Which tool to use for designing a website logo

luckylucky

I need to design a logo for my new website. I have Adobe Photoshop CS. Photoshop I find is one of those programs that I've tended to use sporadically. When I try to use if for the first time in 7 or 8 months though I feel almost like a newbie again and it can take ages to figure out the simplest tasks. Are there any simpler tools to use to do fancy website logos or website graphics in general.

forbairt

Yes / No ...

Open source there is http://www.inkscape.org/ quite a cool vector editing piece of software

I've only fixed up one logo with it but the results weren't bad and it'll output to SVG to boot

Apart from that there are logo apps but to be honest results are strange ...
do a google for logo software and you'll see what I mean ...

still if its for you its for you

Bob the Builder

http://www.gimp.org/

it's free, powerful, and it's easy enough to use/learn....

forbairt

nevf wrote: »

http://www.gimp.org/

it's free, powerful, and it's easy enough to use/learn....

God no ... if he has Photo Shop why bother ? useability with gimp leaves a lot to be desired in my experience

Bob the Builder

forbairt wrote: »

God no ... if he has Photo Shop why bother ? useability with gimp leaves a lot to be desired in my experience

Meh, it was a pain in the arse to get used of, but it does the job....

....and the fact that it's free, helps... if it was commercial, I wouldn't pay for it...

php-fox

better ask for professional help.. The logo won't be that expensive. But you'll get quality and nice appearance..

forbairt

nevf wrote: »

Meh, it was a pain in the arse to get used of, but it does the job....

....and the fact that it's free, helps... if it was commercial, I wouldn't pay for it...

Hence he's got PhotoShop stick with that and don't go learning something completely different at least he's the experience with photoshop

php-fox wrote: »

better ask for professional help.. The logo won't be that expensive. But you'll get quality and nice appearance..

Depends on who you approach really but you may get something quite cheap compared to how many hours / days it'll take you to design it and be happy with it.

ianhobo

I've found this quite useful and easy to use

http://www.getpaint.net/

forbairt

ianhobo wrote: »

I've found this quite useful and easy to use

http://www.getpaint.net/

Similar to Photoshop ? in terms of UI / experience or have you used it ?

ianhobo

Yes I've used, I actually only downloaded it at the weekend.

It's similar to Photoshop while being different

Gimp is much more photoshop than this, I would say this is more like MS pain on drugs ha ha

I found it very easy to quickly do what I wanted with some gif logos that I have (removing backgrounds and the like)


But my experience so far has only been a few days worth, but I reckon I'll be opening it again

forbairt

ianhobo wrote: »

I found it very easy to quickly do what I wanted with some gif logos that I have (removing backgrounds and the like)

But my experience so far has only been a few days worth, but I reckon I'll be opening it again

Cheers for the info ... but it doesn't sound like a Vector editing tool for logo creation ? more of a friendly painting graphics tool ?

ianhobo

yep, correct. sorry, i tried out a lot of different programs over the weekend

pontovic

For logos ? Illustrator, definitely. Can be expensive though!

forbairt

pontovic wrote: »

For logos ? Illustrator, definitely. Can be expensive though!

yeah hence I linked to inkscape ... and open source vector editor. Its quite nice really and quite handy to get to grips with.

luckylucky

Thanks all for the advice and tips.

php-fox wrote: »

better ask for professional help.. The logo won't be that expensive. But you'll get quality and nice appearance..

The problem with going down this route is that it's out of my hands. If I want to make changes to it at a later date, I probably won't have access to the layers etc, that I would do if I created it myself, though i suppose I could ask for the source files as part of the deal. The expense issue is not really the problem for me but the lack of hands on creative control turns me off that route, not that I'm totally ruling it out though. I noticed at www.sitepoint.com they had logo compettions with the winner getting paid, only checked out one but it seemed quite good what they did.

forbairt

luckylucky wrote: »

I noticed at www.sitepoint.com they had logo compettions with the winner getting paid, only checked out one but it seemed quite good what they did.

You could go down that route and request source files

Bob the Builder

luckylucky wrote: »

The problem with going down this route is that it's out of my hands. If I want to make changes to it at a later date, I probably won't have access to the layers etc, that I would do if I created it myself, though i suppose I could ask for the source files as part of the deal. The expense issue is not really the problem for me but the lack of hands on creative control turns me off that route, not that I'm totally ruling it out though. I noticed at www.sitepoint.com they had logo compettions with the winner getting paid, only checked out one but it seemed quite good what they did.

Yep, if you can do it yourself, then do it yourself....
...or at least make a really good attempt, and then find a professional in the field which will make a new logo, and will have your "prototype" to work from...