Jason Hoppe - Adobe Illustrator: A Complete Course and Compendium of Features

Adobe Illustrator: A Complete Course and Compendium of Features

Jason Hoppe

www.jasonhoppe.com

Project editor: Maggie Yates

Project manager: Lisa Brazieal

Marketing manager: Mercedes Murray

Copyeditor: Maggie Yates

Interior design and layout: Jason Hoppe

Cover design: Steve Laskevitch

Indexer: James Minkin

ISBN: 978-1-68198-531-2

1st Edition (1st printing, April 2020)

2020 Jason Hoppe

Rocky Nook, Inc.

1010 B Street, Suite 350

San Rafael, CA 94901

USA

www.rockynook.com

Distributed in the UK and Europe by Publishers Group UK

Distributed in the U.S. and all other territories by Ingram Publisher Services

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018949104

All rights reserved. No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher.

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Printed in China

About the Author

Jason Hoppe is an Adobe Certified Expert and Adobe Certified Instructor in Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, and Acrobat. His 20 years of teaching and working in the advertising world have led him to writing this book.

Born in Japan and raised in Rome, NY, Jason went to school at Mohawk Valley Community College to get a degree in Advertising, Design, and Production. He earned his BFA in (Swiss) Graphic Design at Fredonia State University where he fell in love with the Mac and the early versions of Photoshop, Ilustrator, and Quark. While off for the summers, he did production work for the local newspaper, the Rome Daily Sentinel.

Having had enough of the snow, salted roads that ate up his cars, and hot, humid summers, he left New York for Seattle in the fall of 1994. He signed up with Mac Temps and landed his first job at a small advertising agency. His love for production brought him to several agencies in Seattle. He taught Quark and Photoshop classes at The Art Institute of Seattle for seven years. In 2000, he began teaching at the School of Visual Concepts. In 2010 he quit his agency life and teamed up with Craig Swanson of CreativeTechs and became the founding instructor of CreativeLive, having done more than 250 videos on all things creative, including pumpkin carving.

Gaining his Adobe Certifications in in Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, and Acrobat, he met Steve Laskevitch and Carla Fraga, owners of LuminousWorks, an Adobe authorized training center in Ballard, WA. Teaching software and design classes there for seven years, Steve accidentally suggested he write a book on Illustrator. Jason also teaches in the Design program and Visual Media program at Seattle Central College on all things creative and production.

On the personal side, Jason has always been a fixer. He started customizing lawn mowers at an early age while mowing lawns to save for college. When he turned 14 he bought his first car, a 1964 Corvair, and the addiction began. He collects, fixes, and restores cars as his passion and hobby, having collected over 200 cars from the 1940s to the 1990s.

Jason also loves to build, renovate, and remodel houses, especially ones with multi-car garages to store his cars. He lives in Seattle with his husband and two hairless cats.

This book is his first of manyhe found that writing is not only fun, but also exciting.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Steve Laskevitch for accidentally proposing that write I this book on Illustrator. Seeing the InDesign and Photoshop books was writing prompted him to ask me if I wanted to write the Illustrator book in the series. And here it is!

My mom, Flo Hoppe, artist and world-renowned basket maker, immersed us in art from an early age. Mom made the best christmas ornaments and silkscreened our christmas cards. She brought us to the library every week to get books and records since we grew up with no television. She helped us make all our Halloween costumes and knitted all our hats and mittens for the frigid winters in upstate New York. Mom makes the best cards for every occasion and I have saved every one she has ever sent me. No matter what, she always supported and encouraged me in all that I did. She was the person who made me fall in love with pop-up books and paper folding. Thanks mom!

Virginia Jorgensen, amazing illustrator and absolute hoot of a human being, encouraged me to go into graphic design in 1988. She and her husband Ed were illustrators with an amazing flair for expressing the character of everything they illustrated. They are both greatly missed.

Bob Clarke, teacher at Mohawk Valley Community College, who taught me and encouraged me in the beginning of my education. His infinite patience and encouragement helped me so much on my journey.

Vera Beggs, my 3rd grade teacher at Turin Road School in Rome, NY. She showed me what a great teacher is and how much that shapes a student at an early age. And she and her husband drove Pontiacs which was another big plus in my book.

All the teachers out there who make teaching and learning their lifes work. Thank you for helping shape, encourage, and support all the students out there.

My husband, Greg, who puts up with all my car exploits and adventures and never-ending stream of boxes, packages and parcels filled with car parts that arrive weekly.

Jason Hoppe

Seattle, March 2020

Introduction

Welcome to Illustrator!

In this book, you will be working your way through a full course curriculum that will expose you to all of the essential features and functions of Adobe Illustrator. Along the way, youll learn the concepts and vocabulary of graphic design and page layout.

Between several larger projects are chapters of lessons. In those lessons, each action that Id like you to try is marked with an arrow icon:

• This is what an action looks like.

The surrounding paragraphs explain some of the why and how. For greater depth, the second section of this book is a Compendium of those features and functions, providing the deep dive needed for true mastery of this powerful application. Throughout the Course section, I will suggest readings in the Compendium section. Although you will be able to complete the entire course without them, I think if you do those readings youll find yourself regularly nodding and muttering, oh, thats why it works that way.