by Esben Thomsen
Some of you may know that I’m not a traditionally educated designer or Web developer; I learned everything from the Web and it has so far taken about a year and half to master Illustrator to such a degree that I can teach others. I’m not a particularly good designer and I can’t present 40 pages of illustrations on Flickr that is a Bible for other designers, but knowing the tools of your trade guards against sleepless nights wondering “How do I make a grungy brush with flower patterns…?”
How to Learn from the Web
Since there aren’t exactly a large number of blogs that are all about Illustrator, nor even many authors who write about it at all, it’s quite hard to learn about Illustrator on the Web. I’ve done a lot of research for you and I present to you the best resources for Illustrator on the Web.
Bittbox has been around for about a year, and they have small tutorials and a lot of freebies. Reading every single article it won’t take as long as it sounds.
95% of Bittbox’s articles are about vector and I gotta give him credit, he helped me out and I learned a lot of tips and tricks. I do reference his articles now and then, because I tend to forget small things I don’t use often.
Veerle is the Supergirl from Belgium ! She is the top of the line and very honest about her skills. She has many Illustrator tutorials, and they expand on the subject deeply. Somehow she manages to write difficult stuff in as few of words as possible to describe the process, a skill I perhaps will master some day.
Read her “Photoshop/Illustrator” tag (not category). She has a couple of Quicktime videos too.
Layers Magazine has some tutorials that can be a good start for those who need it. They have videos, too, and better yet video podcasts! Install iTunes for this reason alone!
Oldie but goodie! He doesn’t give a lot love to Illustrator—he’s a Photoshop/InDesign guy—but he has a few videos on very basic stuff about Illustrator. He loves Adobe apps, but Illustrator is passed over too often in my opinion.
Go Media Zine is an excellent source for inspiration and tutorials. They also sell some stock vector packs, but don’t go out and buy them if you are a beginner. They are cool to have around if you are making a living designing (hint: get your company to buy the packs!), but we will go through how to make those yourself in a later tutorial. Reusable stock vectors are a good thing to have laying around.
If that’s not enough, you can poke around in my del.icio.us Illustrator bookmarks. Some have RSS feeds, others don’t. Some articles are out right dumb, wrong, etc. but since this is a very small world we’ll have to put up with what we have.
Design forums can also be useful, but make sure to ask for advice for particular problems.
Have Something to Design for
Since childhood I wanted to draw with computers and started out with Windows 3.11 at an early age. I never learned anything because I didn’t have a particular purpose to create for. I didn’t have a printer, didn’t write papers that needed artwork and it wasn’t encouraged either. When I got older, I bought some Adobe related books, but that didn’t help either.
You really must have a purpose to draw and designing a website is a good project. If you don’t want to start learning about yet another complicated field, then perhaps start to decorate your home. Say “I want large type on my wall in a grungy effect,” or whatever defines you as a person. Make a door sign, start making cards or stock vectors for Easter, Christmas and so on, anything you know can be used. It’s extremely difficult to draw shapes or patterns if you don’t have a purpose for doing so.
Fictional logos only go so far…
Upload your stuff to Flickr or use Vecteezy to share the love; just get feedback, because that’s encouraging and keeps you going.
If you really want to hone your technical skills in Illustrator and just can’t think of anything to create, try walking down a main street and take photos of signs and logos. Then take the photos into Illustrator and just start tracing. Build out the photo to help you learn the Pen tool and get comfortable with Pathfinder, Align, Transform and other panels.
Also use these photos to exercise your ability to identify fonts. Count how many Helvetica signs you see in 100 yards. Know your classic typefaces, because you will notice that they keep popping up, especially in business signs. Learn about type and especially learn to recognize typefaces—I can’t stress this too much! And be sure to check out I Love Typography, an excellent blog on… you guessed it! Typography!
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3 responses so far ↓
1 Alec // Mar 31, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Thanks, Esben — these are some good resources.
2 johno // Apr 1, 2008 at 3:30 am
Another great article, Esben; and a wonderful list of resources. I’m off to check out Layers—which I had never heard of before reading about it here. Thanks.
ps: would be nice to have the images link to the sites they represent too :)
3 Esben // Apr 1, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Well thanks :-)
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