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

His Honor, David Macy, Illustrator Senior Product Manager at Adobe, compared managing Illustrator with being the mayor of a city.

Sandee Cohen's new book From Design Into Print

Sandee “Vectorbabe” Cohen debuted a new blog, podcast, and book all at the same time! All three are entitled From Design Into Print, and are phenominal resources resulting from the Sandee’s two plus decades in print design and production. Visit From Design Into Print, the Website and podcast, and pick up a copy of the book, From Design Into Print: Preparing Graphics and Text for Professional Printing (Peachpit Press, 2009).

While my good friend Sandee was launching her site, yours truly launched another Website and project to inform, connect, and empower creative professionals: the Creatives Are Community and Toolbar (www.CreativesAre.com). The Creatives Are Community Toolbar is a browser toolbar add-on for Firefox / Flock / Camino and Internet Explorer / Maxthon–and later this month for Safari 4 as well. It was built to empower, inform, and connect creative professionals like you. The Toolbar puts–and keeps–the most important design-related information and resources at the fingertips of graphic designers, Web designers, illustrators, and other creative professionals. Read the complete list of features.

Speaking of Creatives Are Community, if you’re looking for the most up to date uber list of graphic, Web, logo, and other designers to follow on Twitter, don’t miss the constantly updated post, “Creatives on Twitter – the Uber Lists.”

You might also want to check out the list of graphics gurus on Twitter, published right here on Gurus Unleashed. The list includes Photoshop gurus Scott Kelby and Deke McClelland, Illustrator gurus Sandee Cohen and Mordy Golding, InDesign gurus David Blatner and Chuck Green, and many, many more.

Speaking of Mordy, he was a guest this month on Deke and Colleen McClelland’s podcast Martini Hour. If you’ve ever wondered about Mordy’s seeming obsession with the color yellow, check out the show.

Sonali Vora interviewed Moscowvite illustrator Zutto and Seattle-based J3Concepts principal Jared Nickerson, while Chris Spooner has his say in an interview with AiVault.

On the LogoDesignerBlog, Jacob Cass reviews Michael Evamy’s logo design inspiration book simply titled Logo.

Speaking of the LogoDesignerBlog, this month it published the 2009 edition of Bill Gardner’s annual round-up of logo design trends. What Bill found is an eclectic, inspiring collection of interesting (and sometimes gaudy) logos with an emphasis on flora and color.

As you’re trying to master Illustrator, do check out From Design Into Print and “Printing & Prepress Basics,” a primer by VectorTuts.

Tutorials

In the last “Best of Illustrator” multiple artboards was a hot topic. This month is no different. Get the hang of multiple artboards and page tiling in a one-, two-, three-part series by Inside Adobe Illustrator, and then take in Mordy Golding’s take on multiple artboards with “You’ve Been Sliced!”

On the subject of using Illustrator for Web design (one of my favorite uses for Ai), there are tutorials for designing a corporate website and taking “Smart Objects from Illustrator to Photoshop to Dreamweaver,” a video by Geoff Blake in Layers Magazine

Create an Identity Package in Illustrator

Branding and logo design remained big topics in the world of Illustrator, of course. Iris Chamberlain helps you master the art of “Communicating with Typography,” while Collis Ta’eed takes us through the ins and outs of creating a logo and brand styleguide in Illustrator. Once you know the basics, go forward to “Create an Identity Package in Illustrator” by Ryan “Rype” Putnam and “Design and Print Bold Promo Cards in 60 Minutes.” If yours is a more whimsical brand, consider adding a cartoon mascot illustration such as a cute hippo character, a happy tree character, or even a Twitter-esque bird character.

Maybe your brand needs a little dimensionality, for instance a beveled star, a “3D Vector Film Roll, Drawn In Perspective,” 3D springs, television complete with rabbit ears and color bars test pattern, 3D paper sheet rolls, 3D tire, hourglass, or just a 3D lighted text effect.

Samurai Wolf Poster

If branding projects aren’t on your immediate to-do list, why not take a few minutes to learn about some of Illustrator’s often underutilized tools? Recolor artwork with Real World Illustrator author Mordy Golding and “Live Paint–Making things out of thin air,” by Brenda Sutherland, Illustrator Team Geologist, are fun to follow. Tom Whalen helps you re-create the “Samurai Werewolf” poster and along the way teaches several illustration techniques useful for an illustration project. The Illustrator Team’s Rohit Guglani helps you create the perfect new document for your particular needs in “Startup Profiles–A Great tool to Customize your New Documents.” Use gradient mesh and other techniques to create a stylized landscape illustration, and learn to use the Blob Brush.

Also this month:

• Fritz at InDesignSecrets.com spills the beans about the secret universal shortcuts that work in Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop.
• In his videocast, Sean Hodge shows you how to “Create a Vector Sketchbook.”
• How to create a vector RSS icon, a video by Chris Spooner.
• Create a vector tile background.
• Von. R. Glitschka demonstrates in a two-part video how to use CValley Software’s Xtream Path Illustrator plug-in.
• Go for abstract vector elements with the help of Spoon Graphics.
• “Blend and Mask Yourself a Great Poster” by the incomparably Veerle Pieters.

Design Inspiration

Waterfall City

Stuck for ideas? Take a break and see what your fellows are up to. There are posters, cartoons, popart illustrations, more popart, and other inspiring vector artwork, “30 Magnificient, Simply Stunning Futuristic City Matte Painting Artworks,” “22 Highly Creative, Ultra-Stylish Advert Designs for Apple iPhone,” “30 Absolutely Breathtaking, Beyond Awesome Digital Portrait Artworks,” “100 Obscure and Remarkable CD Covers,” “10 incredible wallpapers from Desktopography,” and “45 Stunningly Colorful Wallpapers.” Get inspired with PSD Vault’s 30 Mind-Blowing HDR Images collected from DeviatArt.com. Oh, and don’t forget self-promotion that is better than a business card as well as 60 gorgeous vector business cards.

Resources and Freebies

Although not as many as Photoshop, May did bring plenty of freebies for Adobe Illustrator.

Illustrator Brushes

Start with 30 sets of brushes, then another 40 illustrative brushes, and 20 marker tip brushes. Then, move on to vector floral stamps and tattoo patterns, to 27 abstract geometric wireframe vectors, and Vector Ornaments 4 extracted from ArtBox7. Finally, grab some royalty free clip art–swirl fleurons, vector spider, swirly frame, and cupcakes.