Graphics Illustrators Books

This book is so helpful, for many people. Even people who know illustrator, can freshen up with this book. Great buy

I am a complete novice to any drawing software. So when I bought Adobe Illustrator CS and listened to the accompanying "training" tape, I knew I had to have a lot more instruction. I have found that most software manuals are like dictionaries--fine if you already have a good idea of what you're looking for, but not if you don't. So usually a great place to start is a "good" Dummies book. This Dummies book is better than most. It is written in a clear, concise manner with instructions on how to accomplish each feature covered in the chapters. If a simple earlier instruction is needed in a later chapter, it is repeated instead of referred to from the earlier chapter. This saves a lot of time flipping back and forth. And I appreaciated Ted Alspach's humorous approach to topics--at least the first time around. If you have to go back and re-read, it just gets in the way. The only drawback to the book is that it needs either an accompanying CD filled with Illustrator graphics for practice or an Internet source for such vector graphics. Often the instructions say, "Select a piece of artwork..." and I'm left struggling to find a decent example.

If you're interested in Illustrator, this is the way to learn it. You'll laugh your way through it, and you'll be amazed how the foreign language of Illustrator can be so easy to understand.

My favorite part of this book is where the author, with mountains of experience, says PC's are faster than Macs for graphics. It's about time somebody pointed it out. Notice how many people who give it poor ratings are those who worship at the altar of Mac.

This is a good book for beginner to intermediate, which is about where Dummies books are aimed, right? There may be better (more expensive) stuff, but I'm not sorry I picked this one up.

On the other hand, the criticisms here about lack of visual examples is a vaild one. There are examples, but a book about the premiere artist/illustrating software should be crammed with them.

I have found that this book is a great place for a beginner or someone trying to improve on their graphic abilities to start. This book can be a very good tool to help review and remind you of some thing that my have slipped your mind. If you need to rate this book on the 5 star scale then I would give it a 4 ý. The reason it fails for the full 5 stars is that it only had a few full color pages(16) and in some small areas, it is hard to find some things it asked you to process. You have to changed a few things (setup view), then they are where they say they are. One more little bit of info, if you are looking to buy this software and use this book, buy the book only and download the try me version of the "Illustrator CS". This way if you don't like the software then your only out the cost of the book.



Wil Bailey

LaGrange, GA
WGCFUG.org

As a relatively new Illustrator user I purchased this book because it covered a broad range of topics, and seemed to have extra detail on features that were of particular interest (e.g., graphs, clipping masks). I am somewhat disappointed so far. The introduction is short -- not enough to even learn where all the tools are located -- yet the topics do not provide enough depth to master the topics. There aren't many pictures (and only 16 color pages), so when the book says "Use the Direct Selection Tool" for the first time without a picture, a novice needs to turn back 3 pages to remind themselves what that is. (An expert obviously already knows what this is and has no use for this section at all.) So this seems to be a book for people who have some familiarity with Illustrator but not enough that they will tire of only 3-4 pages per topic.

A major pro to the book, however, is that the topics are very accessible. I am getting a good introduction to a variety of topics, and learning the lingo enough to be able to Google for more information when necessary. Many of the Adobe programs are difficult to break into, and this book does make that possible for Illustrator.

Although this book was not what I expected from the cover descriptions, it is serving an alternate purpose.

