Top 5 Adobe Illustrator Tutorial Sites

Adobe Illustrator is one of the more popular programs for creating vector images for a variety of uses from print to animation. In addition to taking an Adobe Illustrator course, you can also learn from tutorial websites. Many sites have archives of tips and techniques, but some sites have better variety and organization. Others provide a smaller list of extremely good tutorials.

Smashing Magazine

Until 2009, Smashing Magazine offered yearly lists of fantastic tutorials on their blog. The 2009 list includes some good beginner tutorials as well as detailed instructions for more advanced users. The Smashing Magazine blog is also worth browsing for their other tutorial lists.

Layers Magazine

Layers Magazine compiled a long list of tutorials for both the beginning and advanced Adobe Illustrator artist. The tutorials are not organized for easy searching, but there is a wealth of information available for most art types. The Layers Magazine list has a number of tutorials for Illustrator's 3D tools.

Adobe Illustrator Tutorials

Adobe Illustrator Tutorials is an archive of around one hundred free Illustrator tutorials. Tutorials are arranged by category to help users find the information they need to learn more about basic tools, art techniques, web graphics, text and special effects.

Vector Tuts Plus

Vector Tuts Plus has a large quantity of vector art tutorials using Adobe Illustrator. Tutorials are neatly arranged in categories from a convenient drop-down menu. Vector Tuts Plus has text based tutorials as well as videos in all experience levels. Beginners can find all the tutorials they need in the "Basix" menu.

Adobe Exchange

The Adobe Exchange site is entirely community supported. Users upload tools and tutorials to share with the Exchange Community. The attentive user base makes the Exchange Community one of the best resources for all Adobe software, including Illustrator. The tutorial category is easy to access under the lists of tools for download, but there are no sub-categories within the tutorial section. This means that the tutorial rich Exchange Community can be somewhat difficult to browse.

Larger Illustrator tutorial sites often sacrifice ease of use for greater variety of tutorials, while smaller lists may focus on only the best of tutorials. Good sites may have a lot of tutorials to choose from, but the best sites provide some degree of categorization or search functions.