Illustrator advanced & Adobe certified

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At a glance

  • Central LondonOnline, Instructor-led
  • 9.30am–4.30pm
  • Workbook & supportSupport
  • Lunch & refreshmentsVideo recording of course
  • 3 days
  • Accelerated learning
  • Business: £649551+VAT
  • Individual / charity: £551468+VAT (£661.20561.60)
  • Adobe CC2023

Course dates

Remote

  • 25–27 October 2023
  • 29 November–01 December 2023
  • 17–19 January 2024
  • 21–23 February 2024
  • 20–22 March 2024
  • 01–03 May 2024
  • 05–07 June 2024
  • 10–12 July 2024
  • 14–16 August 2024

London

Overview

This Illustrator course is for those that have previously completed the Illustrator introduction course or have prior Illustrator experience and are now ready to step up to advanced and Adobe certification level training.

Over the three days of training you’ll learn how to create compound paths, raster effects, workflows and more, before sitting the Adobe certification exam.

This course will be delivered through our Accelerated learning approach, allowing you to learn more information, easier and more efficiently than standard training approaches.

Our Adobe certified training team will be with you all the way. Afterwards you can publicise your accreditation with Adobe digital badges which provide a standardised certification outcome.

Target Audience

This course is for designers, marketers, developers that have previously attended a starter course and want to become Adobe certified.

Upon completion, you'll be able to:

  • Master the specialist features that most aren't even aware of in Illustrator
  • Be comfortable using the pen tool, envelope distortions and the brush tool at an advanced level
  • Get the most out of type, colour and how to adjust appearances
  • Create infographics, 3D shapes and how to take full advantage of live paint
  • Take on the certification exam and become an Adobe certified professional

Accelerated learning

Our Accelerated learning approach at Certitec is unique within the Adobe training industry. Our focus is not on what you learn, but how you learn. Referred to as ‘Accelerated Learning’, this process allows you to digest a significant amount of information more quickly, and more easily than through other methods.

Accelerated learning

  • Establish a firm understanding on the learning process before embarking
  • Overcoming any learned helplessness by reframing what will be learnt upon completion
  • Sessions no longer than 60 minutes each to maximise how we learn 
  • The use of course workbooks to strengthen memory retention (classroom)
  • Finding a balance between new and recap learning
  • Kinaesthetic (‘hands-on’) techniques
  • Video of entire course upon completion (remote)

Find out more about our Accelerated learning process.

Outline

What to expect from this course

The first two days of training will focus on learning the advanced features, including workflows, custom brushes, transparency and more! The third day will focus on Adobe certification, with preparation taking place in the morning and the exam in the afternoon.  

You’ll leave the training course with an advanced level skillset, including an Adobe certified status that further promotes your skill level.

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Day one – Enhancing vector processes

Selecting and transforming objects

  • Setting your selection preferences
  • Using the direct selection and group selection tools
  • Using the magic wand tool
  • Using the lasso tool
  • Selecting objects by attributes
  • Resizing your artwork
  • Rotating objects
  • Distorting and transforming objects
  • Repeating transformations
  • Reflecting and skewing objects
  • Aligning and distributing objects

Advancing the pen tool

  • Understanding anchor points
  • Drawing straight segments
  • Editing a path as you draw it with keyboard shortcuts
  • Inserting and removing anchor points
  • Adding curvature
  • Control handless
  • Drawing perfectly smooth outlines
  • Tracing a freeform, curvy path
  • Converting an existing anchor point
  • Working with open and closed paths
  • Joining paths
  • Averaging and aligning paths
  • Using the scissors tool

Working with colour

  • RGB vs CMYK
  • Adjusting Illustrator colour settings
  • Process or global swatches
  • Creating spot colours
  • Using the swatch groups
  • Working with colour libraries
  • Importing swatches
  • Using the colour guide panel
  • The colour panel
  • Defining and using process colours
  • Defining and using global process colours
  • Defining and using spot colours
  • Accessing colour libraries

Working with fills and strokes

  • Working with fills
  • Working with strokes
  • Creating dashes and arrows
  • Creating variable-width strokes
  • Using width profiles
  • Outlining strokes
  • Creating and editing gradients
  • Applying gradients to strokes
  • Applying and editing pattern fills
  • Creating your own pattern fill

Envelope distortions

  • Introducing envelope distort
  • Editing the contents of an envelope
  • Warping an envelope mesh
  • Creating and editing an envelope mesh
  • Blending an envelope into a background

Creating shapes

  • Understanding drawing modes
  • Creating compound paths
  • Creating compound shapes
  • Working with the shape builder tool
  • Working with the blob brush and eraser tools
  • Working with the paintbrush and pencil tools
  • Smoothing and erasing paths

