Designers rely on Illustrator on a daily basis. It’s used to create high-quality vector artwork which is graphics that are made up of points, lines, curves, and shapes based on mathematical formulas. Vectors are one of the first things you’ll learn as a designer and you’re sure to rely on Illustrator to create with these concepts.
Illustrator is the best tool to learn first for anyone who wants to be a designer. It’s made by Adobe, the leading design software powerhouse, which makes it compatible with other Adobe products including Photoshop, After Effects, and Premiere Pro.
Illustrator is the main tool that’s used by Digital Designers and Graphic Designers. With Illustrator, Designers can create logos, illustrations, graphs, cartoons, charts, photograph-based artwork, typography, promotional materials, and frames for animations. Drawing is certainly a useful skill for any Designer, but Illustrator makes creating art easy without being a fantastic hand drawing artist.
Design Directors oversee designers and projects and also need to know how to use Illustrator. Understanding the tools their Designers are using helps directors express their ideas, make edits, and show their team a standard or template.
UI Designers use Illustrator differently than most designers. They use it to create mock-ups of applications and websites to express their idea of the best user interface for a given project. They also create aesthetic pieces for these projects in Illustrator such as buttons, typography, and accents. Sometimes they use their Illustrator mock-ups to create interactive prototypes and test their designs on real end-users.
Illustrator is mainly used by Designers, but it’s also an extremely useful tool for any visual artist including video editors, photographers, web designers, and animators. While this powerful tool is the best way to dive into design, it’s not the only skill you need to get a job as a Designer. You also need to learn basic design concepts including layout, typography, color theory, vector graphics, and digital drawing.
