Graphics?

[sheltie234]

Hey, I was just wondering what other teams use to create their graphics and websites. Cyber Blue has a new logo, and our website was awesome this year. However, next year, the PR team (which I'm on) and website team are combining into one Communications team, and I just wanted a little info from you guys who know lots about this stuff. I have Macromedia at my house, and I'm pretty familiar with Fireworks, Flash, and Dreamweaver.

Back to my point, what programs does your team use?

[cbale2000]

We've used Adobe Photoshop and ImageReady quite a bit for our team graphics. We've also used Microsoft Publisher(?) to make posters and such that we then print out on our large format printer. Our biggest problem is finding the files after they're made as people tend to save them to their school accounts.

Flash can be good for websites (very interactive and graphically pleasing) but keep in mind that some peoples computers might not be able to run Flash.

[fimmel]

i use fireworks 8 and photoshop cs2 for all of my graphics. mostly fireworks beacuse i have more experience with it.

...forest

[EHaskins]

I use Fireworks for all of my graphics work.

[Billfred]

I'm unsure of the creation of the team logo (see my avatar), but this year the only graphics work we didn't farm out--that would be the graphics on the robot--were done in PowerPoint. Why? It's the easiest to print to where we got ours done.

That said, I tend to find myself using Photoshop a lot down there, Illustrator if it needs to be vectorized. (I'm fast learning that on Mac OS X, the .eps FIRST logos turn out better than their .jpg counterparts!) In a pinch, I use Seashore (Mac OS X-native GIMP).

[lukevanoort]

The GIMP and IrfanView for graphics. Both are nice, free programs and together they can do most of what you need for a website. (Vector graphics is pretty much the only major thing you can't do with that pair) On Windows machines I use Notepad for the actual creation of the website, and on Mac I use TextWrangler.

[tseres]

photoshop elements and dreamweaver for the web site. ya...thats about it.

[Brian J. R.]

There are 2 of us on the graphics team, on my macbook we have been using Photoshop/GIMP for all of the image editing, and Dreamweaver for web design (graphics team is also web team.) Over the summer I will be investing in the adobe web premier package for use at school/for the robotics team.

[artdutra04]

I do much of my graphics work in Macromedia Fireworks MX for web applications and Illustrator (if I'm working on my Mac) for print applications, and any photo editing in Photoshop CS2. Here's a few of the sites I've designed, with almost all of the graphics work done in Fireworks MX:

http://www.team228.org/ (I designed the everything (graphics and PHP/MySQL database-driven backend) from scratch.)
http://www.platths.com/ (I designed only the graphics, not the ASP backend.)
http://www.connvex.org/ (I designed the everything from scratch.)

I avoid Flash [as part of the main design/navigation/framework] of any website like the plague. Not only will it cause a lot of problems with things like search engines and text readers for blind people, but it usually wastes more bandwidth than it's worth. Good uses of Flash might be embedded Flash video players, or an interactive presentation about your team on a dedicated page. Bad uses of Flash include links/navigation and "useless" animation fluff.

(Useless animation just distracts people from the content of your website, which is far more important than bright and flashy websites.)

[Jon Jack]

We NEVER use Photoshop for graphics... mainly it's not supposed to be used for graphics. We use Illustrator for all of our graphics. What's nice about Illustrator is it creates vector artwork, which is artwork that can be blown up to any size without distortion. Another thing that is nice about vector artwork is that it can be used to control laser cutters, vinyl cutters and a load of other devices. We can make a set of decals for our robot in Illustrator, give them to the printshop we use and within a couple of hours have three or four sets ready to go. We can also layout a design on a piece of plastic, give it to that same printshop and have them engrave the design right on the plastic from the Illustrator file.

As for web design, just about every student on our team knows Dreamweaver by the end of the first semester of their freshman year. Naturally, the students are going to use what is familiar to them so Dreamweaver is our web design software of choice.

[Koko Ed]

My favotrite graphics program is Laughingbird Software's Logo creator.
It's what I use to design the X-Cats buttons, robot signage and such and I used it to design all those logo designs for Mission Mayhem. I even used it to design my sig. My favorite feature is the ability to place graphics in letters.
I also use photoshop and Summit Soft's logo design studio.

[ChrisXPPro]

I Only Use Photoshop CS2/3 and Dreamweaver CS3. I Have a Fiery Hatred for Fireworks!

I Have so Much More Expirence With Photoshop and Photoshop Has Just So Much Power to Go Around!

Im Doing the Website in Photoshop then Splicing it into Dreamweaver....

[Ctrl Alt Delete]

I only design the header graphics and gradients in CS2. I manually code pretty much our entire site in Notepad++. The only exception was the image map we did for our cadd site since I didn't want to manually enter all those pixels.

[Koko Ed]

I just got a new laptop (an HP Pavilion dv9207us Notebook) and got Coreldraw Graphic Suite3, Ulead DVd Movie factory, Sony Cinescore, Adobe
Creative Suite with Photoshop, Illistrator and Indesign. But the absolutly coolest thing I got was a Wacom Graphire4 4x5 Graphics Tablet which allows me to use a pen tool so I can actually scetch my ideas down instead of using a mouse which is like drawing with a brick!
I call it MUSE (Multi Use Scheme Engine)

[EHaskins]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

But the absolutly coolest thing I got was a Wacom Graphire4 4x5 Graphics Tablet which allows me to use a pen tool so I can actually scetch my ideas down instead of using a mouse which is like drawing with a brick!

A tablet PC is even better than a Graphics Tablet.