So after like 10 years I have finally decided to stop being lazy and learn AI. Wondering if anyone has any advice as to the best places to go to get a good set of tutorials from beginner to advanced that have a good amount of depth to them. I know, l2google, but we have a few people on here who are clearly quite good with AI so if any of you have found there is a particular site or series or tutorials, or youtube channel, or anything that you found to be phenomenal I would love to hear about it and get some advice on the matter.

Potentially relevant information, I do not own a tablet, nor have I ever used one, just mouse. I might get a tablet in the future because I miss drawing, but if something you were going to suggest is more tablet oriented it might not be the best for me at the current time.

Thanks in advance if you decide to help, if you decide to start a troll thread instead that's fine too, I'll most likely join in anyways.

Here's a list of hotkeys I made last year. The main thing you'll want to learn is the pathfinder. This used to be more intuitive, but recent versions of AI made it a little more annoying. You used to be able to simply hit the merge 2 shapes button, but now you have to use the triangle dropdown on the menu to hit Make Compound Shape, and then hit expand on the menu. You want to pay attention to what things are grouped before messing with the pathfinder as well, because a lot of the buttons don't work with grouped objects.

Regarding the pen tool.. This works so much better compared to the one in PS. The CC version of AI is truly amazing. It's much better than CS6. Experiment with the shift/alt/ctrl buttons while using the pen tool.

Also, this is how I keep my workspace. I find it much easier to have a lot of commonly used items out, rather than the constantly opening up the small symbols. http://gyazo.com/d830e3b3a9cbe0612fb9130a80332457

Tool Hotkeys:

V – Select
A – Direct Select
Q – Lasso Tool
P – Pen
T – Type
M – Rectangle
L – Ellipse
C – Scissors
R – Rotate (hold shift to maintain 45 degree increments)
O – Mirror (hold shift to maintain 180 degree increments)
G – Gradient
H – Hand Tool (or hold space bar while dragging screen)
Z – Zoom In/Out , Alt + (mouse scroll) – Zoom In/Out

Useful Hotkeys:

Ctrl + Alt + N – New Document
Ctrl + S – Save , Ctrl + Shift + S – Save As
Ctrl + Q – Quit
Ctrl + Z – Undo/Redo Multiple Times
Ctrl + 0(zero) – Fit to Screen
Shift + (while moving object) – Maintains Alignment
Alt (while moving object) – Duplicate Object
Shift + Alt (while moving object) – Duplicate Object While Maintaining Alignment
Ctrl + A – Select All
Ctrl + Shift + .(period) – Increase Type Size , Ctrl + Shift + ,(comma) – Decrease Type Size
Ctrl + Shift + L or C or R – Left-align, Center-align, Right-align Type (cursor must be inside text box)
Ctrl + ; - Show / Hide Guides
Ctrl + R – Show/Hide Ruler
Ctrl + U – Turn On/Off Smart Guides
F – Free Roam Layout (click multiple times to cycle through the different layout options)
Alt + ↑ or ↓ or ← or → –Adjust Tracking, Kerning, and Leading of Type (while text is highlighted)
Ctrl + G – Group , Ctrl + Shift+ G – Ungroup
Ctrl + [ or ] – Bring Object Up or Down One Layer at a Time
Ctrl + Shift + [ or ] – Bring Object to Front/Send Object to Back
Ctrl + F – Paste in Front (after copying, this will duplicate the image in the exact same place)
Ctrl + D – Repeat Last Copy or Move (helps maintain consistent spacing)

Ty for the tips! Yeah, I could have sworn I remembered the shape merging being esier years ago when I told myself I would learn AI lol, glad I'm not senile. I agree with having everything out, my PS has like 10 windows always open on the right.

ya or you can bind your keys so that its like youre playing D2 or counterstrike, makes it a lot easier to work with. like all my pen tool/color change/move tools n shit are around WASD

That is an interesting idea. I'm gonna be completely honest, I don't use hotkeys in like.. anything, unless I am expressly forced to, another thing I need to eventually become un-lazy enough to learn to do -.-

A majority of the default hotkeys are pretty intuitive, moreso in photoshop, but AI isn't too bad. Ctrl+G for [G]roup, etc. The only custom hotkey I use in illustrator is Ctrl+D to import/place an object to match InDesign's default hotkey.

Changing anything else besides that would really suck if you ever have to use anyone else's computer. You might not have to do that often, but when you were with 8 other designers, you tend to show/teach them something every now and then, possibly going to their computer and showing them how to do something or explaining something. Changing those defaults would be a hassle in the end.

That one isn't too much of a worry for me, I'm the only designer where I work, but it is also an understandable point.

Make better hotkeys for arrange.>send to back send to front send backward send forward

It makes life easy

I have the hotkeys ingrained for Mac and pc because pc at home and Mac at school and internship