CSPD 301 Illustrator I

CSPD 301 Illustrator I provides students with a basic working knowledge of Adobe® Illustrator® CC. Subjects covered include drawing, bézier curves, color, gradients, patterns, typography, effects and much more. Students will learn how Illustrator files are exported and used in other applications such as Adobe Photoshop® and Adobe InDesign®. New features and best practices will be discussed, investigated and utilized throughout this course.

Prerequisite: basic knowledge of computers is required for all computer classes.

Bonus: experience with drawing, painting, color theory, design, sculpture, photography, light & shadow, psychology of art & human emotions, art therapy, and how the Universe works will be to your benefit :)

Recommended materials/supplies: students should bring a notebook and pen/pencils, as well as a USB Flash drive to transfer digital files to & from class. You are welcome to bring and use your own laptop computer with Adobe Illustrator CC installed.

Food & Drink: students are encouraged to bring food and drink to class. We'll have a break during our sessions. Local restaurants are limited and campus vending machines are, well, vending machines… loaded with who knows what? Bring drinks, dinner & snacks, it's all good :)

Adobe Trivia: Illustrator and Photoshop are siblings, with Illustrator being the big sister and Photoshop the little brother (Illustrator was a 1987 Adobe creation/release with Botticelli's Venus as it's icon (female) and Photoshop as an acquisition by the Knoll brothers (Thomas & John, both males) in the late 1980s. (Thomas Knoll is still involved with the development of Photoshop and John Knoll is Chief Creative Officer at Industrial Light & Magic for Lucasfilm, LTD.) Adobe thought Photoshop would be second to Illustrator, but they were mistaken – Photoshop took off and proved to be the more popular of the two applications due to it's unique capabilities in manipulating photographs (bitmap images). Both applications work extremely well together in being able to produce vector graphics & raster images (bitmaps) for artists, designers, photographers and other creatives around the world.

InDesign was the late comer into the Adobe family in 2000, an acquisition from Aldus in 1994 (formerly Aldus PageMaker, then Adobe PageMaker – aka RageMaker among designers and pre-press technicians due to the multiple work-arounds needed in order to print the digital files correctly) and is viewed as a baby sister to the two older siblings. Adobe released InDesign 2 in 2002 and in an interview with an Adobe representative I was asked what I thought of the new version (since version 1 had numerous issues). I excitedly answered, "It's Adobe Illustrator on page layout steroids!" InDesign has many of the same capabilities Illustrator does, with it's strength in being able to layout multi-page documents and process type (lots of type!) effortlessly.

Adobe Fresco for iPad Pro Released on September 24, 2019

Adobe Fresco (version 1.0.2) is a drawing and painting app built especially for iPad Pro and Apple Pencil and designed for artists who draw professionally or paint for passion. Fresco combines the power of your favorite Photoshop brushes with the precision of vector brushes and the revolutionary technology of Live Brushes, for unlimited expression.

Paint with watercolors and oils that blossom, blend, smear, and smudge just like the real thing. Work with infinitely scalable vector brushes to create crisp lines, ready to print at any size. Easily import all your Photoshop brushes, or choose from over a thousand natural brushes created by celebrated master Kyle T. Webster. Fresco reimagines essential tools for illustrators, including modernized selection and masking, and a flexible UI so you can draw faster and without distractions. With Photoshop integration and automatic cloud syncing, brushes and projects follow you across devices, so you can work wherever inspiration strikes.

Schedule at a glance (subject to revision)

September

October

November

December

Notes & Projects

The Adobe Illustrator Story

When Adobe Illustrator first shipped in 1987, the new product not only altered Adobe's course, it changed drawing and graphic design forever. See how Adobe Co-Founder John Warnock first conceived of Illustrator as a PostScript drawing tool and how PostScript's Bézier curves could be applied to the shapes illustrators painstakingly created by hand. – May 2014, video, 19:01

Learn more about the history of Adobe Illustrator…

Adobe Illustrator 88 Promotional Video

A look into the past with this Illustrator 88 (version 1.7, released March 1988) promotional instructional video from Adobe Systems Inc. – c. 1988, video, 27:30

Creative Insight & Inspiration

A collection of links to items of interest on the Interweb to inform & inspire…

Adobe Illustrator Turns 32 This Year
Adobe Illustrator was released to the public in 1987 and celebrated it's 30th birthday in 2017! (current version CC 2019, v23.0.6)

Adobe Illustrator CC 2018 Properties Panel
The Properties panel in Illustrator lets you view settings and controls in the context of your current task or workflow. This new panel has been designed with ease of use in mind, ensuring that you have access to the right controls when you need them.

Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator & InDesign – Choosing the Right Design App
Learn what each application does best & develop an efficient design workflow.

Redesigning Adobe’s File Type Icon System Language
With the newest release of Creative Cloud 2018, users will see the file type icons have a fresh, new look!

Elizabeth Gilbert: Your Elusive Creative Genius
Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses — and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person "being" a genius, all of us "have" a genius. It's a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk.

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
From the worldwide bestselling author of Eat Pray Love: the path to the vibrant, fulfilling life you’ve dreamed of. If you enjoyed watching Liz Gilbert's TED talk in the link above, you'll love her book. It's a great read :)

Vegetal Mask by Paul Douard
100 hour project – just because you're working with a computer doesn't mean your creative process is faster – Highlights of steps from the sketching in Adobe Photoshop CC,
to drawing and colorization in Adobe Illustrator CC. This vector illustration is part of the Elemental Masks Project.

The Schweizer Guide to Spotting Tangents
A tangent is when two or more lines interact in a way that insinuates a relationship between them that the artist did not intend.

The History & Philosophy of Copyright
Want to know the origins of the concept of copyright? This video from Filmmaker IQ looks at the history & philosophy behind modern-day copyright.

Adobe Create: 5 & 3/4 Questions
Interview with illustrator Marina Kodachrome and her illustrations – she loves Illustrator!

Master List of Keyboard Shortcuts for Designers + Free Cheat Sheet
Shutterstock Blog, Aaron White, June 21, 2018

5 Essential Techniques for Drawing With the Pen Tool in Illustrator
Shutterstock Blog, Aaron White, May 4, 2018

Knock Knock – Multi-screen Animation

Brunettes Shoot Blondes: Knock Knock – Slick animation using Apple devices and a whole lot o' creativity. Looks like a whole lot o' Illustrator too!

The X-Files 2016 Promotional Animation – Ask Yourself

The X-Files – Miniseries Premiered on Fox, January 24, 2016 : From Adobe Illustrator to Adobe Photoshop – graphics for animations like this can begin in Illustrator and be processed in Photoshop to create animated GIFs that can be emailed or posted on the Web.

Project One

10 Digital Drawings

Due: September 26th

Concept: Exploring Adobe Illustrator.

Project Brief: Explore Adobe Illustrator's shape and drawing tools and create 10 Illustrator files. No pressure, anything goes – be creative and have fun!

Specifications: 10 files, RGB color, Raster Effects 300 ppi, Adobe Illustrator (ai) format

Getting Started…

1. Launch Adobe Illustrator,
2. Press the Create New button on the Start screen or use the menu, File > New… or Command + N (Control + N) to open the New Document window,
3. Set the unit of measurement to inches (located to the right of the Width text field),
4. Enter 11 in for the width and 8.5 in for the height (landscape mode for 8.5 x 11" paper – your monitors are wider than they are tall),
5. Press Advanced Options and set the Color Mode to RGB Color and Raster Effects to High (300 ppi),
6. Press Create button – your new document will appear and you can get started creating with Adobe Illustrator!

Saving Files in Adobe Illustrator…

1. Use the menu, File > Save or Command + S (Control + S),
2. Give your file a name (example: lines-shapes.ai),
3. Select a destination on your computer,
4. Verify the file format is Adobe Illustrator (ai) or select it from the format menu,
5. Press Save button,
6. Verify the version is Illustrator CC,
7. Press OK button – after the initial save, you can simply press Command + S (Control + S) to save your work as you continue to work in that document.

Close Window When Finished…

Use the menu, File > Close or Command + W (Control + W) or click the X to the left of the document's title in the tab at the top left of your monitor.

• Getting Started – Don't let the blank canvas syndrome interfere with this project. Just do it. This project is simply about playing with Illustrator's tools and features, it's not about creating masterpieces. Make new documents, cut loose and make a lot of marks, it's all good! Be sure to save your files to bring in for our next class.
• Create by Adobe – Adobe Create Magazine brings you profiles of some of the world’s most innovative artists—shining a spotlight on amazing work in photography, graphic design, film, type, illustration, architecture, and more…
• What is Illustrator? – video, 2:58
• Illustrator Help / Workspace basics
• Illustrator Help / Tool galleries
• Illustrator Help / Drawing simple lines and shapes
• Illustrator Help / Editing paths
• Illustrator Help / About color
• Illustrator Help / Selecting objects
• Illustrator Help / Painting with fills and strokes

For those who want to know more…

• Vector Graphics – Wikipedia
• Raster Graphics – Wikipedia
• Bézier Curve – Wikipedia
• Pierre Bézier – Wikipedia – French engineer, popularized Bézier curves for computer graphics

Project Two

Character Study

Due: October 3rd

Concept: Develop a character (or more) in Adobe Illustrator.

