Software for designing signs and posters

[Margaret B Benard]

Hello friends, I am new to this forum. Hope I am in the right place.
I am planning to start a new business with my friends. The procedures to start a business is almost done, and we intend to launch it as quickly as time permits. This business is one of our dreams, and we are making all efforts to bring it fruitful. Now we need to create some signs and posters that suit our business. But we are in confusion to choose the better graphic designing software.
Can anyone suggest me a good software to design our signs and posters? Please share your experiences with different software.

 

[ChicagoGraphics]

Are you opening a sign company or something related to graphics?

 

[DaMegaPrinter]

We've always had good luck using Adobe's software, more specifically Illustrator, Photoshop and Lightroom.
Design-wise, it's rare we have any issue with those programs, and we use them for every job we do in house.

That being said, don't just buy one. Better yet, If you or your designer have prior experience using any design software, start with the one you guys know best. See if that suits what you're trying to do, and if not, adapt and find a better program.

 

[Billct2]

Yea, what are you opening?

 

[Johnny Best]

Go to FedEx and order all your signs. Will be cheaper and faster to outsource your signs and to learn new software for making signage.

 

[karst41]

Subscribe to the Adobe software bundle that best suits your needs. You can add or subtract as needed.

Dont get a bunch of cheap shareware.

Local Community and State colleges will offer courses in Illustrator and Photoshop.
Take these courses.
Sign up and attend Seminars. There will be an entrance fee. They are not Cheap.
Remember that you are investing in your self and the future of you and your family.

Your computer should be loaded with as much RAM as it can withstand.
Your Graphics Card needs to have a respectable amount of ram on it.
(You don't need a Gaming Card)

Your Monitor should be baddass! I love my Samsung curved monitor.
And a decent smaller secondary monitor for your software tool pallets.

Get a quality digitizing tablet and stylus.

A 27" iMac Pro that is juiced with Ram is a wonderful thing and You can pair an Apply Retina Monitor with it. Yes very nice

Build you a RAID and mirror the drives. Drives do fail.

PC or Mac is up to you but the RULE IS: NO f'n surfing the internet on this system.

On my RIP Station I have only two websites that I will use in a Pinch.
An essential .gov web site and DA Font. maybe 2 or 3 times a year. (in a pinch)

PC or Mac, wtf ever, the software cost will exceed the computer.
Microcenter.com
or my friends at Macofalltrades.com for quality used macs. They guarantee what they sell.

Good Luck,,,,,,,,,, Oh and one last thing.

Those posters that you are going to print,,,,,,,,,,Today is Friday, They were due on Monday and you were out fishing last weekend????
Its not about getting the work, the work will come.
Its about meeting deadlines and you can kiss yo personal life bye bye.

I started my printing apprenticeship in June 1981.
10 years later I opened my own business.

Hope this will get you started in the right direction.

Oh yeah, you will need to outsource your large orders while you are learning how to walk.

 

[myront]

What a can of worms you've opened again!
I can run circles around any adobe user with my 10yr old Corel Graphics Suite. Guarantee you'll need both and possibly more. You're not just designing, you're taking every wanna be graphic artist's crappy artwork and making it usable in some capacity. You also will be required to "proof" it to clients. That means complete with dimensions etc. Something that's much easier to do in Corel.

Go ahead adobe fans throw the beer bottles and trash talk!

Bottom line is you need a vector based program. DO NOT DESIGN SOLELY IN RASTER!!

 

[Bobby H]

Go ahead adobe fans throw the beer bottles and trash talk!

How about trying to practice what you preach?

 

[Souldar]

Hello friends, I am new to this forum. Hope I am in the right place.
I am planning to start a new business with my friends. The procedures to start a business is almost done, and we intend to launch it as quickly as time permits. This business is one of our dreams, and we are making all efforts to bring it fruitful. Now we need to create some signs and posters that suit our business. But we are in confusion to choose the better graphic designing software.
Can anyone suggest me a good software to design our signs and posters? Please share your experiences with different software.

For the money I would get Corel Draw. People love Adobe, I know but it is expensive and they moved everything into the cloud. Corel Draw is more than enough for most layouts and you don't have to worry about the renewal fees/subscriptions.

 

[myront]

How about trying to practice what you preach?

Currently busy running circles.

 

[eahicks]

For the money I would get Corel Draw. People love Adobe, I know but it is expensive and they moved everything into the cloud. Corel Draw is more than enough for most layouts and you don't have to worry about the renewal fees/subscriptions.

Corel is subscription too, by the way.

