In this video, you'll explore how objects are arranged and you'll use Arrange commands to change the artwork stacking order. If you want to follow along, you can open this file from the practice files for this tutorial. Now, to see the first artboard, choose 1 Start from the Artboard menu down here. And to make sure that it's zoomed into the artboard, choose View, Fit Artboard in Window. On this artboard, there are three shapes. Content you add is stacked one object on top of another. When objects overlap, you can see how these objects are stacked. The light green shape was created first, then the dark green shape, then the yellow shape in this example. Now with the Selection tool selected, click to select the darker green shape. You can use Arrange commands to bring artwork on top of other artwork or behind other artwork. To bring the darker green shape on top of the other shapes, in the Properties panel to the right of the document. click the Arrange button and choose Bring to Front. The darker green shape is now in front of all the other artwork in the document, even artwork on a different artboard. Now to send the darker green shape behind all of the other artwork in the document, click the Arrange button again and choose Send to Back. It's now behind the rest of the shapes. Click the Arrange button in the Properties panel again and notice the Bring Forward and Send Backward commands. The Bring Forward command moves the selected artwork on top of the next object in the stacking order. In other words, the object just on top of it. The Send Backward command sends the selected artwork behind or beneath the next object in the stacking order. Now you can't select the Send Backward command because the selected green shape is already behind all of the other artwork. Now to show artwork on another artboard where you'll arrange some artwork to finish it, choose 2 Artwork from the Artboard menu down here. There are a series of shapes that make up a radio here. Some are behind this big green shape. To see all of the shapes out here, choose View, Outline. In Outline mode, only the outlines of the artwork are visible. So, you'll be able to see the artwork that isn't visible when it's behind or beneath other artwork. To see the artwork in color again, choose View, Preview. Now click to select the large screen shape. To send it behind the other artwork, click the Arrange button in the Properties panel and choose Send to Back. Now, select this green circle. To arrange it, click the Arrange button in the Properties panel and choose Send to Back. Unfortunately, the green circle was sent behind the large green shape because you sent it to the back which is now behind the large green shape behind everything else. You need the circle to be behind the heart shape but on top of the large green shape. You can now bring the circle forward in the stack. With it selected, click the Arrange button in the Properties panel and choose Bring Forward to bring on top of the large screen shape but still behind the heart shape. Now to deselect all of the artwork, click in an empty area of the artboard. Arranging artwork makes it easier to work with design content, allowing you to stack artwork in the order you choose. If you want, you can try arranging some of the other artwork out here to get some practice. 

In this video, you'll be introduced to layers in Illustrator CC. First, you'll learn what layers are and you'll get comfortable with the Layers panel and understand why layers are so useful. You can open this file from the practice files for this tutorial if you want to follow along. When you have enough content in your Illustrator CC document, you'll need a way to organize it, so you can more easily find hidden content and select artwork. Layers help you manage your content by showing and hiding it, locking it and more. To see the layers in the document, you'll open the Layers panel. So, choose Window, Layers to open the Layers panel on the right. Layers are like clear folders that can contain content and each layer can contain all types of artwork. To see the content on a layer, you can click the arrow to the left of the layer thumbnail. So, click the arrow for the Header layer to see a list of all the content on that layer. The content in each layer is listed by stacking order. The content towards the top of the list is above the content beneath it. To hide the Header layer content again, click that arrow. Layers can be arranged so that all of the content on one layer is above or below the content in another layer of the document. When you start a new document in Illustrator CC, you begin with a single layer. All content in your document is on that layer. You can create new layers based on what you need. In this document, there are three layers. These layers were created to help organize the content in the app design by section, Header, Footer and Body content. Now suppose you needed to hide all of the Header content, so you can focus on editing the rest of the content without affecting the header content. To do that, click the eye icon to the left of the Header layer name. Now, to show the header layer content again, click where the eye icon was to make the Header layer content reappear. The layers in a document can also be reordered. For instance, press and drag the Footer layer by its name straight down. When you see a line appear below the Body layer, release the mouse to reorder the footer content in the document. Now the order of the layers in the Layers panel determines the order of the content in your document. The uppermost layer content is on top of all other content and the bottom most layer content is behind all the content. Click the eye icon to hide the Body layer content and you can see the Footer layer content now. Click where the eye icon was to show the Body content. You'll also notice the color associated with each layer: red, blue and green. A layer's color is useful when selecting content in the document. Move the pointer over some of the content at the top of the artboard and you should see a red bounding box or path appear. That tells you that content is on the Header layer because the red color matches the red color of the Header layer in the Layers panel. As you work in Illustrator CC, you'll find that layers are really useful for organizing and selecting your content. Try exploring other documents you have to see how the content is organized in the Layers panel. 