Project Brief: Explore Adobe Illustrator's shape and drawing tools and create a vector illustration of a character. Use solid colors for fills, strokes, shading and highlights. Step outside your comfort zone and see how it feels!

Specifications: RGB color, Raster Effects 300 ppi, Adobe Illustrator (ai) format

How to Draw a Horse's Head – example of using simple shapes to create art

• Getting Started – Watch a cartoon or two for inspiration. Search the web for images of your favorite character(s) – look for images shaded with solid color versus gradients (we'll be covering gradients next week) as discussed in class.
• Illustrator Help / Drawing basics
• Illustrator Help / Drawing with the Pen, Pencil or Flare tool
• Illustrator Help / Draw and edit curves
• Illustrator Help / Create and edit shapes
• Illustrator Help / Transforming objects
• Illustrator Help / Combining objects
• Illustrator Help / Creating shapes using Shape Builder Tool
• See what you can create with Illustrator – video, 5:00
• Photoshop Help / Image essentials – info about bitmaps and vectors
• Photoshop Help / Raster & Vector
• Cartoon Fundamentals: Create Emotions From Simple Changes in the Face
• Create a Comic Character: Making a Character Sheet in Adobe Illustrator
• How to Draw a Mermaid – Adobe Create by Renée di Cherri

Project Three & Four

Gradients

Due: October 10–17

Concept: Use gradients to create rich, dimensional vector artworks in Adobe Illustrator.

Project Brief: Continue exploring Adobe Illustrator's shape and drawing tools and create an illustration using gradients, blends and transparency. Use gradients for fills, strokes, shading and highlights. Walk the edge and create something new for yourself!

Specifications: RGB color, Raster Effects 300 ppi, Adobe Illustrator (ai) format

• Getting Started – Observe your surroundings – gradients are everywhere. Subtle and harsh color transitions occur naturally with various light sources, angles of illumination, time-of-day, location, etc. Artists have challenged themselves for centuries with trying to recreate realistic color, light & shadows.
• Light & Shadow – search the Web for more information and images about light & shadow.
• Illustrator Help / Stroke an object – more about strokes (dashed & variable widths)
• Illustrator Help / Gradients (linear, radial & freeform)
• Illustrator Help / Transparency and blending modes
• Illustrator Help / Blending objects
• Create color gradients – video, 4:39
• Get creative with freeform gradients – video, 4:52

Project Five

Typography (designing with type)

Due: October 24th

Concept: Create unique typographic examples in Adobe Illustrator.

Project Brief: Adobe Illustrator has a long history of being the go to application to create incredible typographic effects. Everything from type on paths to flowing text in unique shapes, decorative type to descriptive text and labels, Illustrator does it all. Be creative with Illustrator and make at least 3 unique typographic examples.

Specifications: RGB color, Raster Effects 300 ppi, Adobe Illustrator (ai) format

• Getting Started – Typography is all around us – everywhere – really, everywhere. Appliances in our homes, books and magazines, websites, email, ads on TV, movie and show titles & end credits, digital displays, posters, billboards, packaging, and the list goes on and on. Start to carefully look at type examples to see how it was crafted – most likely, any fancy looking type you see was created in Adobe Illustrator.
• Illustrator Help / Fonts – learn about fonts, including OpenType variable fonts and more…
• Illustrator Help / Creating text
• Illustrator Help / Creating type on a path
• Illustrator Help / Scaling and rotating type
• Touch Type Tool – video
• Discover Illustrator's Touch Type Tool by Tony Harmer
• The History of Typography – Animated Short – video, 5:09
• Take text to the next level – Illustrator tutorial
• Touch Type – Selecting Overlapping Letters: Manipulating type with the Type Touch option may make selecting overlapping text really challenging, especially if you scale some type larger and some smaller. The solution is to select the letter that is overlapping the others and causing the selection issue (i.e. the easy one to select), use the menu, Object > Arrange > Send to Back. Now you can select the smaller letter and continue transforming!
• Kerning Types: metrics, optical & manual – kerning is the process of adjusting the space between any two characters (glyphs) in a font. The metrics option is the kerning the type designer designated when creating the font. Optical kerning was introduced in Adobe InDesign 2 in 2002 and looks at character shapes to adjust the space. Manual kerning is done by hand by the artist using Adobe Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop (see Kerning below).
• Kerning – adjusting the space between pairs of characters (glyphs) to achieve a visual pleasing result. Use the Type tool and click between a pair of characters in your text, press Option (PC: Alt) and tap the left arrow key to decrease the space or the right arrow key to increase the space between characters. This works in Adobe Illustrator, InDesign & Photoshop.
• Tracking – adjusting the space between multiple characters (glyphs) for uniform spacing in a word, sentence or paragraph(s). Highlight your desired text with the Type tool and press Option (PC: Alt) and tap the left arrow key to decrease the spaces or the right arrow key to increase the spaces between characters. This works in Adobe Illustrator, InDesign & Photoshop.
• see additional links for Typography in sidebar

