Missed a story or two of Gurus Unleashed’s 24/7 coverage? Catch up with these important events and stories that happened in the resolution-independent world of Illustrator.

Features

Chris Spooner recently designed the logo for the fortchoming personal development blog Vivid Ways. When he was finished the Vivid Ways logo was vibrant and energetic, reflecting the brand that strive to help people live healthy, active, colorful lives. Like most, logos, though, Vivid Ways’ didn’t just magically happen. It was crafted and refined through sketches, several iterations, and communication between Chris and his clients. In a rare glimpse into the logo design process, Chris documented the logo development from ballpoint sketches through finished, Illustrator-drawn multi-media logo variants.

Focused more on the why and how than the who, Derek Underwood’s “How to Create a Professional Logo” at WebDesigner Depot via Workflow: Freelance is another important read for anyone considering logo design work–whether just once or as a profession.

“During [a] quick intro class I fell in love with Adobe Illustrator’s clean lines, it was something I spent a lot of time and effort to produce with my other mediums, so Illustrator seemed like the ideal software for me to master. After a brief class for it, I pretty much sat down myself and did assignment after assignment in vector. It was really hard at first, because vector is a very unique medium, but over time I have learned to control it the way I want. Long story short, I feel I was about 90% self taught–with minor pointers with tools.” ~ Liz Lorini, AKA Miss Kika. Read the rest of the interview at VectorTuts.

After the Liz Lorini interview, switch over to H-57 Creative Station’s type-heavy poster designs for a different style of inspiration.

How-To

Being a major champion of Adobe Illustrator as a graph and chart design tool for many years (shameless plug for Chapter 12 of my Adobe Illustrator @Work book) it came as no surprise when the single most re-tweeted story headline from @Illustrator_GU in March was “The Joy of Charting.” It seemed like the entire Twitter Illustrator community liked Brenda Sutherland’s article on this vastly underrated feature of Illustrator. (See the “Resources and Freebies” section for a related free download.)

Terry Hemphill, Illustrator Product Marketing Manager at Adobe, put together a great list of tutorials about using the new Illustrator CS4 feature multiple artboards. Terry’s list includes several AdobeTV video tutorials from Illustrator masters Deke McClelland, Mordy Golding, Rufus Deuchler, and Rafael Concepcion, as well as written tutorials from Terry White, Dave Cross, and Vectips.

If you’re curious, you can also read about how the multiple artboards feature came about and why Adobe chose to add multiple artboards to Illustrator instead of multiple pages.

In “How to Make an Eco Friendly Vector Poster” Simona Pfreunder uses symbols, blending modes, gradients, and type to design a pleasing poster entirely in vector elements. Simona documents every step of the process except one. The central feature of the design is the sunburst background, which Simona glosses over in Step 16 by simply stating: “Create a sun burst with two different greens… Place the sun burst behind the trees but in front of the background and set the Layer Mode to Darken.” Several of the commentors to the article expressed confusion about the method of creating the sunburst. So you don’t wind up like those poor fellows stuck at Step 16, here’s the secret to creating a sunburst in Illustrator.

In this video from Layers Magazine Dave Cross introduces the improved CS4 Isolation Mode.

Go for the Wow! effect with “Create Fun, Eye-catching Text with Adobe Illustrator“.

Got Twitter? Of course you do. How is your Twitter profile background? If it’s not quite perfect, check out Twitter “Background Design How-To and Best Practices” from the blog at Spoon Graphics.

Let Cody Walker run you through the tricks of creating precision exploded isometrics for furniture, machined parts, or any object.

Tickle the ivories with Sheryl Richardson’s Drawing a Piano Keyboard tutorial.

If you’ve ever wanted to break into comic design or create a comic-inspired layout, you won’t want to miss “The Mechanics of Comics” from Ian Yates. When you’re done with that, check out the tips and techniques used to create the comic strip “The Brads” in Illustrator.

Client’s love seeing product mockups. Making 3D mockups is a specialty of Illustrator’s, as you’ll discover in the “Create a Milk Bottle with a Funny Cow Label” introductory tutorial from VectorTuts.

While you’re in the mindset of 3D, pick up this quick tip on resetting 3D options.

Create realistic clouds entirely from resolution-independent vectors with Illustrator’s Gradient Mesh tool.

Work smarter with Illustrator templates. Brenda Sutherland, Illustrator Drum Major, will show you how.

“How to Create a Classic Vector Painting with Watercolor Washes and Line Art.” Using Illustrator’s Art Brushes, Cheryl Graham will show you how to layer watercolor “washes” underneath black-and-white line art. This technique can be used with just about any kind of imagery however, including original artwork, clip art and silhouettes.

Resources and Freebies

Consumer product packaging vector blanks including a water jug, corkscrew, jar, container for bubble blowing solution, and over a dozen bottles and jugs of various common designs from Vectortuts+ via The Graphic Mac.

120 silhouettes of men, women, and children at rest, at work, and at play. The EPS-format images are licensed for commercial and personal use from SadMonkeyDesign.com, and provided by QVectors.

Jennifer Willis, the subject of the insanely popular “the Joy of Charting” article (see the “How-To” section), released a simple orgchart template for Illustrator. The template is free and includes graphic styles to start off your designs right.

Bamboo and wood vector banners.

Jungle Splatter Wallpaper Vectors. Before you can say it three times fast you can download this public domain (and thus free for commercial or public use) seemless vector tile from Keep Designing.