A vector editor inside your browser to practice Illustrator’s tools: pen, nodes, handles, shapes and Pathfinder. Trace each silhouette with as few nodes as possible.
Pathfinder creates new shapes by combining overlapping ones, like paper cut-outs. Instead of drawing a complicated form by hand, you build it from rectangles and circles and let the tool calculate the exact outline. In Illustrator it lives in Window → Pathfinder.
Merges every selected shape into one single shape. The overlapping lines disappear and only the outer outline remains.
Use it for: Building complex silhouettes from simple pieces: a cloud from circles, a cartoon character, a bold logotype.
Uses the front shape like a cookie cutter: it removes that area from the shape behind it, and the front shape disappears.
Use it for: Holes and cut-outs: the hole of a donut, a moon crescent, a bite out of an apple, negative space in icons.
Keeps only the area where the shapes overlap. Everything outside that shared area is removed.
Use it for: Shapes that are hard to draw by hand: a leaf from two circles, lens shapes, rounded corners on a single side.
The opposite of Intersect: keeps everything except the overlapping area, which becomes a hole.
Use it for: Checkerboard and interlocking patterns, optical-art effects, logos where two letters cross.
Illustrator’s panel has two rows. On top are the shape modes (the four in this workshop). Below are six more pathfinders:
Tip: hold Alt/Option when you press a shape mode and Illustrator makes a live compound shape you can keep editing. When it’s ready, press Expand. The Shape Builder tool (Shift + M) does the same by dragging across areas.
I design icon systems, logos and illustrations ready for web and product.