 

[Reveal1]

There's a good chance my 25 year old designer would run circles around Myront's circles, using illustrator to create a decent-looking design while playing video games, streaming music, trading crypto-currency, and drinking an awful tasting energy drink all at the same time. It's what the kids are taught to use and they're darned fast. But chances are Myront would gain points in this mythical contest by capitalizing and spelling correctly, and actually creating a file with correct color settings and one that is print ready and under 1 gig.

 

[visual800]

get on ebay and get a used CD of adobe illustrator or Coreldraw. they are on there with great prices and no freaking cloud to deal with

 

[WildWestDesigns]

It's what the kids are taught to use and they're darned fast.

This is a double edge sword here. Yes, they are taught and they really know it, unfortunately, they only know that program. They learn the program, take them out of the program, they are like lost puppies. So is it really a function of the strange program not being up for the task or is it a function of them really only knowing one program and nothing more?

Programs are tools, it's the knowledge base of the user that makes all the difference. I would prefer to have someone that can handle a switch then someone that can only use one tool and nothing more. One program rarely ever gets everything done (unless one is able to extend it themselves and that depends on how easily said program allows for that) and that isn't taking in to account that programs sometimes lose functionality over time, depending on what the user's needs are, so have to adapt. I prefer to be more mobile in my company to make switches in case I see patterns that I don't like that software OEM's seem to be going in. And that included switching back if that becomes the case as well, but to limited to a single program overall is no bueno in my mind.

I notice that the price label was mentioned again. "Don't get a bunch of cheap software". Price while a concern, shouldn't take priority over abilities. I can use a free graphics program with a free plugin and it does better then Ai/Draw with a $3k plugin. The downside is that it does require more knowledge from the user (and that also contributes to better quality of output as well), so for those that are taught by program, lose out and come under the wrongful perception that because it was "cheap" that it isn't up to task. That's not everything and there are examples of it being reverse, point is, not good to make that assumption as it may not be the case.

... you don't have to worry about the renewal fees/subscriptions.

While Corel does still have a one time purchase option for DRAW, I highly doubt that it will stay there for the long haul. They appear eager to go the subscription approach (which I find ironic considering when CC first came out, they were using the fact that they had the perpetual license model and were actively promoting that to get disenfranchised Adobe users that didn't want the cloud), especially with the yearly release cycle (which is much too short to handle new features and a stable program). I also don't like the fact that they appear to also be stretching the devs thin with trying to add Mac to their lineup. I don't question them trying to add another platform of users, but it really appears that they didn't make any investment towards Mac developers to help make that less painless and now with the switch to Apple Silicon underway, just doesn't look good. They could have done some other things to mitigate the need for Mac specific devs, but didn't do that either. So I'm a little concerned.

Affinity products are another that I'm wondering when they are going to go the subscription route. The one plus sign is that I haven't seen a subscription option for their Designer program (either that or I just missed it), so there is that hope.

 

[Bobby H]

This is a double edge sword here. Yes, they are taught and they really know it, unfortunately, they only know that program. They learn the program, take them out of the program, they are like lost puppies.

You can make that claim with any piece of graphics software. The fact remains Adobe's software is far more common across the entire graphic design industry. Any universities, art schools or even trade schools teaching courses in graphic design are going to use the tools most commonly used in the industry. So Adobe often wins out over CorelDRAW and many others.

In an actual graphics production environment where a student is becoming a paid employee, a certain degree of sharpness and self-reliance is required. Staffers are going to encounter other kinds of software no matter the creative niche in which they're working. To this day I still get surprised at just how many people can't effectively manage and organize computer files and folders. They rarely ever use Windows File Explorer or the Finder in OSX. They turn into "lost puppies" when trying to deal with mundane nuts and bolts issues of the operating system. When someone at least understands the foundational basics of the OS, and has good problem solving skills, he'll be able to get up and running pretty quick on a Mac or PC running Adobe, Corel or whatever. The thing he is getting paid to do is create. What's going on in his head is the valuable thing, not the brand of computer or software he is using.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

You can make that claim with any piece of graphics software. The fact remains Adobe's software is far more common across the entire graphic design industry. Any universities, art schools or even trade schools teaching courses in graphic design are going to use the tools most commonly used in the industry. So Adobe often wins out over CorelDRAW and many others.

The problem that I'm referring to is that they tend to be taught how to do something within a specific program and not really breaking down what the need to do.

There is a significant difference in "scalability" when being taught what needs to be done, then just how to do it in a specific software package.

It would matter less if Adobe still wins out as the tool that is used most in teaching depending on how things are taught (and this type of teaching that I'm complaining about extends to other areas of teaching as well). There is a layer being abstracted away in the learning process that is getting them dependent on a software package that doesn't need to be there. Even if they learned say on Affinity and they can't scale that to Adobe as easily.

 

[Bobby H]

The problem that I'm referring to is that they tend to be taught how to do something within a specific program and not really breaking down what the need to do.

