Create Presentation Ready PDFs with Artboards in Illustrator

Ignoring artboards contributes a lot to the super-speedy, wireframe design process that can be accomplished with Adobe Illustrator. 99% of the time, I leave artboards hidden and only toggling their visibility and manipulating them only when I'm ready to export a PDF for presentation purposes.

This is similar to drawing on a big whiteboard with dry-erase markers and snapping a pic to capture everything before it's erased. Illustrator is your whiteboard and artboards are you pic-snap at the end.

You'll be surprised how fast you can churn out screens by blazing through the design process without fussing with artboards or layers. There always comes a time however, when you need to share your work. I wrote about a crazy detailed method for large complex projects, but most of the time simple artboards will do.

Wrangle artboards like a pro by watching the video below.


Download the source files here.

Read the next post in this series, "Create an OS X Status Bar and Safari Title Bar with Illustrator"