Creating a wireframe - High Fidelity - Illustrator

Course contents
SECTION: 15
Cheat Sheet 5:23

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Course info

45 lessons / 4 hours

Overview

UI design skills are one of the most employable opportunities of our lifetime. In this course you’ll learn how to design a professional website in Adobe Illustrator. We’ll start right at the basics of Illustrator and work our way through to building professional UI designs. This course doesn’t cover how to code a website but focuses on the design processes that professional UI designers use when working.

This is a project based class for students who are new to the world of app & web design. I created this for people nervous about changing their careers into the world of user interface design.



We’ll build a professional portfolio website. You can use this course to build your own portfolio website (the one you’ve been putting off for years). You’ll learn how to design desktop, tablet and mobile versions of your website. You’ll learn what you’ll need to deliver at the end of a project to your client.

This course is for people serious about becoming a User Interface design professional.

Know that I’ll be around to help - if you get lost you can drop a post on the video 'Questions and Answers' below each video and I'll be sure to get back to you.

Now it’s time to upgrade your skills, get that better job, and impress your clients.


What are the requirements?

  • You'll need a copy of Adobe Illustrator CC 2017 or above. A free trial can be downloaded from Adobe.

  • No previous design skills are needed.

  • No previous Illustrator skills are needed. 

What am I going to get from this course?

  • 45 lectures 4 Hours 7 minutes of content!

  • You'll learn to design a website with in Adobe Illustrator.

  • User Interface essentials. 

  • 27 Completed files so you never fall behind. 

  • Learn how to wireframe at all levels

  • How to design for a responsive website. 

  • Downloadable exercise files & cheat sheet.

  • Forum support from me and the rest of the BYOL crew.

  • Techniques used by professional website designers.

  • Professional workflows and shortcuts.

  • A wealth of other resources and websites to help your new career path.

What is the target audience?

  • This course is for beginners. Aimed at people new to the world of web and UI design. While no previous Illustrator experience is necessary.

Course duration 4 hours

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.

Downloads & Exercise files

Transcript

In this video we're going to make this a wireframe. It's a wireframe, it also is just gray boxes and some type; nice and simple. Alright, let's go do it. So let's start building a wireframe. It's quite like our Sitemap, we've just got lots of rectangles, and some type. Let's go through some tricks and tips to come along.

But if you are pretty confident with Illustrator already... you might want to skip along this one. First of all I'm going to grab my rectangle tool. We could just use wire boxes. I like to use just a little bit of gray in the box... and a black stroke on the outside, with 1 pixel, '1px'...

which just means I'm going to draw the box. It’s going to represent where my logo goes, about there. I like that kind of off-white just to make it... easy and clear with the different elements. Now, in terms of elements, to impress people, when you are at your meeting. Call it page furniture, and keep a straight face.

it's kind of a name for these types of things, the furniture on the page. Kind of stolen from print, but impresses people. Sounds like you are in the business. The other thing to do is, try not to design this far away. I'm going to zoom down at 50% just so I could see the different artboards... but you want to be designing this thing, or at least mocking it up.

and at actual size, so it’s going to look like on an actual website... not kind of zoomed in, or zoomed out too far... because you're going to make some poor decisions in terms of design. To do it, you hit 'Command 1', or 'Control 1' on a PC... or the long way, 'View', 'Actual Size'. That's what it's going to look like on an actual website.

So I feel that logo is now a bit too tall. And you got to make sure, when you're dragging these boxes... that you do it in the columns. Don't try and do that, where it kind of straddles one of these gutters. It has to line up with the edge of one of these columns. It can't go across one of the gutters, so column to column.

And I'm going to add a bit of a type just to indicate that this--  I'm going to click ones down here, and type in 'Logo'. Font sizes... don't worry about it. 16 pixels is about 12 points in real life. So if you have to print this off, it's nice and original. I'm going to start drawing this out, I'm going to copy and paste this guy...

by selecting both of them, holding 'Shift', and then go 'Copy' and 'Paste'. That's 'Edit' 'Copy', 'Edit' 'Paste', or 'Control C', 'Control V'. And I'm going to make this my navigation. Remember, not straddling, put in the columns. And in terms of the text here, I'm just going to drag it over. It can be a little hard to drag, this text...

especially when you are zoomed out a little bit. You see they're kind of dragging the edges a little bit. The more you zoom in the easier it is to move things around. Or you can just use your arrow keys on your keyboard. If you hold 'Shift' while you drag using arrow keys on your keyboard... it kind of like does it in big chunks.

So I'm going to stick mine in the middle there. I need to change the text. I'm going to dump it across a little bit. Okay, back to 'Command 1' on my Mac, or 'Control 1' on your PC, actual size. Sometimes it's really hard to see with all these columns on as well. So there's a really nice shortcut to turn the columns on and off.

