The best Adobe Illustrator books
Many designers and illustration professionals prefer to learn Illustrator through the comfort and pleasure that a good book offers, so I bring here the best books to learn Illustrator in 2024, as a part of our series of best books for designers.
The best Adobe Illustrator books combine knowledge of the programme’s settings, tools, functions and effects with the practical application of these, according to the level and objectives of the target reader.
If you are new to Illustrator, or simply want to take your creativity to another level, these books will guide you through all the knowledge you need to acquire to use one of the programmes for Graphic Design out there.
If you then want to complement your Illustrator knowledge, you can check out our guide to the best InDesign books, or the best Photoshop books, for example.
The 4 best Adobe Illustrator books in 2024
1. Adobe Illustrator Classroom in a Book
- Author: Brian Wood
- Paperback: 480 pages
- Language: English
Last price update on 2023-03-29. We earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no additional cost to you.
The best book to learn Illustrator
If you want to learn Adobe Illustrator from start to finish, either to use it on your computer or iPad, what better than to learn directly from the official Adobe Press book.
Adobe Illustrator Classroom in a Book is a comprehensive book that combines lessons on paper with exercises, videos and online quizzes to help you practice and evaluate your progress and knowledge.
Plus, you’ll be in good hands, as Brian Wood, the author, is a regular contributor to Adobe, teaching courses all over the world, as well as having written a dozen books on Illustrator, Adobe XD and Adobe Muse.
Throughout 17 lessons and several hours of online videos and downloadable exercises, you will learn all the ins and outs of Illustrator, with tips and tricks to establish a streamlined and efficient workflow.
The detail, ease and practicality of this book, coupled with the amount of resources it provides you with to learn, make it the best Illustrator book on the market.
2. Adobe Illustrator: A Complete Course and Compendium of Features
- Author: Jason Hoppe
- Paperback: 388 pages
- Language: English
Last price update on 2023-05-11. We earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no additional cost to you.
The most complete compendium to learn Illustrator
Whether your purpose is to draw, design logos, icons or other vector graphics for print or digital media, with Adobe Illustrator: A Complete Course and Compendium of Features you will learn everything you need to know from scratch.
You will understand how Illustrator works, its tools, but also discover the best ways to apply what you have learned. It includes files and online exercises that you can download to practice all the concepts and features of the programme that you will discover.
Its author, Jason Hoppe, is a Certified Adobe Instructor as well as an experienced designer. Step by step, the author shows you the best way to use Illustrator’s features, as well as the fundamentals of using the application effectively and professionally.
With this book you will learn to use Illustrator with the fluency and, above all, with the confidence of an advanced user in a very short time, which makes it one of the best books to learn Illustrator and also one of the most complete on the subject.
3. Learn Adobe Illustrator CC for Graphic Design and Illustration
- Author: Chad Chelius
- Paperback: 240 pages
- Language: English
Last price update on 2023-05-11. We earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no additional cost to you.
The best Illustrator book for designers and illustrators
If you are an illustrator or graphic designer, Learn Adobe Illustrator CC for Graphic Design and Illustration will allow you to quickly become proficient in the programme.
The book focuses on the Illustrator tools and features that designers and illustrators most commonly use.
To do so, he supports the explanations with practical examples that you might encounter in your daily life: designing a poster, a postcard, an infographic, an illustration, drawing an image, designing a set of icons for a mobile interface.
The book is very well structured and clearly explained by its author, Chad Chelius, an Adobe Certified Instructor with more than 20 years of experience and author of several courses and books on graphic design.
In addition, the book includes online content that you will access when you purchase the book: 8 hours of practical videos, quizzes and 6 different projects that will help you acquire and consolidate the essential Illustrator fundamentals.
The book is specifically designed to provide you with a solid foundation of theoretical and practical knowledge in case you want to study further and take the Adobe Certified Associate (ACA) exam.
In summary, by the end of the book you will be able to create from simple sketches to the most complex vector images, applying any type of tool, function or effect you need. In addition, you will learn several shortcuts and tricks that will speed up your creation process instantly.
4. Adobe Illustrator CC For Dummies
- Author: David Karlins
- Paperback: 384 pages
- Language: English
Last price update on 2023-05-11. We earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no additional cost to you.
The best Illustrator book for beginners
If you are new to Adobe Illustrator, or even if you have some experience, you may find some tools and features complex to understand and use.
In this sense, Adobe Illustrator for Dummies demystifies any difficulty you could imagine, based on very simple step-by-step explanations, written with a very simple vocabulary and very easy to understand.
Dave Karlins, author of the book, is an experienced designer, a professor at New Yotk University, who has written some 40 books on graphic design.
Dave gives a very practical touch to the book, supporting each explanation with numerous pictures, notes and tips. In addition, the book includes step-by-step examples and online videos that you can access when you buy the book.
In short, you will quickly learn how to handle the different brushes, lines, shapes, paths, colours, masks and many other tools and functions.
Top 5 best-selling Illustrator learning books of 2024
Last price update on 2022-11-29. We earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no additional cost to you.
How to choose the best Adobe Illustrator books
Adobe Illustrator is the most used programme in vector graphic design. It is highly recommended, therefore, to learn Illustrator if you want to dedicate yourself to Graphic Design or Illustration.
Books to learn Illustrator will help you to fix better what you learn, especially if you find it hard to concentrate in front of a computer screen for too long.
But this does not mean giving up the advantages of an online course, some of the books in this guide combine the book with online access to exercises, examples and tutorials, in many cases downloadable.
Please note the version of Illustrator to which each book refers.
In physical and digital bookshops, it is easy to find Illustrator books that refer to versions of the program from more than 5 or 10 years ago.
While there are no major differences between year-to-year versions of Illustrator, in 5 years the programme has changed and incorporated many new features that these books may not reflect.
Practice what you learn with Illustrator as you read, not at the end.
In Illustrator, as in other Adobe programmes, it is important to fix what you learn through practice. I guarantee that if you wait to finish a book to do the exercises, you will be unable to put into practice most of the things you read, and you will have to re-read them again.
Remember that your goal is not to finish the book but to learn Illustrator, and that includes practising what you are learning, even if it takes you a little longer to finish the book.
