Discover how to create a visual representation of data using pie graphs in Adobe Illustrator. This guide will walk you through the process of constructing a pie chart, from setting up your workspace to inputting data and applying desired aesthetics.
Key Insights
- The tutorial begins by setting up the workspace: creating a new file, selecting the letter template, and changing units of measurement from points to inches. The image's height is set at half a sheet of paper, or 5.5 inches.
- Next, a background is added to the artboard using the rectangle tool and a color or pattern from the swatches. To add complexity without overpowering the image, the opacity of the background is reduced to 20%.
- Finally, the pie graph is created on a new layer. Data is manually input into the data box to form the chart. Changes to the graph's data and type can be made by right-clicking and selecting the appropriate option.
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In this video we'll be working on our next project, our pie graphs. Let's start by creating a new file, going to file, new, and from our templates let's select from the print templates.
We'll then select our letter template and let's give it a new name titling this pie graphs. From here we'll change our units of measurement from points to inches and let's divide the height since for this image it will be half a sheet of paper. We'll do 11 slash 2 to divide it by 2 and when we click outside we'll see that the height is 5.5 inches.
We're now ready to create. First let's start by saving our work. We'll go to file, save, and we can save this as pie graphs making sure it's an illustrator file and we'll click save and okay.
Next let's zoom out using CTRL MINUS (-) and observe our artboard. The first thing we want to do here is add our background to give our entire image a little more complexity. To do this let's start with layer one and rename it background and hit ENTER.
We'll then create a background using the rectangle tool and dragging from one intersect to the other. From here we can add our own color. We'll go to our color panel and we can select any color we'd prefer.
In addition we can also select a pattern. To do this we'll go to our properties panel and selecting to the left of fill we'll click on the color giving us a drop down of our swatches. Swatches are colors that can be used again and again and are saved here as a reference.
In this case we want to go to our patterns so we'll click the library for our swatches below on the left hand side and navigate to patterns and for this let's use a decorative pattern choosing from our decorative legacy patterns. We'll then see that we have a panel with all of our patterns here and as we click on them we'll see that our background changes. In addition if we want to go to our next swatch library we'll click the right arrow and we can select swatches from here of patterns.
For instance this has a darker orange flame with a lighter yellow flame and feel free to pick out whatever pattern you'd prefer. In this case I like the look of this one it's relatively simple so I'm going to stick with this pattern. I'll then close the pattern panel and this is a little too strong of an image so let's drop down the opacity from 100% by double clicking and I'll start with 20 and hit ENTER.
I like the look of this it gives it a little more complexity so it's not just a white background however at the same time it's relatively subtle. Next let's begin working on our pie graph. To do this we'll want to start a new layer and we'll double click and rename this layer pie graph and hit ENTER.
From here we can create our pie graph. If we go to the left hand side to our toolbar we'll see that we may see the pie graph tool or any of the following tools on top. Click and hold with the left mouse button to access the gallery and we'll access the pie graph tool.
From here we can simply click and create our graph. We'll start by designating the width and height and for this graph I'll type in 3 for the width and 3 for the height and we'll click ok and from here we have our data box and this is where we'll enter the data for our chart. So let's begin by entering a few columns of data.
First we'll click the first box and we'll type in 10. We'll click the second box and type in 30 and for a third box let's type in 40. To commit these to our pie chart we'll then click on the check mark to apply and here we go.
We have our graph with each of the designated slices corresponding to the data we've given it. Let's close our box here for our data and let's move this pie chart up and to the left. We'll hit v on the keyboard for our selection tool and drag it over to the left hand side.
If we want to make changes to our graph we can do so by right clicking and we can change the type by selecting type and here we'll see we have many different options for our graph. For now we're going to stick to a pie graph and we'll click ok. In addition with this tool we can also change the data by right clicking and selecting data.
In this instance let's actually change our data from 10 to 30, 30 to 50, and we'll leave 40 as is. We'll then click apply and we can see our changes. Let's now close out our data box and save our work using CTRL S on the keyboard to save.
In the next video we'll continue working with our pie graph. See you there!