Chapter 1: Getting to Know Illustrator
When you write a textbook on software like Photoshop or Illustrator, you quickly learn
that Chapter 1 will be your most difficult chapter to write. That’s a bit counter-intuitive,
because it’s the beginner chapter and all the content being taught is basic. However, and
especially with Illustrator, there’s so much content that needs to be communicated.
Chapter 1 was a demanding chapter to write, and it will be a demanding chapter to
teach.
I highly advise the instructor to step through all the lessons in the chapter before
teaching it; don’t teach “on the fly.” It’s important that you’re experienced and
comfortable with all the exercises yourself so you will be able to respond readily to
students when they inevitably have questions.
Another key bit of advice, especially for this chapter, is to not rush through it. This goes
for the instructor and the students. Students will tell you “I’ve got it,” or “This is easy”
after about two minutes of working with a technique. What they don’t understand is that
Chapter 1 is not about remembering one technique; it’s about remembering dozens and
dozens of “easy” techniques and making them all work together.
There are nine lessons in this comprehensive chapter. All of them teach core skills that
form the alphabet of Illustrator’s working language. Take your time, and don’t let the
students move forward until you are sure that they are confident executing all that they
have learned.
I advise that you set your Artboard Preferences to Inches and that you work in inches,
as opposed to picas, points, or centimeters. You should work in points for type and
stroke widths.
Click the Zoom tool and deactivate the Scrubby Zoom option.
Explain to students that now they can create alternative, customized Tool panels in
order to meet their specific needs. This means that the instructor’s Tools panel can
possibly be different from a student’s Tools panel. This could cause problems.
Students should be familiar with the quick keys to switch between Outline and Preview
screen modes.
The instructor should take the time to go through every Preferences window to be sure
that student’s preferences are set the same as the instructor’s preferences.
Familiarize students with the quick keys to hide and show the bounding box, found on
the View menu. Students must also be familiar with quick keys for hiding and showing
smart guides.
Chapter 2: Creating Text and Gradients
In all three of my books, Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, I teach text and gradients
in the same chapter. That’s because filling text with a gradient is one of the most
effective ways to use a gradient. So, one goal of this chapter is to effectively apply
© 2023 Cengage Learning, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
, gradients to text.
Illustrator is Adobe’s best software for creating display text, and that fact needs to be
acknowledged. Even though Photoshop and InDesign do so much with text, when you
really need complex and eye-popping display text, Illustrator is your best choice.
Remember that you don’t need to draw a box with the Text tool to create text. Just click
the page and start typing.
When you create text, be sure that the fill color is set to something other than white. If
you set white text on the white artboard, you won’t be able to see it.
If the bounding box is activated (View menu), all objects you create will have a
bounding box that you can manipulate to change the shape of objects and text. That’s
great, but it can also be distracting. The instructor should teach students to use the quick
keys to toggle the bounding box between visible and invisible.
The students will find that flowing text into an object is fun. Text created inside an
object is called area text. Although most students will be familiar with working with
text in squares or rectangles, few will have experience working with text in, say, a
simple circle. The instructor should show how type size, leading, tracking and kerning,
and text alignment can all be used to affect and perfect the way the text is positioned
within the object. This lecture will be an excellent opportunity for the instructor to
focus on these essential and important operations in a way that is more challenging,
exciting, and visually interesting.
The lessons that cover putting type on a circle and on a path are tough to teach.
Everything in the software is very touchy, and it’ll be tough to get all the students to do
the same thing at the same time. The instructor should go through these lessons
carefully and know the techniques cold before trying to teach, because the students will
have difficulty.
Illustrator has a Preferences window dedicated to hyphenation. The hyphenation
preferences are applied automatically based on the language dictionary that is in use.
Remind students that hyphenation can be turned on or off and its default settings can be
changed.
Fortunately, gradients in Illustrator are very straightforward and relatively easy to work
with. If you follow the steps in the lessons, you will find that most if not all your
students will be using gradients effectively and with little difficulty.
Chapter 3: Drawing and Composing an Illustration
Chapter 3 is a crash course in digital drawing using the Pen tool. In many ways, it’s
probably the most important chapter in the book. When you get right down to it,
anybody can draw squares, circles, and shapes using the shape tools; it’s only with the
Pen tool that you can draw entirely unique shapes.
