Lab 12 Reflection

     So far in VD I have been using Adobe Photoshop to complete my labs. In our 12th lab we were introduced to a new software called Adobe Illustrator. Illustrator is a graphics editing program where the user can design and create artwork. It can be used to do things like draw cartoon to making business logos. This lab was an introduction to Illustrator so we used the basic tools to complete this lab.
    The tools that we used in the lab were the selection tool, the pen tool, the curvature tool, and the rectangular tool. The selection tool is used to select objects. Selecting objects let you change many properties of that object and move it around. The pen tool allows you to draw a straight line using anchor points. The curvature tool simply allows you to edit smooth or corner points. The rectangular tool allows you to draw rectangles as well as other vector shapes like ellipses or polygons.
     The first task was to draw a circle with perpendicular lines in side it. First I drew

2 lines of equal length using the pen tool. One of the lines was angled using the selection tool so it was perpendicular to the other line. A circle was then drawn by using ellipse tool (this is an alternate tool selected from the rectangular tool). Using the selection tool the circle was placed on top of the perpendicular lines. This covered up the perpendicular lines so with the circle still selected I went to Object in the menu bar and went to Arrangement/Send to back. This then sent the circle to a bottom layer and the perpendicular lines could be seen again. Using selection tool again I was able to align the center of the perpendicular lines with the center of the circle.
     The next task was to make a red dotted line with a few specific properties. So first the pen tool was selected but the color of the stroke was changed to red in the properties bar. Then going to the stroke menu in the properties bar I selected the box that said dashed line and set dash to 12pt and gap to 18pt. The weight was changed to 8pt. A line was then simply drawn.
     Our next task after that was to create a square using the rectangular tool. Shift was held down to

get  a perfect square. Then using the curvature tool one of the corners was brought closer to its opposite corner. Another square was made and it was modified the same way.  The two quadrilaterals were then positioned so that the right angle of each were opposite to each other. The two shapes were grouped together by going to Object/Group object. A copy of the group was made and a 45° angled line was made and placed between the two quadrilaterals.
     The final task was to create our own design using what we leaned in this lab. I used the pen tool and ellipse tool to create my design below. As you can see it is a crown with thick strokes and a circle

at the top, which is yellow, and two orange regions with red circles, made to look like pepperoni pizza.
     These skills are important for a web designer because a web designer needs to be fluent with many different programs. Different programs do different things. Photoshop was used to edit images. You could create artwork in photoshop but illustrator is probably the more sophisticated program of the two to create art. If a web designer knows how to use illustrator with photoshop the web designer could create art work for their website in illustrator and edit photos for their websites in photoshop instead of being limited to only photoshop for everything. Being fluent in illustrator in addition to photoshop allows to use the different features illustrator has that photoshop doesn't to enhance what your doing.