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Nevon
April 23rd, 2009, 02:37 PM
Hello,

I'm currently helping out at a small business in a neighboring town. I'm not sure what the English word for it would be, but it's kind of like this greenhouse/botanical garden/flower shop kind of deal. Recently they've asked me to manage their website and web shop - which I am more than happy to do, seeing as how I've freelanced as a web designer in the past, and still am very interested in webdesign as a hobby.

http://harmangertradgard.se/

As you can see, the site is in dire need of a redesign. I have no problem redesigning the page, but when it comes to logo making I am completely useless. I've done a grand total of 3-4 vector illustrations, so as you can probably imagine I am nowhere near good enough to make a good looking logo.

From what I've seen on this forum, some people are quite talented at making icons in vector format, so I was hoping you could help me out. I need an .svg icon of a greenhouse, a flower or something else that you could associate with this kind of business. It would have to be detailed enough to be able to blow it up to about the same size as the logo that's currently on the website, without looking empty and out of place.

I haven't decided on a color scheme for the website yet, but I'm thinking about having shades of white and very light beige for the base, and pink and green for contrast. But don't worry too much about that with the logo, as it needs to stand out anyway.

Thank you very much if you decide to help us out. Maybe I should also tell you that I'm doing this for free, so it's not like I'm going to sell any of your work. :P

Newfoundlander
April 23rd, 2009, 05:41 PM
Have you used Inkscape for making svg images? It's a very nice program!

You should check out www.inkscapestuff.org, they may have some art you can use or someone there may be able to create it for you.

t-mo_
April 24th, 2009, 10:13 AM
If you have no experience at all with inkscape, I would suggest you to make the Logo as a monochrome (black and white) drawing with gimp. Save it as .bmp
Open the .bmp with inkscape. In the menu "Path" choose "Trace Bitmap" and click ok.
Then you can delete the .bmp object and what's left is a nice path. Save it in the format you need it. This will give you a good base to start with.

If the logo contains very thin lines, deselect the option "smooth corners" in the "Trace Bitmap" menu.

Nevon
April 25th, 2009, 02:34 AM
If you have no experience at all with inkscape, I would suggest you to make the Logo as a monochrome (black and white) drawing with gimp. Save it as .bmp
Open the .bmp with inkscape. In the menu "Path" choose "Trace Bitmap" and click ok.
Then you can delete the .bmp object and what's left is a nice path. Save it in the format you need it. This will give you a good base to start with.

If the logo contains very thin lines, deselect the option "smooth corners" in the "Trace Bitmap" menu.

I have some experience with Adobe Illustrator, so I'm not completely new to vector illustrations. I'm just not any good at it.

t-mo_
April 25th, 2009, 09:48 AM
I have some experience with Adobe Illustrator, so I'm not completely new to vector illustrations. I'm just not any good at it.

Yes, that is why I suggest you to do it with the "trace bitmap" option. You can take a picture from anywhere, or draw something, and make a vector graphic in only a few steps. The graphic below is made from a photo, played around with threshold in gimp and auto traced the bitmap. Made a few changes on the path and build it into a truetype font. Very easy and quick.

http://img519.imageshack.us/img519/3760/screenshotxvo.png

cb951303
April 25th, 2009, 10:00 AM
one of the best sources to learn inkscape: http://screencasters.heathenx.org/

if you watch all of them and practice a little bit I think you can call yourself an inkscape master :guitar:

Bölvağur
April 25th, 2009, 10:48 AM
I'll give it a try. just tell us what the logo should be of.... abstract waves... greenhouse.... leafs... bucket of soil....
and how detailed should it be, most logos are just few lines but the current one is relatively detailed..

Nevon
April 25th, 2009, 11:00 AM
I'll give it a try. just tell us what the logo should be of.... abstract waves... greenhouse.... leafs... bucket of soil....
and how detailed should it be, most logos are just few lines but the current one is relatively detailed..

I'm going to leave the details up to you. I'm not all that picky. Anything is better than the current one. However, I think it would be good to go with a greenhouse.