How to Draw a Simple State Map in Adobe Illustrator CC

hi everyone Carl gute here I'm going to show you how to draw a map in adobe illustrator CC first I'm going to place a map that I downloaded off the internet to use as reference I'm going to go to the word file and say place and navigate to my desktop and I have a map of Oregon here I'm going to draw a box that is roughly the size of the map that I want to draw I can resize it later so now that I have my map place I'm going to come up to the word window and I'm going to go to layers or I can come over to this palette on the right here and i can choose layers off the layers icon I want to make layers on my maps so that I can organize my information logically so I'm going to create about three or four different layers here the very bottom layer is where my reference map is and if I double click on this layer again I get an information box that would allow me to dim the image so it mimics having tracing paper over the top of the image so it makes it a little bit easier to see what you're drawing so I'm going to click dim images to 50% and I'm going to say okay I can also name that layer just by double clicking on it and calling it base map on the next layer I'm going to be putting my water on the next lap on the next layer I'm going to be putting my land on the layer after that I'm going to be putting my roads and such and I'll add another layer above that and I'm going to put labels whoops labels like city labels and I'm going to make sure I'm clicked on that layer when I'm drawing that element so I'm going to start with the land I'm going to click on the land layer close that window and I'm going to zoom in by hitting command plus + or I can come over to this microphone and I can drag click and drag back and forth to zoom in on the area that I want I'm going to simplify the coastline up a little bit so that we're not spending all this time watching me draw this map but you'll get the idea I'm going to click on the pen tool and make sure that there's no fill I'm going to just have a line here that line can be any color I want so long as I can see it Oregon is a different color than the surrounding States and I want to leave it that way so I'm going to draw Oregon as its own shape its own polygon so I can fill it with a color all of the other states I'm going to make all the same color so I'm going to draw one big shape for those states and you'll see what I mean now before I start drawing Morgan I want to go off to the side here show you a little bit how do use the pen tool the pen tool is tricky you want to make sure again that there's no fill because if there's a fill as you draw the the shape is going to keep filling in it'll cover up the map that you're drawing from as using as reference so I'm going to get my pen tool and there are a couple of tricks about drawing with a pen tool very simply you want to make sure that you click and you drag and click and drag and Majan this is a little a detail of a coastline click and drag that I'm tracing over clicking and dragging clicking and dragging clicking and dragging and so on what you don't want to do when you're clicking and dragging is you won't want to cross I call it cross swords cross the adjustment handles and this is an adjustment handle when if I let go of this you'll see that there is the actual line that's going to print but this green thing with the little balls on either end is not going to print that is just an adjustment handle and it's for changing the shape of the curve later and manipulating it so you can get it more precise it doesn't have to be precise the first time you draw it so I don't have to come back to this point to start my my curve continued this is already selected that point is ready for receiving the next point so I'm going to click over here and drag do you see the adjustment handle coming out of this point it is now crossing the other adjustment handled you see it's making an X they're kind of like crossing swords if you keep doing that it's going to cause these mis shapes in your droplet in your line so if I keep doing it this way and this way and this way you'll start getting these missions because you're drawing way too far you're exaggerating that just manhandle way too far so when you're drawing again you want to keep especially with a short little coastline you want to keep those adjustment handles away from each other so now I'm going to click and as if I start to get close to that it's going to create a bump in my line so I'm going to just stay away and same with this one I'm just going to stay away and then a curve and stay away and you're going to want to pull in the direction you're kind of going with that adjustment handle make sure that the line behind it is doing what you want it to do and if it's not you can see it's forming it right there don't let go just keep sort of getting that shape about where you and then let go handles away from each other so now let's go over to Oregon and I'm going to go ahead and start in the corner here and I'm going to just draw very I'm going to simplify this coastline which you might want to do is go really in very close and draw every detail it depends on what the map is going to be used for in what size it's going to be used if it's going to be very large you want to make sure that you get a lot of detail in that coastline if it's not you can be a little more vague about the coastline and not show every single Inlet so you can see here that I am clicking and dragging and clicking and dragging there is a little Inlet there so I'm going to just come off to the side there click and drag see how short those adjustment handles are and continue up there's a little bump right there I'm just going to click click no pulling and come up to the beginning of the Columbia River there and I'm going to go along the coastline here and now I'm going to just draw along the Columbia River there's Portland coming all the way along like this around this corner dragging with two fingers on my pad up to to move the map up you can also hold the spacebar down to move the hand up move the map up you get a hand you can continue with your drawing now we're back to straight-line lines and I'm going to click along here and finish that off there so if i zoom out by going command - - you can see there's Oregon and that looks fine let's fill this in with a color I'm going to go ahead and click on the fill box here and put the line color box in the background you see that says stroke when I click on this it says fill