Monday, August 30, 2010

Vector graphics creation - Art Text 2

I was in the need of a logo for a new project of mine.  Few suggestions came - Illustrator, Inkscape, someone's daughter who was a graphic designer.  All suggestions of course involved money (I did not have much of), or a steep and frustrating learning curve on vector graphics program 101, or hacks which went against my new go legit policy.  I googled vector programs for the Mac and came across Art Text 2 on the Apple site.

I downloaded the demo and saw it had some familiar but simplified array of drawing tools.  I could do a logo in text based on any of my locally available fonts or I could add a combination of shapes into the work.  Each entity added came on its own layer and can be edited as a wire frame of nodes and curves; furthermore, I had the option to perform some simple Boolean between layers where it would produce a shape that would be the union, subtraction, or intersection of two layer entities.

Every shape/layer could also be further adjusted by color, fitted or warped into a preset shape, or set to glow or cast shadows.  The program also came with some presets and a gallery of logos, buttons, and headers that I can use to start off a project.  I can as well store my own presets for later reuse.  It essentially has enough tricks to pull off a 10 minute logo which then can be saved or exported into any bitmap format for any of my website projects or letter heads.

Vector programs are essential for printing since line art and text produced can be hypothetically scaled to any size with out pixellation.  Vector data is a road map to every shape you draw and is not bounded to pixel counts and can, therefore, adjust its resolution when being sized up and (to a limit) when being sized down.  Art Text 2 for $40 can offer you the tools to quickly come up with a logo for branding project you might want to undertake.  For developers who have at least some experience with Photoshop and no experience with vector programs such as illustrator the learning curve is relatively quick.  You can find Art Text 2 for on-line purchase on the Apple site.

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