This is a short article to bring attention to greatly underused feature of Adobe Illustrator: Pathfinder.

This palette is not even initially visible in the standard Illustrator layout, which is a shame, since it is probably one of the most-used features in my workflow. The dialog looks like this:

and can help you create lots of cool effects. The following example was made super easily using the pathfinder.

To use the pathfinder, simply select multiple shapes (in the previous example circles) and then click the first icon in the Shape Modes category. This uses an add operator to combine multiple paths like the were a single shape. Clicking the “expand” button will then convert the overlapping shapes into a single path, which in this case was used to create the various outlines by means of Object->Path->Offset Path.

The next icon can be used to subtract one shape from another shape, like cutting a circle out of a square for example. The third icon performs what is called an intersect operation, and returns only the overlapping portions of the shapes. As you can see, the little icons do a lot to tell you what the button is used for. The fourth icon is used to return the opposite of what the third icon would return, which is called exclusion.

The bottom row of icons just performs combinations of the top four actions, and can be experimented with on your own time.

The last point to cover is the object structure. Using these buttons will move your shapes into an object group called a compound shape. If this is expanded, you can change the order of the operations (add, subtract, intersect, and exclude) that are performed by changing the stack order of the shapes. The operations are performed from bottom to top. Also, the operation of each path within the compound shape can be modified by selecting it within the Layers palette, and clicking the new operation you wish it to perform.