Inkscape is free and open-source software that’s been in development for a long time. So, in this first introductory chapter, you will get an overview of the current state of the application. Then, you will design a business card as a self-assessment exercise to learn your true Inkscape level and refresh your skills. By the end of this chapter, you will not only learn the aim and method of this book but also know which Inkscape skills you need to improve on!
In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following main topics:
As you know, Inkscape is free. You do not have to pay to use it and you can create with it without any restrictions.
Being free means it is an accessible vector graphics solution for students, amateurs, and hobbyists, but it also means that the developer team is working on it as volunteers. This makes the development much slower than that of the profit-oriented development process of Adobe Illustrator, for example.
The development of the predecessors of Inkscape started around 1998, and the first Inkscape version appeared in 2003. The development aimed to create a well-rounded open-source SVG editor. During those years, the Inkscape developer team kept adding feature after feature so that this software could grow into its latest version.
Inkscape 1.0 was officially released in May 2020. This was a huge milestone, a stable release with many new tools and design solutions. Since then, we had Inkscape 1.1 and 1.2, and the version numbers will steadily grow with every new feature added.
For a long time, Inkscape was considered a tool for hobbyists, but this mindset started to shift. More and more, professional designers use Inkscape as their main tool. After a humble start, the developers continuously grew the toolset and the list of features of the program so that Inkscape is ready to compete with well-established vector editor programs on the market (such as Adobe Illustrator).
Of course, there is still room for improvement – user requests for new tools and features are popping up every day. But even with some shortcomings, Inkscape is ready for high-level use, and it is a relevant design tool today.
The following sections will address most of the strengths Inkscape developed during recent years.
You can download a stable native version of the program for Windows or Linux, and the certified macOS version is also available. Inkscape running on Windows and Linux also received a performance boost with version 1.0.
Everything will run smoothly while you are working with hundreds of objects, applying filters, or using live path effects that are usually demanding on hardware. Inkscape also has a good bug-tracking system in place, and the Inkscape user community is very involved in reporting them to be fixed.
Inkscape has come a long way, and we can safely state that most of the things you can create with Illustrator can be created with Inkscape too! There are tools that designers used in other programs and wanted to have in Inkscape too or tools that would make working with Inkscape simply easier. Here are a few examples from the latest builds.
There is a whole new dialog window for Live Path Effects (LPE) to make dynamic changes to any path. This is the best tool if you are illustrating in Inkscape and want to render Perspective or align a Pattern Along a Path to spare time repeating shapes rendered along a path. Alternatively, you can apply Power Stroke to draw line art with an organic-looking ink line effect.
In the latest stable versions, these effects became fast and reliable, ready to make your life easier! You will learn more about them in Chapter 8, Pro Tips and Tricks for Inkscapers!:
Figure 1.1 – Perspective live Path Effects in action
The Gradient mesh tool got introduced in version 0.92 and is now a stable solution for creating illustrations with gradients built up using multiple colors with a grid and grid points. It takes some time to get used to, but it is a professional way to create subtle coloring and gradients in your design work.
The Measurement tool is a ruler that you can use to measure length in Inkscape. Whether it’s the distance between objects or nodes along a path, the ruler gives you a proper measurement.
Another new feature is Split Mode, which you can find under the View menu. Using it, you can watch your artwork simultaneously in two display modes – normal mode on the left, and Outline on the right. This can help you identify and edit overlapping objects easier on the fly. Outline overlay mode is another great view mode, where an outline of the objects is displayed while showing their real colors as well:
Figure 1.2 – Editing objects in a complex illustration using Split Mode
Inkscape 1.2 marked the introduction of the Page tool, which manages page setup and allows the usage of multiple paged Inkscape documents! This is an important step toward professional Inkscape usage, since working with multiple pages is important for desktop publishing, user interface design, or general graphic design.
Also, with Inkscape 1.1 came new export formats such as WEBP, and version 1.2 introduced revamped Batch export capabilities that make working with Inkscape even more convenient. These features allow you to export groups or selected objects in different versions in a few clicks.
One long-awaited tool is Shape builder, which will arrive in Inkscape 1.3, but you can try it out already in the developer versions. It allows you to merge and cut shapes and create new shapes more conveniently.
This one is not a direct feature of Inkscape, but rather an indirect result of the hard work of the Inkscape developer team and the user community mentioned previously. After years of listening to the community and adding new features and solving bugs, the Inkscape team convinced professionals and educators to use Inkscape as their main vector design tool.
This resulted in countless high-quality portfolio examples and learning materials to help newcomers find and adopt Inkscape. This growth in available pro users will also demand even more from the developer team, thus making future development faster.
If you want to work with a printer, most of the time, you will be asked for a vector file exported in the CMYK color space. As a designer, this will happen eventually, so it is a very common feature all graphic design programs must have. And I will be honest, Inkscape falls short here.
The program has CMYK support but can’t display the set CMYK color in RGB as Adobe products can. This means that if you want to export CMYK files from Inkscape, and want to see the proper matching colors on your monitor, you will need to use a third-party solution at the moment.
However, this is possible via extensions or using a program that can output proper CMYK, such as Scribus. I will explain these methods in Chapter 7, Combine Inkscape and Other (Free) Programs in the Design Workflow, so that you can try them for yourself!
In my opinion, these strengths perfectly answer the question: is Inkscape good enough for professional everyday use? Yes, it is! It is stable and resourceful and as you will see while completing the projects in this book, it is a very versatile design program.
I hope that after reading the previous sections, you can also see that Inkscape is becoming a professional tool and that it is worth the effort to learn to use it at a higher level.
Are you ready for a warmup to refresh your Inkscape knowledge? To reach a higher level in any skill, knowing your current level is important. The goal of the following test exercise is to give you a realistic view of your Inkscape skills.
