version 9.0. Stacy said Corel Draw, an art program, can be used to draw the designs for projects as large as roadside billboards and the sides of semi-truck trailers. To demonstrate the program Stacy drew a picture of a cat and designed thecover of a menu for a fictional seafood restaurant (an Adobe PDF rendering of that image accompanies the onlineversion of this document).

Because images created with Corel Draw are vector art (bitmaps), the user maintains complete control over thesize and shape of the images. Unlike other popular image-file formats, bitmaps do not “pixilate” – their qualitydoes not change when they are enlarged.

Stacy showed samples of commercial products such as CD covers, logos and print-media display ads that she created with Corel Draw. She said designers should carefully select the fonts for lettering in logos (“don’t use a girly font”).

Stacy said that, in her experience, Corel Draw was easier to master than Adobe Illustrator – although she described Draw as “a buggy program” because a too-rapid sequence of commands puts the program at risk of crashing. “Save often,” Stacy recommended.

The version of Corel Draw that Stacy demonstrated costs between $400 and $600 and includes the photo-editing program, clip art, fonts and copyright-free photos.

Program director Steve Higgins reported the next meeting would include discussion of Verizon and the state of G3 wireless.

Respectfully submitted
 

Chauncey Ross, publicity director