Archives for the Illustrator category

Huge news coming from Adobe in the last week. After 10 years of service, it will be dropping its Creative Suite product entirely, in favour of pushing the Creative Cloud service that was introduced last year.

Here at Silicon Beach, we’ve already updated to Creative Cloud and so all our Adobe Courses, including our Photoshop Courses, will be completely up to date.

This is a massive shift in focus from Adobe, whose business model had until the release of Creative Cloud, followed the ‘traditional’ software licencing model. So what exactly does all this mean for consumers and what’s new?

What is Creative Cloud?

Last year Adobe released Creative Cloud which at first appeared to just be an alternative payment option for existing Adobe products, rather than an entire product in itself. As it has transpired, Creative Cloud will be the sole focus of Adobe from now on.

The next release in June will see them scrap the ubiquitous CS (Creative Suite) moniker that has been attached to Adobe programs since 2003 and instead each product will be branded as CC (Creative Cloud).

There will be no ‘full’ update system in place as their is currently (CS4 to CS5 to CS6 etc) but rather more frequent, less substantial updates each remaining under the CC brand.

Read the rest of "Adobe Drops Creative Suite to Focus on Creative Cloud"

Posted by Aaron Charlie in eBooks, Illustrator, InDesign, News, Photoshop, Print Design on May 13th, 2013| 1 Comment »

Being able to draw and create various types of human faces in Adobe Illustrator is a useful skill to have as a designer, which is why on our Illustrator Training Course you’ll learn everything you need to be able to begin these sorts of drawings.

Even if your usual subject isn’t people, you never know when having this ability could come in use – a client might want a mascot for a campaign or maybe you just want to draw someone for fun.

There are hundreds of tutorials available online but finding the right one for you can be difficult – do you want to go down the cartoon route or be more realistic? Simple or complex?

Luckily we’ve put together a list of 5 of the best tutorials available on the web today, each for a different type of face so you’ll be able to draw everything from famous cartoon characters to ultra-realistic portraits in no time.

We’ve also added a difficulty rating to better help you judge whether you’ll be able to manage the tutorial.

If faces aren’t your thing, maybe you’d prefer to get to grips with creating flaming text in Photoshop instead.

1/ Simple Face

Level: Beginner

In this Simple Face tutorial you learn the basics of drawing simple faces. This is ideal for those new to Illustrator, who might have some experience with the program but none with drawing faces.

Read the rest of "Drawing Faces in Illustrator"

Posted by Aaron Charlie in Illustrator, News on March 13th, 2013| No Comments »

Minimalist movie posters have almost become an art form in themselves as a way for fans of the films to show their appreciation creatively. The best designs summarise everything you know about the movie while remaining simple and stylish.

With that in mind, we thought we’d take a look at some of the best minimalist posters of some of the best movies of all time, as judged on IMDb. (Attribution has been given where possible.)

If you’d like to be able to create iconic re-imaginings of movie posters like the ones below, come on our InDesign Training Course which will teach you all the skills you need. If textual design is more your thing, try our Flaming Text Photoshop tutorial.

So let’s start with number 10 -

10/ Fight Club by Pedro Vidotto

Movie posters don’t get much more minimalist than this – a grey background, a bar of soap and exactly 6 words. This might be IMDb’s 10th best movie but the poster would be challenging for top spot in this list!

Read the rest of "Top 10 IMDb Movies: Minimalist Posters"

Posted by Aaron Charlie in Illustrator, InDesign, News, Photoshop on February 18th, 2013| No Comments »

We are pleased to announce that all of our Adobe courses have been updated and will now be running with the latest CS6 software.

With plenty of new features and an up-to-date format, now is the right time to learn with CS6!

Don’t worry though, if you’d rather learn Photoshop, InDesign or any of our Adobe courses in an older version, we can still tailor a course around your needs.

We can also run bespoke CS6 upgrade sessions, for those who have used Adobe software before but would like to get to grips with the latest version.

Contact us by phone on 01273 622272 or email info@siliconbeachtraining.co.uk

Why the Change?

We always strive to keep up-to-date with the latest products and versions of software available here at Silicon Beach Training but beyond that, upgrading to CS6 means benefiting from all of the new features which include:

Photoshop

• New interface
• Video editing
• Improved Blur function
• Dashed and dotted vector lines
• Auto Save
• Crop tool change
• Auto Adjustment improvements
• Layer Search/Filter
• Text Enhancements and Stylesheets
• Vector tool change

InDesign

• New Interface
• Liquid Layouts
• Alternate Layouts
• PDF Forms
• Flexible Columns
• Conveyor Tool
• Form Tools
• Epub Creation options

Read the rest of "Adobe Courses: CS6 Update"

Posted by Jackson Rawlings in Illustrator, InDesign, News, Photoshop on January 30th, 2013| No Comments »

One of the toughest jobs for in-house designers is choosing fonts. From the company logo (visible on all digital and print copy as well as signage) to copy on the website, it’s important to think carefully about the font you use to reflect your brand’s identity and establish a recognisable look.

Designers are fairly limited when it comes to web copy; you should set a fairly standard font so that it can be displayed by all browsers.

However, when it comes to print and graphic design you are free to play around with typography and can experiment with different typefaces or even create your own!

