Just draw a collection of objects and drag the entire collection to the symbols palette. fills, patterns, gradients, even single 1-dimensional points in space – you name it you can use. Symbols are created using any old Illustrator stuff including – shapes, lines.

OK, Symbols… Symbols are a way to save artwork that you know you will reuse over and over again (like symbols on a map.) Every new occurrence of a symbol is referred to as an instance – which means that if you change the original symbol the instance will be updated so long as it is still linked to the original (more on this later)ġ. I do know a lot about Illustrator, but not enough to be regarded as a superhero, but thanks for the sentiment! The answer is a resounding NO, but we might as well use this as an opportunity to learn about Symbols.Īlright, first off, Mike refers to me as Captain Illustrator, a title I don’t necessarily think is appropriate. What I have come up with, which doesn’t seem right, is to first break the link to the symbol, and then ungroup (“ungroup” is not available as long as we’re talking about a symbol set). I have a symbol set, and I would like to break the “set”, so that it is a bunch of individual symbol instances. O Captain Illustrator, I do beseech you to solve for me a symbol set conundrum:

Creating symbols in illustrator