Real World Adobe Illustrator CS3 (Real World) All too often, when trying wrap your mind around a particular piece of software, the guru who writes the how-to book tries to dazzle you with a whole lot of extraneous, "dig me!", "look what I can do!" "I am so clever!" "watch me pull a flaming monkey out of my butt!", nonsense, when all you want to do is learn how to use a certain tool. Mordy's not like that. His book makes Illustrator way easy to learn. I'll give you an example. In all the books I've bought over at least a decade to learn several applications, I've always had to "hack my way through the underbrush", in the effort to discover and highlight key points. In Mordy's book, I haven't underlined anything, 'cause it's all concise, with no added fluff. When I need to look up something, I grab Mordy's book, go right to the correct page, scan down the instructions, bang, bang, bang, got it, toss the book aside, back to the computer, and I'm there. Seldom have to pick up the book a second time to look up the same thing again. It's easy to remember because I didn't have to wade through numerous digressions into obtuseness. A friend purchased an Illustrator book by another author and she has a couple pages of diagrams on the correct finger placement on certain combinations of keys. "Finger-dances", she calls them. If I was in a class this person taught, I'd run screaming out into the hallway. Come on, I'm not learning to play the piano here or how to read Braille. Don't make things more difficult than they have to be. By now I know how to find the Control, Shift and Alt keys. I can even find the Spacebar. (Whoa! Hold me back!) And don't waste expensive pages showing me other people's work. I can buy a big stack of magazines at a garage sale for a couple bucks if I want to look at other artists stuff. Okay, rant over. If you want to learn Illustrator pretty easy buy Mordy's book. That's all you need.

Great book. Very insightful explanations.... it's very obvious that
the author is master of the subject. This book has been a great resource in my Illustrator class; it's also the assigned textbook. Highly recommended!

I can only comment on the Web and Mobile Design chapter as that's all I read (put the book down after that!). It's as if the explanation of web safe color palettes and dithering were lifted right out of 1998. In fact I double-checked the cover to make sure it was for CS3! I'm a professional web developer, and let me tell you, for the most part you don't have to worry about the "216 web safe colors". My jaw is still stuck open...

This volume is a great disappointment. I'm sure Mordy could answer my questions but the book sure doesn't.
Deke McClelland's version (Real World Illustrator 10) is a far more thorough book. If you're a novice this book is
ample. I'm looking for more detail and it's just not here.

As a professional graphic designer, and a power user of Adobe Illustrator, this is the only book I recommend for someone who wants to learn this program.

You'll need at least a week of concentration, best to carefully ready the whole book. (This is not a quick start book)

After first determining why I needed Illustrator when I already had Photoshop, I picked up this book because of my positive experience with another book from this Classroom in a Book series (Photoshop 7.0). And this book does not disappoint in the least bit either.

It follows a tutorial style approach to teaching how to use Illustrator (both Mac and Windows versions). The book is mostly black and white with all the relevant color pictures tucked between lesson 12 and 13. It hasn't caused me any problems as I follow along on the computer as I read the book (I have a color monitor).

In 15 lessons, this book does an excellent job of teaching you how to use Illustrator 10 without having to be in a classroom. All lesson files are on the CD-ROM that comes with the book. The book starts off with explaining how to use the Work Area and builds from the basic to the more complex topics. The basic topics of creating shapes, painting, drawing, working with brushes are followed by the more difficult topics of transforming objects, working with type, blending shapes and colors, etc.

Even though the two programs Photoshop and Illustrator are coming closer with each new version, the main differences between them are to do with whether you want to start with an existing photo and modify it for print & web or you want to start from scratch and create illustrations and artwork for print & web. I am oversimplifying here but this explanation helps me keep the differences between these two programs straight in my head.

The technological differences are that Photoshop uses bitmaps to represent images and Illustrator uses vectors (and complex mathematical equations) to represent the images. Of course, you don't need to bother with this part as it is irrelevant to using the tools effectively.

I use both Photoshop and Illustrator for basic web design but mostly stay with Photoshop. The reason for this is that I am a photographer and have never been good at artwork so I use Illustrator mostly as a hobby to improve my creativity in this area. It has been a lot of fun for me and I hope the same for you! Have fun learning to use this amazing and cool tool! And don't forget to check out Adobe's website for their latest release of Adobe CS (Creative Suite) that includes the next version of Illustrator after Illustrator 10.

Although I had a lot of experience with CAD programs, I struggled with Illustrator 8. I finally upgraded to v. 10 and bought Classroom In a Book for that version. You CAN teach yourself Illustrator with the manual and this book in a few weeks. ICIAB is a good supplement to the manual, which for reasons that always baffled me, has too few illustrations for information aimed at visually oriented people.

You will have to do some experimentation to get full benefit from the lessons, but I picked up things I was clueless on before. It does help to have some additional book such as Visual series (PeachPit Press) for details not covered.

