- For years Illustrator was a print application.
In fact it was originally designed to be that one program
that could render artwork for PostScript,
the world's first and foremost printing language.
And in that regard, Illustrator has always rocked it.
Okay, so I'm not saying those days are all together over.
I'm not saying print is dead.
But most of us are getting, well, let's say choosier
about our consumption of physical books and periodicals.
I mean, have you ever sat next to that guy on an airplane
who's rifling through an absurdly noisy crinkly floppily
obnoxiously physical newspaper?
Who is that guy?
Is he from another century?
Does he own a time machine?
Seriously dude, where's your pipe?
Which is why these days, Illustrator is element-neutral.
Which is to say, it makes all things for any and every
destination that ever has been or ever may be.
Print? You bet.
Web? Of course.
PowerPoint?
Are you still using that?
But, okay sure.
Kiosk, Keynote, video, social media, smartphone, i device,
television, touch screen, t-shirt, YouTube, lynda.com,
LinkedIn, flying car, lunar landing module,
Minecraft, emoticon, good mythical morning,
and Steve Martin himself.
Literally anything.
So instead of going to the File menu
and choosing Print,
go to that very same File menu
and chose Save for Web.
It's not really for web, not only anyway.
It's for everything and it should be called
Save for Everything.
Everything that has ever been or ever may be.
But first, let me introduce you to the Pixel Grid.
Because the pixel, that tiny square of color,
unlike noisy newspapers and pipes on planes,
is going to be around for a while
and I think you and the Pixel Grid
are going to be best friends.