1. Creating and Managing Documents

The artwork featured throughout this chapter comes from Julie Felton (iStockphoto; username: jfelton).

An artist can have a collection of the best paints and brushes, but those tools aren’t worth much unless the artist has a canvas to paint on. Likewise, all the powerful tools and functions in Adobe Illustrator are meaningless until you have a document open on your screen. In the traditional sense, you can choose different types of paper to paint or draw on, all of which affect the overall appearance of the final result. With Illustrator, the settings you specify for your document also control your final result.