Periodic Table of Typefaces. Click for the full size version.

You can make small adjustments to a basic font (Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma etc.), download somebody else’s custom font from one of the many free font sites (check for commercial licensing first!) or even create your own custom typography.

As a branding tool, custom typography is the ideal solution. Customers will easily recognise media that belongs to you. Some people draw the line at creating custom text for just their business logo, but we recommend going a step further and creating an entire custom typeset.

You may need to hire in a typography expert but the tools are available for anybody to have a go using Adobe Illustrator. After attending our Illustrator workshop you will have all the skills needed to start creating your own typefaces, although we don’t cover typography in detail on the course. If this is something you are interested in learning we can tailor our courses to your requirements.

Once you have created your custom font, you can then use it in Photoshop & InDesign when editing and creating graphics for your web and print materials.

So why should you spend time and resources creating a custom typeset for your business? Here are my top 4 reasons! Read the rest of "4 Reasons to Use Custom Typography for Your Brand"

Posted by Aaron Charlie in Illustrator, InDesign, News, Photoshop, Print Design on June 27th, 2012| 3 Comments »

We have already given you the info on the latest & greatest changes in Photoshop CS6, but Adobe is also rolling out an updated version of their other flagship tools: InDesign & Illustrator.

In this post we take a look at the best new features of InDesign & Illustrator CS6 to help you decide whether to upgrade to Creative Suite CS6 this summer. Take a look at our Creative Suite CS6 blog post to find out which payment options are available.

Once Adobe releases CS6 to the public we will be updating our Illustrator and InDesign courses to include the latest features, but for now here are our top 3 updates to each tool:

Adobe Illustrator CS6 New Features

1. Seamless Tiles Patterns

llustrator CS6 comes with a new pattern editing mode. This allows you to select an object and turn it into a pattern. As you edit the object, the entire pattern is edited.

When you apply the pattern to an object you can then edit the pattern live in pattern editing mode. These changes are then reflected onto your document as you go. Read the rest of "InDesign CS6 & Illustrator CS6 New Features"

Posted by Aaron Charlie in Illustrator, InDesign, News on June 14th, 2012| 2 Comments »

We have been using the Photoshop CS6 Beta for a month now and admit that it is an impressive release. Now, Adobe have revealed the full Creative Suite 6 Package will feature updates to all key products including Illustrator, InDesign and Premiere.

As anticipated, shelling out for the full CS6 Master Collection will be pricey – £2,668 for new buyers, £476 to upgrade – which puts CS6 out of reach for a number of potential buyers. This year Adobe have provided a solution to this problem: Creative Cloud.

Adobe Creative Cloud – Selling the Mobile Apps

Launched in 2011, Creative Cloud was originally marketed alongside Adobe’s range of mobile Apps. Signing up to Adobe’s cloud service would allow users access to all of Adobe’s tools on desktops, tablets and smartphones. Read the rest of "Adobe CS6 Prices Revealed: Creative Cloud Takes Centre Stage"

Posted by Aaron Charlie in Illustrator, InDesign, News, Photoshop on April 25th, 2012| No Comments »

Back in March we ran a short (but very popular) Re-Tweet Competition in conjunction with the training advice service MyTraining Manager.

The prize was a free place on any of our public training courses, and we had hundreds of entries.

Our lucky winner was Stephen Whitehead from Bellerbys College, who chose to attend our 2-day Illustrator Course 

He finally got round to attending the course last week, and was delighted with the training – so we’ve included his Illustrator course review below.

Tutorial: How to create a scalable map in Illustrator

If you are a Photoshop user looking to add to your skill-set, or ever need to produce professional vector graphics (logos, maps etc…) – Illustrator is a very powerful addition to your tool kit.

Illustrator Training Course Review

Stephen Whitehead – Competition Winner

I’ve been using Adobe Photoshop professionally for over ten years now – and Adobe Illustrator is a package that I’ve wanted to train in for some time – but could never justify the budget.

However having now taken the Silicon Beach two day Illustrator introduction course I would recommend anyone who is a frequent user of Photoshop or has ever been interested in creating digital art and identities to consider taking this course.

Now that I am able to work with vector graphics – I feel as though I’ve found a missing piece in my understanding of digital design.

For me this was without doubt the most creative and downright fun training course I’ve ever been on; not only for discovering the tools and functions of the software but also for the wonderful trainer David who led the course.

He was animated, funny and with years of industry knowledge – was extremely knowledgeable.

David encouraged questions and took a real interest in demonstrating how Illustrator could help all of the delegates who came from a wide degree of backgrounds – across print, education, marketing and digital sectors.

He helpfully offered some mnemonics to help us to remember the various tools in the package.

I came away with a real buzz and feeling of accomplishment afterwards.

So thanks to Silicon Beach and MyTrainingManager for this wonderful prize!

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We’re really pleased Stephen was so happy with his course. If you’re interested in attending any of our Adobe Training Courses – feel free to call us on 01273 622272 for more details.

We run regular competitions – so be sure to keep checking the competitions section of this blog for future opportunities to win free courses and other great prizes.

Posted by Aaron Charlie in Competitions, Illustrator, News, Print Design on August 16th, 2011| No Comments »