Without argument, the pen tool is Adobe Illustrator’s most powerful drawing tool, followed by the set of geometric shapes, and at least for me, the pathfinder tool. These tools in combination are the primary (and often the only) drawing tools needed for the creation of beautiful, professional level illustration work, especially in the areas of icon design, typographic marks, and two-dimensional vector-based graphics. They require skill and some technical prowess, but more importantly, they require patience and practice.

So often, I see students and beginning designers cheapen what could be great work by running unrefined drawings or photographs through the image trace filter and calling it a day. At first glance, it may seem like the scans have been magically transformed into interestingly textured vectors that can be easily scaled and recolored, but actually what has been created is more often than not a gigantic mess of thousands of haphazard vector points. If you zoom out just enough, you might be able to convince yourself or your client that things look ok, but if you look closely at what is actually there, you can see and feel the warts.

I admit, there are some cases where you might consider using the image trace tool, and with good reason, but in a good majority of cases, the image trace tool leaves behind the easily spotted mark of an amateur. It shows a lack of experience and understanding of what a professional-level vector illustration actually is and why it was the requested medium in the first place. Not everything needs to be a vector, nor should it be. There is room in the industry for many different illustration styles and techniques, but the art and science of using the pen tool to hand-trace over a scanned drawing should not become a lost art, especially not out of lack of proper training on the tools, or worse, just a simple lack of ambition.

Anyone committed to the professionalism and the craftsmanship of the discipline can see and appreciate the beauty of the minimalism that is achieved by a skilled artist and craftsman expertly placing only the bare minimum of anchor points and precisely controlling the curves that connect them. It is in this minimalism and careful construction that the construction itself disappears. Even under the microscope of the maximum zoom, anchor points cannot be discerned if constructed correctly. For a long time, this was considered the norm and we worked hard to maintain that high standard. It has only been recently that we have begun sliding down the slippery slope of good enough vector illustration work.

All too often the easy way out becomes the status quo, and as a result we tell ourselves we actually prefer the result that comes much too easy because we are in love with the pace or we simply aren’t aware there is an alternative. Or maybe we just don’t care to put the time or energy in to learn it. We become so used to the machine marks that get created as a byproduct of the laziness, that we find a way to make ourselves believe that the results of the shortcut are somehow better. I don’t buy it, we’re better than that.

We must find a way to stop this trend and even reverse it if we can. We cannot expect our clients to know the difference and to ask us to do better, that is our job. We are the ones they have entrusted to produce quality work. Furthermore, if we use the wrong tool for the wrong job only because it is quicker and easier, how do we ever come back from that? How do we explain in the future that the thing that maybe only took a short amount of time to produce the first time around will now take much longer because this time we want to do it right? Because it will be better? If I were a client, I’d be very suspicious of that conversation and I think with good reason. We don’t want clients to start to think that automation tools can produce the same work that a trained human can, it simply isn’t true and I certainly don’t want the professionals in the field to be the ones perpetuating that idea. We have enough adversity already competing with crowd-sourced assets, a topic for another article.

Professionals, both practicing designers and design educators, are the ones responsible for understanding the standards and requirements of our industry and owe it to our students, our clients, our peers, and to the discipline itself to perform at a professional level. To ignore standards is to ignore the core values of the profession, essentially lowering standards across the board for everyone. It’s important that we do good, honest work, but it is more important that we leave the profession at least as good as it was when we entered it, and hopefully better.