Should A Designer Create A Logo Design In CorelDRAW X7?
But should you use CorelDraw X7 to create a professional logo? Let’s find out!
CorelDRAW X7 is one of the logo design programs for today’s designers. It can replace Photoshop for different reasons, and the reliability of this 17th version of CorelDRAW is one of the contributing factors.
The official website states that CorelDRAW X7 isn’t the most recent version of this logo design program. Instead, many designers today are still preferring to use it. CorelDRAW X7 even has upgraded the design program to the more fast-paced Graphics Suite versions.
Such a design program update has the aim of accommodating workers in the logo design industries who have different device versions. Until now, a logo design worker can use this design program for their Windows 8 or 8.1 OS devices.
Nonetheless, the “Should a designer create a logo design in CorelDRAW X7?” question remains the question we need to address. We will answer with the reasons and explanations of why a designer should create a logo design in CorelDRAW X7.
1. The software comes with different versions with diverse key strengths
The original version is often the version we think about when we think about any design programs. As one of such design programs, CorelDRAW X7 should be no exception.
However, the Graphic Suite and the PHOTO-PAINT are two different CorelDRAW X7 versions with diverse strengths and specifications that make us think a designer should create a logo design in CorelDRAW X7. Both of the versions support the PSD file, which belongs to the design file types that a logo designer frequently deals with.
Even though high-quality PSD files tend to be expensive, the Graphic Suite version can accommodate any device with at least 2 GB of RAM storage left. Another thing about this version is that you can use this CorelDRAW X7 version on your Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 OS devices.
Now, there are many affordable laptops and desktop computers for design purposes that have such specifications. What’s more, is that the graphic interface of CorelDRAW X7 Graphic Suite is easy to navigate for the users.
The PHOTO-PAINT is one of the CorelDRAW versions to accommodate files coming from different camera devices. Yet, many edited photos with decent quality come from this logo design platform. In particular, people who work in the logo design industries love to use PHOTO-PAINT to create magnificent 2D logo images.
2. The X7 version is the master of creating outstanding 2D logo images through the effects and shapes
Today, there are many CorelDRAW X7 tutorials for creating high-quality 2D logo images. More specifically, we can mix and match the color palettes in this version to create a one-of-a-kind logo that can act as our portfolio collections or serve our design clients’ purposes.
Ellipse and rectangle are two CorelDRAW X7 elements that logo designers frequently use to design company logos. These shapes are the fundamental shapes that can morph into other customizable shapes when we combine them with the correct shapes.
We can even add effects to the existing logo design shapes. Even after we combine more than three shapes, we can add more effects to make our logo designs more stunning.
Bevel and blend contour are two effects that we frequently see in this design program. Bevel or emboss makes the shapes (or other design elements) seem as if they are popping from inside, while blend contour blend some percentages of the shape’s outer lines to create brand-new logo design elements.
More specifically, the Graphic Suite X7 version is the version with lots of interesting effects for your logo.
Smear, Attract, Repel, and Twirl is the other four “liquid” effects that can give flexible, unbending edges to your logo designs. Many people prefer the Twirl effects for a 2D logo since these image effects give the most flexible strokes and lines compared to other effects.
3. CorelDRAW X7 has some of the best special effect tools
Special effects don’t stand as some of the most customizable elements in the design world. A decent logo design should also combine and balance the special effects with the appropriate tools.
In CorelDRAW X7, we can find the Shape Tool, the Freehand Pick Tool, the Quick Pan Tool, and the Drop Shadow Tool as the tools for adjusting the effects you’ve rendered on some logo shapes. The Freehand Pick tool has become the tool most logo designers use in this design program due to its flexibility to adjust the shapes according to the clients’ requests.
This tool gives the designer more complete control than the rest of the special effect tools since this tool lets them isolate and manipulate the logo elements. Since curved and non-linear objects have gained popularity these days, the Freehand Pick tool gets an advantage in the CorelDRAW X7 program.
