Adobe Illustrator Tutorial – How To Add A Basic Stroke

What Is A Stroke and How Do You Use Them?

In the Design world, Stroke means the outline of any element. Stroke is not something you will use on every element but you will use it often.

Basically, a stroke is an outline of color and can be placed on any shape, clipping mask and text element.
 

 


Stroke can do a number of visual things to your Graphic Design layout. It really is an effect that you have to experiment with yourself.

Your strokes can be really faint or really fat. I tend to keep mine more simple. To make your design as professional as possible, you don’t want viewers getting distracted by noisy and oversized strokes.

Keep them simple and play around the the options in your stroke palette. The video above will help you understand strokes if you are a beginner.
Graphic Designer Tips Stroke Video Tutorial Adobe IllustratorIn the image above there are 2 different strokes. The first one is a blue stroke outlining the black box and the second stroke is the pink one on the white text.

In Adobe Illustrator, you can find the stroke palette by going to: Window > Stroke
To add a stroke, simply drag a swatch to the stroke area or double click the stroke area and a window will pop up allowing you to choose a color yourself.