Download Illustrator CS4 Tool Guide – PDF
To help you remember Illustrator CS4 tools and improve your productivity, we've put together a download-able Illustrator Tool Guide in PDF format that includes shortcuts and a brief description of what the tool does. So enjoy and come back for more guides!
Illustrator CS5 – In A New Dimension
If you haven’t already started working with Adobe Creative Suite 5, then you are missing out on new features that will make your life much easier. Whether you are a graphic designer or freehand artist, Illustrator CS5 release brings in some very interesting features, that smash out those painstaking tasks off your schedule. Today we will take a closer look at a much needed feature in AI CS5, the Perspective Grid tool. So how great is the tool? Well lets go ahead and find out.
The Sketchbook
Being able to draw or not; the sketchbook must be every designer's best friend. "If you can not sketch it, you won't be able to transfer your idea to the computer" I always say, because the computer is just an electronic peripheral and it must not make up to a large percentage of the design process but the final one that leads to making your sketched ideas more appealing and easier for production.
This is an example of a great sketchbook type, it is called the Mokeskine, you will find it in art and architecture supplies shops for sure.
I even know many people who use sketchbooks to "illustrate" their daily ideas, make it like a journal to keep the great ideas in it, people who are interested in film making or animation also keep journals (Sketches) to take notes of interesting visuals or ideas happening around them, after all, your mind can not everything without throwing out some other parts; you just have to keep a journal.
Follow this link to see the two-month experiment with this person's sketchbook.
Always remember that you do not have to publish it or you do not have to sell it, it is for your own sake, so use it in the way that you see fit.
Get to know your design rights!
As a graphic and multimedia designer who worked as a freelancer for a while now; I have got introduced to so many aspects and sides of the graphic art world, some of these aspects were technical, some were ethical but I also had to face the legal side of the Graphic Design world which can be a bit intimating if you do not know your obligations and rights as a professional freelance designer.
Designer 2.0
In the past few years; we've witnessed many technological developments in the field of Multimedia and internet; with that on hand, many designers who could not catch the fast lane of that super advancement of web 2.0 dropped out of the field or at least stayed where they are defining themselves as only Print or Web designers.
A designer now is not only web or print or video; a designer now can do anything and everything, from ordinary print items to web pages and even building a wordpress theme, a designer can also make a video to upload on YouTube, a new-media designer is even capable of writing simple HTML,CSS and PHP codes, the new-media designer can animate and develop interactive media and web applications.