Learning to use layers makes managing content in your documents faster and easier. Using this poster as a sample project, you'll create a new layer, add artwork to that layer and then change some properties for the layer. You can open this file from the practice files if you want to follow along. Working with layers in the Layers panel is useful in a lot of ways including for example when you have different elements in an icon or a logo that you need to work on individually without affecting the other elements. For this poster, you'll create a background shape and then create a layer to more easily select the content later. To access the layers in the document, you'll open the Layers panel. So, choose Window, Layers. Every new document in Illustrator CC starts with one layer you see here named Layer 1. Changing layer names, including the default layer, can make it easier to keep track of which content is on each layer, especially in documents that have multiple layers. So, double click the layer name Layer 1 and change the name to Content and press Enter or Return to accept the name. You can name your layers anything that makes sense to you. Now you'll create a new layer where you'll add a background color to the poster, which in this case will make the text more readable. Putting the background color on its own layer is also helpful because it allows you to hide, select and edit the background more easily. To make a new layer, at the very bottom in the Layers panel on the right, click the Create New Layer button. The new layer is added to the Layers panel and name something generic like Layer 2. Also notice that this new layer is above the content layer in the Layers panel. Double click the new layer name and change the name to Background, then press Enter or Return. With the layer selected and you can tell it's selected because it has this highlight, you'll add content to it now. Selecting a layer in the Layers panel tells Illustrator CC to place new content you add onto that layer. To add a new shape to the new layer, select the Rectangle tool in the Tools panel on the left. In the document, starting in the upper left corner of the artboard, click and drag to the lower right corner of the artboard to create a rectangle that covers the entire artboard. To change the color fill of the selected shape, you'll open the Properties panel. So, choose Window, Properties, or you can click the Properties panel tab if you see it. Click the Fill color. Make sure the Swatches option is selected and then select the color like this purple to fill the shape. With the shape still selected, click the Layers panel tab up here to show it. You can see that the new shape is on the layer named Background and this little red box to the right means the selected content is on this layer. This shape needs to be behind the other poster content. To do that, you can reorder the layers in the Layers panel. Drag the layer named Background down. When you see a line appear below the Content layer, release to reorder the layers and ultimately the layer content in the document. To deselect the background shape, choose Select, Deselect. Now to lock the layer so that you can't select anything on that layer, over in the Layers panel, click the blank area to the right of the eye icon in the Background layer. Locking this layer may help you to focus on editing the artwork on a Content layer for instance, without accidentally moving the background shape. Notice this pencil icon. That icon is telling you, you can't create a rectangle right now. But if you click to select the Content layer, then you could create a rectangle because you're creating with a selected layer that's not locked. Being able to add and rename layers helps you organize and manage your content in Illustrator CC. As you get more comfortable with layers, you'll find that adding and renaming them is especially useful for complex projects that use multiple objects and elements. 

In this video, you'll learn how to move content from one layer to another and then how to easily find content in the Layers panel. If you want to follow along, you can open this practice file from the practice files for this tutorial. To make sure that you see all of the content in the document, choose View, Fit All in Window. This postcard has two artboards or pages with artwork on each. Since the document already has artwork on it, it makes sense to start organizing the content in layers. The Layers panel makes selecting easier, temporarily hides content so you can focus on other artwork, locks content so you can't select it and more. The first thing you'll do is open the Layers panel to see the layers in the document. Choose Window, Layers. In the Layers panel that opens on the right, you can see that there is one layer that contains all of the content for both artboards. You'll organize the artwork by putting the content for each artboard on a separate layer. So, one layer for the front of the postcard and another for the back of the postcard. To change the name of the first layer, double click the name Layer 1 and change it to Back, and press Enter or Return to make that change. To make a new layer, click the Create New Layer button at the bottom of the Layers panel. A new layer is added above the selected layer named Back. To change its name, double click the layer name and change it to Front, and press Enter or Return. With the layers created, you'll now move some of the content to the new layer named Front. So, with the Selection tool selected in the Tools panel, drag across all of the artwork on the artboard on the left to select it. Each layer has an assigned color. You can see the blue color for the Back layer in the Layers panel. You can tell that all of the selected artwork is on the Back layer because it has a blue color on the bounding box surrounding it, which matches the color of the layer. Also, in the Layers panel, this blue square on the Back layer tells you that the selected content is on this layer. That little blue square is called a selection indicator. To move the content from the Back layer to the Front layer, drag the little blue square straight up to the Front layer. When a red box appears, release the mouse button. You can see that the content is now on the Front layer and the color associated with the content is now red, which is the color of the Front layer. To hide the content on the Front layer, click the eye icon. You should see that the content on the left-hand artboard is now hidden. To show the content again, click the blank area where the eye icon was on the Front layer. Now that the layers are created, and the content is on the correct layers, you'll learn how to find content in the Layers panel. This can be helpful when you need to hide content or see how it's organized in relation to other content. So, click to select this green background rectangle on the artboard on the left. In the Layers panel, click the Locate Object button at the bottom of the panel. The content on the Front layer is now showing. This is a great way to see the object you selected in the Layers panel and be able to tell where it is in the stacking order. In other words, if it's on top of other artwork or in this case, since it's at the bottom of the layer, behind all of the other content on that layer. By showing all the content on a layer, you can also do things like hide one object on a layer instead of the whole layer, by clicking the eye icon for that single object. To hide the Front layer content, click the arrow here. That way you can keep the Layers panel a little neater, so you can easily see all of the layers. Now that you know how to manage the content in your documents using the Layers panel, you can better organize your artwork in whatever way makes sense to you.