Quick Tip: How To Create A Dot Grid In Illustrator

So in the last blog, I showed you how to create a dot grid in InDesign, but I also said that if you had the option to make it in Illustrator, I would recommend doing that and either exporting it as an SVG and importing that into your InDesign file, or copy and pasting it where it will import as a flattened EPS.

So, in this blog, I’ll show you how to create a dot grid in Illustrator.

Our first step remains the same as the InDesign blog, so create your dot and once again I have chosen to make mine 0.1cm in size.

Then, holding option (or alt for Windows users), we’re going to click and drag to make a copy.

Illustrator’s smart guides will tell us the distance horizontally from our original dot, but it tells us from the centre of both dots. If you prefer your measurement to be from the centre of the dot, just pull it your preferred distance away from the original.

However, if you want the measurement of your dot grid to be between each dot, add the measurement of your dot to the distance you’re pulling it away. So, because I want a measurement of 0.5cm between each dot, I am pulling it 0.6cm away according to the smart guides.

Then, making sure the second dot we’ve created is selected, we’re going to go Edit → Transform → Transform Again. This will create another dot the same distance away from the second one we’ve created. The shortcut for this is command +D (control + D for Windows users), so we’re going to keep hitting that until we have an entire row of dots.

Then, we’re going to select that row of dots and option + drag (alt + drag) them down another 0.6cm for a gap of 0.5cm. From there, repeat the steps from above and transform again until you have a full page of dots.

We’re not done yet, though. Next, we’re going to select all of the dots, and group them using command + G (control + G).

We’ve done this so we can align them all. Using the align window, we can now align to artboard and centre it exactly.

After that, you can choose the colour of your dots and make any changes you want before moving it into InDesign.

I hope this quick tutorial was helpful, and I’ll be sure to share more quick tips for designing a digital planner.