MTFCA Forum

Greetings Fellow Model T-er's!!!

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

I have used Inkscape to design a few. Free download. I normally find that I need to google things like how to align the text with a curve as I forget again before I do the next one, but the information is all out there. Might be worth a look.

Haydon

Verne, I can't help you as I am a 'word' user like you! But I wanted to say your work looks great. Keep it up.

Microsoft Publisher

Usually the PAINT or/& PAINT 3D applications are included in the Microsoft setup.
I use PAINT some hints but you are likely to know all this using WORD
You almost always need to use SELECT before you do the next action
In my example of the drop down boxes
I did a Print Screen (Ctrl + PrtSc keys), then PASTED it onto my picture, then SELECTED what I wanted, then COPY, then CNTL+Z to remove the Print Screen (sometimes need to do more than once) Then PASTE and moved the image to where I wanted
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I Print Screened the Model T Forum Logo. then PASTE into the my work, immediately reduced it to prevent pixel loss - reduced the size and moved it over to a white space. The resultant image had the Logo inside a black square. I then used FREE FORM SELECT to remove most of the black corners. To give a good edge I superimpose a whit circle of the image

Thank you all for the responses! I will look into these. Verne Shirk