Project Six

Logo Design

Due: October 31st

Concept: Create a logo in Adobe Illustrator.

Project Brief: Corporate brand marks (symbols) and logotypes are usually created in Adobe Illustrator. This is due to Illustrator's resolution-independent output. Illustrator files can be infinitely scaled while maintaining sharpness! Create black, white, Pantone+ Solid Coated, RGB and CMYK versions of your brand mark.

Specifications: Create the following versions of your logo design and save your files in the Adobe Illustrator format (.ai).

• Pantone+ Solid Coated – for brand identity & printing with limited inks
• RGB Color – for digital display
• CMYK Color – for 4-color printing
• Black – for printing with black ink
• White (also known as the knock-out version: as in knock-out to white, where white is the paper color) – for use over similar or competing color(s) to brand marks and/or visually complex backgrounds

• Getting Started – Brand marks are all around us, on everything. Brand marks and branding have a long history, dating back to ancient Egypt to mark ownership of livestock. Branding has evolved over time to not only mark livestock, but to mark products, services, groups and individuals. Adobe Illustrator is usual application to create logos, due to the scalability of vector artwork (Adobe InDesign is also used to create logos as vector art. Design novices often create logos in Adobe Photoshop and quickly learn that bitmaps have limited scalability.). Start to carefully look at logos and see if you can figure out how it was crafted in Adobe Illustrator.
• Design in Black (first) – Designers work with black only to begin their exploration in creating a brand mark to save time and get the design nailed down. The mark has to work with reproduction in a single ink, including white (paper color or a special opaque ink).
• Design in Color (second) – Color exploration is the next step in brand mark design – usually a time consuming process selecting colors that best represent a corporation or individual. Color can evoke powerful emotional and psychological responses from humans and convey positive and negative values.
• The Story Behind the FedEx Logo
• The Cost of Famous Logos
• Logo Evolution of 25 Famous Brands
• Steve Jobs: "Don't Make It Cute"
• Illustrator Help / About color
• Illustrator Help / Selecting colors
• Illustrator Help / Using and creating swatches
• Pantone® – Pantone is the world-renowned authority on color and provider of color systems and leading technology for the selection and accurate communication of color across a variety of industries. Download the 2015 catalog and the 2019 catalog.
• Create Outlines – After saving your master Illustrator file, convert all type to outlines before making the black, white and color versions. This will convert your typography to shapes and not require including the font(s) with your files. You can convert live type to outlines by selecting your type objects with the Selection tool and using the menu, Type > Create Outlines or Command+Shift+O (PC: Control+Shift+O).

Project Seven

Layout

Due: November 14th

Concept: Create a layout in Adobe Illustrator.

Project Brief: Adobe Illustrator also has a long history of being used for page layout to create everything from business cards, postcards, posters, bumper stickers, product packaging, email campaigns, ads and more. Choose a subject and try your hand at creating a layout in Illustrator. Feel free to create more than one layout – the more you do, the more you learn!

Specifications: RGB color, PDF format (include printer's marks & bleed if necessary)

• Getting Started – Again, all around us, almost everything and everywhere you look – Adobe Illustrator is hard at work. Start to carefully look at printed and digital works and see if you can figure out if it was created in Adobe Illustrator and how it was achieved.
• Scaling (resizing) Placed Digital Images in Illustrator – Illustrator allows you to easily scale placed digital images (i.e. Photoshop files and digital photos) by dragging a corner of the bounding box around the image with the Selection tool, using the Scale tool or using width and height fields in panels. It's best practice to place images at 100% of their original size or scale them smaller than 100% of their original size in order to keep the file's resolution needed for printing. Scaling an image larger than 100% will result in lowering the effective image resolution and could cause pixelation and disappointing printing results. Digital images should have a resolution of 300 ppi (pixels per inch) for everyday printing needs.
• Illustrator Help / Importing artwork files
• Illustrator Help / Place multiple files | Illustrator CC
• Illustrator Help / Importing and exporting text
• Illustrator Help / Clipping masks
• Illustrator Help / Working with effects
• Illustrator Help / Summary of effects (quick reference)
• Illustrator Help / Reshaping objects with effects
• bleed – Printed artwork or text that extends beyond the final trimmed piece to ensure ink is printed to the edge of the media.
• Illustrator Help / Setting up documents for printing
• Illustrator Help / Printer’s marks and bleeds

Project Eight

Patterns & Brushes

Due: November 21st

Concept: Working with patterns and brushes in Adobe Illustrator.

