The importance of using layers within any project.

Have you ever designed a project on the one layer and tried to edit something and then realised the portion of the project you are trying to edit is the base of it? I know I have and trust me, it sucks. Making sure you layer your art is something that is very important and something that I wish I would have known early on in my design career.

The importance of layering.

Layers basically exist to help keep different elements separate from each other on your artboard. Whether you’re in Illustrator, Photoshop or InDesign. Because of this, they then can be edited individually giving you free rein to create as much detail as you would like without messing up the entire artwork. The order you place layers on your canvas does in fact matter. Just think of it as your bed cover and your sheet. You can’t see the sheet with the bed cover on top, right? You can easily change the order of each layer by simply dragging the layer on the menu higher and lower in the stack. Keeping track of your layers is important too. Without knowing the name of the layer you’re going to be spending time going back and forward-thinking where something is. Make sure you name your layers correctly.

There is such a thing as too many layers.

Remembering which layer is which, can be a pain if you have a massive pile of them within your file. Try to keep the number of layers you create down as much as you can. You can also merge layers once you are happy with a section. This gives you the freedom of connecting the two and still knowing where it is in the file. Colour coding can also help too if you’re more of a colour person. Like myself.

Layered up

Sure, digital art can seem confusing or even intimidating to someone who has never tried it, but with having layers, you will soon start to see that it isn't as bigger a leap as you were expecting. Always be sure to experiment with the software and understand most elements before jumping into something crazy. But as always, have fun with it.