The one question I get asked most by other creatives is, “How do you get your vector artwork to look so nice?” When people ask me this, they’re not talking about any specific art project or illustration, but rather how I go about building my artwork in vector format so precisely.

Truth is that many designers, whether they are students or seasoned professionals, struggle with building precise vector shapes. I have wrestled with it myself. There are times I have to access old art files from my personal archive, and when I open them, I cringe, thinking, “Why did I build it that way?” or “That could have been done a lot better.”

The point is: We all have room for improvement.

Vector Basic Training exhaustively documents my own creative process and approach to building vector artwork. The methods I’ll cover in this book (with exception to the plug-ins covered in chapter 2) are what I’d call application-agnostic. No specific software is required because you’ll be able to take these methods and use them within the vector drawing application of your choice. For sake of demonstration, I’ll be using Adobe Illustrator, which is the drawing application of my choice.

This book isn’t your typical software-oriented technical manual or a how-to for using the latest tools and pull-down menu effects. It assumes you have a general understanding of vector drawing applications already and want to improve your skills so you can build precise vector artwork.