Adobe Illustrator

Design and illustrate with vectors and master the use of shape and color like a pro.

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  • 10 Free Online Digital Illustration Classes for Beginners
    Illustration

    10 Free Online Digital Illustration Classes for Beginners

    Up your skills and get inspired by these free digital illustration classes led by Domestika experts Digital illustration is the art of creating images that tell stories through the use of digital tools. Artists manipulate images using a digital illustration interface, like Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, and a pointing device, such as a tablet, a mouse, or a stylus. Digital illustration is used extensively in web design, advertising, animation, video games, social media, and more. It's also often combined with traditional illustration for editorial work. When an illustrator's drawing skills are transferred to a digital environment, and paired with digital tools (used correctly), the work can take on a different form with unique and spectacular results. Taking a digital illustration course can help you make the most of these tools, giving you the opportunity to explore different possibilities with your drawing and develop your creativity through experimentation. It's also a way of playing around with and discovering the best software to suit your style.

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  • Free Adobe Illustrator Template for Data Visualization
    Design

    Free Adobe Illustrator Template for Data Visualization

    Learn to create engaging infographics with information designer Federica Fragapane's free Illustrator template Crafting graphs and tables that are easy on the eye can be a tricky task, but when elegant design meets data visualization, reading and understanding complex information becomes a genuinely pleasant experience. Taking infographics to the next level, information designer Federica Fragapane (@federica_fragapane) is renowned for her ability to transform tables and numbers into an opportunity to tell a captivating story. Here, she shares her free Adobe Illustrator template for designing data visualizations.

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  • Everything You Need to Know About Vector File Formats
    Illustration

    Everything You Need to Know About Vector File Formats

    Learn what a vector file is, discover the most common formats and why it's better to work with these file types Before we dive into categorizing the different vector file formats and discovering when it is more appropriate to use one over another, let’s clarify what a vector file is and why, on some occasions, it is better to work with these file types. Vector files are used for example in Vector illustration, that is a type of graph that represents images or shapes through mathematical formulas.

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  • Farewell Charles Geschke, Adobe Co-founder Passes Away
    Web & App Design

    Farewell Charles Geschke, Adobe Co-founder Passes Away

    We bid farewell to the Adobe co-founder and creator of the PDF format The Adobe story began in December 1982, when Charles Geschke joined John Warnock in founding the company which would make design software like Acrobat, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, and Photoshop a reality. Last Friday, on April 17, Geschke passed away at the age of 81.

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  • How to Use the Pathfinder Tool in Illustrator
    Web & App Design

    How to Use the Pathfinder Tool in Illustrator

    Discover how to use the basic Pathfinder options to speed up your workflow If you are familiar with vector illustration, or even if you are just starting out in Adobe Illustrator, one of the tools that you'll find more useful is the Pathfinder tool. By learning how to use it, you will be able to quickly do many designs and streamline your workflow. Discover its essential functions below. What is the Pathfinder tool for in Illustrator? This useful tool allows you to quickly manipulate different shapes and strokes to create other, more complex shapes and combine them without having to redraw. It is handy when you want to combine several shapes. Find the tool To start using Pathfinder, go to the Main Menu, then to Window, and then Pathfinder to make it visible. You can also use the Shift + Ctrl + F9 commands on PC, or Shift + Cmd + F9 on Mac.

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  • 5 Vector Illustration Online Courses for Beginners
    Illustration

    5 Vector Illustration Online Courses for Beginners

    Learn this essential tool to create amazing digital illustrations with vectors from the experts Vector illustration is a type of graph that represents images or shapes through mathematical formulas. Unlike what happens with illustrations made in bitmaps or from pixels, vectors do not lose sharpness or resolution no matter how much the size varies. At present, vector illustration is used in creative fields such as web design and this is due to its ability to be resized without losing quality. Graphic designers and digital illustrators are the ones who use it the most. If you need to learn how to create vector graphics, these courses could help you:

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  • Illustrator Tutorial: 17 Essential Keyboard Shortcuts for Illustrated Lettering
    Typography, Calligraphy and Lettering

    Illustrator Tutorial: 17 Essential Keyboard Shortcuts for Illustrated Lettering

    Learn essential Adobe Illustrator shortcuts that will improve your workflow when designing illustrated lettering When working with software like Adobe Illustrator, there are often commands and tools that you use frequently, making shortcuts a great way to save time and maintain your creative focus. For Birgit Palma (@birgitpalma), an illustrator and multidisciplinary designer who specializes in creating illustrated letterforms, Adobe Illustrator shortcuts are a crucial part of her workflow. In this tutorial she explains 17 important shortcuts and how they will help you when designing illustrated letterforms.

