Crumpet Club

AT LAST! 😭🌈💖🥳 I’ve FINALLY made the design tool that I’ve always wanted, and here it is for ya! 🎨

I don’t know about you, but every time I start a new document in Illustrator, I spend so much time creating a new palette of colours to work with that are 5000 times better than the default swatches that exist, and I seem to do this same action AGAIN AND AGAIN!!! Creams, pinks, lilacs, tans, olive green, dusty peaches – again and again!

INSTEAD – why not download this new palette that I created of 81 colours, based on those that I regularly use?! These aren’t the be all and end all of colour swatches, but they’re at least a step up from RGB Red 🤡.

Once you’ve downloaded the swatch file, create a new blank Illustrator document. Customise the artboard size (or multiple artboards) and arrange everything in a way that would help you work smoothly. I created a single 2000px x 2000px artboard with 150ppi resolution because I find it best for starting to play with concepts.

Next step – delete the crummy swatches that are in the Swatches panel by default. Get rid of em!

From the Swatches panel menu (three lines in the top right), navigate down to Open Swatch Library and then choose Other Library all the way down at the bottom. Load up the Crumpet Club Default Swatch Set that you’ve downloaded, and drag the fab new swatches into your swatch panel.

Now that you’ve created a good starter template with the new swatches, save this file to your Desktop as a template by choosing Save As and then selecting Illustrator Template (ait) from the Format dropdown. I called mine “New Concept.ait”.

Close down the file now and navigate to your Blank Templates folder in your Adobe Illustrator folder. Drag in the the saved template file that you’ve stored on your Desktop into this folder. You’ll probably need to confirm permissions somewhere here because it’s a system area – go ahead!

NOW! For the next little while until Illustrator figures it out and remembers your actions, when you go to open a new document, navigate to the File >> New From Template option, and choose your brand spankin’ new template. It will open up with the artboards just the way you like them, and of course your NEW GORGEOUS SWATCHES!!!

After some consistent use, this template style will start to appear in your Recent tab when you open a new Illustrator document huzzah!

I hope you enjoy your lovely new workspace ✨ Let me know how it goes!

Note! These are just RGB swatches, so only suitable for on-screen display 🖥️

About the author

We love a good list, and we really love when something makes our lives easier! So here are 8 design resources that we use on the reg or just simply love 👉

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