Fundamentals of Illustrator I: The First Steps to Becoming a Pro Illustrator
Brad Woodard · Illustrator + Graphic Designer
A 66-minute orientation to Illustrator's workspace and file basics, not a class in making anything, useful mainly for total beginners.
This is not a course about illustrating. It is a course about the room you illustrate in. Brad Woodard, a graphic designer and illustrator running Brave the Woods studio in Austin, spends the full 66 minutes on setup: document creation, navigation, workspace customization, basic selection tools, and saving. Nothing gets drawn. The stated project is to arrange a personal workspace, the software equivalent of tidying a desk before starting work.
The structure is linear and sensible for what it is. Woodard opens with a case for why Illustrator matters at all, contrasting vector paths against Photoshop's raster pixels using a dragonfly icon that stays crisp at any zoom level while its rasterized twin turns blotchy. That comparison is the clearest teaching moment in the class and gives beginners a real reason to care about the tool before they touch it.
What the course actually covers
Document setup gets the most careful treatment: choosing RGB versus CMYK, setting bleed to 0.25 inches for print jobs, understanding that everything outside the artboard exists in the file but never prints, and duplicating or resizing artboards with Alt/Option-Shift-drag. This section earns its length. Anyone who has sent a file to a printer without bleed settings knows why it matters, and Woodard explains the reasoning rather than just the clicks.
The navigation and workspace lessons cover rulers, guides that can be locked or hidden with Command-semicolon, and the grid snap that can quietly sabotage precise placement if left on by accident. The workspace customization segment runs long, showing how to drag panels like Character and Color out of their tabs, dock them together, and save the arrangement as a named workspace. It is useful once, tedious on a rewatch.
Where it thins out
The basic tools lesson distinguishes the black Selection Tool from the white Direct Selection Tool, covers grouping with Command-G, isolation mode via double-click, and selecting objects that share a fill color through the Select Similar menu. These are foundational keyboard habits worth internalizing early, but none of it touches drawing, the Pen tool, or shape building, all deferred to the sequel courses in Woodard's four-part series.
The saving lesson closes strong. Packaging a file correctly, embedding linked images so they do not go missing, outlining fonts before sending artwork to someone without the same typeface, and choosing between EPS for universal compatibility, PDF for print or presentations, and SVG for web, all get concrete walkthroughs with real menu paths.
Woodard's teaching style is unhurried and conversational, sometimes to a fault. He backtracks mid-sentence, repeats himself when demonstrating shortcuts, and the workspace-customization stretch could be half its length without losing anything. The audio and screen-share quality are consistent throughout, and every demonstrated action is shown on screen rather than just described.
As a first fifteen minutes of Illustrator, this succeeds. As a 66-minute investment, it asks patience from anyone who already knows what an artboard is. It is explicitly the on-ramp to three further courses covering paths, color, and layers, so judge it as chapter one of a longer book rather than a complete education.
The standout
The walkthrough of packaging a file for handoff, embedding linked images, outlining fonts, and choosing PDF export settings, is the most practically useful single lesson for anyone who will ever send Illustrator work to a client or printer.
What you will learn
- How to set up a new document with the right artboard size, units, color mode, and bleed settings for print versus web
- How to use rulers, guides, and the grid to align objects, including locking, hiding, and clearing guides
- How to customize and save a personal workspace layout by dragging panels in and out of the interface
- How to tell apart the black Selection Tool and white Direct Selection Tool for moving whole shapes versus individual anchor points
- How to group and isolate objects, and select multiple items sharing an attribute like fill color
- How to save and package files correctly, including embedding images, outlining fonts, and exporting PDF, EPS, and SVG
Best for: Someone who has just installed Illustrator for the first time and needs to understand the interface before attempting any actual drawing.
Skip it if: Anyone who already knows their way around Illustrator's panels and tools, or anyone hoping to create an actual illustration or design by the end.