Creating new templates
Templates let you create new documents that share common settings and design elements. For example, if you need to design a series of business cards with a similar look and feel, you can create a template with the desired artboard size, view settings (such as guides), and print options. The template can also contain symbols for common design elements (such as logos) and specific sets of color swatches, brushes, and graphic styles. When a template is selected via the New from Template command, Illustrator creates a new document with identical content to the template, but leaves the original template file untouched. Templates offer a powerful alternative to creating custom startup files. While you can only create two custom startup files (one for CMYK mode and one for RGB mode), you can create an unlimited number of templates to meet your design and production needs. In addition, you can store and access templates anywhere, as opposed to startup files that must have a specific name and location.
To create a template: - Open a new or existing document.
- Customize the document in any of the following ways:
- Set up the document window as you want it to appear in new documents you create from the template. This includes the magnification level, scroll position, ruler origin, and options in the View menu.
- Draw or import any artwork you want to appear in new documents you create from the template.
- Delete any existing swatches, styles, brushes, symbols, or actions you don't want to retain.
- Create any new swatches, styles, brushes, symbols, and actions you want in the corresponding palettes. You can also import preset swatches, styles, brushes, symbols, and actions from a variety of libraries that come with Illustrator.
- Create any graph designs you want and add them to the Graph Design dialog box. You can also import preset graph designs.
- Set the desired options in the Document Setup dialog box and Print Options dialog box.
- Choose File > Save As Template.
- In the Save As dialog box, select a location for the file, enter a filename, and click Save.
Illustrator saves the file in AIT (Adobe Illustrator Template) format.
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