This short test is self-graded, so finish the exercise on your own first, then answer the questions of the evaluation. After that, you are free to look into my method to solve this task on the following pages, but for the best learning experience, please finish the task first on your own!
Your task: copy this business card design in the best possible way you can!
Figure 1.3 – Recreate this business card design in Inkscape
Here are a few hints and criteria:
Note
We don’t need to add bleed to our business card, and it doesn’t have to be print-ready either, as this is just a design exercise.
Are you ready? Start!
Now that you’ve finished this assignment, it is time to evaluate it. Give yourself 1 point for each task you completed with ease:
Based on your total points, this is your current skill level:
If you want to take a look at how I designed the card, read through the following section for my method.
Even if you scored high on the previous design test, feel free to read the following tutorial.
We will follow the same structure in all of the projects in this book, going step by step, focusing on actionable tasks, and learning by example. I will explain all the tools that are necessary for the task at hand so that you can keep the focus on learning what you need. We will cover almost all the possible tool combinations in Inkscape, but object-oriented, not tool by tool. So, here is how I created the business card design.
Use the Rectangle tool and draw a simple rectangle. The color does not matter for now; we will change that later. Set the size of the rectangle by selecting it and adding the width (W) and height (H) in millimeters in the Tool controls bar. If the unit is not set to millimeters, click on the units and select the proper unit for this project, as shown in Figure 1.4:
Figure 1.4 – Setting the width and height on the Tool controls bar and applying millimeters
Alternatively, you can navigate to File | Document properties and change the Display units to mms there! This way, all the tools and rulers will be in the correct unit.
We will write the text first. As you need to set a visual hierarchy of the text on the card, you will need to apply different font sizes and font weights to the blocks of text. Text is just an object like any other object in Inkscape. You can move it, scale it, transform it, and recolor it easily.
Let’s learn how to do this:
Figure 1.5 – Setting the font’s weight and size
Figure 1.6 – Aligning the left edges of the text objects
Tip
It is smart to make the name and the role on the business card more visible than the other lines of contact information on the card. As the word suggests, a business card has an important role: to show the receiver what the profession of the owner of the card is. In my native language, we call such a card a name note (névjegy), which highlights the other function of the card: to clearly state the name of the owner.
There are two methods you can use to create these shapes. Both are equally good for what we want to design here, and you are free to choose any of the two methods to continue. I usually use the one that I feel is fast and convenient for the project at hand.
We will practice both of them in the upcoming projects again and again, as they are the base of building custom shapes in vector.
Boolean operators are basic logical operations that help you merge and cut shapes and objects to create new shapes as you need. It is an effective method and very logical.
Here is how you can use this method in this case:
Figure 1.7 – These are your two rectangles overlapping
This command is used to cut off the shape on the top from the shape under it. It only works if two objects are selected. In this case, Rectangle3 is cut to the size that is half of Rectangle2, creating the shape we wanted!
Figure 1.8 – Using the Difference path operation from the top menu
Figure 1.9 – The state of the card design with the two shapes in place
Tip about learning the Boolean operations
There is a small icon before every Boolean operation in the Path dropdown list. If you are not sure about the function of the operation, just take a peek, it’s ok!
The Path editor tool is a very important tool that can take a beginner’s design to another level. With it, you can shape elements of your design by adding, removing, or modifying nodes to the path.
This is how you can use it to design your business card:
Figure 1.10 – Using the Node tool and moving this node to the left
I usually don’t focus on colors until the shapes in my design are almost set. I just use any placeholder colors at first and work on the shapes, proportions, and positions in my design. We have several objects to color in this case: the card, the text, the horizontal bar, and the two diagonal shapes on the left.
First, the background. Where there is text, you have to think about legibility. So, pick a background color that you will set to the card base, then a text color that is easy to read on that background. I used a dark blue for the text as it stands out against the light gray of the card:
Figure 1.11 – Applying a fine gradient to the card
Tip about gradients
Gradients are nice. But as in many cases, less is more. Try to use gradients only when the image benefits from them. I tend to use subtle gradients to create drop shadows, emulate lighting, or create color contrast. Ask yourself: do I need this gradient here?
At this point, your card looks like the one I created, but the final task was to export it into a PDF file. Inkscape doesn’t have multiple artboards, but one huge artboard to show. When you start up the program, the default is an A4 page in the middle.
As our card is much smaller, you could start by adding the size of the document. But what I usually do is the opposite. I create the design in a given size and, as a final step, resize the document around it:
Figure 1.12 – Resizing the page to the group you’ve selected
Now your page is resized to the exact size of your business card!
Figure 1.13 – Exporting your design to PDF, using the document’s page size
This is how we designed the business card in Inkscape. First, drew the base of the card, then added the text and some decorative elements, and finally exported it as a PDF file. How was this workflow compared to your method? Did you learn something new? How would you do things differently?
This book shares the workflows I use as a designer working with Inkscape, but as you saw, there is not one ultimate solution. There are always different methods that utilize different tools. The more tools and methods you know, the bigger your design toolbox, and the easier it is to find an efficient solution for a visual problem.
This concludes this first short chapter in this book. After the introduction, we took a closer look at the current state of Inkscape and saw that after years of constant development, this awesome program offers fast and stable versions on all major platforms, has a growing community with plenty of resources, and is ready for daily design work – even for professionals.
Then, you met your first challenge in this book. I hope you found the self-assessment exercise useful and that you now know your real Inkscape skill level. And I also hope it was setting your expectations for the upcoming projects in this book as they all will be more interesting and complex than this short warmup exercise!
After establishing the position of Inkscape as a relevant design tool and measuring your skills, it is time to move forward! In the next chapter, we will dive into creative territory by using Inkscape to design a clever tech logo.