I have a question for those out there who like to design dash plaques, club logos, letterheads, etc. About 20 years ago, the company I worked for switched from Lotus to Microsoft. Lotus has a program called Freelance. It was a drawing program which allowed folks to draw things like were aforementioned. The Microsoft suite did not (or at least I don't know if it) have a drawing program with it. I've just been having to wing it since that time. I sure miss it! It allowed me to import a line drawing and then fill in around it with the letters. It had various types of letter and border styles to select from. You could turn it at an angle and you could put the words in a circle as in a round logo that some clubs use. I'd like to find another program to replace that. I have thought about Adobe Illustrator however, it is fairly expensive. Some of the drawing programs look like they could be used to draw a full-color picture but I was looking for something simpler. The one I had would allow you to draw lines, boxes, triangles, circles, etc. and, for instance, fill the inside with color then install white lettering that would stand out against a red background. I have figured out how to do some of it in Word but it is fairly difficult. The example below could be done with a drawing of the car and gas pump imported into a Word document, then the lettering added around the page. It was lot easier to do the words in Freelance. Just drag and drop where you wanted them. The other things is drawing odd shapes. For instance, a diamond shape with rounded corners, or an oval that can be adjusted to fit around what is inside.
Now that you see what I am looking for, does anyone have a program that they currently use and would recommend? The attachment is only to give you some idea of that I am looking for. If you want to see some of my current design work, check out the flyer for the upcoming Model T Winter Clinic in McPherson, Kansas, shown elsewhere in this Forum. It was done in Word.
Thank you for your help!
Verne Shirk
