
Introduction and Welcome to the Course!
Open Adobe Illustrator, create a new document choosing print or web presets, learn how PPI and color modes affect output, and set a 600x600 square for stock submissions.
Customize your Illustrator workspace using the essentials layout, arranging panels such as align, transform, appearance, layers, swatches, and stroke; switch between rgb for web and cmyk for print.
Explore Illustrator layers to lock, hide, and organize shapes, and use the appearance palette to stack multiple strokes on one object with varied colors and widths.
Explore color palettes, appearances, and pathfinder tools in illustrator, including fills and strokes, opacity, color guide, swatches, brushes, symbols, transparency, and basic alignment and divide and unite functions.
Master essential Illustrator tools to craft a coffee packaging icon, using rectangle shapes, selection and direct selection, zoom, pan, and color sampling with tools like reflect, pin, and eyedropper.
Create a coffee packaging icon in Illustrator by using the rectangle and pen tools, snapping to points, coloring with eyedropper and color guide, adjusting stroke, and saving the file.
Create a coffee pot icon in Illustrator by drawing and editing shapes with ellipse, pencil, and pen tools; copy, paste, remove fills, and join paths for a clean outline.
Create a coffee pot icon in Illustrator by building shapes with the ellipse and pen tools, dividing and aligning paths, then apply fills, strokes, and smoothing for a polished finish.
collect and arrange three icons on four artboards in one document, align strokes and colors, and export PNGs using artboards for sharing.
Celebrate your icon and upload your projects to the project gallery to show what you learned about illustrator. Keep practicing to grow your illustrator skills for graphic design alongside Photoshop.
Are you a complete beginner to Illustrator?
If you want to learn about Adobe Illustrator and icon design in an easy and clear way, this course is for you. I have years of teaching and training experience under my belt, and I understand what beginners to Illustrator want and need to know.
We’ll start from the beginning steps of setting up your workspace in Illustrator all the way through to exporting your design as a JPG or PNG file.
Files for this class are available for download in each section.
You’ll learn:
The basics of illustrator, including Illustrator’s most important tools and palettes
The tools necessary to draw icons – and then immediately put those new skills to use creating a coffee icon set
Keyboard shortcuts to build designs quickly and easily
Tips and tricks to improve your speed
Course content and Overview
We’ll create a cute coffee icon set from start to finish, learning the basics of Adobe Illustrator along the way.
1. Intro
2. Creating a New Document in Adobe Illustrator
3. Setting Up Your Workspace in Illustrator
4. Layers and Appearance Palettes
5. Colors, Pathfinder, and Other Palettes
6. Illustrator Tools Used in Icon 1 - Coffee Packaging
7. Icon 1 - Coffee Packaging
8. Illustrator Tools Used in Icon 2 - Tall Coffee Cup
9. Icon 2 - Tall Coffee Cup
10. Illustrator Tools Used in Icon 3 - Coffee Pot
11. Icon 3 - Coffee Pot
12. Collecting graphics and exporting.
13. Wrap up
Don’t worry if you’re a complete beginner, even if you’ve never opened Illustrator before!
As one of my students, Yesenia Castillo, put it:
“If you are looking for a good start to learning Illustrator, this is the class to begin getting your feet wet. Anne speaks with clarity and balanced speed. The projects she has chosen are not too advanced, and she responds quickly. I would not hesitate to take another of her courses should the need arise.”