Adobe Illustrator
Adobe is like your kids that just can’t stay out of trouble. You love them, but you just want to kill them sometimes (that’s a bit extreme, but you get the idea).
Read more “Adobe is at it again…”
Adobe Illustrator
Not a whole lot needs to be said about this. Download the free script for Adobe Illustrator to allow you to open multi-page PDFs – each page being placed on its own artboard.
Apple | Mac
I’ve been a huge fan of Extensis since long before Mac OS X. In particular, their font manager, Suitcase Fusion, has been one of only two tools I consider mission critical beyond the essential Adobe apps I use.
The recently released Suitcase Fusion 8 doesn’t turn font management on its ear like version 5, 6 and 7 did—but it does greatly improve the experience for designers in lots of little ways.
Read more “Suitcase Fusion 8: The best font manager, reborn”
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe released the latest major updates to their CreativeCloud apps this past week, and I’m happy to report that they’re running smooth as silk on macOS High Sierra—both the standard release version as well as the beta version.
Adobe Illustrator
This free set of distressed halftone patterns for Adobe Illustrator contains 10 seamless vector swatches that can be applied as fills to add retro comic book style print effects to your illustrations. There’s a range of dot pattern densities so you can effectively shade your designs by using the different pattern fills across your artwork. Unlike your typical halftone pattern with clean, perfectly formed circles, these patterns have a distressed style to give your designs that grungy rock poster vibe.
Read more “Free distressed halftone pattern vectors”
Adobe Illustrator
I belong to a lot of design forums and Facebook Groups and the question I see more often than I care to think about is “which app should I use to do X?” Should I design a logo in Photoshop, build an ad in Illustrator or InDesign, etc.
Read more “Advice: When to use Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign”
Adobe Illustrator
If you’ve used Adobe Illustrator for any amount of time, you’ve probably created a complicated piece of artwork. Those files can be fairly large, making file transfer and storage cumbersome. Thankfully there’s a simple way to drastically reduce your file sizes.
Read more “How to make your Adobe Illustrator documents much smaller”
Adobe Illustrator
Unless you’re a heavy-duty Illustrator user, you probably didn’t even know you could do some of this stuff. This how-to video is worth taking a look at.
Read more “Using Adobe Illustrator’s Blend tool”
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Illustrator has an awesome tool that I’m willing to bet most designers have never used. The Width Tool.
Adobe Illustrator
Hey Adobe, see that button down there in the lower right corner of your highly-annoying Welcome screen that pops up every time I launch InDesign CC 2015—the one that says “Don’t Show Welcome Screen Again?” How about you fix whatever bug that tells the app to ignore the fact that I clicked that button the last time I launched the app, EVERY TIME I LAUNCH THE APP!!!
Read more “Adobe’s unwelcome Welcome screen”
Adobe Illustrator
Have you ever received an Adobe Illustrator file that when opened offers the dreaded “Could not find the linked file” message seen above? The designer who provided the file to you forgot to either embed the image in the file, or send the linked image along with the Illustrator file. Worse yet, you need that image file now, and the clueless dolt who sent you the file is nowhere to be found, presumably hiding from you under a rock somewhere!