Illustrator, the basics

Member lesson

Artboards, assets and export

Lesson 7 of 8 in Illustrator, the basics.

Checked against the makers' documentation on 9 October 2026.

Export and Share Artwork in Adobe Illustrator | Adobe Creative Cloud · Adobe Creative Cloud
Lesson

An artboard is the part of the document that gets printed or exported. Adobe's help compares it to a sheet of white paper, and one document can hold many of different sizes side by side, while anything left on the grey canvas area around them stays in the file without being printed or exported. That makes the canvas area a good place to park spare versions. The Artboard tool, Shift-O, draws new artboards and resizes old ones, and with one selected the Properties panel offers preset sizes and a Name field. Hold Alt or Option as you drag an artboard to copy it with its artwork. Window > Artboards lists them all.

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Members answer these 3 questions and keep the ticket for this lesson. Every lesson has one.

  1. Question 1, locked

    You leave a spare version of a logo on the grey canvas, outside every artboard. What happens to it when you export?

    • It is exported as an extra file
    • It is left out, because the canvas is never printed or exported
    • It is moved onto the first artboard
    • Illustrator deletes it
  2. Question 2, locked

    A developer building an Android app asks for SVG icons. Which Styling option does Adobe say Android Studio requires?

    • Internal CSS
    • Inline Style
    • Presentation Attributes
    • Minify
  3. Question 3, locked

    What minimum does Adobe's help give for a press bleed?

    • 3 points
    • 72 points
    • No bleed is needed in a PDF
    • 18 points

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