I don’t know if this would be as useful to you as it is for me, but I leaped for joy when I discovered this little Illy CS3 feature. If you deal with client-delivered vector artwork, this could make your life a ton easier. By selecting any or all of the artwork and then clicking [...]

I’m going to walk you through a technique to create vintage looking 3d stars in Illustrator. You guessed it, 100% vector. By the time we’re done, there will be 0 (zero) effects, or filters. You will have a very useful vintage star vector on your artboard, and a new skill to go with it. With [...]

Every once in a while we might find ourselves needing to get that “inset” or “beveled” look for text, probably more often for buttons and web design, than anything else. But whatever reason you might need or want inset text, here’s a quick tip to get that effect without using a filter, effect, layer style [...]

You may or may or may not know/use this Illustrator feature, but Layer Masking is a very under-used feature of the Adobe Illustrator series of software. I’m not talking about making a clipping mask. This is entirely different altogether. By making a “layer mask,” you can save precious time by not having to release and [...]

There is no triangle tool in Illustrator, which to this day, boggles my mind (wtf Adobe?). I have memories of the times when I first started using Illustrator and really tried to get to know the program in depth. This was one of the things that frustrated me regularly (making a perfect, equilateral [...]