That's not what I see taking place in the college I attended or even locally at the in-town university and vo-tech. The classes are more project-oriented rather than centered around pointing and clicking a certain recipe of steps to complete a mundane task. There is no need in wasting valuable class time on that kind of piddly stuff, especially when the same point and click information is available for free online. Adobe has countless numbers of tutorials, either as static, print-based lessons or videos. There are tons of third party how-to videos out there; some of them are good and others are, well, not so good.

A person that has to memorize a certain order of menu buttons just to complete a given task may be missing some basic computer skills, like the file management skills I mentioned earlier. Another thing: in applications like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop there is often multiple ways a user can complete a certain task. I think the problem really boils down to laziness. Some people are just not interested in truly learning the structure of a piece of creative software to see what all is possible with it. Their heart really isn't in it. They're just trying to get some kind of chore done and the software is something they have to tolerate, not enjoy using.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

That's not what I see taking place in the college I attended or even locally at the in-town university and vo-tech.

Experiences may differ that is for sure.

My college was definitely that way, now I would imagine that I also went to college later then you so that could also have been the sign of the times as well. Or my college could have just been that bad, it was a state school after all. Tech school, I haven't done anything in that arena, so it's the traditional college arena, so I can't say for sure.

A person that has to memorize a certain order of menu buttons just to complete a given task may be missing some basic computer skills, like the file management skills I mentioned earlier.

I see that with people that have excellent skills in design programs, but have basic skills otherwise. And that would still include file management skills as well.

Another thing: in applications like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop there is often multiple ways a user can complete a certain task.

And at my school they really would have learned only that one method and that's the method that they keep with them.

Some people are just not interested in truly learning the structure of a piece of creative software to see what all is possible with it. Their heart really isn't in it.

Absolutely that's apart of it. I know some of the software that I really like, on the surface, most don't think that they can do much (typically related to what I have been talking about before with learning a specific workflow for a specific software), but the power that they have with extended the programs to tailor fit the user's needs is far away more then what you can do with Ai and Draw. But they either can't do it, don't want to do it, or believe that they shouldn't have to do it. In the end, they miss out.

 

[Bobby H]

Experiences may differ that is for sure. My college was definitely that way, now I would imagine that I also went to college later then you so that could also have been the sign of the times as well. Or my college could have just been that bad, it was a state school after all. Tech school, I haven't done anything in that arena, so it's the traditional college arena, so I can't say for sure.

I was in college 30 years ago; computer-based design was still in its infancy then. Many of the analog methods of illustration and graphic design were still very much in use. I've watched what the art school I attended has offered over the years. None of the course load revolved around learning the basics of a specific application. Today it's the same thing at the local university and vo-tech here. They have computer labs open to students to learn what button means and does what on their own, if they don't know that basic stuff already. There is too much other stuff to cover in the class room than re-hashing what can easily be found in an application's user's manual.

A competent creative worker should have a drive to learn and experiment. There should be some excitement involved when getting new tools or new/upgraded software. It takes work to keep one's own creative spirit alive and skills up to date and relevant. That means doing a lot more than just staying up to date on a given piece of computer software. There is a bunch of people doing work as "graphic designers" who are just phoning it in. It shows in their work. And they probably would do better (and make more money) doing something else for a living. Truly learning and retaining real knowledge of what a graphics application can do is too much of a burden. So they're going to memorize as little as they can.

 

[Pewter0000]

Just to hop in here...

Unless you're going to consistently need design work done on the daily/weekly (in which case, absolutely get a designer/program suite/machine to do so), I'd just farm this work out to people with experience and stuff to do it already. I'd strike up a relationship with a local sign company; they've got the goods. Even a freelancer (which is what I did before selling my skills to a sign shop) can help, though you should be absolutely sure that freelancer can work vector.

Corel? Adobe? Here's my $.02...

As a independent designer for 15 years, I've used both Corel and Adobe, and I actually enjoyed Corel's programs a lot more. Intuitive and just nicer programs and nicer tools/brushes etc in general.
However, when I started moving away from freelancing and into typical workplaces a few years ago, Adobe is the only thing that mattered on my resume. My employers already had Adobe subscriptions because their previous designers used it. And once the students in the design programs learn that GIMP or whatever raster program they drew with in high school doesn't translate in the large-format industry, they snag an Adobe subscription. Paying for Illustrator monthly...sucks long term. But $1,199 for CS2 was a really large sum to ask when I started out. So, it sucks, but it also opens up the market to small biz/independent freelancers to get their start, and kids to get some experience.

TLDR, Corel's got better programs but I haven't used them in ages because everywhere uses Adobe; kids can afford an adobe sub in high school and get a head start.