Introduction to Charts

  • Creating charts and infographics
  • Creating bar charts
  • Creating line charts
  • Creating pie charts
  • Importing data from Excel
  • Colouring your charts

Working with type

  • Creating a grid with guides
  • Working with point type and area type
  • Placing and flowing text
  • Threading text
  • Selecting type and choosing fonts
  • Adjusting type size
  • Leading, tracking and kerning
  • Baseline shift
  • First line indents
  • Paragraph spacing
  • Creating paragraph styles
  • Redefining paragraph styles
  • The glyphs panel
  • Spell-checking
  • Creating text on a path
  • Converting text into paths

Adjusting appearances

  • Exploring the appearance panel
  • The stacking order
  • Working with multiple fills
  • Working with multiple strokes
  • Adjusting appearance with live effects
  • Saving appearances as graphic styles

Day two – Pushing forward and consolidation

Tracing

  • Converting pixels to paths with Image Trace
  • Exploring the Image Trace panel
  • Tracing photographs
  • Tracing line art
  • Auto-tracing and resolution
  • Adjusting layer previews
  • Cleaning up with the Threshold option
  • More clean-up with the noise option
  • Expanding and simplifying traced paths
  • Flipping and fusing shapes
  • Scaling resolution-independent vectors

Live paint

  • Introducing live paint
  • Stroking with the live paint bucket tool
  • The live paint selection tool
  • Adding a path to a live paint group
  • Constructing the base objects

Working with images

  • Placing images into Illustrator
  • Placing an image to create a dynamic link
  • Working with the links panel
  • Embedding images into Illustrator
  • Cropping images with a mask
  • Best file types to use

Working with brushes

  • Introducing the brushes panel
  • Applying and editing a calligraphic brush
  • Applying and editing art brushes
  • Applying and editing a scatter brush
  • Replacing an existing brush
  • Creating and refining a brush
  • Creating and editing a pattern brush
  • Adjusting the bristles in a bristle brush

Printing, saving and exporting

  • Printing your artwork
  • Saving your artwork
  • Saving in legacy formats
  • Saving templates
  • Creating PDF files
  • Saving for the web
  • Creating high-resolution bitmap images
  • Using Illustrator files in Photoshop and InDesign

Charts and data

  • Importing correcting and editing data
  • Swapping between graph type
  • Changing the graph type settings
  • Selecting and colouring graph elements
  • Creating and defining a design for Illustrator charts
  • Applying a chart design to a marker
  • Adding numeric values to a column chart

Customising graphics and 3D

  • Designing your own charts
  • Creating a 3D pie chart
  • Rotating objects in 3D space

Gradient tool

  • Creating gradients
  • Applying a gradient fill
  • Using the gradient annotator
  • Editing multiple gradients
  • Creating a radial gradient
  • Adjusting the midpoint skew
  • Making a transparent gradient
  • Assigning a gradient to editable text
  • Assigning a gradient to a stroke

The blend tool

  • Using the blend tool
  • Creating a multi-colour blend
  • Editing blended paths
  • Adjusting the number of blended steps
  • Blending between levels of opacity
  • Applying a blend to a new path
  • Establishing a clipping mask

Gradient mesh

  • Introducing the gradient mesh
  • Working with the mesh tool
  • Adding colours to the mesh points
  • Adding a gradient mesh to a shape
  • Converting a linear gradient to a mesh
  • Editing a linear gradient mesh
  • Converting a radial gradient to a mesh
  • Editing a radial gradient mesh

Warps and warp brushes

  • Introducing the warp tools
  • Brush size
  • Introducing envelope distort
  • Editing the contents of an envelope
  • Warping an envelope mesh
  • Working with an envelope mesh

Drawing in perspective

  • Defining a perspective grid
  • Drawing artwork in perspective
  • Applying artwork to the grid

Day three – Adobe Certification day

The final day of your course will be focused on the official Adobe Illustrator exam objectives.

– Exam preparation - 10am – 1pm
– Undertaking exam - 1.30pm – 2.45pm (exam itself 50 mins)

You must undertake the exam on a non-work (home) computer in either Chrome or EDGE which is connected to your home broadband connection (no VPN). You do not need any Adobe software installed to undertake the exam.

Exam format
– Section 1 - multiple choice - covering approximately 10 questions
– Section 2 - actually ‘driving' the Adobe application to complete tasks - covering approximately 30 questions 

Should you not pass the first time, you can retake the exam for no charge when the course runs again in our schedule.

The Adobe certified professional (ACP) exam is facilitated solely by Certiport and their testing solution (Exams from Home [EFH]).

See our booking conditions should the Certiport EFH system become inaccessible or inoperable.

Classroom trainint

Advantages of classroom training

Classroom training has many advantages over other formats of training since in-person interaction and communication plays an extremely important part to absorbing information. 

