Adobe Illustrator is a powerful tool for designing vectors. Designing infographics in the form of vectors gives you an edge as they can be infinitely resized without losing quality. This makes Illustrator a popular design choice for creating engaging infographics.
Tables are an essential element of infographics. Although there’s no dedicated tool in Illustrator for making tables, you don’t have to draw every cell by hand. If you need to incorporate a table into your designs, there’s a handy shortcut that makes creating tables in Illustrator quite simple.
How to Make a Table in Adobe Illustrator
You can use the Rectangle tool in Adobe Illustrator to create the main body of the table. Then split the rectangle into a grid to form the rows and columns. Open or create a document and follow the steps below:
- Select the Rectangle tool from the toolbar. You can also press M on your keyboard.
- Click anywhere on the canvas and enter the Width and Height that you want for your rectangle. This will be the total size of your table. You can also freehand-draw the rectangle if you prefer.
- With your rectangle selected, change the Fill and Stroke colors from the Properties panel on the right.
- Now you have the main body of your table. Once you’re happy with its size and the way it looks, it’s time to split it into cells. Select the rectangle and follow the steps below:
Navigate to Object > Path > Split Into Grid from the top menu. This will open a dialog box.
- In the dialog box, enter the number of Rows and Columns you want for your table.
- Check the Preview box so that you can see what the table will look like before creating it.
- Once you’re happy with your table, click OK.
Illustrator will now create a table with your specified dimensions.
The resulting table will actually be a series of separate squares or rectangles depending on your dimensions. If you want to move or resize your table, select all the shapes using [Ctrl + A] or [Cmd + A] and group them together by pressing [Ctrl + G] or [Cmd + G].
Once you set the number of rows and columns, Illustrator will automatically set the dimensions of each cell to fit the rectangle. You can customize this so that there’s a gap between the cells, which Illustrator refers to as Gutter. Changing the total size will change the size of the entire table.
Now you have a table that is also a vector image since you created it in Adobe Illustrator. Check out this guide to learn more about vectorizing images in Illustrator.
If you’re unhappy with your table and want to make some changes, there’s no need to start over. Just select the entire table and go through the same steps above to change the number of rows and columns, the width and height, or change the fill and stroke of your cells.
You can also manually change the dimensions of the table by selecting all the cells and dragging the anchor points to make the entire table (or specific rows and columns) narrower or wider. Once your table is good to go, you can use it to create infographics in Adobe Illustrator.
Easily Create a Table in Adobe Illustrator
Although there is no table tool in Illustrator, once you realize that tables are nothing but a series of rectangles, you can easily create a table in Illustrator using the Rectangle tool and splitting it into cells.
If you’re working with Adobe Illustrator, then you know that designing with efficiency is the key to success. Give this tutorial a shot and see for yourself how easy it is to create tables in Illustrator.