Unit 2 | Vector Documents & Workspace

Introduction

Your first formal look at Adobe Illustrator: why it’s built around vector paths instead of pixels, how the interface is organized, how to set up a real print document with multiple artboards, and the tools that make precise work possible.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:

Understand the difference between raster and vector graphics
Navigate the Illustrator interface confidently
Set up a multi-artboard document with the correct size, bleed, and units
Use rulers, guides, grids, and view modes for precise work

Calendar of Events for This Unit

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
9/21	9/22	9/23	9/24	9/25
PD	S \| 1	S \| 1	F \| 2.1	F \| 2.1
9/24: Unit 2 - should include ungraded Pre-Test; 9/25: Interim grades open in Infinite Campus (MP1)
9/28	9/29	9/30	10/1	10/2
F \| 2.2	F \| 2.2	F \| 2.3	F \| 2.3	F \| 2.4
10/1: Back to School Night; 10/2: Interim grades close 4:00pm (MP1)
10/5	10/6	10/7	10/8	10/9
F \| 2.4	S \| 2	S \| 2	S \| 2	S \| 2
10/6: Interim Reports Available
10/12	10/13	10/14	10/15	10/16
S \| 2	F \| 3.1	F \| 3.1	F \| 3.2	PD
10/15: Choice Open House; 10/15: By 10/15: PreTest; 10/15: Fall Leadership - 10/15 (unconfirmed -- Delaware DECA hasn't posted 2026-27 date)

Lessons

2.1 – GMetrix Setup & ACP Pre-Test. Create your account, join the class, take the pre-assessment
2.2 – Pixels vs. Paths. Raster vs. vector, rasterizing, resizing
2.3 – The Illustrator Interface & Your First Document. Application bar, panels, toolbar, control panel, New Document dialog, artboards, bleed/trim/live area
2.4 – Design Aids: Rulers, Guides, Grids & Views. Smart Guides, Outline/Pixel Preview/Presentation Mode
S2 – Artboard Sampler. Summative project

Unit Vocabulary

Pixel: Short for “picture element”. The smallest unit of a raster image, a single colored square in a fixed grid.
Raster: An image made of a fixed grid of pixels. Also called a bitmap. Photographs are raster images. Enlarging a raster image beyond its original resolution makes it look blocky or blurry, since Illustrator has to guess what color goes in the new, larger pixels.
Bitmap: Another name for a raster image. A map of individually colored bits (pixels).
Vector: A graphic built from mathematical paths (lines and curves) rather than a fixed pixel grid. Vector art can be scaled to any size, a business card or a billboard, with no loss of quality, which is why Illustrator, a vector-based program, is the standard tool for logos and icons.
Path: A line or curve made of anchor points connected by segments. The mathematical building block of every vector shape.
Object: A general term for anything you’ve placed or drawn on the artboard. A path, a group of paths, a placed image, text, and so on.
Rasterizing: Converting a vector object into a fixed grid of pixels. This is a one-way trip. Once rasterized, an object can no longer be edited as clean, scalable paths.
Rendering: The general process of a program calculating and displaying (or exporting) an image, whether that image started as vector or raster data.
Resizing: Changing an object’s dimensions. Vector objects resize with zero quality loss; raster objects lose quality when resized larger than their original pixel dimensions (a process called upsampling).
Application Bar: The bar running across the top of the Illustrator window, holding the workspace switcher, search field, and window-arrangement controls.
Control Panel: The context-sensitive options bar (also called the Properties panel in current Illustrator) that changes to show relevant controls for whatever tool or object is currently selected.
Panels: Dockable, collapsible windows (Layers, Swatches, Color, Align, and many more) that expose a tool’s or feature’s full set of options. Panels can be docked into the side column, floated freely, grouped together as tabs, or closed when not needed.
Toolbars: The column of tool icons (Selection, Pen, Shape tools, and more) along the side of the window. A small triangle on a tool’s icon means it’s hiding a flyout group of related tools.
Contextual Task Bar: A small, floating toolbar that appears near your current selection, surfacing the handful of actions most likely to be useful right now. The same idea as the Control Panel, but attached to your selection instead of fixed at the top of the screen.
Artboards: The page(s)/canvas(es) within a single Illustrator document. One file can hold multiple artboards. For example, the front and back of a business card, or a whole set of related layouts. And only what’s inside an artboard’s bounds prints or exports.
Pasteboard: The gray work area surrounding your artboards. You can leave art there as scratch space or a holding area, but nothing on the pasteboard ever prints or exports.
Bleed: Extra artwork extended past an artboard’s trim edge, so that no thin white sliver appears along the edge of a printed piece if the physical cutting shifts slightly during production.
Trim: The actual, final physical edge of a printed piece. Matches the artboard’s set size.
Live Area: The safe zone kept clear of the trim edge for text and other important content, protecting it from being cut off if the trim shifts slightly.
Outline (view mode): A view mode that displays only the wireframe of every path on the artboard. No fills or strokes. Useful for finding and selecting an object hidden behind another.
Pixel Preview: A view mode that previews how vector artwork will look once rasterized to a screen’s pixel grid. Useful when a design is headed for web or screen output.
Presentation Mode: A fullscreen, no-interface slideshow of a document’s artboards in order. Useful for presenting work to a client without any Illustrator interface visible.