Photo: Free by PsychoRatDog

I just wanted to share some of the ways I work with Illustrator, some have been useful, some didn’t produce much, but people “tick” differently, so heres a couple of ideas.

by Esben Thomsen

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Dingbats

Font dingbats can be an excellent source for finding vector artwork. Here are a few sites you can check out for fonts and I bet there are more like these.

• Urban Fonts
• Creamundo
• DaFont
• Pixel Fonts (not in English)
• Better Fonts
• SimplytheBest Fonts
• Manfred Klein Fonteria
• Font Leech
• Neat Fonts
• Font Font free downloads

Finding Vectors on the Web

You can “spider” through the internet and download every ai, svg or eps file you find—I know I did once—but the quality is often miserable and looks like it was created in Illustrator 1.0 back in 1988. There are some exceptions:

• Vecteezy.com
• Bittbox
• Deviant Art (be very mindful of the copyright)

I would advise you not to buy vector stock; it’s expensive, you don’t learn anything and most of all, it isn’t difficult to produce it yourself. If you find something you just must own, don’t buy it or trace it; instead, practice you’re newly acquired Illustrator skills and try to make a look-alike.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia uses vectors (svg) for maps, flags, signs, logos and other well known everyday artwork.

If you need a flag, like the old USSR revolutionary flag with the victory star, guess what! It’s on Wikipedia as an .svg!

Once I had to make those iTunes flag icons for a user interface and I did draw them by shapes. Do you know how difficult that is?! Take the British flag and draw that in Illustrator and you are going to meet a brick wall at some point if you don’t know you way around Illustrator or forgot your lessons in math. Let’s just say I learned to respect the British flag.

Camera as a Tool

Photo: Camera Phone by EasyPickle

You need a camera—and I’m not talking about one of those glorified expensive Nikon or Canons, with and a trillion pixels—just get a mobile phone with a low resolution camera so you can take pictures discretely, or go for a compact camera; buy cheap until you are good at taking photos and know what to look for.

Some of you perhaps have high quality cameras, which is fine, but try to use your mobile phone camera as an exercise first. Because of the low quality, it’s going to be more difficult to trace (live or hand) and guess what! You will learn something!

I often take weird pictures at parties. I usually don’t have any people in them, but rather things like girls’ hand bags (the Louis Vuitton rage that hit Europe is fortunately dying out!), wallpaper, ashtrays, brands of cigarette packages—anything that is appealing in textures and patterns. Just make sure that you have good contrast (strong light source) and ask people if its okay, so they don’t think you’re being too weird or creepy.

Grafitti is an excellent source for curves, textures and paths and even run down brick walls or pavement, whatever you may find appealing. I’m sure that you can find 20 interesting shapes or patterns within 10 feet away of your doorstep, no matter where you live.

Use the photos for tracing. Try not to open Photoshop to correct details, just go directly into Illustrator and start live or hand tracing it, if you have found confidence in Pen Tool. Which tracing method you use also depends greatly on the types of artwork you want.

Stock Photos

Stock photos are also good for tracing stuff; you can use anything really. The problem with most stock is that it is easy to find, but is rarely free.

I use photos for tracing and the best free source out there is flickr.com. They have an advanced search form, that allows you to search for only Creative Commons licensed photos, and that means that in many cases you have freedom to change the photos. If you have any doubt about how you can use the image, ask the photographer if you may trace his or her photos. Often they are very interested in to see the result, other times they change their license. Unfortunately, yes, it happens.

I don’t pay for stock, not because I don’t want to support the artists, but because most of my tracing artwork never sees the light of day, so it would be excessive to pay for it.

Print Media

I don’t personally have a TV, radio or subscribe to newspapers and have made sure I don’t get advertising through my mail. Not because I’m a poor guy, but those things really don’t interest me at all and I don’t see them as a source for inspiration or news either.

I love to go to cafes and flip through newspaper and especially magazines to break down the ads into lines, curves, triangles and Fibonacci spirals. Don’t spend time analyzing the poor clipping mask work, looking for grid and layout, or understanding why they make they choices they do.

Just take pictures!

Stop thinking like Photoshoppers and looking for bad clipping paths or a poorly applied healing brush, be that guy from “A Beautiful Mind” who says, “There must be a mathematical explanation for how bad your tie is.”

It may sound cheap to buy a cup of coffee to flip through 10 magazines or newspapers in order to take pictures, but its better than having subscription for these. It forces you to do something at a cafe and where you don’t get distracted by your children, wife, husband, TV, phone, etc. And besides, when you are super busy, 10 magazines dumping in your mail slot is not what you want.

If you can’t find the time for hanging out at a cafe, ask friends, relatives or coworkers if you may borrow some magazines once in a while. They may look at you funny, but just tell them you want to scan through the images.

P.S. In case you haven’t heard the news, Aaron Russell of MiLienzo just launched a new blog! His first official article is a great one (because it features Creative Curio, naturally!): 25 Inspirational Design and Creativity Blogs. Check it out!

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