Adobe Illustrator lets you capitalize on your design team's talent, but even the most talented artist may need Adobe Illustrator help from time to time. Help your artists by ensuring they have access to Adobe Illustrator manuals, Illustrator help and a gamut of other Adobe Illustrator resources available to them.

Make Illustrator help available to your creative team through many different avenues. Remember that different people learn in different ways so you should let your team members choose the way they want to learn Adobe Illustrator. Some popular methods include:

1. An Adobe Illustrator tutorial or multiple tutorials

2. An Adobe Illustrator help forum or an Adobe Illustrator help center

3. Off-site or on-the-job Adobe Illustrator training

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Use Adobe Illustrator tutorials

Adobe Illustrator tutorials can help your team learn the software step-by-step. Tutorials let you look at screen shots of the software so you can see what you need to do rather than simply read about it. You can, of course, buy tutorials, but software versions change rapidly enough that the best thing to do is find one or two websites that offer Adobe Illustrator tutorials (almost always for free) and watch those sites for updates.

I recommend: Mike Doughty runs the Sketchpad website, where you can find a bevy of Illustrator tutorials. Developer Shed also offers a good variety of free Adobe Illustrator tutorials.

Join an Adobe Illustrator help forum

When struggling with a specific problem, designers often look to forums or help centers to find an answer. These forums are also excellent places to find Adobe Illustrator tips and other Adobe Illustrator resources.

I recommend: Adobe Systems has almost 300 Adobe Illustrator help forums. The Tecumseh Group also has an ever-growing collection of forums, as does Gamma Ray Digital.

Get Adobe Illustrator training

Of the three ways listed, Adobe Illustrator training (either on-the-job or at a training center) is the only one that will cost your company money. But hands-on training led by authorized Adobe Illustrator guides may work the best for businesses that want their design team to come up to speed on a new version of software quickly. These courses let designers work through Adobe Illustrator in a classroom setting, and the students often come away with an Adobe Illustrator reference book or two at the end of their Adobe Illustrator training.

I recommend: Sterling Ledet & Associates offers on-the-job Adobe Illustrator training as well as Adobe Illustrator support at its training center. Of course, don't forget to check out what the ultimate Adobe Illustrator technical support site itself--Adobe Systems--has to offer in the way of Adobe Illustrator help.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  If you've purchased a multiuser license, then make the Adobe Illustrator manuals available to your artists. Often times such manuals end up in a company's IT department, where they won't help your talented creative staff even a little bit. Don't have enough manuals? You can find Adobe Illustrator manuals on the Adobe website.