Talk about your tricks of the trade for the newly upgraded Illustrator CS3 and Adobe Illustrator CS3: Classroom in a Book has ‘em covered. To be honest I am far from being a seasoned Illustrator user but this book gets you well on your way with an excellent and easy to understand task based learning style with exceptional supporting graphics and fun to do tutorials. If you are a beginning user looking for some great ideas how to create great illustrations with a very streamlined workflow this book is worth more than its weight in gold. GET IT GET IT GET IT.

The book is divided into 15 tutorial sections and smartly puts interface and enhancement discussions at the front of the book in sections of its own. I thought this was a clever tactic rather than forcing seasoned Illustrator users to suffer through the first few lessons getting through showing you where the pen tool is.

Preface

The opening units are for those who are new to Illustrator. There is a Getting Started unit which shows you how to install the program, restore default panel settings and provides a little information on the Adobe certification.

The next section briefly introduces the enhancements that the CS3 version now has. Here you see the facelifts from the Control panel, drawing enhancements and the new functionality of the eraser tool. They have also given some time to how the CS3 workflow has improved in Illustrator. This is really a great section to read if you are a veteran to illustrator and want to see if this book will help you on your way to using the new features.

The last section before the lessons/units helps you to familiarize yourself with the new interface and a couple of chances to use some of the new tools. Here you are really introduced to the “best practices” of working within CS3.

Unit 1 Getting to know the work area

Much like the preceding section this first unit is really for beginners and those who have never worked with Illustrator. There is some basic instruction familiarizing you with the tools and panels and discussion on how to access and use the panel menus. All of these are done with the use of supporting art files already created for you. What is nice about the instruction here is that you really get the feel for Illustrators interface and by the end of the unit you have created something that looks very professional if you have followed all of the instructions.

Unit 2 and 3 Selecting and Aligning / Creating Shapes.

These are the last of the targeted to new users of Illustrator. Of course as a new user myself I found these units very helpful. Unit 3’s discussion of Live Trace to create shapes included essential information and really showed how and why Illustrator is top ranked illustration program. The book makes learning Illustrator very easy through these two units but also gets you well on your way to being an intermediate user of the software that is always appreciated.

Unit 4 Transforming objects

Transforming objects was a good follow up to unit 3 because you really got a feel for how to manipulate and change objects in Illustrator. Exercises included here cover, scaling, reflecting, rotating, distorting and positioning.

Unit 5 Drawing with the pen tool

This is an outstanding unit because the pen tool for the graphic designer can eventually become one of the most powerful tools graphic design programs have to offer. The exercises provide easy to follow traceable patterns that really show how easy the pen tool in Illustrator has become to use.

Unit 6 Color and Painting

Illustrator CS3 has made great improvements in regards to providing users with a wonderful set of color tools. This unit gives you everything you need to know about adjusting and applying color in documents as well as creating color groups. This unit made me fall in love with Illustrator by the way that it has helped someone who is aesthetically color blind and provided me with corresponding color coordinated swatches.

Units 8-11

As the book proceeds you begin to have considerable overlap of tools and ways to manipulate the interface. However, this does not mean that the book begins to suffer or offer valueless lessons. In fact the lessons reinforce what you have been learning and allow you to achieve greater proficiency at doing them.

Units 12-15

The final units of the book cover workflow and streamlining elements of Illustrator giving the user a good understanding of how to create appearance and graphic styles as well as how to remove them. A solid understanding of styles is imperative if you are going to create consistent designs and so this discussion is a welcome addition to just learning tools. There is also a unit on symbols that really help streamline your work by allowing you to reuse content and create some really incredible effects. Finally there is some discussion on integrating Illustrator with other programs in the CS suite of offerings and creating specific print and artwork settings for specialized output devices.

Adobe has outdone itself this time in its classroom series for Illustrator CS3. The learning files are a pleasure to work with and the explanation is always easy to follow and the lessons easy but challenging to accomplish.