What Illustrator and Design Tutorials Does Mattgyver Offer?

Updated

Mattgyver offers a small set of Illustrator-focused tutorials and process write-ups: data visualization in Illustrator, Illustrator 3D tools and tips, playing card deck design tips, and creating pop art portraits in Illustrator. Each is presented as a project page with tips and process notes rather than a linear course, so they suit self-directed designers who want to see how a specific technique or project was approached and then adapt it to their own work.

The Tutorial Lineup

The site lists these tutorials under its Illustrator & Design Tutorials section:

Tutorial What it covers (per the site)
Data Visualization in Illustrator Tips and process notes for building data visualizations in Illustrator, plus links to resources and public data sets to help start a data viz project
Illustrator 3D Tools & Tips Working with Illustrator's 3D tools
Playing Card Deck Design Tips Design considerations for playing card decks
Creating Pop Art Portraits in Illustrator A pop art portrait workflow in Illustrator

The data visualization entry is the most explicitly described: the site says it includes resource links and public data sets intended to help you get your own data viz project off the ground. The other three are listed by title, so expect project-style notes rather than exhaustive step-by-step manuals.

How to Use Them

  1. Pick the tutorial closest to your current task. If you need to turn a spreadsheet into a chart, start with data visualization; if you're designing a deck, start with the playing card tips.
  2. Read the process notes first, then open Illustrator alongside them. These are project write-ups, so the value is in the decisions and technique choices, not a click-by-click script.
  3. Use the linked resources for the data viz tutorial. The public data sets and resource links are the part you can act on immediately — download a data set and rebuild one of the visualizations.
  4. Verify your result against the project images. Compare your output to the finished pieces shown on the page to catch spacing, type, or color issues.

What Else Is on the Site

Beyond tutorials, Mattgyver hosts a portfolio of design work — poster series (such as Bridges of the Grand Canal), commissioned playing card decks, typeface posters, and technical-manual-style illustration — plus a selection of free mockups, brushes, and other design tools. The site also points to Instagram and Dribbble for the full collection of one-off designs and illustration work.

For live instruction, the site notes a weekend Twitch stream (Twitch.tv/MattgyverTV), described as tutorial-style and covering graphic design techniques, experimentation, and the business side of design, with sessions listed as Saturday and Sunday mornings, 7am–10am East Coast time.

Common Snags

  • Expecting a structured course. These are project pages; you'll need to supply your own practice project. Pick a real deliverable — a chart for a report, a card deck for a game — before you start reading.
  • Skipping the resources. For the data visualization tutorial, the linked data sets are what make the practice concrete; without them you're only reading about process.
  • Ignoring version differences. Illustrator's 3D tools have changed across releases, so if a step doesn't match your version, check Adobe's current documentation rather than forcing the old workflow.

If you want free assets to practice with, the site's mockups and brushes are a reasonable starting point; if you want to see finished work for reference, browse the portfolio and poster series first.