The Quick Pan tool is the more practical alternative for designers with non-complicated tasks. At some points, a logo design in CorelDRAW X7 only needs the zoom-in and zoom-out (or similar) adjustments. At such times, the Quick Pan tool balances the zoom-in and zoom-out ratios by keeping the pan hand on its shape and place.
4. The interactive Font Playground options are extremely helpful and attractive
The font is one of the most integral logo elements apart from the shapes and color combinations. The appropriate and appealing typographies will convey the company’s message clearer while keeping the attention of customers and potential customers for our products.
When our logo design has such font choices, there will be boosts in our sales because we have successfully created things that captivated their minds. Hence, the fourth reason why a designer should create a logo design in CorelDRAW X7 lies in the interactive font option that this design program has.
Font Playground is the name of the interactive font options in this X7 version of CorelDRAW. It is available in both the Graphic Suite and the PHOTO-PAINT versions. It is the menu that lets you experiment with different fonts in the program.
The same menu also lets you view how the logo text is going to come out from the printing devices through the three preview buttons. The three preview buttons are the Single Line, Multiline, and Waterfall.
When you’re a logo designer who uses the CorelDRAW X7 program, you will have the ability to add, paste, and delete the text samples that you’ve previewed through any of the Font Playground’s three-view option menus.
The “Add another sample” option is an option for adding more text samples. The more heavily-texted your logos are, the more likely you will need to click this menu.
The copy-paste function works through clicking the texts you wish to copy-paste, then using the usual device shortcut combinations (CTRL+C, then CTRL+V), and you’re ready to go!
The same also goes for deleting certain samples. All you need to do is to choose the texts you wish to delete. Hold the CTRL key button while keep on clicking the intended texts when it’s necessary. Then, you can press the “X” button on the top-right side of each text box.
5. The software support many different files
As one of the reliable programs for today’s logo designer, CorelDRAW X7 doesn’t only have the Graphic Suite and the PHOTO-PAINT variations. It also supports Photoshop Document (PSD) files, the file types that most people in the logo design industry are familiar with.
True to its name, designers usually open up PSD files in any version of Photoshop. However, some design professionals recommend programs other than Photoshop due to its inability to work with certain types of vector images. The good news is that you can open up the PSD files in the CorelDRAW X7 series.
You can add layers and do some other Photoshop-like imaging functions in your PSD files in both CorelDRAW X7 Graphic Suite and PHOTO-PAINT. This graphic design program can accommodate PSD files regardless of how low or high-quality the PSD files are.
The pixelation limits are also considered in both versions, which let the designers upload and edit the PSD files for up to 30,000 pixels in both heights and widths. The PSD files in CorelDRAW X7 itself can extend for up to 2 Gigabytes.
What’s more, is that you can convert your PSD files through this graphic design program and vice versa. You will still get a decent quality of your created logo images, depending on the file types you use. SVG, AI, TIF, RTF, and VSD are some of the non-mainstream file types that this imaging software can accommodate.
At some points, this logo-imaging program can also open up files where the designer can attach flash elements like EXE and HTM. In the Windows version, the designer can even access DOC and DOCX files by opening up the Graphic Suite or PHOTO-PAINT software.
There are also some menus to create a logo design in CorelDRAW X7 by re-creating the logo fonts themselves. In other words, a designer can create a logo design in CorelDRAW X7 by combining their created fonts with cliparts that this logo design program supports.
The designer doesn’t only have the chance to utilize the advanced OpenType font features in this program. Instead, they can use the Import menu to their advantage.
The Import menu doesn’t only support at least 16 different types of files. Instead, it also lets a designer choose from the device’s image that they want to set as the background for the logo. A designer can even remove the background, so the image will blend better to create a font-based logo.
Hence, this point becomes one of our reasons why a designer should create a logo design in CorelDRAW X7. It is because the program versions themselves can support vast ranges of files. Hence, they let the designers work with different files in creating a one-of-a-kind logo design.