Classroom training allows you to get trained in a safe, quiet, clean environment, away from the noise and pressures of the office or home. The classroom environment provides the important “human touch,” which is often missing in technology-based training. 

You can’t beat real life interaction when asking important questions and receiving immediate feedback. 

Other benefits of classroom training include:

  • Group interaction. People learn from one another as well as from the trainer
  • Training groups can be large or small
  • Classroom training also teaches us how to interact with one another in a professional, productive, cooperative way, which is something that other forms of training often don’t provide

Remote training

Advantages of remote training

Remote training introduces a virtually no-limits training option since it's extremely flexible. You can attend a remote training session anywhere in the world and has become increasingly popular over the last few years. 

Remote training plays itself into your hands and you can harness technology to enable you to use traditional computers, tablets and even phones for complete flexibility.

You can see your trainer (webcam) and they will take you through the training session like you're actually attending a classroom training event.

Other benefits of remote training include:

  • No travel to the classroom - you can attend remote training in your pj's if you wish!
  • Training groups can be large or small and even split over multiple locations and even multiple countries at the same time
  • You have the ability to interact with your trainer by talking, electronically raising your hand and even allow for them to see your screen (if you authorise)
  • All remote training sessions are recorded - so you can play-back at anytime in the future and enhance your learning experience

More details

Adobe certification

Adobe certified professional. Build a unique portfolio and gain a professional certification that communicates your advanced knowledge- that is what becoming Adobe certified is about.

Adobe certification masterclass

Become an Adobe certified professional. Save up to £1,000 with our Adobe certification masterclass. It will increase your chances of landing your dream job!

Discounts for self funders and charities

You will save 15% off the course price if you’re a non-business delegate and includes the following:

  • Self funding individual
  • Charity
  • Student
  • Educational establishment

Flexipay over 6 months

With the option to split the cost of your 5 day Adobe certified training course, our Flexipay payment plan allows you to develop your skills, without breaking the bank.

Post course support

After your course, we don’t leave you high-and-dry. Our technical support is provided for a lifetime.

Course computers

When it comes to classroom training - our training facility computers are better and faster than ever.

All our modern 27-inch computers have faster processors, expanded memory, larger storage and enhanced audio and video capabilities for an even better experience in the classroom.

Free course retake

We understand that before booking your course, knowing that you can have a free course refresher gives you that added insurance.

London training facility

Located in the heart of London's West end ... our training facility at 60 St. Martin's Lane ensures the location is as exciting as our training!

Lunch and refreshments

We provide healthy snacks (high quality dark chocolate, walnuts, fresh fruit) and coffee, all of which have been suggested to improve focus in the sessions. 

For lunch, we give you the flexibility to eat what you want and introduced a lunch voucher scheme that can be used at nearby outlets. 

Adobe Creative Cloud software

You can either subscribe to the entire suite (that’s all the applications) or just one application on a monthly basis. Adobe offers a free 7-day trial for each application if you wish to try before you subscribe. 

Just visit the Adobe Creative Cloud page and see what might be the best option for you.

FAQs

What happens if I am unwell on the morning of my course?

This is just fine from a course perspective since you can re-arrange again (according to our course schedule) for no fee.

How do I actually book my course?

Find the course you wish and then click on the ‘book now’ button and complete the form.

Can I jump immediately to an Advanced course?

Delegates attending an Advanced course must already possess at least 80% of the knowledge of the (previous) Introduction course. This is so you are not out of your depth in the Advanced course and also so other delegates are not affected.

Do I need to bring my own computer (classroom training)?

We supply all computers (macOS and Windows) at our training facility. You can bring your laptop along if you wish for anything work related but due to Adobe guidelines - delegates must use our computers to ensure the software meets our requirements.

What are the training times?

We start at 9.30 and finish at 4.30pm with plenty of breaks and 40 minutes for lunch.

Are refreshments and lunch provided (classroom training)?

Yes - we provide all refreshments (tea, coffee, water, biscuits etc) and also lunch (in the format of a voucher which can be spent at many nearby locations).

What if I fail my ACP exam?

  • Start 9.30am - Finish 3.30pm.
  • Exam 2pm

You will undertake a practice exam just before lunch, then undertake the certification exam in the afternoon. 

Should you not pass the first time, you can retake the exam for no charge when the course runs again in our schedule.

Will I get a certificate for attending?

Yes - your Adobe authorised training centre certificate of attendance will be emailed after your training course.

What is the dress format for attending training (classroom training)?

Anything goes since our training caters for the creative industry - so wear what you like (although please consider the training rooms are air conditioned).

Will I be able to work to my own agenda in the training?

