Cool Art Alert -- Hidden Gems Found in Illustrator CS4! (Oh, and a FREE gift!)

So I got my official copy of Illustrator CS4 today and was kicking the tires some (previously I only had access to a prerelease beta copy), and was having some fun fooling with the new Blob Brush tool. I decided to load some brush libraries and noticed something that was named "Grunge Brushes Vector Pack". Hmmmm -- don't remember coming across that one before. I loaded the library and was pleasantly surprised to find 7 awesome brush strokes that created some totally rad grunge art (and if you know me, I'm not the biggest grunge fan around).

Turns out, there are several new brush and symbol libraries that you'll now find included and installed in Illustrator CS4: Florid Vector Pack; Regal Vector Pack; Grime Vector Pack; Dot Pattern Vector Pack; Grunge Brush Library; Hand Drawn Brush Library. These royalty-free libraries were licensed by Adobe from a company called GoMedia, who sell an "arsenal" of fonts, textures, photoshop brushes, and vector packs.

Of course, I had to reach out to these guys -- they are a design studio based in Cleveland and they do some pretty cool stuff. In fact, GoMedia has been kind enough to extend a gift to all the dedicated readers of the Real World Illustrator Blog -- a FREE vector pack sampler with 44 pieces of art! (click here to download the Illustrator file)

As if that weren't enough, I've also secured a 10% discount on any orders from GoMedia's website -- just use the code mordypack (all lowercase) when you check out at their website.