6. There are many ornaments, cliparts and elements to choose from in the program
There is a reason why people working in the design industry refer to these program series as the industry-leading program since their inception in March 2014. A logo designer would instantaneously know they need ornaments to work with the different files in their devices to create a logo design.
Both versions of this program have many built-in ornaments. The many default decorations in the program become nice additions to the different file types that it supports. What we meant by ornaments or decorations here are the clipart images, photos, templates, fonts, patterns (including patterns for the image’s borders), and graphic-based borders.
In total, there are more than 15,000 default ornaments that you can choose from in both versions of CorelDRAW X7. The clipart images are the majority of ornament populations in this CorelDRAW program that you can choose from. Until now, there are more than 10,000 clipart images in this program that designers can choose and combine.
Cartoon animal pictures, such as sheep and cats, are among the most popular clipart images for logo designers who use the Graphic Suite program. Some designers use the classical green leaf vector images, which are also highly flexible for solid-colored backgrounds or some pattern backgrounds.
The images themselves are more organized in the X7 versions than in their predecessors, such as the X4 version. They are no longer in the Import menu in the program’s File drop-down menu.
Instead, people can access these images through the Corel Connect program. The Corel Connect program will also connect people with other graphic designers, and this program is the program that the CorelDRAW team had just introduced in the X7 version.
7. The Corel Connect program can connect people to other design workers
We can say that this X7 version of CorelDRAW is the pioneer of the Corel Connect program. This program acts as the designer’s online art portfolio. In other words, we can see how other logo designers who use any X7 versions are doing with their logo creations through the Corel Connect feature.
For the designers themselves, the feature acts as the portfolio by asking the device owners to permit access to the Library, Gallery, My Documents, Picture, or similar folders. Later on, you can review your finished logo designs through the Corel Connect feature, even though you have physically deleted the original files. You can do these things by giving a tick mark on the Content Exchange option in the Connect’s Library drop-down menu.
The Content Exchange also lets other designers see your portfolio while they are online. It is because giving a tick mark on that option automatically lets you upload your chosen designs to the cloud portfolio system that the X7 Graphic Suite and PHOTO-PAINT have.
Flickr, iStock, and OneDrive are the other three programs that we can connect with this connective feature. When we have an account in any of these three programs, we can integrate the existing accounts with our Corel account. As a result, we can display the same portfolio series as we do on Flickr, iStock, and OneDrive.
Flickr itself is one of the #1 world’s leading places to find and connect with other designers. In Flickr, we can choose for our images to be able to be used commercially without any creative content rights or impose full copyrights for our artworks, so we can earn more money through our designs, and no other people can steal our artworks without our written consents.
So, the Corel Connect program is more than just a forum. However, all CorelDRAW users can use the Community’s forum in case they have questions to use the features in the program, including any of the X7 versions.
8. The Graphic Suite is more budget-friendly than other versions
Let’s face it: CorelDRAW versions that are later than X7 have limited features. For instance, the clipart is inside the Import menu, which makes it a lot more inconvenient to sort which ones are the built-in clipart and which ones are graphics from the user’s gallery.
While it’s true that the older versions come with cheaper service packs, the Graphic Suite pack in the X7 version has more progressive updates. Even though X7’s overall package costs are slightly more expensive than their predecessors, it comes in handy with their varied clipart images, patterns, and other built-in, downloadable series of images and artwork.
Subscribing to the entire CorelDRAW X7 version means the designers have non-stop access to this program to create and re-create their logo portfolios.
This program is one of the most recently developed CorelDRAW programs to support cloud-based collaborations in online logo design projects. In other words, it means the designer can access Cloud Connect, the community forum, and the cloud-based collaboration systems at once while still working on their offline X7 Graphic Suite version.
Final Words
To further encourage the designer’s creativity, there are also additional exclusive fonts through the Corel Font Manager feature, which is a feature that only subscribed logo designers can access. There is also the AfterShot HDR to process RAW photos for subscribed designers, and the feature is available in two other languages than English.
These whole things have no additional costs. In other words, you only need to pay the base price to create a logo design in CorelDRAW X7.
