In this tutorial, we’re going to cover the benefits, some uses, and the ‘how-to’ of two powerful methods to hide or show areas of an Illustrator document without deleting objects that you want to be invisible, which allows you to go back and re-work more easily.

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Did you know that you can create multi-layered artwork in Adobe Illustrator, and then turn layers on and off in InDesign? Learn how in this quick tutorial.

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Most people think of Google’s Sketchup (Free and Pro) product to be primarily a 3D tool, but it is also a powerful means for creating complex shapes to be used in 2D vector packages. In particular, it is a fabulous tool for creating primitives that require precise geometry in order to “look right.”

We’ll be creating a gemstone in this tutorial. I use Illustrator and Sketchup Pro, but similar effects can be achieved with Corel, Inkscape, Xara or other tools and the freeware version of Sketchup.

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In the footer, outer margin or header in books and brochures you often find a title repeated on each page - depending on who you ask these are called running titles or running headers/footers. If you know how to master the master pages in InDesign, you won’t have any troubles with adding a title that is automatically added to all pages, but learning InDesign’s text variable options and the different text markers are essential to make a running title, and changing the content depending on the page it is shown on.

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After working for a couple agencies as an Art Director, I noticed many entry level designers and old pros alike still use InDesign very inefficiently when it comes to typography and formatting. This tutorial will cover the formatting of type within Adobe Indesign using their wonderful paragraph and character styles feature.

This tutorial assumes you already know some of the basics of InDesign, but I will cover some of the basics quickly for new users. We’ll look at paragraph styles first, and then learn about character styles. Let’s get started!

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Many of us have done this before in Auto CAD, 3D Max or Maya. In this tutorial, we will learn how to create 3D springs in Illustrator. We’ll be using the 3D Revolve Tool and some manual effort to obtain this quality vector result. Hope you find it interesting!

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We have another great Vector Plus tutorial available exclusively for Plus members today. If you want to learn how to craft unique character illustrations in Illustrator, then we have an awesome tutorial for you. In this tutorial, Bubblefriends takes us through the process of using a sketch, Illustrator’s tools, and some artistic ingenuity to make this happy illustration. Learn more about this tutorial at the jump!

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In this tutorial, we’ll explain how to do an easy setup in InDesign for automatically numbered tickets. We will look at the handy “Data Merge Tool,” which is a great time-saver. Let’s jump into this quick tutorial!

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Create impressionistic, infinitely-scalable vector clouds with the Gradient Mesh tool. It’s easy to start, but it takes a lot of time to master. There are several ways of approaching the Gradient Mesh - this one may be new to you. Let’s get started!

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One of the most amazing and confounding tools in Adobe Illustrator is probably the Gradient Mesh tool. Working with this feature allows the user to divide almost any shape into a mesh. Each intersection of two lines (horizontal/vertical) can be colored with a solid color. This tutorial takes a different format than some of our other tuts, and will help you work with the Mesh tool better.

In this tutorial, we’ll show you some tips that will improve your Mesh work. We’ll also show you a proper workflow to get outstanding results with this tool. We’ll take a close look at creating a layer within the detailed file of a meshed boot. The final design is available for review in our freebies section, and is titled Army Shoe. Let’s get started!

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