ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR BASIC

Duration: 2 Days

Cost: £600 + VAT

Course Available Online and Onsite

Create professional graphics with Adobe Illustrator

This comprehensive 2-day course is designed for anyone new to Illustrator who wants to produce professional-quality graphics, designs, and illustrations.

You’ll learn to master Illustrator’s sophisticated drawing and text tools, including:

Creating complex shapes and adjustable strokes
Applying painterly effects
Using Image Trace and Live Paint to transform your artwork

The course emphasizes practical, hands-on learning, with exercises to consolidate skills and build confidence.

No prior experience is required, and the course outline can be tailored to meet your specific requirements.

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WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

Anyone wishing to use Adobe Illustrator to create vector based graphics for print or screen.

PREREQUISITES

You need no previous experience to attend this course. Familiarity with Windows or Mac environment required.

COURSE OUTLINE

Day One

Welcome to Illustrator
• About vectors and bitmaps

Getting started in Illustrator
• Opening illustrations
• Creating new documents
• Using document profiles
• Saving Illustrator files
• Exploring panels and workspaces
• Useful shortcuts

Artwork components
• Outline vs Preview mode
• Rulers, guides and grids
• Intuitive Smart Guides
• Paths, point and handles
• Grouping objects
• Introducing layers
• Working in Group Isolation Mode

Creating basic shapes
• Using the Shaper tool
• Manipulating shapes with the Shaper tool
• Creating primitive shapes
• Creating polygons, stars and spirals
• Drawing lines, grids and arcs
• Using the Live Corners widget
• Transforming live shapes
• Identifying live shapes in eh Layers panel
• Converting to and from live shapes
• Storing assets in CC libraries

Applying colour
• Colour models
• Applying colour to objects
• Spot vs process colour
• Process and global process colours
• Managing swatches
• Creating colour groups
• Loading swatch libraries

Working with layers
• Creating layers
• Using layers effectively

Drawing in Illustrator
• Drawing with the Pencil tool
• Drawing with the Curvature tool
• Working with paths, points and direction handles
• Drawing paths
• Tips for drawing curves
• Editing, manipulating and modifying paths
• Adding and deleting anchor points
• Splitting cutting and erasing paths
• Using the Average and Join commands
• Using the Join tool

Day Two

Organising your artwork
• Introducing multiple artboards
• Editing the artboard size
• Using guides and smart guides
• Aligning and distributing artwork

Painting in Illustrator
• Manipulating stroke options
• Creating dashed lines
• Adding arrowheads to strokes
• Using the Blob brush
• Using Variable Width profiles
• Using the Variable Width tool

Placing imported graphics
• Linked vs embedded images
• Creating template layers

Using Image Trace
• Automatically tracing artwork
• Converting Image Trace objects

Using LivePaint
• Creating LivePaint groups
• Painting LivePaint objects
• Detecting gaps
• Modifying LivePaint groups

Transforming objects
• Using the Transform tools and menu commands
• Using the Transform panel
• Performing numerical transformations

Creating complex shapes
• Introducing the Shape Builder tool
• Creating compound shapes
• Expanding compound shapes

Working with type
• Using type tools
• The Touch Type tool
• Using the Character and Paragraph panel
• Creating outlines from text
• Creating type on a path

Saving and exporting
• Packaging your Illustrator file for hand-off
• Creating Adobe PDF files
• Exporting files from Illustrator

Questions and answers