Let's talk about logo and icon design

[jana]

I often go to the Logo of the Day website, both to find inspiration and to laugh over some of the designs :) Because designing a good-looking and meaningful logo is not an easy task, even though it can look deceptively easy on the surface. There is so much to think about, like the message you want to bring across and the kind of emotions you want to evoke in people. It's very similar to designing small desktop or website icons; you want to say as much as possible, but you only have so much space. Very tricky indeed.

So, my question goes to the community: Ever tried your hands on logo or icon design with GIMP? Or is GIMP not the best tool for this kind of creative work? Any thoughts?

Comments

[nebulosity]

I think you can create logos without a problem in GIMP, but I certainly think you'd have to do a lot more manual work in the design (and you might have to be a little more creative in terms of how you actually create the graphic). I haven't tried adobe illustrator, but it sounds like illustrator is made specifically for drawing graphics. I should give illustrator a try and then compare it to GIMP. I've done basic graphic design with gimp before, but not so much logo design.

[sara]

I've done logo work in the GIMP, but working with manipulating existing images, not drawing new ones. I have a completely crap Wacom tablet and am not much of an illustrator anyhow, so drawing on the computer isn't so much my strong suit.

[jana]

I use Inkscape as a vector graphic program, but I think the program's functionality is very similar to Illustrator. It's just a guess though, since I've never used Illustrator. My experience with Inkscape is that you have more control of the small details of a drawing or an image, but then again, there is lots of amazing stuff out there - made with GIMP - so it shouldn't be impossible to do inspiring logos, or desktop icons. There is one thing though that's lacking in GIMP in my opinion, and that's the program's font functionality. Most of the time fonts in GIMP just don't look very good. It's much easier to do something with fonts in Inkscape.

[jana]

I use Wacom's Bamboo tablet, but I just have gotten started with it, which means most of the time I feel like one of my computer illiterate relatives who don't really know what to do with the mouse ;) I also often combine GIMP with Inkscape (like Illustrator I think), because there are some things that seem to be easier to do in Inkscape, but who knows - maybe I just have to work a little more with GIMP to learn all its cool features and functions...

[sara]

Yeah, a lot of what I end up doing with the tablet in the GIMP is using it to clean up images -- for example, erasing backgrounds out of photos.

[dragonwolf]

Inkscape is Illustrator's counter part, yes.

One thing you might want to play with is the hotkey settings. I know I found some things in GIMP that weren't all that intuitive to me as their defaults. Your tablet issues might be the same way.

Tablets are awesome, in my opinion. Once you get used to it (which doesn't usually take long, especially once you get used to the fact that the tablet maps to the screen, so the left edge of the tablet = the left edge of the screen), you'll be hard-pressed to go back to a mouse!

[jana]

Yeah, I guess I need to use my tablet more often and play around with its functions and settings. Otherwise I'll never learn all the possible ways to use it - and Gimp :)