While creating any of the items like books, creating logos, business cards, magazine covers, and posters, that Illustrator can be used for, you may at one point or another wonder if you can create bullets and numbering. While Illustrator is not the best for creating bullets or numbering, you can create them in Illustrator.
Bullets and numbering when added to lists will make your work much neater and more readable. With some tools and features, you can use Illustrator to add bullets and numbers to your list.
How to add Bullets and Numbering in Illustrator
To add bullets and numbers to make your list much better follow these steps. You will also learn to use other special characters to make bullets for your list.
- Open and prepare Illustrator
- Write the list
- Format the list
- Add the bullets or numbers and then tab
- Enter values for the indents and paragraph spacing
1] Open and prepare Illustrator
To start your Illustrator document, find the Illustrator icon and double-click it. this will open Illustrator, depending on the version of Illustrator that you have, it will look different. You will create your new document to begin.
2] Write the list
In this step, you will write the list that you want the bullets or numbers to be added to. You can add the list of items and format them with the space between each list.
To write the text, click on the Type tool in the left tools panel or press T. To type click and drag to create a text box. The text box can fit into the place that you want to put the list. You can move and resize the text box when you are done.
3] Format the list
You would now write the list that you want to add the bullets or numbers to. Format the sentences with the spaces between each list item.
4] Add the bullets or numbers and then tab
You will now add the bullets or the numbers, or any other special character that you want to add. The article will look at adding the bullets first.
Adding the bullets
This step is where you will add the bullets to the items in the list, there is a shortcut that you can use.
Go to the beginning of each list and press Alt + 7 (number pad). You will see the bullet appear when you release the Alt key. You would press the Tab key after you add each of the bullets. Above is the list of words with the bullets added, if the bullets are small, you can select them and increase the font size. You can also make the bullets bold, depending on the font type.
This is the list with the larger bolder bullets.
5] Enter values for the indents and paragraph spacing
You will now need to format the lists so that they look neater and more organized. To do this look for the Paragraph panel. The Paragraph panel is usually on the same group as the Character and Opentype panels.
If you do not see the Paragraph panel go to the top menu bar and press Window then hover over Type and when the list appears, click Paragraph or press Alt + Ctrl + T.
This is the paragraph panel.
You will now click in the text box with the lists and then press Ctrl + A to select everything. With everything selected, go to the paragraph panel and type 20 pt in the Left indent value box. You would then type –20 in the First-line left indent value box. You then type 10 in the Space between paragraph value box. Note that you can choose your own numbers to add to these, experiment with numbers, and see if you like the format.
This is what the list will look like after adjusting the values.
You will now adjust the tab so that the list will have the sentences properly lined up. To do this, select everything then go to the top menu bar and press Window then hover over Type and press Tabs or press Shift + Ctrl + T.
At the left on the Tabs bar, you will see some arrows, make sure that Left-justified tab arrow is selected. You will then go to the X value box and type in the same value that you had for the Left Indent. In this case, the number would be 20 pt. If you know the measurement in inches or any other unit (even percent) you can enter after the number.
The tab value you entered will automatically be converted to inch.
This is the final list with the bullets.
Adding the numbers
You may want to use numbers instead of bullets in your list. To add the numbers to the list, the steps would be the same, what you would do is type the number then add a dot (.) then press the tab key.
Adding other characters
You may add special characters to your list instead of bullets or numbers.
To add the special characters to the list go to the top menu bar and press Type then Glyphs.
This is the list of Glyphs, you can change the glyphs by changing the font type at the bottom of the list. You can also add numbers to the list from the glyph list. You will notice that the round bullet is also a part of the glyph.
To add the glyph to the list, follow the same steps you did to add the bullets, you then open the glyph list and double-click the one that you want to use.
This is the list with a character from the glyph.
Read: How to make a Table in Illustrator
How do I change the color of the bullets or numbers in Illustrator?
To change the color of the bullets in Illustrator, select the bullet then go to the color pallet and choose a color.
How do you indent the second line of a bullet?
To indent the second line of a bullet list you would use the Tab. To do this, select everything then go to the top menu bar and press Window then hover over Type and press Tabs or press Shift + Ctrl + T. At the left on the Tabs bar, you will see some arrows, make sure that Left-justified tab arrow is selected. You will then go to the X value box and type in the same value that you had for the Left Indent.
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