Project Brief: Pattern tiles (repeating elements) can be produced in Adobe Illustrator by simply dragging objects, including photos, to the Swatches panel. Complex pattern tiles can be created by selecting multiple objects in your file and using the menu, Object > Pattern > Make – this will add the pattern swatch to the Swatches panel and invoke the Pattern Options dialog. Pattern tiles can be customized using the Pattern Options to create a variety of tiles. Pattern brushes can also be made from objects and pattern swatches to enhance your designs. Have fun working with patterns!

Adobe Illustrator also features a suite of brushes that let you stylize the appearance of paths. You can apply brush strokes to existing paths, or you can use the Paintbrush tool to draw a path and apply a brush stroke at the same time. Illustrator has five different types of brushes: calligraphic, scatter, art, pattern, and bristle. Custom brushes can be created, allowing for endless possibilities in creativity! Be expressive and don't worry about making mistakes!

Specifications: RGB color, Raster Effects 300 ppi, Adobe Illustrator (ai) format

• Getting Started – You guessed it, more observation!. Patterns are used in textile design, art, architecture, etc. Wall paper & wrapping paper, packaging, floor coverings, borders, tiles, trim work, etc. Start to carefully look at patterns and see if you can figure out if they were created in Adobe Illustrator and how they were achieved.
• Illustrator Help / Patterns
• Illustrator Help / Create and edit patterns
• Illustrator Help / Transforming objects
• Transforming Patterns – Press and hold the tilde key (~), located to the left of the number 1 key at the top of the keyboard to transform the pattern fill, leaving the shape untouched.
• Transform Panel Menu – The panel menu in the Transform panel has options for Transform Object Only (default setting), Transform Patterns Only and Transform Both.
• How to Create an Illustrative Vector Pattern Design
• Illustrator Help / Automatic corner generation (new feature Illustrator CC version 17)
• Adobe Illustrator Guide: How to use symbols, patterns, and graphic styles – PDF 1.1 MB
• Illustrator Help / Brushes
• Illustrator Help / Painting with fills and strokes – contains info on variable-width strokes
• How to work with brushes
• Use Brushes – video, 04:00
• A Look Inside Pattern Brush Borders in Adobe Illustrator CC – video, 08:25
• Create a Pattern Brush – video, 10:00
• DesignTuts+ – Adobe Illustrator Brush tutorials
• DesignTuts+ – A Huge Compilation of 60 Free Illustrator Brushes
• 40 Awesome Sets of Free Adobe Illustrator Brushes to Bookmark
• Pattern & Brush Libraries – Adobe Illustrator ships with additional libraries that can be accessed using the panel menus (top right of panels) or Libraries buttons (bottom left of panels).
• Search for Patterns & Brushes – Search for Illustrator patterns and Illustrator brushes in your web browser and in your Adobe Creative Cloud Assets > Market – you'll find an incredible amount of resources that you can download and use to your heart's content!

Project Nine

Reason to Create!

Due: December 12th

Concept: Showcase your skills using Adobe Illustrator!

Project Brief: Use Adobe Illustrator and create 3 or more artworks with techniques covered in class and from personal research & experimentation. Have fun and create something exciting!

Specifications: RGB color, Adobe Illustrator format

• Getting Started – You wanted to learn Adobe Illustrator for a reason. Think about that reason and let that inspire you to create in Adobe Illustrator. Feel free to take inspiration from the world around you and have fun with the creative process!
• Illustrator Help / Symbols
• Illustrator Help / Symbolism tools and symbol sets
• Illustrator Help / Best practices for creating web graphics
• Adobe Illustrator CC Tutorials – From Novice to Expert
• Creative Pro – more tips & insight on design and the Adobe Creative Cloud apps
• Tuts+ – more tutorials with the Adobe Creative Cloud apps
• Orlando Arocena on Behance – commissioned to design Illustrator CC 2014's Venus
• Malika Favre – illustrator
• Illustrator Help / Default keyboard shortcuts – Mac & PC cheat sheets
• Adobe Create Magazine – online resource for art, design, illustration, photography & more…