Downside: some errors of tools or keys, nothing serious. But I was disappointed by two topics; the web chapter separately covers making a Flash animation for the web, and slicing a graphic for the web, but while the "finished" version of the lesson shows both in a complete web page, the lesson doesn't tell you how to put them together without the Adobe Web program (too expensive for me). You have put both html files in a text editor and combine them using the complete example for reference as to where to put the Flash file and what to include or leave out.

Also, the section in lesson 6 on data/variable objects is applied in a page of business cards, but doesn't explain how to get the data base and variable fields applied to all incidences of the biz cards on the sheet. I did figure it out for myself, but it took me about an hour of experiment, and is almost as tedious as just editing the file, though once the database is set up it would be quick to print out new cards with the variations.

But overall, a really good way to learn Illustrator to an intermediate level, and a whole lot cheaper than any class I've looked into (plus classes tend to be taught on MACs in my area).

This book came highly recommended by an Illustrator 10 instuctor. It's an excellent resource for a very powerful software application. One doesn't need to be very technically oriented to get the most out of this book.

(Note to "A reader" from Hollywood, CA USA: You may benefit from the English course into which you suggested Chris Youngs enroll himself. I am confident that, if you do, you will learn that languages are always capitalized. Until then, perhaps you will realize that you do not possess perfect grammar skills either and your tacky comments should kept to yourself.)

I've always liked the Adobe Classroom in a Book series. This book is no exception. The lesson plans are easy to follow and structured in a way that allows even the most inept user to create nice looking illustrations. A very good beginner's book that teaches the basics as well as time saving shortcuts.

A great reference too for Illustrator. Don't use it on it's own though but in conjunction with other references. Has some great thought provoking ideas on using Illustrator.

This is such a great way to learn Illustrator basics! Don't be intimidated by the size! It is written in plain English and uses humor to help you become familiar with many non-familiar and intimidating terms. There are illustrations (!) for almost every step in the process, which are very helpful. It is not organized as lessons but instead, begins with the description of each tool and its use and then tells you how to implement the tool and shows you illustrations of what the result should look like. It then tells you, in successive chapters, the various ways to combine the basics and enhance them with devices like color, gradients and type to make an illustration. It demystifies such esoterica as "masking", "paths", "layers" and "Bezier curves"and explains what they do. Then it explains why you should master them and how to implement them. I haven't even gotten to the included CD yet, I'm saving it for when I finish the book! It contains a sampling of effects and fonts and some utilities that you can use with Illustrator. An excellent beginner's book and an encouraging way to get started in Illustrator.

My dog-eared copy of this book has seen me through dozens of clients and tons of issues I would never have known how to deal with otherwise. The perfect reference guide for Illustrator.

This is a great book for learning the basics of Adobe Illustrator 8 in a very short time. The examples it provides really help you along, and you are doing cool looking logos in no time. Yes, there are better books out there, but this one is great for people who are just starting out. Worth the read.

I bought this book online, and therefore without having the opportunity to flip through it. I was disappointed. Grip #1 I was left with the impression that the schtick of the "Bible" series is to put out really fat books implying that it's a complete treatment. Don't be fooled. There is a LOT of filler in the 775 pages. Gripe #2: It seems poorly organized, as if slapped together. Overlapping and related information is covered in multiple parts of the book. The flow of ideas is sometimes unpredictable, again making it look unedited. Gripe #3: the examples are hypothetical - not applied. (I wonder about the authors' graphical talent based on the unprofessional illustrations peppering the book.) So while you might learn what effect various settings have, it's pretty much up to you to figure out how you'd use it in real life. (For a contrast, see Photoshop 5/5.2 Wow book, which shows you compelling end-results and shows you how you apply Photoshop's tools to create it. I wish the Illustrator WOW book was as good!) I will admit that I learned some basic techniques with this book, but overall I cannot recommend it.

While it doesn't cover any of the new features in CS3, this is an excellent guide to get your feet wet in Illustrator. It includes step-by-step instructions and leads you gradually through all the basic features of the software.

