BOOK REVIEW: Excellent Project Guide for Commercial Designers and Technical Illustrators who Draw Graphs

© Ugur Akinci
If you’re a beginner or amateur illustrator or designer Adobe Illustrator CS2 @work: Projects You Can Use on the Job is not for you since it does not address the nuts-and-bolts aspects of Adobe Illustrator. This how-to volume assumes that you already know the basics of using the Illustrator.
What the author excels in doing is to present commercial-grade projects with all the steps patiently explained. If you’re just hired by an advertisement agency to work on product packaging design, for example, then beg, steal, or buy this volume right away. It’ll save your career.
The design projects covered include designing corporate identity materials, designing packaging, creating 3D product packaging mockups, tri-fold brochures, etc.
One chapter of the volume that’s probably obsolete is the one devoted to “Designing a Website and Flash Animation” given the declining fortunes of Flash and the rising start of HTML5 as these lines are written in January 2012.
One chapter I found very useful as a technical writer is the great chapter on “Creating Graphs for a Report.” Illustrator has this great functionality to create graphs and charts but it’s rarely explained how to do so. The author explains that process in a chapter that spans over 30 pages.
Recommended resource for all professional designers, technical illustrators and writers.