Get Started With Adobe Illustrator: 12 Tutorials To Step Up Your Game [2022]

Working with vector files is paramount for every designer. No matter if you want to focus on print, graphic, or web design, sooner or later you will have to face challenging situations, in which you should have a card up your sleeve. And this is where Adobe Illustrator tutorials come into place.

While other programs like Affinity Designer and Sketch are much cheaper alternatives to Illustrator, Adobe’s product still sets the industry standard. And it is not a coincidence why so many people keep using Adobe Illustrator ahead of other products, despite the steep price: the variety of features, how-to-guides, and even job opportunities make it an attractive option for designers across the world.

Article Overview:
What is Adobe Illustrator used for?
12 Adobe Illustrator Tutorials To Step Up Your Game

What is Adobe Illustrator used for?

The reason why Adobe Illustrator is picked over the competition is simple – you can create absolutely stunning things with it, and the more you learn, the more outstanding your designs will become. There is a lot of room for improvement and you will hardly even find Adobe Illustrator lacking.

Consistency and practice lead to good results. Let’s see what you can achieve with Adobe Illustrator when you get better.

Illustration Design

As we can see from this illustration, you can get some superb designs if you manage to utilize colors, fonts, and forms.

T-Shirt Design

Most of the brands are using Adobe Illustrator for their clothing design. Below is an example of how well you can use vectors for different clothing sizes without losing image quality.

Poster Design

Posters are another “signature” area of Adobe Illustrator. You can tweak the fonts and add some very creative graphic designs.

Logo Design

Adobe Illustrator is also a must-have tool if you create logos, as you can utilize different fonts, anchor points, shapes, and one of the best tools for color combinations – Image Trace.

12 Adobe Illustrator Tutorials To Step Up Your Game

You already saw what you can achieve if you improve your skills. Now, let’s jump into the article and see 12 Adobe Illustrator tutorials that will make you a better designer.

1. Create Shapes with Adobe Illustrator

The first and most basic lesson in Adobe Illustrator is about shapes. We believe it’s crucial to know how to work with shapes, as vectors are made of dots, lines, and curves. Essentially, all vector images are part of a mathematical formula, and no matter how much you stretch or shrink a vector, it will look exactly the same.

In this guide, you will find out how to modify shapes, how to keep ratios, and play with the dots. We advise you to start with the lesson about Shapes and stop the video at around 18:30. Do not watch too many tutorials at once. Instead, you can practice what you have just learned.

2. Transform and Edit Artwork in Adobe Illustrator

In this video tutorial, Andrew Hochradel will show you how to transform and edit artwork in Illustrator. The guide will improve your skills to group and ungroup objects, and transform them into an illustration.

What we liked here is that Andrew explained the rotate, scale, and reflect tools very well and we could see from the final illustration that even from the most basic elements you can come up with something.

3. Use Color Picker in Adobe Illustrator

This guide is a little bit “old” but it is very informative, as Laura Coyle explains one very easy way to recolor ready-made illustrations.

What you will see there is how to use a magic wand in Illustrator, as well as change the background of an illustration, or even change some elements from the illustration in accordance to the background, so you keep the contrast ratio.

4. Master the Pen Tool in Illustrator

The Pen Tool is the most important tool in Illustrator (it’s even confirmed by Adobe). This tutorial shows you some basic steps and slowly turns into more advanced shapes. You can also see some good examples.

Two techniques were mainly used – the 90-degree-technique and the use of anchor points. In the end, you can also see one of the most widely used tools in Adobe Illustrator – Image Trace.

5. Drawing with brushes

Utilizing the brushes will give you a whole new spectrum of your creative artwork. You will be able to easily distinguish yourself from other designers and find your unique, trademark approach.

In this tutorial, design guru Dansky shows some good techniques that can help you utilize brushes in your texts, shapes, and cartoons.

6. Warp Text into Shapes in Adobe Illustrator

Warping text into shapes is a very creative way to catch attention. You can warp text into any shape – from hearts to beer bottles. In this tutorial, you will see how to create a logo using the feature called Envelope Distort.

You will see three different ways to create captivating logos that have a vintage design. Each design takes around 6 minutes to complete in the video but even if you have to start from scratch, you can create something great in 1-2 hours.

7. Isometric 3D texts

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create an Isometric 3D Text in Adobe Illustrator. These texts are quite trendy today, as they look stunning.

You will also get to know how to insert 3D effects, rotate, and add depth to the 3D text. You will also learn how to tweak the text, to make it even more playful.

8. Create a 3D Sushi

Surely, you won’t have to come up with a 3D sushi design every day. But you will learn how to create a 3D illustration from a flat one.

In this guide, Elena Baryshkina uses some very useful tools to create 3D illustrations – like “3D and Materials”, and more specifically – the Inflate function. You’ll also see how to play with shadows and depth.

9. Learn to Make Beautiful Infographics

As we know, infographics are one of the best ways to visualize data. In this Adobe Illustrator tutorial, you will learn how to create infographics (bar charts in particular) from the program.

The guide is very detailed and includes everything – from creating the chart to adding titles, playing with the colors, and even adding some cool elements that make it look better.

10. Making a 3D-looking logo from scratch

Adobe Illustrator shines with its rich features for logo design and here Will Patterson shows you some quick tools to create an amazing 3D-looking logo.

This video tutorial will show you how to use a mixture of skills – like creating letters from shapes, giving curves a 3D look, and optimizing your gradient work.

11. Creating a poster design

Among the most important Adobe Illustrator tutorials, there should be a place for at least one that is related to posters or book covers, as print design remains the bread and butter for many agencies using Illustrator. You should pay attention to a very important detail – you should select a printing format (like A3/A4).

In the video, you will see how to create smooth neon effects, as well as play with fonts – positioning of the fonts, font weight, and font color. What we like in the guide is that it shows you several techniques – using a Paintbrush Tool, Blend Options, creating Shapes, and the Scissors Tool.

12. Making a Social Media banner

Social Media design is crucial for any modern company. Brands often sway between Photoshop and Illustrator for creating these designs. The truth is both are capable but Illustrator excels with fine details and the difference is shown in the video.

In this tutorial, the focus is on creating beautiful shapes, text positioning, and using the Make Clipping mask option to create a superb visual.

Wrap up

Adobe Illustrator is very rich in functions and tools. Once you learn the basics, you will soon realize that everything, no matter how beautiful and hard-to-make it looks, lies on the foundation of three things: working with dots/lines/curves, finding the right color balance, and lots of practice. And if you manage to get the right proportion of the aforementioned details, you will quickly master Illustrator.

If you found these video tutorials useful, you can also check our blog for more Illustrator tutorials:

• Simple Vector Robot Character in Illustrator (Tutorial + Freebie)
• Where to Find Free Vector Images for Commercial Use?
• 40+ Vector Kits to Create Your Own Character in Illustrator