CorelDRAW International Design Contest is Back!

If you haven't already heard, CorelDRAW is now 20 years old. As part of the birthday celebration, Corel is doing a few things to commemorate it. Today two more things have been announced. The biggest news is the return of the CorelDRAW International Design Contest.

Those of you who have been using CorelDRAW for many years will no doubt remember the contest. Designers from worldwide would submit their best artwork in hopes of winning fame and prizes. The new contest is a little different, but the prizes offered are very nice.

There are six categories in which you can enter. You may only enter one piece of artwork in each category. The exception is the Academic category. If you enter in that category, you can not enter in other categories. Below are each of the categories with the descriptions provided by Corel for that category.

• Advertising & Marketing: Flyers, brochures, logos, signs and other designs related to advertising, marketing or point of purchase (POP)
• Promotional Items, Awards & Personalization: Designs to be used in the engraving, awards, dye sublimation and other related industries
• Vehicle Wraps: Designs to be used for car, truck, boat or other vehicle wraps
• Textile & Fashion Design: Designs for fashion, embroidery and direct-to-garment printing
• General Illustration & Fine Art: Artistic, creative and unique designs
• Academic: To enter this category, you must be able to prove that you attend an educational institution. You may submit entries from any of the categories listed above into the Academic category.

First, second and third place winners will be selected in each category and will win a very nice prize package designed for the category in which you win. So if you win the Vehicle Wraps category, your prize package is related to designing vehicle wraps.

Each of the six first prize winners will then compete for the grand prize of a $22,000 Roland VersaCAMM printer/cutter.

I know that I'll be watching the results of the contest very closely as I'd like to feature some of the winning entries in a future version of my CorelDRAW Unleashed book. Find your best artwork and enter the contest now. You could be the winner walking away with the big (it is really big) prize!


A second announcement was also made. There is a special version of CorelDRAW box called the CorelDRAW Anniversary Edition. It includes CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 (the same version you may already have), a Wacom Intuos3 tablet and Corel Painter Sketch Pad. If you haven't already gotten a copy of CorelDRAW X4, this may be the perfect chance for you to get a copy and much more. It is available as both a full version and an upgrade.

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CorelDRAW on Inside Digital Design Radio Show

A few weeks ago I was a guest on the Inside Digital Design radio show. You can find an archive of the show if you would like to listen.

It was great to be able to speak to the audience about CorelDRAW, but it was sad that the hosts hadn't done any homework about CorelDRAW or Corel Corporation. Some of the questions they asked were about outdated information, really outdated information, that really had nothing to do with CorelDRAW. And like many Mac/Adobe users, they had no idea the power of CorelDRAW and the many ways it is being used today. I had the opportunity to try and correct some of the myths these users hold, but time limited me from truly presenting the power of CorelDRAW. Hopefully I can return to the show to present more useful information. It would also be great to see other CorelDRAW power users as guests on the show.

If you had five minutes to tell the world why you find CorelDRAW to be the best graphics tool for your needs, what would you say? Leave a comment and let me know!

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Origins of the Peace Sign

I was reading National Geographic recently and came across the story of how the logo for the peace symbol originated. It was a bit of a surprise since I don't read it to get stories about graphic design.

After doing a bit more research, I realized the logo celebrated its 50th birthday this year. The logo was originally created in 1958 by Gerald Holtom for the Center for Nuclear Disarmament. Look at the diagram at right to see how the elements were developed. It is based on the letters N and D in the Semaphore alphabet. Note that the Semaphore font is supplied with CorelDRAW and was used to create the diagram at right. Each of the semaphore characters were simplified to give the two pie pieces. Those pieces were then combined to give the final logo that we all know so well. More details can be found on the happybirthdaypeace.com Web site.

I think this is a great example of how an artist thought outside the box a bit. Rather than using the letters in a Latin alphabet, he chose a symbol font and then simplified it greatly. In Britain the logo is commonly known as the disarmament symbol, but many of us outside Britain simply call it the peace symbol. Now you know how it was created. Hopefully this gives you some ideas for logo design!

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CorelDRAW Around the House

One reason CorelDRAW is so popular is that it can be used in so many different ways. While it may not have been designed for all the uses, there are still ways to make it work.

Alex Vakulenko had an interesting blog post about how he recently used CorelDRAW and Corel DESIGNER to help with some remodeling projects around his house. Now if you don't know Alex, you might know some of his work. During the day he works at Corel and is responsible for the cool macros in the CorelDRAW box like Calendar Wizard. In his spare time he runs the OberonPlace Web site and offers several useful macros for sale. He is also the programmer behind our popular EZ Metrics add-on for CorelDRAW.

Alex is definitely not the first, nor will he be the last, to use CorelDRAW for these kinds of projects. I designed the floor plan for my current house in CorelDRAW 5 back in 1995. Tony Severenuk, CorelDRAW Program Manager, recently designed a salon for his wife using CorelDRAW. It is really cool to see how household projects like this can be made easier in CorelDRAW.

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Design Studio Packages Loaded with Apparel Templates

There are many CorelDRAW users creating graphics for apparel. Two new packages have been released that are loaded with high-quality graphics to be used for apparel. Design Studio packages can be bought individually or get both volumes for a discounted price. They are loaded with graphics, templates, fonts, distress overlays and a full color book loaded with examples.

This is a great collection for anyone doing screen printer, garment printing, embroidery and more. And for those using Decostudio, it gives you the multi-decoration artwork that will really show off the capabilities of Decostudio.

