Adobe Illustrater

[Launchbury]

I want to design a basic logo and some flyers for my business. I know what I want to do with the design.

I can't afford to commission a graphic designer so I'm going to have to do it myself.

I've been searching the Internet for a suitable package, and I think my best bet is Illustrater.

- is there any other package more suitable?
- if Illustrator is the most suitable, do you think I could use the package (if I get an idiots guide), or is it difficult to use?

Any help would be very much appreciated - thank you.

 

[nickjb]

Illustrator is certainly the right tool for the job. The problem is it is very expensive and quite hard to use. There are lots of tutorials and guides around, though.

You could try inkscape which is similar to illustrator but free or there are some online vector editors if you want to have a quick free try eg http://svg-edit.googlecode.com/svn/branches/2.5.1/editor/svg-editor.html

 

[skhudy]

I know you say you can not afford anyone, but consider using an online service - peopleperhour is one I know of, either post your "job" and the amount you can pay - someone, somewhere is likely to offer their professional services, or better still find someone yourself - order by reviews and look at the freelancers portfolios and contact directly.

Maybe it's not something you'd consider / need for the job you have now, but it's worth keeping in mind for something later. I know a couple of people who have used it for IT related things - website / database problems with success

 

[Launchbury]

I have actually tried using a couple of people before but they haven't listened to what we wanted and ended up very frustrated and with poor results. We know what we want and need to be able to play around to get exact result.

Looks like it will cost about £20 PCM for AI but considering our local printing.com want £95 plus Vat for artwork for one flyer that's not bad.

Will Illustrater enable us to edit shutter stock images?

Thanks again for your advice.

 

[nickjb]

Illustrator wont edit shutterstock images, it just does vector graphics. You can bring an image in and do a few things like put it in a frame, crop it, even convert it to vectors, etc but to actually edit the picture you need something like Photoshop. That comes with Illustrator as part or Creative Suite (CS), or there are lots free image editors such as paint.net or gimp.

 

[Dave54]

If you want free, then Inkscape for vector images (drawings), Gimp for raster images. (photos)
All vector graphics programs that I have seen have a fairly steep learning curve. Some of stock image sites have vectors in eps or other editable format.

 

[Rider]

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer is a dual purpose program that works with both vector and bitmap images. Not free but not as expensive as some other programs of its type:

http://www.xara.com/us/photo-graphic-designer/