Illustrator is the tool you reach for when artwork has to stay sharp at any size: a logo that goes on a business card and on a hoarding, an icon set that has to read at 24 pixels, a map, a label, a diagram. This two-day course teaches the drawing, colour and type skills that sit underneath all of that, in the order a working designer needs them.
Day one begins with document setup, because most of the problems that reach a printer start with a badly set up file. You then spend a long session on the Pen tool. It is the part of Illustrator people avoid, and the part that decides whether artwork looks drawn or looks assembled. By the end of the first day you will have traced a supplied sketch into a finished icon and built a six-icon set that aligns on a shared grid.
Day two moves to colour, type and output. You will construct a wordmark, learn why global swatches let you recolour an entire design by editing one chip, place and trace images, and assemble a one-page A4 flyer with bleed and trim marks. The final session is the one clients care about: exporting SVG, PDF/X-4 and PNG, knowing which to send where, and packaging a job so the printer receives the fonts and links along with the artwork.
The syllabus maps to the published exam objectives for the Adobe Certified Professional in Adobe Illustrator, which is delivered through Certiport. We prepare you for that exam. We do not award the certification, and no course can guarantee a pass. If certification is your reason for attending, say so on day one and your instructor will flag which sessions sit directly on the exam objectives.
You work on the same practice brief throughout, so the icon set, the wordmark and the flyer belong to one fictional client rather than to three unrelated exercises. You keep every file you produce.
