What can you do with Adobe Illustrator?

  • Published on February 14, 2014
What can you do with Adobe Illustrator?

When you need to create stylish graphics that can be repurposed to suit any design project, Adobe Illustrator is unbeatable. One of Adobe's most versatile software programs, Illustrator empowers you to unleash your creativity and design vector artwork for your next project, no matter how large or small. If you're thinking about taking Adobe Illustrator classes at the American Graphics Institute, take a look at these projects to see how Illustrator can bring your creative vision to life.

Mobile games
The growing popularity of tablets has given rise to a slew of mobile games. From real-time strategy titles to action-packed platformers, people all over the world love to get their game on and attempt to beat their high scores on the way to work or during downtime. One designer, Saleh Salim, used Illustrator to create all the art assets for his iPad game, "Traffic City."

Boasting stylized visuals and fun gameplay, "Traffic City" puts players in control of a playful race car tasked with navigating a series of urban courses. Salim relied on Illustrator's extensive range of vector graphics creation tools to design and produce the art for the game, including the tracks, loading screens, obstacles and user interface.

Web graphics
One of Illustrator's strengths is the ability for designers to reuse artwork depending on the nature of the project. When it comes to creating icons and visual elements for websites, Illustrator's powerful Symbol Library can provide designers with a quick and easy way to assemble a collection of assets to be used in future designs.

Another feature of Illustrator that will prove invaluable to Web designers is the pixel alignment tool. When creating a new site design, accurate measurements are vital, and with Illustrator's pixel alignment tools, designers can quickly convert vector graphics into bitmaps and ensure that visual elements align with predefined grids to pixel-perfect placement.

Adobe Illustrator can also be used to define CSS rules for webpages. Just like true CSS selectors, certain actions can be applied to all elements of a design quickly and easily, enabling designers to make site-wide visual changes with just a few clicks. This is just one example of how Illustrator is an essential software package for Web designers and other creative professionals.

If you're ready to take the plunge and master the fundamentals of working with vector graphics, contact the American Graphics Institute today. Our Adobe Illustrator classes will teach you everything you need to know to get started creating art assets for your next design project.

About the author

 is a user experience designer, Photoshop expert, educator and author based in Boston. She 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 delivers UX training and UX consulting for large Fortune 100 companies, small start-ups, and independent software vendors. 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 Windows UX Design, having worked closely with the Windows team to create educational material and deliver UX workshops to key partners globally on behalf of Microsoft. Jennifer works with a wide range of prototyping tools including Fireworks, Photoshop, Illustrator, Blend for Visual Studio, XD, and Balsamiq. She also works extensively in the fields of presentation design and visual design.