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Software to help with graphic designing
To keep up with customer demands and growing technology advancements, several small businesses will overhaul their company logo and image. A good graphic designer can come up with a new image for your company to help it stay in touch with the future. However in a struggling economy, paying for a full-time graphic designer may not be an option for your company. A good alternative for business owners is to purchase some graphic design software and create the new company image on their own. Of course, you will need some understanding about graphic design and how to use publishing software like Quark and InDesign.
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When Adobe InDesign hit the market, graphic designers fell head over hills in love with the new publishing software. Unlike Quark and other out-dated graphic design software, it has multiple options that allow you create documents in a shorter amount of time. You can create transparency effects, feathering, and many other unique features.
Markzware created an Adobe plug that helps to convert Quark Express files to Adobe InDesign files. This is a great way to keep all of your graphic files organized. Since most of the new graphic designers are strictly trained on Adobe InDesign, the plug-in feature will save your money because your designer will not need to re-create graphics. This not only saves you money, but it frees up more time for the designer to work on other files.
Moving onto what to do if you don't have a graphic designer, the first thing you need to do is consider hiring a freelance designer. Graphic design is no picnic; do you know what a vector image is? How about scalable EPS graphics? Just like any profession, a graphic designer comes with a series of different skills that will help to improve your company's image.
Some of the things you can hire an online graphic design company to create for you include the following:
- Business cards
- Logo
- Brochures
- Menus
- Folders
- Postcards
- Mailers
The online graphic designing firms do offer high-quality work, but most of the time you will be forced to choose from a series of templates. You really don't get a big voice in how you want your company image to look.
You can do some basic graphic design work in Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop is useful when you need to convert files for the internet as they need to be .Jpg or .gif formats. Photoshop is pretty complex to use and it's hard to design brochures and catalogs it in, this is when you need to make the step up to Adobe InDesign. InDesign literally allows you to design just about anything you need and you can upload it to printer's web sites directly from the software. To purchase InDesign, you are looking at an investment of at least $400 or more. If you purchase the Adobe Suite, plan on spending close to $1,000. However, for high-end graphic design work, Adobe is the way to go.
There are some simplistic programs you can use like Corel DRAW to make simple vector images like logos and business cards. You can do basic work with Corel DRAW so it may get you by if you just need images to place on your web site. However, building multiple layers is best left to an Adobe program.
Finally, you can consider using a program called Smart Draw to help you design some basic business graphic. Smart Draw is similar to Corel DRAW in that you have limitations on what you can do. You will be given a series of templates to choose from and you can do your work from these templates.
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