Interview with David Karlins: The Future For Adobe Illustrator
David Karlins analyzes, writes about, teaches, and implements new developments in digital communication culture, design, and technology. His latest book is Adobe Illustrator CC For Dummies. I’ve used the book, and I had a chance to sit down for an afternoon with Professor Karlins to ask him about how Illustrator fits into the world of digital design, and how he approaches teaching Illustrator. I’m sharing the interview in four episodes.
Last time, we talked about the collaboration process behind his book, as well as the psychology of dealing with client feedback as a designer. In this final part, we talk about the future of Illustrator and its place in the design industry.
How confident are you that this book will withstand the test of time? Because, for all you know, Adobe could update Illustrator and make some big tool changes. A lot of problems with how-to guides is either you’re forced to release one every year, and there will only be some minor changes, or that the information they have is pretty outdated by the time it’s released.
I feel good about that. I feel very confident, within the limits of the fact that a book is a book and not a website you can just go change every day, for several reasons. For one thing, it’s not an update of a previous book, so it’s not saddled with trying to squeeze in a few new things. And, despite the fact or, really more likely because of the fact I’m old, I’m a constant student of the evolution of digital design culture. I interact with teenagers and young people in their 20’s every day in the classroom. I see what they’re doing, I see what problems they’re trying to solve. And I consciously write for the future. The emphasis on SVG and vector graphics for screens in Illustrator CC For Dummies being a good example.
So I was looking ahead when I wrote the book, and not locked into a lot of dated material.
And then there’s the fact that core elements of Illustrator will never go away. Hey, the pen tool hasn’t changed ever, and it’s still the heart and soul of Illustrator. I don’t care what changes. There won’t be an Illustrator without a pen tool, and you won’t be able to get very far in Illustrator without mastering the pen tool. I’ve been teaching the pen tool for about three decades so I’ve found some ways to make that engaging.
What do you think of current design industry trends, and what do you think Adobe Illustrator’s place in those trends?
I think one dimension of the answer lies in the way technology is impacting design. An example I often use is that light-colored text against a dark background extends battery life on smartphones dramatically. That’s not the whole reason it’s popular. It also reduces eye strain for people working in offices, staring at a screen all day. And then because of those two things, dark, gray-based color schemes have become trendy. I mean, we live in NYC where people always wear black and grey, but beyond that, I think the influence of technology on design trends has been interesting to see. Because vector design abstracts graphical design and expresses it in the form of mathematical calculations as opposed to a bitmap, I think there’s a dynamic intersection between what’s happening in science and technology and what’s happening in design, that has made Illustrator a more important part of design then when it was mainly a print design tool.
I don’t want to sound like I’m just fixated on the whole SVG thing, but forever, screen designers were told, “You don’t do vector graphics on the web. There is no vector format supported in browsers.” When I poll my students to ask them what graphic formats are supported by websites and browsers natively, they’ll say GIF, JPEG, and PNG. Guess what’s missing? SVG. So this is relatively uncharted territory. SVGs render files tiny in size, they open instantly on phones with slow connections. There’s another example of the dynamic between technology and design. I don’t think the explosion of creativity that harnesses that has actually happened yet. So that I see as an emerging trend.
I predict Illustrator will be a significantly more impactful component of design in the coming decade as compared to, for example, Photoshop. It’s a little bit like in audio: analog vs digital. Record players made a comeback because you can’t duplicate that sound, but without digital, it’d be hard to imagine music over the last 20 years.
There are a lot of posts online about illustrating on your iPad Pro or tablets. Adobe Illustrator has a mobile app called “Adobe Draw”. Do you have any experience with that? And, do you think the big push going forward will be towards mobile?
The fact that when you launch Illustrator, whatever you’ve been sketching in Draw just pops into Illustrator, you don’t have to open it, or transfer it or anything, I think that’s a compelling workflow. You want to be able to sketch and generate ideas and draw stuff. I do a ton of stuff in Adobe XD, that’s Adobe’s UI/UX app. But I’ll bounce between that and Illustrator, using Illustrator to build details.
Anything else you want to add?
I want to recognize the colleagues and students who contributed the projects I deconstruct in Adobe Illustrator CC For Dummies. It was very generous of them to do that. Both in the work they put in, but also in letting me deconstruct their stuff. It goes against the whole “me-me-me”, “This is my work.” kind of culture that’s so prevalent, and I greatly appreciate it. There’s a website where people can see these projects. Whether or not you buy the book, you’ll find it worth a visit. It’s davidkarlins.com/illustrator. And I encourage people to check out the work of the different artists and designers who contributed and support them in their work, and you’ll find them there.
David Karlin’s, Adobe Illustrator CC For Dummies, can be purchased on Amazon for Kindle or print. You can read earlier parts of this interview by visiting these links: episode I, episode II, and episode III.