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  • How to Vectorize a Lettering Design
    Typography, Calligraphy and Lettering

    How to Vectorize a Lettering Design

    Learn to digitize your letters easily using Adobe Illustrator with tips and directions from Daniel Hosoya Advertising designer Daniel Hosoya (@danielhosoya) specializes in digital lettering and teaches the Domestika courses, Introduction to Lettering in Procreate and Digital Lettering with Illustrator and Photoshop. Here, he tells you how to digitize your lettering designs, an essential step if you want to work on your hand-drawn creations and turn them into more ambitious projects.

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  • Illustrator Tutorial: How to Create a Brush for Vector Portraits
    Illustration

    Illustrator Tutorial: How to Create a Brush for Vector Portraits

    Learn how to create a brush for digital illustration with Rogério Puhl A great set of brushes is very valuable to illustrators working with Adobe Illustrator. Each brush will have its own characteristics–thicker or finer, rounded or straight line, textured or plain effect–and these characteristics will impact your end results. Brushes are so important that many digital artist create them and then make them available for other professionals to download, either for free or for a fee. In this tutorial, illustrator, art director and graphic designer Rogério Puhl (@rogeriopuhl) will teach you how to create your own brush set in an easy and intuitive way. Discover more in the video below:

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  • Challenge: 3 Fun Ways to Stimulate Creativity
    Illustration

    Challenge: 3 Fun Ways to Stimulate Creativity

    Art director, graphic designer, and illustrator Rogério Puhl tests out his own challenge and surprises himself with the results Since he was a teenager, Rogério Puhl had always dreamed of being an artist. At the age of 14, he enrolled at Chapecó School of Arts in Brazil. After discovering the world of digital illustration at the age of 18, he began a career in advertising, and went on to work for some of the most successful agencies in Brazil: AlmapBBDO, DM9DDB, Africa, Ogilvy, WMcCann, Young & Rubicam, and more. His portfolio includes projects for clients such as MTV, McDonald's and Red Bull, and he has created copyrighted murals around the world. Thanks to many years of experience, Rogério has lots of tips on how to get your creative juices flowing. In this challenge, the artist shares three ways to keep your mind active. The exercises can be carried out anywhere using whatever tools you have at hand. Not only will you have fun but your brain will also get a workout. Rogério was in fact very surprised with the results he got when he tried it out himself.

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  • How to Create Shapes using the Shape Builder Tool in Illustrator
    Illustration

    How to Create Shapes using the Shape Builder Tool in Illustrator

    Learn to use the Shape Builder tool in Adobe Illustrator and make your workflow easier While it might not be the most well-known tool that you Adobe Illustrator has to offer, it is very useful for working with vectors. The Shape Builder tool allows you to create complex figures using basic geometric shapes and work quickly with different design types. This tool is very straight-forward and easy to use. Once you get to grips with how it works, you’ll be able to work out how to create perfect shapes very quickly using the tools offered by Adobe Illustrator. Here we explain how to use the Shape Builder tool to create shapes in Adobe Illustrator:

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  • Illustrator Tutorial: Tips for Vectoring Sketches
    Illustration

    Illustrator Tutorial: Tips for Vectoring Sketches

    Learn how to use your sketches and draw them with vectors to give the final touch to each element with Mauro Martins, graphic designer and bespoke illustrator Sketching helps us to organize ideas on paper, letting the line flow freely to give life to abstract figures that will later gain detail. It is at this stage that we can give free rein to our creativity. The next step is digitization, which requires more attention to detail and can be quite laborious, but it is essential to define your style and identity. To help you in this process, Mauro Martins (@mauromartins), graphic designer and illustrator, shares some tips to transform your sketches into a vector and give the final touch to each element. You can watch the tutorial here.

