Design/Graphics Software for Supporter's Banners

[THOMA GOL]

So I've got the itch to design banners once again. This time I'm aiming to use software instead of handdrawn designs of banners. Eventually I'd like to take my saved designs to a professional company and they'd put the banner onto some vinyl or strong cloth material. What's the best software options out there for this?

[MalboroDude]

banners?

definetely a program that deals with vectors and not raster images (photoshop)

Illustrator or Corel draw would be ideal.

Let's say if you were to design a banner that's 10 feet long in Photoshop (raster) the file size could easily be 10 GB or more. This of course would basically be worst ever thing for you computer even if you had a duo core processor and 4 GB of ram (which I doubt you have), as it'd go way outside of its limits. The thing would need so much power and memory, it'd run out of resources, stop responding, explode and create a black hole right there on your desk that'd suck you in. In other words, ridiculous.

Now in Illustrator or Corel draw (vector), the 10 feet long banner could only be a few KB or a couple of Megabytes. This is because vectors can be resizable, so 10 feet banner could be designed in illustrator as a 1 foot banner and the company printing could scale it up (or you) to 10 times that size in 2 seconds. The size could go up to hundreds of MBs if you add linked files or embed images (raster, meaning a normal picture with millions of colours). Illustrator or Corel are great for solid colours.

In case you do decide to do it in Photoshop do it at 100-150 dpi (200 dpi if you want great quality), coz at large sizes (feets) pixels don't matter that much.

The best -> Use Illutrator. The thing you need to remember is that vectors will always look clean and sharp regardless of the size (not with raster images or photoshop), so all the text should be best left as vectors. any shapes or extra elements could also be vectors. Try mixing it with actual raster images set up at 100-150 dpi.

good luck

[Dills]

The best -> Use Illutrator. The thing you need to remember is that vectors will always look clean and sharp regardless of the size (not with raster images or photoshop), so all the text should be best left as vectors. any shapes or extra elements could also be vectors. Try mixing it with actual raster images set up at 100-150 dpi.
i haven't used it, but i've heard good things about an open-source (i.e. FREE) vector graphics creator/editor called INKSCAPE (http://www.inkscape.org/).

[MalboroDude]

i haven't used it, but i've heard good things about an open-source (i.e. FREE) vector graphics creator/editor called INKSCAPE (http://www.inkscape.org/).

Yeah, there's a few free/open source choices out there.

I design for a living so I basically stick to Illustrator.

I once tried one of those open source programs out of curiosity it was completely horrendous. Totally useless and limited. But I'm sure there has to be better open source choices out there, although I tried one of the highest rated ones. It'd be worth for him checking some out before dropping some cash on Illustrator.

The issues I might see with those open source programs is the limitations in the output, printing and preparing files for extraction. There are limitations as to the file types available for output, pantone colours (spot colours) and efficiency working with full colour images.
This issues are a huge deal. Some printers request things, like documents must be in a specific format, or spot colours must be used, etc…
Of course this limitations would not exist with Illustrator.

I'll see if I can find a page I had bookmarked with a good list of decent open source programs.

[THOMA GOL]

Thanks for all of the techie help. i've gotta get my tech head back though as I've lost my touch over the past 5-10 years:(

I've downloaded this Inkscape and quite frankly at first glance it appears to be a monster but I'll have to make time and learn the various icons. So far I've toyed around and can at least draw the basic long rectangle and put in words on what appears to be a simple banner. But the main thing I'm hoping is to incorporate clip art of some kind. For example, I've seen some banners with the icon of say, an Apache indian, bulldog, Bob Marley, or some famous animal, mascot, celebrity, etc. in the middle. I'd like to add the icon to the banner while editing any unwanted background thus incorporating the icon into my banner. is that possible with these open sources?

[Dills]

i can't say for certain, but i would think it is possible. the thing is, however, the clipart must be traced over and made into a vector image in order to take advantage of the "limitless" resolution the file type has. if it's copy/pasted into the banner image file, and left as a jpg/tiff/bmp/etc, you will still run into the pixelation issues at larger sizes.