Resizing your artwork from square to story size with Reform

Need a quick way to change your artwork from square to story size for Instagram? We’re going to show you how to quickly resize and reshape your artwork in Illustrator with the Reform tool from Astute Graphics.

Start off with putting the main focus of your artwork in the center of the artboard, and adjusting the background to fit.

Now if you need to extend or shorten a path on the same trajectory (like we’ve done with these sticks and flames so they reach the bottom of the artboard), use the Constant Offset mode of the Reform Tool. Here’s how:

🔥 Open the Reform Panel (Window > Astute Graphics > Reform) and click inside the panel to activate the tool, or find the tool in the Advanced Toolbar.

🔥 Hover over your path and it will highlight the segment you’re touching that is between two cusp/corner point types.

🔥 Holding the Option /Alt key will enter Looped mode and show a double line at the cursor. This will offset the entire path as a loop, like a single offset.

🔥 Holding the Option + Shift key while hovering on your target segment will enter the Constant Offset mode. Now as you drag out from the path you will see it constantly offset that one edge.

🔥 It will cleverly follow the paths trajectory until it reaches its limit. This means you can extend or shorten whole edges of shapes, rather than directly selecting the anchor points and eyeballing where they should go.

🔥 When you have got it to the right length, you can press Apply in the panel.

🔥 Top tip: If you want to alter another edge by the same amount, make a note of the Offset value shown in the panel before you press Apply. This will enable you to start the constant offset on the new path, then just enter the value in the panel to match it.