New Illustrator CS5 WOW! Book

The breadth of designers involved in the book's creation ensures that all material is varied, with a style or approach for everybody.

Looking on the office shelf, I can see a copy of Illustrator CS WOW! books ranging from CS through to CS4. I only joined the Adobe Illustrator crowd at version 10, and when CS appeared back in 2003, I wanted to learn a little more and it was Sharon Steuer’s book that I reached out for. I found it invaluable and it became part of a process which culminated in the launch of the Phantasm CS plugin for Illustrator.

Today is a good day because this morning I received the latest incarnation of the long-running series: The Adobe Illustrator CS5 WOW! Book published by Peachpit Press.

Immediately I thought the cover was one of the best and makes powerful use of the new brush tools introduced in Illustrator CS5. It’s hard to image that the artwork is vector based and could be expanded to the size of a ocean liner!

I have to confess to Sharon that even though I was one of the reviewers of chapters as the book was being assembled, I didn’t have time in the past year to read a good portion. Therefore a large amount is new to me and I’ve already gleaned valuable nuggets and snippets of information and tips. This is the great thing about this book and why I’ve kept with every edition; it’s an invaluable resource for novices and experienced users alike.

With thanks to…

Sharon naturally contributes material to the book, but her task is mainly of editor, compiling a vast array of tutorials, artwork and tips from accomplished and well know Illustrator users. The breadth of designers ensures that all material is varied, with a style or approach for everybody. This is demonstrated by contributions ranging from Von Glitschka (who created the infamous “Loyal Order of Wormwood” example artwork that accompanied Illustrator CS4 – still my favourite sanctioned demonstration piece) to Anil Ahuja – one of Adobe’s own developers. It would seem that Anil was part of the team that developed the Illustrator CS5 perspective grid/tool system as his contribution – a 3D bus illustration – makes excellent use of it.

I’m sure you’ll be familiar with other contributing designers including Ryan Putnam of Rype Arts. The Acknowledgements page reads as a bit of a “who’s who” of the Adobe Illustrator world.

I know that technically all material in the book of a high quality, because this is where Jean-Claude Tremblay was involved as technical editor. Jean-Claude is an Adobe-certified consultant and trainer based in Canada and runs Proficiografik specialising in Illustrator and InDesign. I, and many others, have learnt a lot from JC over the years from forums and other guidance. As Illustrator is a such a technical package at heart, this task must have been a bit daunting.

286 pages, plus…

You would reasonably expect 286 color pages to be sufficient. Not for Sharon and the team who appears to have found time to cram the accompanying CD full of great additional material. And I’m not just referring to the odd artwork file; there are pages of additional appendices, tutorial material, original artwork featured throughout the book and more. It’s going to take me a long time to sift through all this.

It’s such a great benefit to access some of the original files featured. Reading explanations obviously gives a very good idea, but nothing beats supporting words with messing around for yourself with the exact same objects and artwork constructs.

Conclusion

You can probably guess that I like this book. I’ve only spent some hours reading it physically in front of me and I’m sure it’s going to stay on the desk from weeks to come. I don’t want to miss a trick.

If you’re serious about learning Adobe Illustrator – experienced user or not – go out and get this book!

ISBN-10: 0-321-71244-7
ISBN-13: 978-0-321-71244-8

Nicholas van der Walle