I bought this book for my husband to learn Illustrator (and also the companion book for photoshop). It is an excellent tool to teach the basics of illustrator, especially for someone who has never used the program before. It's not meant for people already familiar with the program but BEGINNERS, and it does a great job. I would highly recommend it to someone who wants to learn the basics. If you do the chapter work, you will learn Illustrator.

This is my textbook for a communtiy college class on Adobe Illustrator and it is a great book. I can go back and redo the lessons and get it!! I am a visual learner and this book is really a great tutorial. I am having fun in the class but missed two lessons and caught up on my own with the book.

I have worked through every page and exercise in both this book and the official Adobe "Classroom in a Book" for Illustrator CS2. Chris Botello's book (this one) is far better in my opinion. Chris covers features, topics, and techniques that the official book completely ignores (gradient meshes, as one of many possible examples). I suppose the official book may have a couple of very minor things that this book doesn't, but no book like this is completely encompassing. This book certainly comes closer to giving a fuller picture of what you can do in Illustrator than the official book.

While I find that some of the comments in other reviews below to be exaggerated, I do agree that a very small amount of the instruction text in just a couple of the particular steps of only a few of the tons of exercises could be worded better, but it's far from incomprehensible. Just a tiny amount of thinking and experimentation reveals the "why" of any step you may find baffling. I might even suggest that if this simple book befuddles you, maybe Illustrator isn't right for you altogether. No one will be holding your hand when you are doing *real* work with Illustrator.

Think of my 4 start rating as more of a 4-and-a-half star rating. I would have given the book 5 stars if it had been in full-color and included a CD. A very small number of the examples refer to a color you should be seeing in the accompanying picture, but the whole book is in black-and-white. That isn't really a big deal, since it's always obvious what the text is referring to. About the CD: while I'm sure it was a smart, cost-efficient solution for the publisher, including a CD with the book's example files would have been nice. As it is, you must download the examples from the publisher's website. Still, that isn't really a problem.

So, for greater exposure to what Illustrator CS2 does and how to do it, I highly recommend this book. It covers many features, has lots of exercises, and it has better-than-what-some-people-would-have-you-believe explanations for everything. It is worth spending time with.

This text was bought for an art class for graphic design project production. At the time, I didn't know anything about Illustrator other than using the pen tool and some basic shapes and whatnot. While I haven't used many other references for Illustrator, this would have to be THE book I recommend for learning Illustrator. It goes through and systematically teaches you everything you need to know to be a mid to high level user of Illustrator CS2. If that's what you want to be, this book is for you.

This book gives an introduction to almost all features of illustrator and how to use it. Using this book in conjunction with extensive personal practice and experimentation with the program will take you a long way toward mastering the software.

I bought Illustrator CS2 a couple months ago and had never used the program before. I have used Photoshop for years, so I was at least familiar with the general Adobe layout. This "100 Essential Techniques" book sounded like the perfect place to start, but I soon discovered mistakes and omissions as I went through the tutorials. And as a novice, ANY mistake or omission makes the difference between quick learning and total confusion. "Did I read that wrong? Am I not looking in the right place?" No, the book is wrong.

For example, #24 is called "Clipping with Masks". It's supposed to tell you how to use one object as a shape mask for another object. Here are the COMPLETE instructions for this section:

"The components of a clipping mask are the object to be masked and the masking object. You first create the object to be masked. Then you move the masking object on top of the object to be masked."

It fails to mention the important part about clicking "Object | Clipping Mask | Make". This I discovered on my own. Other sections (example #31) use the wrong terminology. In this section they used "Lasso tool" when they should have said, "Magic Wand." If I hadn't already been familiar with these two tools from Photoshop, I would have wondered why their instructions didn't work.

To summarize, this book isn't great for anyone. It's too simplistic for anyone who's used Illustrator, but has too many mistakes to be 100% useful to beginners. If you end up buying this book, buy it used and know that if you get lost reading the instructions, it's most likely the fault of the authors.

This book is structured exactly as you would imagine from the title. It's great for looking up a solution quickly when you get stuck. I felt that I needed more "Instruction", being a novice ... so I bought "Exploring Illustrator CS2 (Design Exploration Series) to go with it ... together they are great for the beginner! Both Highly recomended.

