If any of you out there are or have designed signs for businesses (fahadkhan.pk), I'd love to hear any advice you have for a new designer getting started in this field.
How do I convince the company to move from Corel Draw to Adobe Illustrator when the previous designer used it for everything? Is Illustrator, in reality, the industry standard?
Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated!
CorelDRAW is very commonly used at many sign shops, especially long established sign companies. The reason for this dates back to the 1980's when the first computer-based routing tables and vinyl cutter/plotters were first released. Those machines were driven most often by MS-DOS based software and then going into the 1990's by Windows-based PCs. The Mac platform has never had a strong foothold in the sign industry. Adobe's software has only started to gain prominence in the sign industry since the mid 2000's.The early versions of Adobe Illustrator were a joke on the Windows platform. I know this because I have worked in the sign industry over 25 years and I used those old versions. Illustrator 4 was very basic in nature. The only value it had for me then was being able to paste vector paths into the paths palette of Adobe Photoshop 2.5. That was it. CorelDRAW back then was far more capable. Adobe released Illustrator 5 and 5.5 on the Mac platform (and SGI IRIX) but did not for Windows. So the user base for CorelDRAW grew because that was the best option available on the Windows platform. I used CorelDRAW but also Illustrator as well. But I started using Freehand instead of Illustrator due to Adobe's nonsensical treatment of the Windows platform. Adobe didn't start giving Windows any proper respect until the trend of web graphics started taking off. Illustrator 7 was the first version of Illustrator to be equal on both Mac and Windows platforms.Over the last 15 years Adobe's software has made big inroads into the sign industry by way of large format printing purposes and to a lesser extent motion graphics for LED-based variable message signs. CorelDRAW still has a very large install base in the sign industry.I'd say "good luck" on getting a sign company to stop using CorelDRAW. I've been using both CorelDRAW and Adobe Illustrator since the early 1990's, taking advantage of the best of what both have to offer and using some of those "best" features to overcome deficiencies in either application. CorelDRAW and Adobe Illustrator do not have 100% overlap in terms of features and capabilities. So it's really a pretty freaking extreme sounding request for a new employee to tell an established sign company to stop using a graphics application they might have been using for decades. Just look at the situation in terms of backed up archive files. Adobe Illustrator has ZERO open/import capability for CDR files. None. And even for files exported from CorelDRAW to Illustrator in AI format there are things that get lost in translation. The same is true going the other direction. Which is why I have been using BOTH applications for many years.Take it from a sign veteran, if the shop allows you to use Adobe Illustrator just be glad for that. Don't dictate Illustrator on other designers under the same roof that may have been using CorelDRAW for a long time.
Tools both CorelDRAW and Illustrator are. Use correct tool for the job you must. Learning always you must be, an open mind keep.
I also agree that CorelDraw is a great fit for the sign designer's needs. You can certainly benefit from Illustrator as a secondary app to create a design or edit/convert and existing art file that was created by and Adobe product.
Why reason do you have to move to killustrator? For sign work you simply cannot beat Corel. Unless, of course, the latest and greatest Corel software is too buggy or crashing all the time. For me it's rock solid (vers. X7).
When we all retire from here and the owner sells the business, it's likely the new owners will move to killy. NOT WHILE I'M STILL HERE THOUGH!
Sorry for the long reply, but here goes:The situation is not that simple. I've worked in the sign industry a long time. Over the past 15-20 years Adobe Illustrator has become increasingly important to my workflow.
One of the biggest issues is being able to accurately handle client artwork that was generated in Illustrator, especially artwork from business chains and large companies. CorelDRAW has gotten better at importing AI, EPS and PDF files in recent years, but it's still not 100%. There are certain features and effects within Illustrator that have no counterpart in CorelDRAW.
Bugs are another issue. Font table problems and other odd issues force me to have two versions of CorelDRAW installed on my desktop PC at work and notebook at home. Versions 2018 and earlier didn't have the font table problems. I really worry about what's going on behind the scenes at Corel, particularly what Vector Capital and the new owners, KKR, might have been doing to possibly hollow-out the company. From my point of view it doesn't seem like the development team at Corel has the manpower and resources necessary to keep pace with competitors. The minimal number of updates and bug fixes is a very telling sign.
Adobe is not sitting still. Just within the past 12 months a couple of the biggest advantages CorelDRAW had over Adobe Illustrator disappeared via the Illustrator 24.2 and 24.3 updates. CorelDRAW had a much larger max artboard size than Illustrator (1800" x 1800" in CorelDRAW vs 227" x 227" in Illustrator). Illustrator now has a max artboard size of 2275" x 2275". Another new feature is Font Height Variations. That's a big one for sign design. There are now four choices: cap letter height, lowercase letter height, Em Box or the ICF Box. In sign design you set and position letters according to the cap letter height.
Adobe has plenty of other stuff on the way. They have a very active beta program. They put out a lot of updates for Illustrator. Version 25 is already on the ".2" release. More than a dozen small bug fix updates were released for version 24.
Let's not forget there are other competing vector drawing applications out there. Affinity Designer has a long way to go to match what CorelDRAW can do, but it is a growing threat. A significant chunk of Corel's customer base is people who aren't professional graphic designers, but people who need some graphics software capability in their office. Affinity Designer may appeal to those users since it covers most of the basics and has a very low price. Vectornator is another low cost application that is getting better and better. Version 4.0 will released later this month and looks promising.
Needless to say, Corel really has to step up its game. Or the folks at KKR need to give Corel the resources it needs to step up its game.
As demanding as the situation is for Corel, I think the situation is even more grim for software companies who sell graphics applications specific to the sign industry.
Onyx Thrive and RasterLink Pro are the only industry specific applications that we have running on their current versions. Our shop has three licenses of Flexi and none are the latest editions. There is no reason to update because the developers aren't doing anything to get their design software out of the freaking 1990's. As far as I can tell there isn't a single industry specific sign design application out there that fully supports all the features of OpenType. Forget about support for OTF Variable Fonts in any of those applications or anything newer like SVG Fonts.
I used to do all my full size sign design work in CASmate and then moved to Flexi in 1998. Sometime around 2000 I just started doing most of my full size sign design work in CorelDRAW. I took Flexi off my computer and put the hardware key on another production machine running a vinyl plotter. These days the only time I touch Flexi at all is when I have to open an ancient CASmate SCV file from the 1990's. Pretty soon sign companies will only need software to directly control vinyl cutters, large format printers and routing tables. I'm hoping 3D printing technology will improve enough to be useful in the sign industry.