Certificate in Adobe Illustrator

Ten modules, 133 lessons and about 27 hours of video. Every lesson carries a written summary, notes and a key-takeaways panel, about half carry an interactive step, and there are ten checkpoints of eight questions and a final assessment of twenty questions at 80 per cent, which is what issues the certificate. In order: the interface and Pathfinder, illustration built from shapes, drawing and brushes, logos and icons, spot illustration and type, gradients and mesh, charts and patterns, masks and style, 3D and isometric, and finally zines, animation prep and blending.

No. Most Illustrator work is built from shapes and paths, not freehand drawing, and the course leaves the pen tool until module 3 on purpose. You spend two modules building artwork from rectangles and circles first, so by the time the pen arrives you already know what a good path looks like, which is most of the difficulty.

The ones its projects need: images exported at the right size for screens, and print-ready PDFs with bleed for anything going to a printer. Web-specific work like SVG optimisation sits outside it, and the vector skills you build here are the foundation for it.

Illustrator is a paid Adobe subscription with a free trial, and the trial is enough to start the course. If the cost is a blocker, Graphic Design Using Canva teaches design in a tool with a free plan, though it won't draw original vector artwork the way Illustrator does.

Illustrator for logos, icons, type and anything that must scale to any size. Photoshop for photographs and pixel-based editing. If brand and logo work is your goal, start here, and the Graphic Design Bundle puts both together with Canva and Figma.

Yes. You build from your own sketches and photographs, and you make your own textures, like the noise brush in module 3, so everything in your portfolio is your own work.

A computer that runs Illustrator, paper and a pencil, and a phone camera to photograph your sketches. The zine in module 10 ends at a printer, your own or a print shop.

Yes. Pass the twenty-question final assessment at 80 per cent and you get an OBA certificate of completion that an employer can verify online. It isn't an Adobe certification exam. The logos, icon sets and illustrations you finish are the other half of the proof.

Download the free info pack first. It walks you through every module, what you'll build and what you need before you start, so you can enrol knowing exactly what you're getting. If you'd like to talk it through, get in touch and we'll help you choose.