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  • Illustration Tutorial: How to Create Color Palettes from Images
    Illustration

    Illustration Tutorial: How to Create Color Palettes from Images

    Learn to make color palettes for your designs from the colors and images that inspire you with Catalina Estrada The colors we choose for our illustrations say a lot about our style and give a unique touch to anything we want to represent. The one-color palette will transmit a series of sensations completely different from those that other tones would achieve. Therefore, knowing which colors we want to use in our illustrations, and being able to choose them well, as the Adobe Capture app allows us to do with images, will help us make our mark on our work. In the following video tutorial, illustrator and print designer Catalina Estrada (@catalinaestrada) explains how to use Adobe Capture and Illustrator to import color palettes from our favorite photographs, to be used in an illustration. Watch the video below:

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  • Illustrator Tutorial: 3 Ways to Vectorize an Image
    Design

    Illustrator Tutorial: 3 Ways to Vectorize an Image

    Learn the key steps to vectorize an image in Adobe Illustrator with Juan Villamil In the world of graphic design, and, more specifically, illustration, lettering, branding and corporate and institutional design, mastering the creation of vector images is key. Vectors are highly manipulable, offer different advantages over pixels, and learning to create with them in Adobe Illustrator is not particularly difficult. In this tutorial, illustrator and graphic designer Juan Villamil, better known as Juan Sin Miedo (@juansinmiedo), explains three different ways to vectorize an image in Adobe Illustrator, and reviews the fundamental difference between images created with vectors and images created with pixels

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  • Illustrator Micro-tutorials by Marc Edwards
    3D & Animation

    Illustrator Micro-tutorials by Marc Edwards

    Australian designer Marc Edwards shows us how to create perfect icons in Illustrator in just a few seconds Icons. They’re everywhere: a universal language to express all sorts of words, ideas, and concepts, synthesizing what we want to say and communicating it directly. Mapping language is an art that not everyone is good at, as well as finding the logo that best says what we want it to, a designer faces the challenge of making sure anybody can recognize it in an instant. Excellence also requires simplicity and speed. Marc is an expert at this and he was kind enough to share some of what he’s learned on his Twitter profile.

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  • Download Free: ‘Rude Font’ Typography, by Miguel Nieto
    Typography, Calligraphy and Lettering

    Download Free: ‘Rude Font’ Typography, by Miguel Nieto

    Graphic designer Miguel Nieto shares his typography, Rude Font, with the Domestika community for free Miguel Nieto (@miguelnieto) created Rude Font to fill the need for a typography inspired by the ads at the turn of the 20th century. He imagined a modern adaptation of the classic advertising publications with a touch of street style. The typography found its shape and now we can download it for free as members of the Domestika community.

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  • 15 Essential Shortcuts for Mastering Illustrator
    Illustration

    15 Essential Shortcuts for Mastering Illustrator

    Learn the best shortcuts for speeding up and improving your workflow with Adobe Illustrator Most illustrators, designers, and artists will already be familiar with Adobe Illustrator. However, to really master the program, it’s important to learn these shortcuts. They will help you to move around the keyboard and interface quicker and increase your productivity. Adobe Illustrator also allows you to add and personalize shortcuts to fit your needs. Anyone who works with Illustrator should know these 15 shortcuts inside out. Download below a PDF with the shortcuts. Essential tools All of the following commands are activated at the touch of just one letter key, allowing you to execute them quickly. Resize: Free Transform tool (E) and Scale tool (S) These tools are for changing the size of selected objects. The first, the free transform tool, allows you to alter the proportions of the object in a way that distorts the original shape. The scale tool enlarges or reduces the size of the object horizontally (along the x axis), vertically (along the y axis), or both. Select: Direct Selection tool (A) and Selection tool (V) The first lets you select individual anchor points or path segments by clicking on them individually, or select an entire path or group by selecting any other point on the item. You can also select one or various objects from a group. The second shortcut lets you select objects and groups by clicking or dragging over them. You can also select groups within groups and objects within groups. Magic Wand tool (Y) This is a magic wand that can automatically select objects of the same color, stroke weight, stroke color, opacity, or blending mode with one click. Rotate tool (R) This tool is for rotating an object around a fixed point. The default reference point is the center point of the object. To change the rotation point, you just have to click where you want to move it to. Live Paint Bucket tool (K) This is an intuitive way to create illustrations with color. It allows you to use the full range of Illustrator’s vector drawing tools, but treats all the paths you draw as though they are on the same flat surface. Pen tool (P) The Pen tool is the most useful and versatile vector drawing tool. You can use it to choose how many anchor points your path will have and their positions. You also can decide whether they have jagged or rounded corners. Hand tool (H) The hand tool is useful for moving around the area you are zoomed in on. It makes working much easier. Paintbrush tool (B) The paintbrush tool allows you to click and drag to create a pathway to which predefined vector artwork is applied.

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