Check out the sample images from this collection and you'll find that it can bring even more creativity to the products you are creating.

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The Creation of 3D Box Shots

A very common vision when you see a software box on the Internet is for that box to be shown in a three dimensional view. Sometimes those images are actual photographs, but it is just as common that the graphic was built from flat pieces.

There are a number of ways to build such a graphic and the best method can vary based on a user's goals. You can use perspective tools in either CorelDRAW or Corel PHOTO-PAINT to adjust the three orthographic (flat) views of the box until they fit together. With a little practice, you can create a series of steps to accomplish this fairly fast. For those using CorelDRAW, you may want to look into the EZ Metrics utility as it will instantly put the three pieces into perfect perspective at the angle of your choice. Then you'll just slide the three sides together and you're all done.

I'd like to introduce two other utilities that are geared towards creating 3D box shots. They are Box Shot 3D and True BoxShot. Both products allow you to try the program before you buy it. If you need to create these type of 3D box shots on a regular basis, one or both of these programs should probably be in your design arsenal.

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Free Video Tutorial on T-Shirt Template Design

Tom Knight has created a new video tutorial that will teach you to create a t-shirt template in CorelDRAW 11-X4. As Tom goes through the creation of the template, you'll learn about a number of different features in CorelDRAW. So even if you aren't in the business of creating t-shirts, there are a number of tips that you can apply to your workflow.

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Two Great Books on Shapes for Designers

I have to admit that the two titles I'm going to describe were unknown to me and seemed relatively obscure. Part of the reason for this is that the books are published by a German publisher and so the books really weren't on my radar. At least not until I read a recent blog post by Chris Dickman. Chris authored the first book on CorelDRAW and has been a leader in the graphics community for well over 20 years.

The first book is Neubau Welt. Check out the link where you can read more about it and see samples of many of the pages. What you'll find is silhouette images of everyday objects. In total, there are over 1000 pictograms in the book. Even better, all of the graphics are stored as Adobe Illustrator files on the included CD-ROM. That means they are vector graphics you can import into CorelDRAW to use in your projects. The book lists for $62 from the publisher, but you can get it for $39 from Amazon US. It is also available at a discount from Amazon Canada, Amazon UK and Amazon DE.

From the same author comes Neubau Modul. Again, I encourage you to follow the link to the publisher's Web site so you can check out the sample pages provided. As with Neubau Welt, it is a full-color hardcover book along with a disc. This time it includes a DVD-ROM with over 2000 editable graphics in Adobe Illustrator format as well as a font. For anyone looking for design inspiration, you're sure to find it in either of these books. Again, the list price is pretty high at $65, but you can find it at Amazon US for only $41. You can also find it at Amazon Canada, Amazon UK and Amazon DE.

I highly encourage all of you to look at these books as you will surely find something that you can incorporate into your designs. If nothing else, they are a great source of shapes that work great in CorelDRAW and the license allows you to use them in your designs royalty free.

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The Evolution of the Google Logo

I'm assuming that most of you are graphic designers. Thus, you are interested in how to create the best designs possible for your clients. Google went from nowhere to one of the most influential companies on the planet in ten years. But how was their logo born? The folks at Wired just ran an article on how the logo was created and you can see the iterations along the way. Their logo may not be the key to their success, but it is certainly one of the most recognizable logos in the world. Hopefully it can bring some inspiration to your projects.

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The Wide World of Clip Art

Just recently a user upgrading from CorelDRAW 8 to CorelDRAW X3 commented their disappointment that the new version only included 10,000 images. I gave that user a quick answer about the clip art that is available to CorelDRAW users and I thought I would expand on that in a blog post.

One thing that I think this user forgot is that you can still use the clip art from older versions in CorelDRAW X3. I personally copy the clip art from the CDs of older version to my hard drive so I have them available when needed. If you don't have the old versions, maybe you can pick up a copy of them on eBay for a reasonable price.

If price is your main concern and you want a whole bunch of images, then Nova Art Explosion 800,000 Clip Art is probably right up your alley. 800,000 images on 34 CD-ROMs for only $79.99. If you owned a previous version, there is even a $30 rebate. There are many more packages of this type listed on our Web site.

The downside to these megacollections is that you are paying for quality and not necessarily the most useful images for a production workflow. So it all depends on what you need for your business.

A really inexpensive option are the packages from Dover. If you've ever seen the old Dover clip art books, these collection put that artwork on disc for you. No longer do you need to scan the pages out of the book. Some of this artwork is supplied as a bitmap and some is in vector form. But there are a ton of choices and none of them is more than $15.

For those of you in a production environment, many of these large collections just aren't that useful. Working with the files to get them prepped for output as a vinyl sign, an embroidery stitch pattern, laser engraved and more is a lot different than print work.

One source of great artwork is Clipart deSIGN. All of their artwork is design for vinyl cutting which means it can easily be used in all areas of production work. If you need flames, tribal designs, vehicle graphics or pinstripes then you definitely want to check out this collection.

By far the largest collection of production ready artwork is from Digital Art Solutions. There are over 30 packages to choose from with over 100,000 total images. Yes, these packages cost more than the mega packages because they are designed for those creating shirts, signs, plaques and other physical products that have to get out a lot of usable artwork in a short period of time.

Hopefully all of you can find some clip art to meet your needs in the many collections I've listed. If you know of other collections of interest, I'd love to hear about them.

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