INFOGRAPHIC SERIES - City skyline using Illustrator Charts

Creating Infographic charts can be much more visually exciting that a plain bar chart, pie chart or graph. Using Illustrators Chart Tool as the basis for your artwork, you can turn data into something exciting and fun. In this blog, you can take data and turn it into a city skyline quickly and easily. 

Start with the Chart Tool in the Illustrator Tool Bar. 

Here is a list of all the chart tools that are built into Illustrator.

DRAW with the selected chart tool and the data input box will show up. 
Click the CHECK MARK to set the data and the chart will appear in the document.

Ungroup the chart. (You may have to ungroup a few times to ungroup everything).

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Illustrator will warn you that you are no longer able to edit the data in the chart once it is un grouped. Click YES.

Remove the extra bits of the chart you don't want. In this case it is the markings and the numbers. Remove the fill in the bars. 

Apply a stroke color to the bars. 

Position one of the bars away from the chart to use the Align/Distribute function to equally space all the bars out. 

Open the Align Panel from the window menu. Select all the bars then choose the Distribute CENTERS button.

Once the bars are equally spaced, use the DIRECT SELECTION tool to remove the lower segment from each bar, leaving the other 3 sides. 

Select two adjacent bars, the JOIN them (COMMAND + J) together. Repeat this until all the bars are one continuos line. 

You may notice that the open ends on the line are not in line with the bottoms of the lines. Open the Stroke Panel and set the END CAP to be a "Projecting Cap"

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Use the DIRECT SELECTION tool to select just the top of the bars, then change the corner widgets to be pointed. 

Add some rectangles for windows if you want. 

Add numbers to show the values that were originally input from the chart data.