Others say...

"Good Only if this is your First Book on Illustrator"
Golding might be an expert on Illustrator, but it does not show through in most of this book. The only detailed chapters were the graph and 3D chapters. These were the only chapters I thought provided any true insight. The rest seemed like it was taken verbatim out of the manual.

I thought the classroom in the book provided much more insight and info than this book. I might have liked this book better if this was the first book I got. However, the book claims that it is targeted towards Intermediate / Advanced users - and except possibly the 3D section, I can not agree.

Also, one of the highlighted features of the book was the "detailed" flash integration. There was maybe a total of two and half pages devoted on Flash - just regurgitated from other places.

I would have liked to see more insight and some more tutorial driven approaches to see how the guy, who is supposed to be an Illustrator genius, works.

I did love the cover art.



"Mordy Golding is one of the true masters of Illustrator!"
Mordy Golding is not only one of the true masters of Illustrator, but he is a magnificent teacher. Mordy can explain complicated features in a way that beginners can easily grasp. We are all lucky that in addition to being such an expert, and teacher, that Mordy has the time to author books such as this. No book can cover all the features of a program as complicated as Adobe Illustrator, but Real World Adobe Illustrator CS3 comes very close, and it is a book that I am proud to associate with (we have excerpted this book in the Adobe Illustrator CS3 WOW! Book). I have noticed that there have been some criticisms here about this book being in black and white, and it's important for readers to know that the only way that this immense book can remain affordable is to make it in black and white (with a color signature!)-- it's not meant to compete with the full color books such as Illustrator WOW!, any more than the WOW! Books can provide the level of technical detail found in this Real World Adobe Illustrator CS3. Real World Adobe Illustrator CS3 is a comprehensive reference book that is both good for beginners, and users of all levels will find that this is a great book to keep beside the computer while you work.

"Best Illustrator book I found"
I've looked through numerous Illustrator books before deciding that this one is the best. It has an easy-to-follow structure and is well-written. It includes everything a beginner needs to know, but doesn't bore somebody with a lot of Illustrator experience already. It also offers explanations of broader concepts (Pixels vs. Vectors, RGB vs CMYK, etc.). And one doesn't need to see color illustrations on every page to learn the most of the Illustrator tools! For the rest, there are a few color pages in the middle of the book.

"Huge Disappointment; Buy WOW! instead"
Unfortunately, this book doesn't stack up to the other Real World books, like the excellent InDesign book. It's largely in B&W, though Illustrator is full of color tools--which must have saved the publisher money, but didn't save the buyer any at $55!.

It's really an advanced beginner book, with an explanation on what's a vector drawing as compared to raster. It also includes a long section on making graphs in Illustrator, an obscure feature that--if you ever need it--is covered adequately in Help.

While there certainly is a lot you can learn from this book, it just doesn't compare to the better WOW series.

Sorry to have to pan this, but people who want to learn a lot of cool Illustrator techniques would be better off with WOW!

"Excellent so far"
I am not a graphic design expert guru nor have i finished Mordy's book (I am only on Chapter 4) but I am reviewing because the first and only reviewer is, what is the word i am look for....sort of an dumb-dumb. (the commenter is absolutely correct; the system should delete reviews like the first one for this book). The book is clearly 4 or 5 star material. I can't speak to the book from a expert perspective. But this is not a book on graphic design; further, the book goes deep on color/live color and you don't actually need to see everything in color to learn the color tools.

I am still learning illustrator CS3. I took most of Deke McClelland's mega course at [...] and i also just started Mordy's [...] course "essential illustrator cs3." I highly recommend both and this book, too. But i had a tough time getting over the initial learning curve. I think illustrator cs3 is hard to learn. Mordy's approach, in the book and in his [...] videos, is borne of teaching experience. The book does not go into a catalog of features. Instead, he starts early on layers and the appearance palette. This was exactly what i needed. I finally get illustrator because i see it as paths in layers, and attributes to paths as reflected in the appearance palette. I probably simplify, but when you "get" paths, layers and the appearance palette, it all starts to come into place (e.g., all the live effects are just additional attributes!).

The book doesn't walk thru projects with associated downloadable files, that's a difference from some others. It is a bit more like a reference, except organized sort of by jobs rather than features. But Mordy (like Deke) is world class and you won't find a better Illustrator instructor.