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Easy Ways to Create Vector Artwork

You can put it off for as long as you’d like but sooner or later you’ll need to create a vector image of your band logo. Whether it’s for a shirt design or festival poster, you’ll inevitably meet a printer who requires vector images so that they won’t spend hours tweaking your lossy bitmap file. While the easiest method is to start from scratch and create the artwork as a vector image, we understand that more often than not the logo or artwork is created with pencil and paper. So how do you turn a scrap of paper into a vector image?

Alex G’s “House of Sugar” pad print created with vector artwork

The professional route would be Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw. Of course, not only can those be complicated for beginners, you’ll also need access to these pricey applications. However there are freeware websites that allow you to upload your image and they will trace the outlines to convert to a vector file. The results will vary and often depend on the complexity and quality of your source material. Some websites have more options than others, so be prepared for trial and error tweaking until you’re satisfied. Further tweaking can be done in programs like Illustrator, PhotoPea, or even Photoshop.

Here are a few websites worth checking out:
Rapid Resizer
Vectorization.org
Autotrace (Online Converting)
PhotoPea (click on Image -> Vectorize Bitmap)

Vector outlines for Alex G’s pad print artwork.

While we don’t require vector artwork for pad print and laser etching, we certainly do recommend it. It helps us achieve finer lines with a fraction of the platemaking time. The more people who send us vector artwork the quicker we can produce and ship orders! For those who want to start from scratch, there’s a plethora of YouTube instruction videos out there for you to learn from. Who knows, maybe you’ll find yourself on a new career path as a graphic designer in the music biz!