At first glance at this book, I really liked how the book was formatted by numbers and "quick tips". This made me feel like learning illustrator would be short and to the point. I liked the screenshots and shortcuts that were included and I felt like the first few chapters (or "tips") were a good way to get introduced to each topic in a quick and easy way. The reading in this book is good. It is easy to follow and straightforward. The reference guide is plus too!

But, for me personally--I did not find this book extremely helpful to my knowledge of Adobe Illustrator. I think it would be great for a REAL Illustrator novice--someone who has absolutely NO prior Adobe Illustrator experience because it explains to the Illustrator student how each step should be taken in a thorough and explanatory way. For someone who has had experience with Illustrator--you might be looking more for a tooltip book like the QuickStart guides that Peachpit press puts out. But for the true Illustrator novice--I think this book can be really beneficial for you!

One last point, I think that I would've liked to see more examples and images of Illustrator-created work as examples for each of the tools that were explained and expounded on in each chapter. This is what helps inspire me as a designer, seeing other people's work and seeing how I can do something similar with an ordinary Illustrator tool.

Again, for a beginner who is just starting out--this book is to the point, well written and can help you be on the road to learning Illustrator in an easy & topically driven way.

Yes, as stated in other reviews, this is a book for those new to Illustrator. Simple, to the point, and clearly written, this book takes the dread and frustration out of using a program that has such an extremely steep learning curve. There is a bit of redundancy when using this book cover-to-cover, but the chapters can also be used as stand-alone reference material in such fashion.

This book would have been ALOT better if ALL of the example files were included in their download site. Many of the examples claim to be from Photoshop and Illustrator Sample Files (Stock Photography). But they are not in mine, and I checked the original installation discs and they aren't on them either. It seems rather cheap to have not included a disc with the book.

I don't know why people who don't know what they are doing, write titles and claim to be experts... this book tells you nothing new about Photoshop or Illustrator. You can save your money on this one.

To the guy who said the reviewers must be friends of the authors, ah, ok sure.
Everyone has their opinion - you didn't like it, I did. I got some useful tips and I really like the way they combined explaining techniques with real projects.
I look forward to an updated version of this book.

I have the classroom in a book series for both Illustrator and Photoshop, and this book beats them hands down! The preliminary info is very helpful, explaining the theory, before you move on to trying things. I have always felt that the CIB series didn't always tell me WHy I was doing things, but just told me to do a step. This book covers the WHY and also offers some cool possibilities of other things to try. If you use both Illustrator and Photoshop, this is a great bok. (Even if you only use one or the other, I would still recommend it for the very helpful, practical concepts that it explains)
I hope they keep bringing out more of these types of books.

I don't know who wrote the other reviews, unless they were friends of the authors... the book does little to promote any knowledge of the programs... and you'd be better off opening Photoshop and Illustrator and figuring it out on your own.

Avoid the title... it's not worth the price.

I just love this book! I started learning Illustrator with CS2. I was connecting the dots with CS3 and decided to get the Illustrator CS3 Bible. By not having classes with Illustrator CS3, I was missing out on all the cool new tools like Live Trace. A great designer always has the best refrence books! I also have the Photoshop CS3 bible and the InDesign bible... get them all!!

It has been 2 years from last "Illustrator CS2 Bible" and now we have updated version of it to CS3.
This time book again written by Ted Alspach alone and he stays the guard of this reference from version 7 (in far 1997). And the most interesting thing that every time Ted tried to power this book on 100% with information.

Bible keeps not only it's author, but also great style. With minimum clear explanation it gives you the most full information on an object. There're couple of color insert with nice Illustrator examples (seems very creative). Book consist of 700 pages. Pages are not not white shiny to make you blind, but pretty good indeed and in calculation of (book information*paper quality)/price buyer wins a couple of times.

All information you need is included: from novice to professionals - this reference is for everybody. To study new features or start from basics, to draw simple lines up to combine them in one complicated object and up to professional printing process of your work.

Great information order, information presented very clear and it is easy to follow, easy to find and it is explained step by step.