The long way is under 'View', 'Guides', 'Hide Guides'. But you can see here, this is the shortcut... 'Command ;', or 'Control ;' on a PC. I'm holding down 'Command' and just tapping ';'  I use this all the time when I'm designing... because it's like, need it lined up, need to see it. Next bit is, there's going to be a nice big, what's called a Hero box  So I'm going to grab my rectangle tool here, pick on my colors, and things...

so off-white, black around the outside, one pixel. I'm going to draw--  It's called the Hero box, that kind of big slab in the middle. sometimes it rotates, but it's that big kind of like... "Hey, this is us, and this is what we're doing. Welcome."  So that's our box, and I'm going to add a bit of type to it. What I've done previously is I've clicked once...

and typed, it types on forever. What I want is what's called the fixed width box. I'm going to delete that using delete on my keyboard. And what I'm going to do is grab my type tool again... which is this guy here, the capital 'T'. And I'm going to make sure I start on this side of my column.

I'm going to click and drag, and if you drag a box out... it means it's going to have like a fixed width. This means, it's going to kind of like bang up to the edge... and then loop back around. Now this text is far too small, I want this big. Like an inspirational, 'Come, do work with us' thing...

we're going to put there, and I'm just going to bump off the file size. So the file size, not too something quite large. A cool little shortcut is, with it all selected, like it is here. You hold down the 'Command Shift', and tap the full stop key. So, 'Control Shift' on a PC, and tap the full stop key on your keyboard. And it just makes it nice and big.

A comma makes it smaller. They're kind of next to each other, up and down. So we have something that looks like that. If you hate hyphens like I do, you can do a select it all. So I kind of triple clicked it, kind of selected it all. And you can go to your 'Paragraph' tab here and turn 'Hyphenate' off.

I'm probably going to have to triple click it again. I want my font a little smaller. It sits in here, I grab my black arrow. I've got this box just to kind of-- that's what I want. The next thing I want is going to be--  There's a 'Call To Action' button down here. Why it goes there?

I don't know. It becomes a style. You need big inspirational quotes that defines you. And then you need a button underneath. That's your 'Call To Action'... your 'Come buy this thing', or 'Contact me', or something like that.

So, there's my button, and you can see mine's kind of come... and defaulted to black, center, but no stroke on the outside. I want it to be like the rest of the buttons, so what you can do is... you can start using the eyedropper tool. so this one, the eyedropper tool, select it, and I click on this guy. And you'll see he'll steal the styling from this guy...

this navigation along the top. I'm going to click on this, grab my logo, copy and paste it. You're going to be my 'Amazing Call To Action'. I probably won't put 'Amazing' on it if I'm sending it to a client. I get very professional about it all. Nice!

So the next thing I want to do is... I want to put in some thumbnails underneath here. I'm going to put three of them... and they're going to span four columns each, to make up the twelve. But the bottom of the page is stuck down here... so I'm going to grab the Artboard tool.

I want to zoom out a little bit so I can see it all. And I'm going to make it a bit bigger, so I'm just going to grab the bottom. You can make it as long as you like, I tend to make it just really long. And then, when you're finished... drag it out rather than keypadding to move it down. Back to 'Command 1' to get to the right size.

So, rectangle tool, I'm going to have a fill of my off-white. I'm going to have-- Oops, I've got that selected, can you see? My text's selected when I was changing there. and that means that it's changed my text to have that off-white color. It's there but it's the wrong color, so we'll undo that, 'Edit', 'Undo'. I'm going to have nothing selected, black arrow.

Click on the background, done, grab my rectangle tool. I'm going to draw something else roughly about that size... it's going to span 4 columns. Now, to indicate that it's not a button kind of thing... to indicate it's an image, people put a cross through it... or they use these special image size, you can see it over there...

kind of like landscape looking thing. So what we're going to do is grab the 'Line Segment Tool'... and we're going to draw that. I could start dragging this one over, but I want to get the angle right... so it's easier to grab the black arrow, click off... make sure you've just got this guy selected.

I want to go to 'Edit' 'Copy', 'Edit' 'Paste'. And up the top here, we can go to 'Object', 'Transform', 'Reflect'. I'm going to use horizontal. Click 'OK', and it'll just kind of flipped it over. Now, I'm just kind of jam it close to it, not worried too much... because I'm going to select all three of them.

and there's one up here that says align horizontally, and vertically. I want my rectangle back up. I'm going to group them, I'm going to go to 'Object', 'Group'... and I'm going to hold down 'Alt' key... and click and drag one out, and it kind of makes a duplicate--  oh, we're dragging, so hold down 'Alt'. You'll notice that when we hold 'Alt' it just kind of moves it across.

And often it lines up, and you can force it through, while you're dragging... so holding 'Alt', you can hold 'Shift' as well. It just makes everything lined up. Straight up and down. Great! So, a lot of time I just do these crosses, people fancy it up.

You can see this graphic here, it's like an universal Ironman image. You can add that extra complexity to it. There's no real drama for it, you might like it. You can just use the line segment tool and start drawing mountains. You might have to increase the stroke width to match that. And if you're looking for the Ellipse tool...

it's just under the rectangle tool here. And you can mock up your own version of that. So I've got my images, what I want to do now is... I want to finish off a couple of things. This is where you might skip along... because it's just going to be a little bit repetitive.

and what I'll actually do is I'll probably stop... this video right now and the next video you can skip... because that is me just filling this out. And I'm going to line up the tablet version as well. It’s not going to be super exciting, but--  I'll see you in the next video, or the video after that. 
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