Design software

Dinah93

A little advice please, I am currently paying quite a bit out to designers to produce what to my eye looks like glorified clip art, and I'm struggling to properly describe what I want. I've started doing hand drawings of the designs I need, which they're very happy with as they can copy them and digitise them, but I'm starting to think I could save time and money if I learnt to use some sort of software myself. It's basically a graphics software I want for creating logos, packaging, leaflets etc, can anyone recommend something I could spend some time getting to know and see if I can do it myself?

JuniorDesigner

Porbably looking at the Adobe Creative Suite CS5. This includes Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, pretty much all the packages you want.

Is this a one time thing or a constant process?

steve1980

GIMP, Photoshop Trial (30 days), If you're serious then get Photoshop.

neilwoods

Go for Adobe Illustrator, creating logos and packaging is ideal for this software.

Doing a logo in vector graphic is better than using Photoshop, as you can scale a vector graphic to any size without any image loss (from a stamp size to side of a building). Vector's are made from path's, whereas images in photoshop are created from pixels, limited to how big you can scale.

Dinah93

It's a long term thing, I've started a business doing personalised cupcake wrappers and then we've got some designs in museums and things, so the range is always expanding or there is a need for new personalised one offs.

Thank you so much for taking the time to respond.

neilwoods

You could try a FREE version to practise to on, something like Inkscape or DrawPlus.

But for commercial use, Illustrator is the way to go. If you are good at freehand drawing, then a nice A3 plus graphic's tablet will work so well with illustrator. Works great with Photoshop as well.

Used Illustrator a lot when I worked within Pre-Press for newspaper and magazine, plus in altering and creating artwork for a 3D design company (mostly packaging)

What you may want to consider as well, is buying a Font library, as you have to pay to use most Font's commercially, as outlining and embedding fonts within a PDF may not always be legal.

JuniorDesigner

Dinah93 wrote: »

It's a long term thing, I've started a business doing personalised cupcake wrappers and then we've got some designs in museums and things, so the range is always expanding or there is a need for new personalised one offs.

Thank you so much for taking the time to respond.

I would definitely recommend Iluustrator then, if it's something long term I would invest in a copy of it, there are lots of tutorials online for Illustrator, feel free to PM me should you want some links as I'm not allowed to post any up here :money:

longwalks1

Sorry to jump in people but am after a design program too and Illustrator sounds ideal, what sort of price does it cost? I've googled it but prices range from £50 up to hundreds so im guessing some are add-ons/upgrades, what does the complete thing cost?

Thanks in advance

mart44

A vector drawing program is best for logos and other graphics. Vector images can be resized from small to very large without loss of quality. Vector programs range from free (Inkscape) to quite expensive. I've tried quite a few but for quality, ease of use and value for money, I'd say that the standard version of 'Xara Photo and Graphics Designer' is good. It's mainly a vector drawing program but it can also work with bitmap images (photos for instance). It can mix both to good effect as well.

If you want to see some examples of the program's capabilities, go to to the 'Xara Art Gallery' over on the 'Talk Graphics' forum.

InsideInsurance

Illustrator CS5 is £619 (even though in the USA it is $600) as a stand alone product or £28 a month by an annual subscription. Most however will go for the packages, the Design Standard one includes Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Acrobat Pro and Bridge which is £1240 - obviously very expensive but massively cheaper than buying the softwares individually.

There is an upgrade version, no use unless you have CS4, and there is a Students version which explicitly excludes its use for commercial purposes.

JuniorDesigner

Yeah the packages are very expensive but worth it should you wish to delve into Design properly!