whatever's in the foreground is what's going to happen and I'm going to go ahead and just click a color and now that's green so here I'm going to go ahead and now I'm going to double check and make sure I'm on the right layer do you know what I'm going to double click on this land and I'm going to call this Oregon and then under I'm going to click on the layer below it I'm going to create a new layer and I'm going to call it other States why not just get down on those layers so now I'm going to be on the other States layer and I can turn a little organ on and off and I'm going to turn it off for now and click make sure I'm still on the other states because I'll be drawing there and I'm going to get my pen tool and zoom in a little bit and draw those other states very simply now watch what I'm about to do Here I am NOT going to redraw this coastline the map of Oregon is going to be on layer above what I'm drawing now so whatever I do now is to be covered by the map of Oregon so I'm just going to ignore that complete coastline there do you see what's happening I am drawing with a fill on a turned on and that's what's why I say don't draw with the fill so I'm going to hit the Escape key and get out of that that pen tool and I'm going to click on no fill so I get back and then I'm going to go back and pick up that point and go ahead and continue this Oregon coast now again I'm being very simple in vague here I'm going to come to this corner hold the hold the spacebar down and drag this down come back here and come over here and so now I have drawn those other states and I can click on the swatch tools again swatch colors and let's just pick the color randomly right now we'll make that orange and now watch what happens when I come to my layers palette and I turn Oregon back on it covers up that little messy jog I did under here so what you can always use the polygon above what you're drawing to cover up the map there's no need to redraw borders if they're going to be behind another shape I'm going to turn off those two layers and I'm going to go to my roads layer and I'm going to draw some roads just to give you an idea of how to draw them and it is drawn just like I'm making the mistake of drawing again with the fill color on so I'm just going to come over here and hit no fill without even leaving the pen tool and I'm just going to draw Route five coming down I'm going to be very general about this the important thing is that you would you would be spending the time to draw this really well and I am just showing you and generally how to do this clicking and dragging all the way down and now I'm going to hit the escape tool and get out of that pen tool so now I have my two roads and those are on the roads layer if you look carefully here you can see there's the image of the elements that are on that layer this circle onto the circle off to the right of the layer just is a selection bar you'll select everything that's on that layer so I click that circle it'll select both roads I'm going to put click on the shapes tool and you can see there are different things you can do I'm on the ellipse tool and I'm going to if I hold down the option shift key I can draw out from the center if you don't hold down the option key in just the shift key it'll draw from the side if you don't hold down either it'll just draw it'll be hard to conform that to a circle but so I'm holding down option shift drawing up in the center and you can see I could have a line fill but no I have a lion color but no fill and I don't really need a line on this I just wanted it to be a fill so what I'm going to do is I can just drag that color into the fill color and then I can just click leave the line color in front and say no no line and now I just have a circle so I'm going to hold down the option key and hover over the circle and if I click and drag it actually will duplicate that circle but first out before I do that I want to shrink it down hold the shift key down and just drag to the side and drag it diagonally and now I'm going to hold the option key down and duplicate a few of these and I'm going to just spread them around here we'll put one at Redmond so now we have all of those cities one thing I neglected to do is to lock my base map do you see when you see these blue lines coming through that's an X that means that the background map is selected and I don't want to accidentally move it I forgot to lock it so I'm going to click the lock space right here next to the eyeball and I can always turn off that eyeball to see how my map is looking too so I'm going to go back to the roads and I'm going to click on these roads and I'm going to make them or I could just select in this selection thing and I'm going to make them red so I'm going to come up to the swatches palette and I'm going to make sure that I can also switch between line and and fill here and here it actually has the line in the foreground so I'm going to click a red color for that now now you'll see this and when I turn those when I change the roads to red it actually turned the outline to all of my cities red also because they were on that layer and when I selected the circle to the right of the layer here it selected everything on that layer so I mistakenly drew my circles on that layer and I want them to be on the same layer as my label so I'm going to do command-z or control-z on the PC to undo that that I'm going to deselect these roads just by clicking on the background select I want to select all of the dots that I drew here I don't want to hold this shift I could hold the shift key down and go through and collect and select them all but I'm going to I know that they're the only thing I have that is filled in black I have a black line here but these are the only things that are filled in black so I can go select same fill color and we'll select all of those dots now that those dots are selected you see that there's a blue square next to the circle on that layer that blue square indicates what layer those dots are on and to move them to a new layer all I have to do is click on that circle click on that Square and drag it up to the new layer so now I know that my city dots are not on my roads and I can just hide those dots by turning them off go back to my roads layer and click on the select on that layer or I could hold the shift key down and select the two roads and now I'll go back and I'm going to color them red and that's great go back to my layers I'm going to lock the roads layer go to the labels layer and turn that back