Illustrator 9 F/X and Design (Book ) [With CDROM]

I have to respectfully disagree with the one-star reviewers listed here. This book is labelled as 'intermediate'--it assumes you already have completed the Adobe Illustrator tutorial which I did. This was the second book I bought. I adore this book. Sherry London presents exercises in well-written, easy-to-follow steps ("8. Create a new layer and name it '02'"). I completed many of the chapters nearly two years ago and still re-read the one on texture with type. It is a detailed and clever use of type (the letters in 'david') as fill for an image: converting an image to gray-scale, posterizing it, converting those areas to closed paths (using Adobe Streamline) and then filling them with weighted fonts. Although she tells you exactly how to adjust the weight, width, & font tints, she provides them on the CD. Further, the lesson creates variations--slanted type, a patterned seamless tile, and a random pattern using the letters as non-compound shapes. These are great techniques, in my opinion. I also really enjoyed her chapter on gradients and blends where she shared with us another bit of pattern magic in the illusion of water. The resulting image is beautiful. Adobe has moved onto Illustrator 10, and I hope that Sherry London will author another great step-by-step intermediate book. I'll keep checking back to see...waiting.

If you do not know the pen tool, avoid this book.I am sorry that the weighting of scores makes this book look like a mediocre book. I think that it has great examples and lots of techniques. I recommend it to my students as the next step after my beginning Illustrator class. It is fun and makes you look like you know how to apply the tool, not just use it.I look forward to the version for Illustrator 10.

I was reading other comments and noted a few people weren't satisfied with the book...guess its each to their own. For me...the person complaining about unzip files -- you can download the winzip file for free trail...so you don't really need to fork over the money. I say it would been nice if the cd did include sample of the unzip thing to make it easier.

This book teaches a lot of techniques in it's over 500 pages. It won't make you an artist if you are not one already but it sure will teach you how to use the tools of Illustrator it their full advantage. The Author is adept at teaching and conveys the message well. The book is not a step-by-step learn Illustrator book, but rather a "here is how to use this feature--now do it by..." book. You get hands on experience by performing the projects that reinforce the teaching.The images needed to perform the projects are included on the CD-ROM. Some of the things you'll learn is how to apply transparency, use patterns, some really cool things using dashed lines and lots more.I noticed right off, first line of the Book description where it says this book is for the intermediate user. The back of the book states it's intermediate (if you go to a physical bookstore) I don't see why "beginners" would assume and then be disappointed it is not a beginners book.If anything, I think it should be even more intermediate and a bit less beginner.

I found this book to be a mix of a bit higher than rank beginner all the way to the more difficult. The writing syle was easy to understand and follow and there are tons of examples and illustrations. Keep up the good work for us Intermediate users.