I'm all about finding easier and faster ways of accomplishing technical tasks, and thankfully in Illustrator there are so many fantastic tools & functionality which help to create work of any complexity pretty effortlessly — as long as you know how to get the most out of all these tools!

 

Building compositions by repeating elements has to be one of my favourite ways of creating, and I just love that you can transform and copy elements in many different ways, and apply this approach during different stages of the design process!

 

I remember years ago I was creating some illustrations in a similar style and also had to trim the paths is a similar fashion to create breaks in lines — and what can I say, it was not as fast back then, and now Shape Builder makes this sort of tasks so easy!

 

Live Corners are one of my favourite ways of customising elements in illustrations, and generally creating iterations of shapes within designs or surface patterns.

 

Creating Symbols of any complex or not so complex pattern elements is such a fun way to have them readily available when you want to try to create some new pattern compositions! And using Graphic Styles based on different Appearance attributes (in this case dot pattern fills, which you probably cannot see in this size, and stroke settings) is also a great way to keep everything consistent! And of course, using Global Colour Swatches to keep colours consistent and adjustable across a number of designs.

Using DIY grids instead of Document Grid is something I do in 99% of my work: custom sizes, spacing, making it look nice (don't you like good-looking grids in custom colours and stroke weight;)?), and not to mention custom structures (i.e. isometric or hexagonal grids, etc.) — it all offers so much more room for creativity! And of course working with multiple artboards, you can position your grids the same way; and then being able to keep an eye on elements positions when Artboard Rulers are enabled — it really makes it all so much easier!

 

To begin with when I started creating these letterforms, I usually just opened one of the previous files and resaved it as new, stripped it down to the grid stage and started creating. Not sure why I did it, if I could just use Document Templates all along!:D Anyway, that's what I do now, and it is so much easier; and also you will never overwrite any previous files and lose your work!

 

Nice custom placeholders for images created using Live Corners & semi-basic layout templates — consistency and variation at the same time, and can be further customised with ease anytime!

Symbols are a game-changer when you get to know them!:) I love using them to add some fun elements to my work, or create complete compositions, or use as a basis for creating something more complex, for example, by applying some Graphic Styles with 3D effects.