Visualizing Patterns over Time - Data Points: Visualization That Means Something - page 106

Tools window, and then specify the style of your line via the Stroke window.
Make the weight 0.3 pt, and make sure the Dashed Line check box is not
selected.

To draw a line, click where you want to put the first point of the line (or tick
mark in this case); then click where you want to put the second point. If
you press the Shift key during the second click, the line will automatically
be straight. You should now have a single tick mark. You need 30 more
because you need a tick mark for each year.

You can draw them all by hand, but there's a better way. If you're on a Mac,
hold down Option, or if you're on a PC, hold down Alt. Click the single tick
with the Selection tool and drag to where you want the next tick, while still
holding down Option or Alt. This creates a copy, so you should now have
two tick marks. Now press Command+D for Mac or Control+D for PC. This
duplicates the new tick mark spaced the same distance that the second
was from the first. Press Command/Control+D until you have all the tick
marks you need.

Finally, arrange all the marks correctly. Move the last tick mark so that it's
centered with the last bar. The first tick should already be centered with
the first bar. Now highlight all the ticks, and click Horizontal Distribute
Center in the Align window (Figure 4-18).

This distributes the ticks so that they're
evenly spaced between the outermost
marks. Optionally, you can highlight every
other tick with the Selection Tool and
resize it vertically to make them smaller.
This makes it obvious that the longer ticks
are for the year labels.

FIGurE 4-18 Align window in
Illustrator

To change the fill color from red to green,
you could go back to the Direct Selection tool and select every red box.
Because there aren't that many, it would be quick, but what if you have a
lot of elements to click? Instead, click a single red bar; then go to Select
➪ Same ➪ Fill Color. This does what you'd expect. It selects all the bars
that have a red fill. Now simply change the color to your liking via the Color
window. You can change both border and fill color here, but just change fill
for now, as shown in Figure 4-19.