As we all know Illustrator belongs to Adobe family products, that's why almost every month such programs as Illustrator, Flash, Photoshop and other are used together to make work more easy and productive. Ted took one chapter of this time to explain the very basics of this programs integration (to expand our vision on this program and it's possibilities).
Illustrator is also a very powerful program and has a lot of "hot keys" and the complete list of it you can find in Appendix.

For people who never used Bibles, I would like to give table of content to let you know what you can expect from Bibles:

Part I: Illustrator Basics
- What's new in Illustrator CS3
- Understanding Illustrator's Desktop
- Working with Illustrator Documents
- Understanding Drawing and Painting Techniques
- Creating Objects, Graphs and Symbols
- Learning how to select and edit
- Understanding Color, Gradients and Mess

Part II:
- Using Illustrator to Organize Objects
- Working with Type
- Using Creative Strokes and Fills with Patterns
- Applying Transformations and Distortions
- Using Path Blends, Compound Path and Masks
- Using Live Trace
- Using Live Paint
Part III:
- Working with Graphic Styles, Filters and Effects
- Creating 3D in Illustrator
- Customizing and Automating Illustrator

Part IV:
- Understanding PostScript and Printing
- Creating Web Graphics

Appendix: Shortcuts in Illustrator CS3
Index


But in couple of words, we have here a titanic work of Ted Alspach that was put on paper for your satisfaction. And I really can't imagine a person that would not enjoy it. This book is really all you need.

I can't speak to the quality of the instruction, but the paper quality of the book is very cheap newsprint. It was so bad, I couldn't stand to touch it. I know this seems a silly reason to dislike a book, but this is not a cheap dime store paperback or cheap puzzle book & for what the book costs, you should did get quality. Also, as far as I could tell, all pictures were in black and white. I'll stick to the Wow series - quality paper, color illustrations & excellent instructions.

I purchased this book to help migrate from Fireworks 8 to Illustrator CS3. I have read six chapters so far.

Another reviewer commented on the "newspaper" pages, and while the pages are somewhat thin, it doesn't detract from my reading process.

The book's first few chapters covers all of the basics any newcomer needs to start drawing simple designs and my reading was going rather well until I read about symbols.

The author's description of a symbol is, well, nothing. The first mention of symbols is, "Since the addition of the Symbol tools in Illustrator 10, the world has never been the same. Small children can now, with ease, make a sensible drawing using the Symbol Sprayer tool."

So I read on, expecting to be enlightened, and he never even tells the reader what a symbol is, or why "the world has never been the same"! Such a bold statement with absolutely no supporting dissertation. There are 6 pages dedicated to symbols with not one mention of the fact that the concept significantly increases productivity and efficiency.

Luckily, I know enough about symbols to know the author really missed the mark, and instead of exposing their true power, passes them off as art that can be spray painted on the the canvas. Yeah, that's kind of helpful in certain situations, but those situations are far and few between.

If I wouldn't have already understood what symbols are and how they work, I wouldn't have figured it out by using this book. I am, therefor, lead to question how much information is left out. Am I going to be left in the dark on some other basic and important concepts that the author either doesn't understand or doesn't care to share? Probably.

This is the only time I have ever wanted to return a book...I simply don't think I can trust it as an authority on the subject.

Excellent book for those that want an owners manual for Illustrator. The book explains each tool and command in Illustrator quite well. The only issue I saw was that it did not have enough details on design techniques. Even though it started explaining how blends are created I was left craving for more information. It would have been nice if they would have shown how blending works on a few different objects.
The book does have a nice keyboard shortcut guide in the back. In my opinion the book was still worth it and will make an excellent reference book.
To recap, if you want a reference book this is it, if you want a how-to book for designing look elsewhere.

I am an illustrator and when I got this book I was hoping to learn from it. In my opinion this book is about a few has-beens giving their opinion on their own jobs. Boring!

There is a lot of artsy fartsy talk that only someone who doesnt live in the real world could understand. The kind of talk im talking about is like "The plastic bag flying in the wind is beautiful". pfft.