The Pen tool is tricky at first, but with practice, it starts to feel natural. I pride myself on
my techniques for teaching drawing and using the Pen tool in this chapter. I designed all
© 2023 Cengage Learning, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
When you write a textbook on software like Photoshop or Illustrator, you quickly learn
that Chapter 1 will be your most difficult chapter to write. That’s a bit counter-intuitive,
because it’s the beginner chapter and all the content being taught is basic. However, and
especially with Illustrator, there’s so much content that needs to be communicated.
Chapter 1 was a demanding chapter to write, and it will be a demanding chapter to
teach.
I highly advise the instructor to step through all the lessons in the chapter before
teaching it; don’t teach “on the fly.” It’s important that you’re experienced and
comfortable with all the exercises yourself so you will be able to respond readily to
students when they inevitably have questions.
Another key bit of advice, especially for this chapter, is to not rush through it. This goes
for the instructor and the students. Students will tell you “I’ve got it,” or “This is easy”
after about two minutes of working with a technique. What they don’t understand is that
Chapter 1 is not about remembering one technique; it’s about remembering dozens and
dozens of “easy” techniques and making them all work together.
There are nine lessons in this comprehensive chapter. All of them teach core skills that
form the alphabet of Illustrator’s working language. Take your time, and don’t let the
students move forward until you are sure that they are confident executing all that they
have learned.
I advise that you set your Artboard Preferences to Inches and that you work in inches,
as opposed to picas, points, or centimeters. You should work in points for type and
stroke widths.
Click the Zoom tool and deactivate the Scrubby Zoom option.
Explain to students that now they can create alternative, customized Tool panels in
order to meet their specific needs. This means that the instructor’s Tools panel can
possibly be different from a student’s Tools panel. This could cause problems.
Students should be familiar with the quick keys to switch between Outline and Preview
screen modes.
The instructor should take the time to go through every Preferences window to be sure
that student’s preferences are set the same as the instructor’s preferences.
Familiarize students with the quick keys to hide and show the bounding box, found on
the View menu. Students must also be familiar with quick keys for hiding and showing
smart guides.
Chapter 2: Creating Text and Gradients
In all three of my books, Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, I teach text and gradients
in the same chapter. That’s because filling text with a gradient is one of the most
effective ways to use a gradient. So, one goal of this chapter is to effectively apply
© 2023 Cengage Learning, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
, gradients to text.
Illustrator is Adobe’s best software for creating display text, and that fact needs to be
acknowledged. Even though Photoshop and InDesign do so much with text, when you
really need complex and eye-popping display text, Illustrator is your best choice.
Remember that you don’t need to draw a box with the Text tool to create text. Just click
the page and start typing.
When you create text, be sure that the fill color is set to something other than white. If
you set white text on the white artboard, you won’t be able to see it.
If the bounding box is activated (View menu), all objects you create will have a
bounding box that you can manipulate to change the shape of objects and text. That’s
great, but it can also be distracting. The instructor should teach students to use the quick
keys to toggle the bounding box between visible and invisible.
The students will find that flowing text into an object is fun. Text created inside an
object is called area text. Although most students will be familiar with working with
text in squares or rectangles, few will have experience working with text in, say, a
simple circle. The instructor should show how type size, leading, tracking and kerning,
and text alignment can all be used to affect and perfect the way the text is positioned
within the object. This lecture will be an excellent opportunity for the instructor to
focus on these essential and important operations in a way that is more challenging,
exciting, and visually interesting.
The lessons that cover putting type on a circle and on a path are tough to teach.
Everything in the software is very touchy, and it’ll be tough to get all the students to do
the same thing at the same time. The instructor should go through these lessons
carefully and know the techniques cold before trying to teach, because the students will
have difficulty.
Illustrator has a Preferences window dedicated to hyphenation. The hyphenation
preferences are applied automatically based on the language dictionary that is in use.
Remind students that hyphenation can be turned on or off and its default settings can be
changed.
Fortunately, gradients in Illustrator are very straightforward and relatively easy to work
with. If you follow the steps in the lessons, you will find that most if not all your
students will be using gradients effectively and with little difficulty.
Chapter 3: Drawing and Composing an Illustration
Chapter 3 is a crash course in digital drawing using the Pen tool. In many ways, it’s
probably the most important chapter in the book. When you get right down to it,
anybody can draw squares, circles, and shapes using the shape tools; it’s only with the
Pen tool that you can draw entirely unique shapes.
The Pen tool is tricky at first, but with practice, it starts to feel natural. I pride myself on
my techniques for teaching drawing and using the Pen tool in this chapter. I designed all
© 2023 Cengage Learning, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
