Mastering Gradients in Adobe Illustrator
Unlock the full potential of Adobe Illustrator's tools for creating gradient designs with my special tips, tricks & techniques ranging from beginner to advanced levels!
Whether you’re going for a vibrant and dramatic look, something subtle and minimalistic, or elaborate and experimental, gradients create a sense of depth and dynamics, allowing you to change the feel of any design, object and environment!
The wide range of tools available in Adobe Illustrator make it a perfect playground for creating different kinds of gradient artworks! And whilst some of these tools might appear pretty basic at first glance, when you learn to extract everything out of their features and functionality, the creative possibilities become pretty much endless.
This course is designed for everyone who loves gradients, and I’ll walk you through everything you need to know to make awesome gradient-based designs suitable for both digital and print projects.
Whether you are just starting out and want to create your very first gradient design in Adobe Illustrator, or you are a more experienced graphic designer, illustrator or digital artist and want to take your gradient designs and Illustrator skills to a next level, this is a course for you!
In this in-depth course, you’ll learn:
- How to choose the right colours to create beautiful smooth transitions and avoid murky gradients and colour banding;
- How to unlock the full potential of Linear, Radial & Freeform Fill Gradients, including how to use multiple gradient fills and how to apply gradients to editable type;
- How to make the most out of different types of Stroke Gradients;
- Experimental techniques for creating gradients by using Gradient Meshes, Blends and Opacity Masks;
- Techniques for taking your gradient designs a step further to get a perfect colouring, silky smooth transitions & a beautiful textured look;
- How to create and use gradient assets, such as Gradient Swatches, Graphic Styles & Gradient Brushes to speed up your workflow or to sell as digital assets;
- How to prepare your work for print & digital use.
This course comes with a set of downloadable resources, assignments and optional English captions.
Join me in this course to level up your vector gradients and create exciting & experimental colourful designs, illustrations and artworks with ease and confidence!
— Evgeniya / Attitude Creative
What Students Say About This Course:
"It was extremely informative and the teacher provided so many exercises that were great jumping off points for creating something unique. I'm excited to continue using these tools and techniques in my future projects!" — Maria
"Great course with in-depth explanation of gradient techniques. Very easy to follow and full of great examples. I've learnt a lot and I will be coming back to this course whenever I need an inspiration." — Alex
"I've been designing for a bit now and I learned a ton of new things! More importantly, I opened up my brain to different possibilities with design. This got me to look at gradients in a different way. Illustrator may not be 3D software, but with gradients and gradient shading you can get a 3D look. Awesome course and awesome instructor." — Michael
"I'm an illustration & design student whose biggest weakness is software, and this course helped me so much! Now I can actually make myself all those cool digital images with gradients my classmates enjoy making, and I'm so excited about what I'll be able to create with all these new skills!" — Yeonwoo
"An awesome course, so much useful information delivered in such a clear way.
Strongly recommend it!" — Simeon
"This course was very informative and enjoyable. I learned a lot. The balance between theory and practice was great. It is clear that Evgeniya put in a lot of time and effort to develop this course!" — Jason"I'm not new to graphic design and I know how to use Adobe tools well and I still learned a great deal from this course. The most complete and detail-oriented course I watched so far. Kudos for not neglecting print subject, which lots of courses do. Can't wait to try out the new things I've learned!" —Antonela
FAQs:
Do I need any previous skills or experience to take this course?
Ideally, it should not be your very first time opening Adobe Illustrator, but you should be able to follow along with the instructions and learn and practise the tools even if you are relatively new to the program and working with gradients — just start from the beginning of the course, don't skip lessons, and don't jump into the deep end straightaway.
What software do I need to follow this course?
For the best experience, you’ll need a recent Creative Cloud version of Adobe Illustrator (desktop).
This course was recorded in Adobe Illustrator CC 2020, but most of the covered tools and techniques can be used in older versions of Illustrator just as well, and so far there has been no significant changes to the tools used in this course in newer Illustrator versions.
I work in Illustrator a lot and know it quite well, will I learn a lot of new things in this course?
Even if you are a more experienced Adobe Illustrator user, I bet you'll pick up some new and useful tips, tricks and insights both in lessons covering the basic tools and in more advanced lessons towards the end of the course! Apart from sharing how to use various tools, in this course I cover a lot of different tricks of what you can do with these tools and how to exploit their functionality in an advanced manner to create different effects.
Is it a step-by-step tutorial on creating a few gradient designs?
No, it is an in-depth guide to all gradient-related tools in Adobe Illustrator and an overview of the creative possibilities behind each of these tools, specially designed to inspire you to experiment and create your own unique work with gradients using any of the gradient-related tools.
If you are looking to simply copy a process from A to Z and recreate a specific design, this course might not be for you. Whilst you’ll find a lot of different step-by-step examples for creating certain effects throughout the course, you won’t see the complete process of creating particular designs, apart from in a few bonus time-lapse videos (not narrated).