Adobe Illustrator used for big designs by budding artists
Related Class

Adobe Illustrator used for big designs by budding artists

  • Published on
by Jennifer Smith
Adobe Illustrator used for big designs by budding artists

The Valley Metro Transit System, the public transportation provider for Phoenix, Arizona, recently held a contest among high school seniors, asking them to design a large wrap for the company's busses. As part of the "Design a Transit Wrap" contest, students were asked to design a piece of art that would wrap around the entire vehicle. More than 120 students participated, with the top three selections coming from Arcadia High School.

John Reniewicki, the first-place winner, explained to AZ Central that the students first hand-drew sketches on paper, then recreated them using Adobe Illustrator. The top half of Reniewicki's winning image displays the words "Ride On" in large white text, set against a turquoise background. The bottom half resembles the state's flag, with blue silhouettes standing against yellow and red striped lines that jet out from the sun. 

"I was trying to get across that everyone rides Valley Metro, and I wanted to capture Arizona, so I did the Arizona flag at the bottom with the ray of light and the sun," Reniewicki told the source. "At the top I used turquoise instead of the dark blue to show the Native American side of Arizona's history and culture."

Reniewicki's design is already featured on one bus and will also be applied to one light-rail car for the next year. While the bus or streetcar won't easily fit into his portfolio, the winner has received a great deal of useful design and production experience. 

Digital applications allow companies to create quality products
Because of its ability to create scalable vector graphics that can be used on anything from the size of a business card to the side of a bus, American Graphics Institute offers Adobe Illustrator courses ideal for introductory through advanced designers.

About the author

 is a user experience designer, educator and author based in Boston. She has worked in the field of user experience design for more than 15 years. She has designed websites, ecommerce sites, apps, and embedded systems. Jennifer designs solutions for mobile, desktop, and iOT devices. Jennifer holds a Master of Science (MS) degree in Human Factors in Information Design, a Bachelors degree with a concentration in Commercial Art. When not teaching at American Graphics Institute, Jennifer Smith is an adjunct professor at Boston University.

Jennifer delivers UX training and UX consulting for large Fortune 100 companies, small start-ups, and independent software vendors.She has served as a Designer in Residence at Microsoft, assisting third-party app developers to improve their design solutions and create successful user experiences. She has been hired by Adobe and Microsoft to deliver training workshops to their staff, and has traveled to Asia, Europe, India, the Middle East, and across the U.S. to deliver courses and assist on UX design projects. She has extensive knowledge of modern UX Design, and worked closely with major tech companies to create educational material and deliver UX workshops to key partners globally. Jennifer works with a wide range of prototyping tools including XD, Sketch, Balsamiq, Fireworks, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Blend for Visual Studio. She also works extensively in the fields of presentation design and visual design.

Jennifer is also an expert on Photoshop, digital image editing, and photo manipulation. Having written 10 books on Photoshop, and having consulted and provided training to major media companies and businesses around the globe.

Jennifer is the author of more than 20 books on design tools and processes, including Adobe Creative Cloud for Dummies, Adobe Creative Cloud Digital Classroom, and Photoshop Digital Classroom. She has been awarded a Microsoft MVP three times for her work with user experience design in creating apps for touch, desktop, and mobile devices. Jennifer holds the CPUX-F certification from the User Experience Qualification Board and assists others in attaining this designation in leading a UX certification course at American Graphics Institute.