My 12 years with Adobe Illustrator (Part 2)
As you know about my experience with Adobe Illustrator from version 9 to version CS4. I’ll start talking now about CS5 and up.
When CS5 released, I did not get that much of opportunity to use it. I was working as Graphic/Web Designer where I mainly focused on the web. I mostly used Photoshop and missed using Illustrator. Sigh!! Although, I would have still preferred using Illustrator and gave my reasoning how vector images would be better than raster images. But it was shot down and a good thing it was. Illustrator was not meant to export assets for Web 2.0 where even tiny image of 10kb could make a difference. And I became a Photoshop ninja or a champion or a gladiator whatever the word is used these days (Photoshop story is another article for itself!).
Then came CS6 with huge interface change. 64-bit memory support, Image Trace. I went back yo college in 2013 to learn more about Digital Design where I heavily used Illustrator to create flows, prototypes and high fidelity mocks for my assignments. Yes. My focus now changed from how to set bleed and crop marks, talking to printers, to saying digital jargons like assets, iOS, Android. I had fun with Illustrator. It felt that 2 long lost friends met after a long long time.
But as I started working as a UI/UX Designer, I felt that now Adobe Illustrator has lot of features but things I need to create are missing. I realized that Illustrator CC up till 2014 version did not have proper asset exporting system for the UI Designers. Even when creating wireframes I had some troubles when trying to align to objects. It was to0 bulky to use. I was not even using all the features which it provided and had to shift to other softwares (specifically for UI and UX) to make my work a little faster and seamless. But I still used it to make icons, illustrations and some lettering projects (BTW I love lettering!).
I went on my maternity leave for a year where whenever I got a chance I used Illustrator to keep myself updated and to do some of my own projects like lettering or creating Illustrations. I loved it!
When I came back from my leave, CC 2017 was released and boy I am loving it! The new way to export assets, easy access to different templates, shaper tool. It is just fun. I am still doing my UI and UX projects in another software but I still use Illustrator and whatever happens I am never leaving this amazing software!
Hope Adobe Illustrator team keeps doing awesome stuff.
Thanks for reading!
Original article was published here.
