This report summarizes the Lynda (LinkedIn Learning) Illustrator 2020 Essential Training course, a comprehensive guide for beginners and intermediate users to master Adobe’s industry-standard vector drawing software. Course Overview
Instructor: Tony Harmer, a professional illustrator and Adobe Certified Instructor. Target Software Version: Adobe Illustrator 2020 (v24.x).
Core Objective: To teach essential skills for creating icons, logos, charts, and complex vector illustrations for digital and print media. Key Training Modules
The course is structured to move from foundational workspace setup to advanced output techniques:
Workspace & Navigation: Customizing artboards, using layers, and mastering panning and zooming.
Drawing Fundamentals: Using basic shape tools, line tools, and the Pen and Curvature tools for complex paths.
Color & Typography: Managing swatches, gradients, and global colors; formatting point and area type, and placing type on a path.
Advanced Construction: Combining and cleaning up paths with the Pathfinder panel and Shape Builder tool.
Effects & Appearance: Using the Appearance panel to stack strokes and fills, applying Photoshop effects, and creating graphic styles.
Workflow & Output: Utilizing CC Libraries, packaging files for hand-off, and exporting assets for web, print, and mobile platforms.
The following tutorials provide visual walkthroughs of the core Illustrator skills covered in this training: lynda illustrator 2020 essential training repack
Learn Adobe Illustrator in 30 Minutes – Beginner Crash Course 470 views · 10 months ago YouTube · Digital Design Tips Adobe Illustrator for Beginners | FREE COURSE 11.9M views · 6 years ago YouTube · Envato Tuts+
The fluorescent lights of the design firm "Helix & Hare" hummed with a low, headache-inducing frequency. Outside, the city was alive, but inside, Arthur was dead—professionally speaking.
Arthur was a "pencil-and-paper" man in a digital world. He could sketch a portrait that would make you weep, but ask him to vectorize it in Adobe Illustrator, and he would weep. He had been hired on the strength of his traditional portfolio, but the job required digital delivery. Deadlines were breathing down his neck, and his mouse cursor felt like a hammer in his hand.
"Arthur, the client needs the logo in .eps format by morning," his boss, Sarah, said, tapping her watch. "And for the love of design, make sure the anchor points are clean. No messy sketches."
Arthur nodded, his throat dry. "On it."
He sat staring at his screen. He had a bootleg copy of the software he’d found on a forum three years ago. It crashed constantly. He didn't understand the difference between the Selection tool and the Direct Selection tool. He was doomed.
Desperate, he turned to the only place he knew for answers: the internet. He didn't have the money for an official subscription to a learning platform, and the free tutorials on YouTube were fragmented—five minutes of chatter, ten minutes of confusion. He needed structure. He needed a teacher.
He typed furiously into a private tracker search bar: Adobe Illustrator training.
Then, he saw it. A file name that felt like a digital artifact from a benevolent ghost: "Lynda Illustrator 2020 Essential Training Repack."
It wasn't a new file. "2020" was already a few years old in the fast-paced tech world, and the "Repack" tag usually meant it had been stripped of non-essentials, compressed, and recompiled for easy downloading. To Arthur, it looked like a lifeboat. Chapter 1: The 2020 Advantage The 2020 version
He clicked download.
An hour later, the file was on his desktop. He extracted the archive. It was a self-contained offline player. No need for a high-speed connection to stream; the knowledge was right there, sitting on his hard drive like a digital grimoire.
He double-clicked the player. The interface was familiar—Lynda’s clean, professional layout. The instructor, Tony Harmer, popped up on the screen. He had a calm, British accent and an encouraging demeanor.
"Welcome," the video said. "Let's start at the beginning."
Arthur had expected to be overwhelmed. But the "Essential Training" tag wasn't a lie. The repack was organized into logical chapters: Getting Started, Navigating Documents, Working with Shapes.
Tony didn't just show the tools; he explained the logic. He spoke about the Pen Tool not as a drawing tool, but as a way to connect points.
"The Pen Tool is the master of the universe," the instructor said on screen, demonstrating how to drag handles to create a perfect curve.
Arthur mimicked the motion. Click. Drag. Curve.
For the first time, the Bezier curve didn't look like a spaghetti noodle thrown against a wall. It looked like a design element.
Arthur fell into a trance. The "Repack" was perfect—it had stripped out the filler, leaving just the raw instructional data. He could pause, rewind, and practice in real-time on his other monitor. He learned about the Shape Builder tool, a "magic wand" that dissolved the headache of Pathfinder operations. He learned about Artboards, Layers, and the vital importance of Appearance panels. you will find a 01_Getting_Started
The hours bled away. The headache from the fluorescent lights vanished, replaced by the dopamine rush of competence. The file he had downloaded out of piracy became a vault of mentorship.
By 3:00 AM, the workspace on his screen was unrecognizable. The jagged, scanned sketch of the client's logo was gone. In its place was a sleek, scalable vector graphic. Every anchor point had a purpose. The curves were mathematically perfect.
He exported the file. Logo_Final_Clean.eps.
He leaned back, rubbing his eyes. The "Lynda Illustrator 2020 Essential Training Repack" sat in his taskbar, a small icon representing a massive shift in his life. It was a reminder that even in the shadows of the internet, among the chaotic noise of torrents and cracks, sometimes you found exactly what you needed—a
The 2020 version is unique because it bridges the gap between the older CC (Creative Cloud) interface and the modern workflow. The repack highlights Cloud Documents and Auto-Illustration features. You will learn why 2020 fixed the notorious lag issues present in 2019, especially when working with complex brushes.
Because "repack" often implies compiled offline resources, here are the legal avenues to obtain the exact same content:
Warning: Avoid random torrent sites claiming "Cracked Repacks." These often contain malware. The training does not need a crack; Adobe software is separate from the training videos.
A repack usually contains a folder named Exercise_Files. Inside, you will find a 01_Getting_Started, 02_Drawing, etc. Do not skip any. The files are sequential; finishing Chapter 3's file is impossible without completing Chapter 2.
If you have acquired the complete, uninterrupted repack, here is exactly what you can expect to learn week-by-week.
To appreciate the depth of this training, one must first appreciate the difficulty of the subject matter. Unlike raster art (Photoshop), which mimics traditional painting with pixels, vector art is mathematical. It is the art of plotting points and manipulating handles—a process that is counter-intuitive to the organic way humans naturally draw.
The 2020 Essential Training succeeds where many tutorials fail because it acknowledges this cognitive friction. It does not simply teach "where the tools are"; it teaches "how to think." The course is anchored by the expert instruction of Tony Harmer (often credited as the primary instructor for this era of Lynda courses). Harmer’s approach is not just technical but philosophical. He positions the Pen Tool not as a drawing instrument, but as an architectural tool. The course forces the student to confront the primary hurdle of Illustrator: the transition from freehand intuition to calculated precision. By focusing on the "why" of paths and anchors before the "how" of complex effects, the training builds a mental model that outlasts any specific software update.