Our courses are scheduled and run with the same outline and aims. Whilst our trainers can field some ad hoc questions along the way we are unable to provide specific information on your project.

If you did wish to cover your own agenda why not arrange a private training course.

Can I park at the training facility (classroom training)?

There are numerous NCP car parks close to the facility although you might find it more cost effective parking further afield and travelling into the city centre on public transport.

Course Enquiry

Interested in one of our courses but need a couple of questions answered first?

Use our simple form below to send a message directly to our consultant trainers. We value great customer service and will endeavour to get back to you within the hour inside normal business hours.

If you require an immediate response then please do not hesitate to call 0845 527 0768.




Course: Illustrator Illustrator advanced & Adobe certified – 3 days



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Course dates

Remote

  • 25–27 October 2023
  • 29 November–01 December 2023
  • 17–19 January 2024
  • 21–23 February 2024
  • 20–22 March 2024
  • 01–03 May 2024
  • 05–07 June 2024
  • 10–12 July 2024
  • 14–16 August 2024

London

Option to split dates when booking

Private training

We can deliver this course on a private training basis

Private training

Location

Spaces, 60 St. Martin's Lane, London WC2N 4JS

Reviews

5

18 reviews

100%

recommended the course

The trainer was very detailed when we covered brushes and gradient tools which will greatly enhance my workflow. It was a very solid course and the exam was the finishing touch!

Warren Decker. 2nd September, 2023

I specifically come to the training for the live-trace tool and I wasn’t disappointed in covering bitmaps to vector - thank you for explaining all the functions available! I really enjoyed the exam process and pass with good marks

Anoushka Constantineshku. 6th August, 2023

A great 3 days in the city with amazing people and now Adobe certified

Molly Kae. 20th July, 2023

A huge thank you to my trainer for his patience and skills in helping me to become Adobe certified ;-))

Derek Evans. 6th June, 2023

The Illustrator advanced course outline looks strong but I didn’t know what each feature was. I was very pleased by the end of the course knowing what each now does and how it will impact my daily jobs positively. The ACA exam was brilliant!

Bert Kline. 3rd May, 2023

Book your course

You can use the form below to make a course reservation with Certitec. We are an established company with over 15 years’ experience training Adobe products and have a high regard in the industry. Alternatively just call us on 0845 527 0768.

Course details

Name of course:
Illustrator advanced & Adobe certified – 3 days

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Dates (Please note that the modules of this course must be taken in order)

Days 1–2

Day 3

Days 1–2

Day 3

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Course cost: £649.00+VAT per delegate

Total cost: £

Individuals‘ Status - Only select Individual if you (and not your employer) are paying for this training course.

Payment - all Self-funding bookings require payment at the time of booking.

Course cost: £649.00inc. +VAT

Course cost: Deposit of £300 inc. VAT followed by 5 payments of £69.80inc. VAT each.

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Illustrator

Course selector tool

Our course selector tool will enable you to evaluate the most suitable course according to your existing experience of the software.

Please answer all questions to the best of your knowledge.

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Question 1 of 11

Do you understand and work with vectors?

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Do you understand and use image resolution?

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Do you understand and use basic drawing tools?

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Do you understand and use pen tool?

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Do you understand and work with layers?

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Do you understand and work with clipping masks?

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Do you understand and work colour?

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Do you understand and work images?

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Question 9 of 11

Do you understand and work with text?

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Question 10 of 11

Do you understand and work with exporting to different media?

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Question 11 of 11

Do you understand and work with CC libraries?

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Adobe accreditation

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“I have used Illustrator for a while, but I used to struggle with grasping the pen tool and the concept of paths. After my 2 days of training I now understand both, plus lots more. Thank you.”

Jim Daley, Designer, JD Design

“The training was extremely focussed, covered lots of information, but it didn’t feel overwhelming at all. It was a great week and I can’t believe that I’m now Adobe certified!”

Connie Tretorga, HR Projects manager, Trident

“I was very impressed on how much information about Illustrator I remembered and I’m looking forward to creating professional infographics for my company!”

Don Jackson, Designer, Zack Ltd

“I initially signed-up to start creating professional vector graphs in Illustrator… but I learnt so much more and cannot stress how impressed I was with Certitec. Thank you.”

Petra Johansen, Private, Putney

“Having an Illustrator trainer who knew his stuff made a huge difference to the learning process for me. I loved the flash cards after each exercise and I learnt so much as a result!”

Taylor French, Policies manager, Bank of Ireland

“Extremely impressed with all aspects of this training!”

David Saxon, Private, Reading

“Fantastic on all levels!”

Mike Sanderson, Digital department, BP

“I now have a very firm understanding of Illustrator and cannot believe how much information I could remember after the course! The workbooks are a great idea! Thank you!”

Dee Pyrel, Artworker, TfL

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