraries. I was working for the local government, okay? They're urban planners. They're producing a lot of symbols  for their road marking and all sorts of topographical maps. And it kind of blew my mind. But they needed help building out their symbols library.

And that worked perfect for them. They were able to share them. They  had like a library of them. There you go. That is the overview  of symbols in Illustrator. Did it annoy everybody that my circles not quite in the  middle of their, I just drew a quickly, oh,  should have done that first.

Anyway, that is it. That is symbol's over. I will see you in the next video.