on and so I'm going to go ahead and add some type to this I'm going to click on the T for type and I'm going to click here and I'm going to type in Portland Portland now that's a big typeface so I'm going to double click on that and I'm going to it myriad Pro is the font that it is and that's fine you can make it whatever font you want so I'm going to go ahead and reduce that down to about eight-point type and I'm going to this is an extra dot remember I duplicated it just to resize it and I'm going to just delete that so I'm going to go ahead and slide Portland right under there anything you drag holding down the shift key in Adobe Illustrator will duplicate it and I'm going to double click on this and I'm going to call it Salem and I'm going to reduce this smaller because it's a smaller town so I'll make this six point and that is starting to get very small for a map so you can always make sure that the map is larger to save the right size when you draw it or you can resize it later you know it's hard for me it's hard to see the that I have something selected because it's the color yellow so if I want to change the color of the label of the layer I just double click on it go to the color thing and make it you know brown or brick how about brick red and now when I use I select it you can see it a lot better so there I have my cities and I want to make sure they're very carefully positioned you know I'm going to bump it up against there and hit two spaces over so they're all exactly the same you want your map to look very clean and professional I'm going to turn on my ugly color to Oregon and other states just so we can see and you can see I'm starting to get a map and what I'm going to do now is go get some better colors and I'm going to click on the swatches palette and pop open if I go in this corner to thing I can click on that and go down to open swatch libraries and there's something there that's called earth tones which I think is probably a good color for maps Oh tan color and I'm going to click on Oregon and I'm going to make that a lighter version of that color so already that looks better and all I need to do to make the ocean happen is to go to the layers palette and come back and click on the water and since they'll remember the thing in the things in the foreground will block things in the background so all I need to do is click on the shapes tool get a rectangle and draw a box and I then have to just come here to the layers and color that box a color so you can see this is beginning to look like a map I'm missing some borders right now so I'm going to go ahead and go back to my layers and I'm going to turn off the other States and I'm going to actually turn off the water too because that's just in the way and I'm going to zoom in and we'll just knock in a couple of borders here and click on the pen tool again and make sure there's no fill make sure I'm on the other States layer and that it is visible if you get the pen if you get the pencil with a with a circle the line through it meaning you can you can draw anything it's either going to be because the layer is turned off as far as the eyeball is concerned or there's a lock on it so I'm going to turn the layer back on and the problem with that is I want to be able to draw those borders but this polygon covers that so one thing I can do is I can create a new layer above that and call it borders or I can click on the polygons that make up the other states and I can go up to object and say hide selection or command 3 and so it's it's not it's just hiding temporarily while I go ahead and do with the work I need to do so I'm going to come back here and grab the pen tool click on the border and I'm just going to make that one border hit the escape key whereas Idaho down here we're going to just go here and I should be cry I will curve that I'm going to click a little bit and drag it and there's the other border and I'm going to just draw the border between California Nevada and now I have my borders so now I can go back up to object and say show all and I'll get my states back and there are my borders I don't like those black lines I want them to be white so I'm going to select the border and I'm going to say select same stroke color and it'll select all of the lines so now I can just put the line in the foreground and select white and now those borders look a little bit less harsh as those black borders I'm going to go ahead and write in the name of the Pacific Ocean and I'm going to make that the blue color so again again take this type size drag it hold the shift key and drag it over here I'm going to type in Pacific Ocean now what I'm going to do is come down here and turn on my water I could make that white and actually make it a little bit of a tint of the color of the water just by selecting this and hitting command a select all so I click on the type and I command or control a and I go ahead and I make that white so I say swatches fill white and it's completely white but if I just come up to it and add a little opacity to it up here it will let some of that color of the background show through so it looks a little bit more elegant put in a mileage scale I'm going to click on the layers palette I'm going to hide the other States layer and I'm going to click on the labels layer so that I draw on the labels layer and I'm going to come down here and I'm going to go to my mileage scale and I'm going to draw right over this mileage scale because I'll draw it right next to it you'll see what I'm doing I'm going to just get my line tool here line segment tool click on that hold the shift key down so it stays straight across and I'm going to draw that line right there I'm going to come up here and make it a little bit fatter probably two point and I'm going to click on my swatches palette and I'm going to make sure line is in the foreground and I'm going to make it black and now I'm going to zoom in on this command plus plus actually I could just put the magnifying glass right over that and click and drag and zoom right in there and now I'm going to put two other lines on this one right there and I'm going to make it smaller I'm going to make it a half a point and I'm going to drag this click and drag this right across to the other side and there's my mileage scale command - - I can go back and now I'm going to go ahead and select these three elements by clicking on them like this and I'm going to hit command G which groups them and I can move this off to the side now and now I'm going to go back to my layers