Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One

tal domain. And lest you think such artwork is rare or

refi ned, think again. We all see Illustrator artwork on

a daily basis. Just about every corporate logo in use

today has passed through Illustrator. Nearly every bag,

carton, or container you see at the grocery store comes

to you from Illustrator. Buying a new toy, computer, or

piece of sporting equipment? That box was most likely

designed in Illustrator. Movie posters, glossy magazine

ads, schoolbook illustrations, architectural renderings,

stamps, decals, DVD and CD cases, billboards, transit

signs, retail signage, bumper stickers, credit cards, gift

certifi cates, crap you get from McDonald’s, fragments

of screaming paper and colorful plastic buried in land-

fi lls the world over—in short, virtually every ounce of

still, single-page graphic commerce and public-service

labeling is to some extent a by-product of Illustrator

(see Figure 1-3). For better or for worse, Illustrator art-

work surrounds you.

Illustration versus Image

Illustrator’s main purpose is to create line art. Each

line, shape, and character of text is independent of its

neighbors. These independent elements are known as

objects. Illustrator describes each object using a basic

coordinate-based mathematical equation. (Fortunately,

Illustrator doesn’t assail you with this math; it calculates the

equations in the background.) Because these equations describe

the ...