For someone who has never used it, diving into Adobe Illustrator can seem like diving into the middle of the ocean without a life vest. Eventually, you just get tired of treading water and find yourself sinking.
I vividly remember this feeling when I first began teaching design. I just didn’t want to do it anymore. Of course, quitting wasn’t really an option for me. I couldn’t just quit teaching in my 3rd week.
So, I trudged through it and after making many, many mistakes, I found some good solutions to the problems that I came up with.
I have been working on a video series called: “Learning Adobe Illustrator AND the Elements of Design”. In it I will be walking you (and/or your students) through the Illustrator program and exploring the elements of design.
I will be releasing this video series at the NEXT WEEK (I’m pretty excited!). For now, however, I just wanted to briefly talk about WHY Adobe Illustrator is the best place to start when learning graphic design.
- It is what the experts use. It may not be the least expensive digital program on the market, but whenever I go to graphic design websites I constantly hear designers talking about using AI (Adobe Illustrator) and a starting platform. Especially when they are talking about logos or graphic posters.
- It is design friendly. Unlike Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator is forgiving when it comes to designing. If your line or shape isn’t exactly right, you don’t have to erase it completely, you just need to adjust it a little or rearrange your designs.
- It uses vectors instead of bitmaps. I won’t get into deep detail on the difference between the two, but a vector is preferable to a bitmap when it comes to design. A bitmap is basically a picture made up of thousands or millions of little colored squares, if you zoom in too far your details will look “pixelated” or blurry. Whereas a vector will never be distorted, no matter how much you enlarge the design.
Again, I will be releasing a video series on Adobe Illustrator at the beginning of November. I really like to start my graphic design off right when it comes to these digital art programs and I feel that my video series will be a step in the right direction.
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