The entire book is made up of articles written by various established illustrators. I found the sections on art direction and education extremely interesting. Included are sample course syllabii which is helpful if you are teaching illustration courses.

The part that I had a problem (maybe that's too strong a word) with was the section on the state of the illustration market today. To me, it came off as old time illustrators whining and pining for the good old days, you know before the computer when one could make a decent living as an illustrator. It wasn't terribly encouraging to new comers which I think is too bad. I rather felt like they were telling me not to waste my time, that there was no room in the industry for me. In the end, it just made me more determined to succeed despite (or in spite) of their views. All in all, it is a thought provoking book, whether you agree with their view point or not, and it's guaranteed to start some interesting dialog with your illustrator friends.

Heller and Arisman are two School of Visual Arts (NY) professors who have achieved much in their careers. The conversation/interview between them is the strongest, most educational and most inspiring part of the book.

Brad Holland writes a detailed (but dry) description of the history of stock houses, the direction they are moving in now and how that relates to working artists.
Educational.

A very large portion of the book is a collection of art excercises useful to teachers creating curriculum or artists without the ability to direct themselves in the production of work. I found this area to be mildly interesting, but quite useless to me as an illustrator.

Teachers often tend to create excercises they would do very well themselves, but don't necessarily draw out the uniqueness of the individuals they are teaching. Success as an artist is following your own values of what a successful peice of art or illustration is.

I would have liked to read the perspectives of a more varied cross section of artists in addition to the New York city old guard. There is so much innovation happening in this field. To bemoan the fact that things aren't what they were, shows a lack of awareness of what the younger generation of artists do. Jump fences.

"I design my students to destroy me."
John Maeda of MIT Media Lab

"You are the next Picassos."
Sheridan College Faculty addressing the class in my foundation year 5 years ago.

My first thought when I really got into this book was "finally. An outlook on the career of an illustrator neither negative nor overly optimistic, but realistic and helpful." Being an illustration major I have several misconceptions about the field of illustration that were cleared up pretty quickly. I found the interview with Thomas Woodruff particularly insightful in the case of the illustration as low art issue, and I laughed my head off at Brad Holland's satirical lesson on art terminology. My advice is to buy this book not to decide whether or not illustration is the path for you, but to make sure you have a grasp on what you're getting into.

I use Adobe After Effects. I needed to get up to speed on basic Illustrator in order to "feed" vector graphics to AE. Although I have only had this book for a short while ... it allowed me to get to that point very quickly. I am finding it fun to read and am astonished by what Illustator CS2 can do. There is some leaning towards "learning by doing this exercise exactly as we tell you" with excercises ... (which I am not fond of) ... but it does help if you are a beginner (like me). I bought this book along with "Adobe Illustrator CS2 How-Tos: 100 Essential Techniques" and found that to be a great complimentary book. Highly recomended.

Exploring Illustrator CS2 has been a great resource for me. I'm a web developer and definitely NOT a graphic artist. I'm proficient in Photoshop for my needs but occasionally need to do work in Illustrator and always feel like I'm lost. This book gave me a grounding in the overall process of using the software. While it uses a tutorial/lesson approach, it performs well as a how-to resource for specific tasks. I always take it out before I start any work in Illustrator.

Purely for the digital artwork, the book will be a pleasure to some readers. Certainly, the artwork is impressive. But the point of the book is how you can also aspire to creating such output using Illustrator CS2.

The emphasis on the book is on treating the reader as an artist, rather than as a computer programmer. It explains the many powerful techniques available to you. But you can and should treat these purely as a means to instantiating your efforts.

The book shows that Adobe has gone to some lengths to make very complex to implement methods be as simple as possible to use. The text also covers both making digital images for the Web and for hardcopy. Illustrator handles both well.

It's sort of sad that a book being advertised as being "Completely Revised" is completely the same. Even the date on the CD is 2003! I have the version for Illustrator CS and nothing has been changed between the two volumns, NOTHING! So save yourself some money and buy the version for Illustrator CS if it available. I'm so mad that I purchased this book I could scream. But instead I'm just going to rate the book with a big, fat one star. Maybe the author will get a clue for her next version.