Before You Begin

Before you start creating in Illustrator, there are some preference you may want to set to

ensure success with all you create. Setting your preferences before you open any documents will ensure that all the documents you create will have the same preferences. Many of the preferences you’ll set are specific to each document, but there’s no way to distinguish them from those that are globally applied to the application. The full discussion about customizing Illustrator can be found in the first chapter of the compendium, Preferences and Workspaces, but this first section will walk you through the basic customizations that you will likely want to set.

General

Let’s open the Preferences menu. On a Mac, use the Illustrator CC menu; on a PC go to Edit > Preferences. The Preferences shortcut is ⌘-K/Ctrl-K.

Set the Keyboard Incerement value to a low increment. I would use 1 point or 1 mm. Currently the document is in points as a unit of measure so each time you nudge an object with the keyboard arrows, it will advance in this increment. You can change the units later if points is not what you prefer.

Show The Home Screen When No Documents Are Open

The Home screen appears when this setting is checked, and displays your recent documents and new document presets. This screen is not necessary since you get another screen that looks nearly the same once you create a new document.

Selection & Anchor Display

A few setting here will make your creations easier to manage, select, move, and edit. Many of the boxes are checked by default, which is good as they are helpful.

Anchor Points, Handle, and Bounding Box Display

Adjusting this value makes the anchor points, handles, and points larger based on the sliding scale. Slide the slider to make the points larger and find a size that works for you.

Show Handles When Multiple Anchors Are Selected

If you are using curves, then you will be working with pull handles. By default, the handles only show on the point you have selected. Check this box and all the points on your selected object will show handles.

Type

Size/Leading

Since I am a huge fan of shortcuts, I change these three settings from their defaults. I set the Size/Leading keyboard shortcuts to adjust in 1 pt increments when using the Shift+⌘+. (Mac) / Shift+Ctrl+. (PC) to increase the type size and Shift+⌘+,/Shift+Ctrl+, to decrease type size.

Tracking

Here I set the Tracking defaults to adjust in 10/1000 em, using ⎇+→ /Alt+→ and ⎇+← /Alt+← to increase and decrease the kerning and tracking.

Baseline Shift

I change the defaults of 2 pt to 1 pt increments when using the ⎇+↑ /Alt+↑ and 
⎇+↓ /Alt+↓ to increase and decrease the baseline shift.

Units

General

This is used for measuring the size and position of objects, the size of the artboard, and the size of the rulers. Choose whichever unit of measurement you’re most comfortable using.

Stroke, Type

Points is the standard unit of measure for specifying the stroke weight and type size.

User Interface

Brightness

Adjust the color of the panels and background to be dark, medium dark, medium light, or light. When you load Illustrator, the default is a dark background.

UI Scaling

This is a unique feature that I have not seen before and I like it. This allows you to scale the entire Illustrator interface, including tools, cursors, and menu fonts from small to large.

GPU Performance

To better control zooming to specific objects, I recommend disabling Animated Zoom. I prefer to use the Zoom tool in a precise way by clicking and dragging over the object I want to zoom in on rather than sliding the Zoom tool over the object to control the zoom size.