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Great looking data: using Excel and Illustrator for high-quality graphics for publication

Tips

  1. Make your graphs/charts in Microsoft Excel.  We are going to do a few things before we export our graphics to Illustrator:
    1. Fonts.  You want to use Arial as both programs work well with this font.  Sometimes with other fonts when you transfer your artwork over to Illustrator strange things will happen to the text so just go with this for now and you can change this in Illustrator after the import.
    2. No effects or shading.  Use only solid colors (no gradients).  No shadows. Nothing.  You want plain graphics at this point.  We can spice things up in Illustrator, the important thing to remember is that you want your data to stay intact in a vector format.  When you add shadows or gradients the program will render it as a raster graphic in pixels and we don’t want that.  Vector all the way!
  2. Now that our graphic is ready we will select the main container in Excel and do a File > Copy.
  3. Open a new document in Illustrator. Any size is fine you can adjust this later.
  4. Go to File > Paste and we will need to do a few things with our graphic at this point before we can work with it.
    1. Drag your cursor across the entire figure so all elements are selected.  Ungroup 2-3 times, go to your menu Object > Clipping Mask > Release, Object > Compound Path > Release.
    2. When we transfer the graphics there are a number of extra objects that get transferred. My best guess is that these empty boxes are grouped to the other objects to keep things in the right position during the transfer but at this point we no longer need the placeholders so they can be deleted.  Click one of the empty boxes and go to menu Select > Same > Fill and Stroke.  This will select all the other empty boxes in your document and hit delete.  Select > Same is a useful tool for selecting groups of objects that are similar so keep that in your mental tool-bag for future projects.
  5. Now you want to create a container so you can get the perfect sizing done for your graphics.  Create a new layer and label it “Workspace”.  You will now select the rectangle tool and click on your art board.  This will bring up a menu where you can enter an exact size for your box.  I usually will measure my document in inches and enter that as my size.  This box will only have an outline color visible and you want to fit your final figure inside this area.  Lock this layer so you don’t accidently move or delete it.
  6. Select your whole figure and resize it to fit inside your Workspace box.  Then you will select your text and adjust the font type and sizing.
  7. When you are finished sizing everything you will delete your “Workspace” layer and save your final document.