Adobe Illustrator Pro Tip: Creating a Shortcut

When you are working on a pattern collection in Adobe Illustrator, do you find yourself doing the same tasks over and over? A typical process for me is to pull out my final pattern swatch, select the background blank square, go to the menus and select Artboard - Fit to Selected Artwork. I do this over and over as I save patterns in a collection and colors of each pattern to upload to Spoonflower.

I have a great tip to help speed through this process that I wanted to share with you.

I never have to go to the Object menu to select Artboard - Fit to Selected Art. Instead I just hit the semicolon key. The selected art instantly has an artboard surrounding it. I can then save or export to my files.

Let me show you how to set this up. It seems like a small change but will save you tons of time in the long run!

To set up a keyboard shortcut, go to Edit - Keyboard Shortcuts

A window will open and you will see Tools in a dropdown menu.

Change it to Menu Commands.

The menu mirrors the options you see in the top bar of Illustrator.

Artboards are at the bottom of the Object Menu. Select Object to open the menu.

Scroll all the way to the bottom to see Artboards. Open the menu and find Fit To Selected Art.

Enter a key that works for you. The key can’t be used for any existing command so your first choice might not work. An error message will show in the window letting you know if the key is already in use.

I know I never use the semicolon ( ; ) in Illustrator so I entered that key.

Click OK at the bottom of the window.

Select a layer or rectangle in the Document window and hit your key choice.

The artboard will automatically move to what is selected. No more menu scrolling!

Don’t you love it? I feel like I’ve given myself a gift every time I use this tip. What other processes can you switch to a single keystroke? Let me know in the comments.

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If you found this helpful, share it with a designer friend who’s uses Illustrator. We’re all in this together! Enjoy!