Get advice to help you create your t-shirt graphics. Discuss t-shirt design software, special effect techniques, or other topics related to creating a t-shirt design on your computer. If you'd rather hire a graphic designer to do the work for you, please post in our Referrals and Recommendations section here.
I want a basic line drawing logo with an attached slogan - ( I was an art major in a former life, but it's been YEARS) - is it better to hire out an artist, or invest in a software program and play around with it myself And by better, I mean, cost and time to learn the program
I was an art major in a former life, but it's been YEARS
Is that the slogan?
If you're going to be doing t-shirt stuff... you probably want to touch graphics software sooner or later
If cost is an issue... try Inkscape! (yeah, I'm a fan)
If you were an art major - and I mean in practice rather than study - then your understanding of form and colour is probably more than enough to make your own logo! Be sure to keep it simple enough so that you can reproduce it with a variety of mediums as necessary. You can always make a fancier version from it later if you really need to, but the world's best logos are insanely simple.
Every business has start-up costs - so in the grand scheme of things, a good art program would be a justifiable expenditure. Do you use Inkscape exclusively or with another program e.g. illustrator, as well? Hey....that should be my slogan - good one!
Do you use Inkscape exclusively or with another program e.g. illustrator, as well? Hey....that should be my slogan - good one!
I use Inkscape exclusively!
That's pretty much my slogan :P
It's a rockin' program, and with a lot of people using Corel and Adobe here (although they all seem to be open-minded to open-source : ) I feel that I should be the Inkscape ambassador to t-shirtforums.com
Dont forget you can always save big by getting previous versions of software. I think I paid 20% of the cost for my Photoshop versions CS and CS2. I think they are down to $40 or something for CS2 now. You aren't missing much for that extra $580 in savings or whatever the current version costs.
EDIT: just saw Inkscape for the first time thanks to this post... wow thats cool looking!
I learned illustrator myself with just my knowledge of Paint. I got pretty good at it too. There are also tons of tutorials online that will help you and youtube has a lot of videos too.
I learned illustrator myself with just my knowledge of Paint
Do you mean MS Paint? Or like, the liquid (or suspension) that you apply with a brush?
Paint is raster, and quite frankly the worst raster program out there (I'd say that you get what you pay for, but recall that Inkscape is free and that's really good : ), whereas Illustrator is vector; and the methods are different.
I learned by playing around with vector software. Once you're good with paths and boolean path operations, you'll manage the rest. I'd suggest: try learning on your own. If that doesn't work, grab a book about vector graphics from the library - even if it's old, the fundamentals about how you deal with nodes and anchors have not changed. If that still doesn't help you, I guess take a class
I use Illustrator and PhotoShop for the T-Shirt Designs, but I hired out a Designer to to my logo so that I would have another place that promotes my business and I would know that it's a ligit logo. Sometimes I like not being the only one with the ideas. It's also good to get another perspective.
Really great advice here. My suggestion also would be to do the logo yourself. You can at least do the concept sketches and if youa re having trouble learning the software hire someone to do the digital execution for you.
I'm an Illustrator/Photoshop guy but I also want to join those who are suggesting inkscape as a possible alternative. Given the nature of opensource communities I am sure there are loads of tutorials out there. If you go the adobe route you might get a (paid) subscription to lynda.com - the tutorials there are fantastic.
self designed logo vs. hired out 
Re: self designed logo vs. hired out 
