My Design Studio's MyDesignPrimer.com | Graphic Design Equipment: All about Vector-drawing Programs (Adobe Illustrator & Freehand)

May 09, 2008

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Vector-drawing Programs: Drawing on Technology
eraser ector-drawing programs, like Illustrator and Freehand, are programs that are used to create or change vector-based artwork. Common forms of vector-based artwork include logos or drawings that have been created with a vector-drawing program or have been converted to a vector drawing.

Vector-drawing programs are quite versatile and offer a number of tools and filters as part of their features. With these programs, you can:

Create drawings that can appear from the very technical to the very hand-drawn.

Create a variety of shapes or polygons with various borders, colors and textures.

Contain CMYK, spot or RGB colors.

Create distorted and specially manipulated type.

Create spectacular charts, graphs and logos.

Vectors are points that you "plot" and connect to create simple or complex images. Each one of these plotted components is an object. Vector drawings have hard edges rather than soft edges like photographic bitmap files.

The plotting of these points can take quite a bit of practice to master but can be a great advantage to illustrators and designers. If an illustration needs to be altered, the creator can do so by moving the vectors in the file. Illustrators, working with artboards and paint, may by contrast, have to start from scratch. Not a pretty picture (pun intended).

Another advantage of this kind graphic is that it can be resized in a page-layout program without suffering any loss in quality. If you were to design a logo using vectors, you could reduce it to the size of a postage stamp or enlarge it to the size of a skyscraper without any loss of quality. Pretty amazing stuff. And, to top it all off, the files are typically pretty small and can often fit on a floppy disk.

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