Quick tip: How to create custom guides in Illustrator
This quick tip will teach you how to create a complex set of guides with oblique lines, circles or guides at a certain angle. You can then use this layout as a template for a more elaborate design, for image sets with similar traits and even use them to create patterns.
I guess you already know the basic View > Ruler (CTRL+R) and click-drag it onto the canvas to create a guide.
But what do you do when you need a lot more guides, and not just horizontal and vertical? Plus, their size is infinite and using more will only encumber your actual design. It will most likely look like this.
Crazy, huh? But don’t panic, I’m here to explain.
You can create guides not only from the ruler, but from the shapes you are drawing as well. Let’s say you need a guide at a 24 degrees angle, for let’s say, drawing a label or a set of labels at this specific angle. Here’s how you do it!
Grab the Line Segment Tool (\) and click the canvas. Change the “Angle” value to “24” and hit OK.
Grab the Selection Tool (V), select the line, hold the SHIFT key and click-drag one of the distortion points. Enlarge it until it becomes a bit larger than your canvas (or work in progress).
Keep it selected and go to View > Guides > Make Guides (CTRL+5).
This also works for other shapes, like circles, triangles, rectangles and even user-defined curves.
If you find this useful, let us know in the comments section below!
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