palette and turn it on and turn on the land and there is my little mileage scale go command - - zoom out a little bit pick up this type here and I can just right right in here 50 miles and you can draw your mileage scale however you like it's fun to go looking around and see what other people do and now what I need to do is label the states so I'm going to click and drag here and I'm going to say put all caps and say Washington and I think I'll make Oregon a little bit bolder type click on that and come up here and I'm going to say bold maybe I'll even make it bigger you want to make sure you save your map before you had to 5 come too far if this were to crash I'd be very angry I'd be very upset at this crash I'm going to hit command s and I'm going to call this Oregon map and hit save and ok and then I am now going to put I want to put some interstate symbols on these roads and if I were drawing a road I would there are a couple of ways to do this I want you to know that you can draw type along a road I'm going to show you how to do that I'm going to drag this black into that line there and get a black line I'm going to get my pen tool if you get a crosshairs for your pen tool it's because the shift key it caps it's because the caps lock key is on I'm going to draw a shape here like this there's a line now if I hold the type tool down you'll see all these different things you can do on a tight with your type I'm going to type on a path so if you had roads and you wanted to draw along a road you could do that draw another line next to the road and click on it and then just say Road Road named Road name and these handles will allow you to to push back and forth on them this one here will allow you to flip that name around and go back and forth that way and again you can flip it back over so that's what that does but what we're not we're going to do is different we're going to put an interstate symbol there so I'm going to go to my window symbols library and if I click on the symbols I can go down to open symbols library and there's a Maps library right there and here all these really great things I'm going to go ahead and drag out this interstate symbol and close this and to edit this interstate symbol you need to double click on it so and if you if you have this repeated in a couple of places it'll change both versions because it's a symbol come in on this double click on this and it's saying you're about to edit a symbol it'll edit all versus this symbol and I'm going to say okay I don't really like the black line so I'm going to make them white and now I'm going to uh no to get out of this editing mode I just have to double click off to the side and now I'm back into this editing mode and I'm going to go ahead and grab this little type here Salem and I'm going to the reason it went behind this symbol is because it was drawn before the symbol was placed there so it is behind the symbol whenever you draw something that's in above technically above the thing that you do before it I'm going to go ahead and control click or right click and say arrangement bring this to front and now it's in front and I can also so I can go ahead and type in 84 here and I think that's a little small actually so I'm going to go ahead and make that bold and I'll think it maybe we'll just for now make it about a point and I can I think it also needs to be white so go here and make that white and now that I've done that I can come over here and drag this click and drag this holding the option key down and just click a5 and then I can Center that into that space so one last thing I have to do to clean up this map is to I want to I want to clip all of this stuff around the edges first I'm going to turn off the base map which I no longer need but you can see that things don't line up here on the bottom this look this red line road is sticking out a little bit it's a little messy you can see that the there's a black line I can take that black line off the watercolor but if I want to clip the edges and make it perfectly square I need to do what's called a clipping mask the problem with making a clipping mask is that if I make this if I'm put a clipping mask over this and clip everything it's going to obliterate all of the layers that I did it will still look just like the mat but I will no longer have things on layers so what I like to do is is create a copy of the mat that retains the layering as a sort of a off to the side as a backup so I'm going to go ahead and duplicate this map and I'm going to open up all the layers and I'm going to make sure nothing is locked and you can see I had a locked roads layer there and you want to also make sure that this is up here it says unwell there's nothing is locked here there's no lock with a checkmark so I'm going to hit command + + and I'm going to go ahead and draw a selection box around everything and I know everything will get selected because nothing's locked I'm going to hold the option key down and I'm going to just draw a copy of this drag a copy of this map off to the side and now that's a backup map and all of this layers that you see here will be retained and now I'm going to go ahead and create my map my clipping mask I'm going to go I need those layers open I need to be on the very top layer to do this matter of fact I can create a new layer and I can call this clipping mask it doesn't really matter because it's going to obliterate all of this and then I'm going to grab a box tool and draw a box right over the top of this and it doesn't matter what color it is but if i zoom in you can see that this is a box that is a little bit smaller than my my map and and if I make it a different color you can see it a little bit better so you can see it's a little bit smaller than my map I've exaggerated a little bit now I'm going to go ahead and select everything again and I'm going to right click over the top of it I'm going to say make clipping mask and it trims off all that stuff on the edges if you need to reduce or enlarge your map you can click on the map and then click on this free transform tool and then hold the shift key down and you can shrink or enlarge that map however you like you may need to adjust your font sizes a little bit but that that's about how that's how you do that so there you have it everybody a map of Oregon take care

Channel: Karl Gude

Views: 27,441

Rating: 4.9717317 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: U5h3PNkEq7M

Length: 24min 14sec (1454 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 22 2016