Corel Draw Basics

ABOUT THIS TUTORIAL 

This CorelDraw graphics suite tutorial is designed to provide students with essential graphics and visual communication skills that they can use to enhance every aspect of their schoolwork and later apply to their careers. Students will be exposed to the basics of CorelDraw including various use of the toolbox and also learn the basics of using vector graphics and text. They would also be exposed to various techniques of creating graphical interpretation of their thoughts and imaginations.  

TOPICS TO BE CONSIDERED 

 PRINCIPLES & ELEMENTS OF DESIGN 

 COREL INTERFACES

 TYPOGRAPHY 

 COLOR THEORY 

 GRAPHICS DESIGN 

WHAT IS DESIGN as related to Graphics? 

The art of integrating text, typography, and illustrations in the production of books and magazines. In this short definition, there are some keywords that comprises what graphics design is all about. Text, typography and illustrations (pictures/ images), these cannot be left out when defining design.  

So graphics design is the combination of image and text, the ability to make use of both and communicate effectively to a pre-conceived audience. There are 3 basics of a good design:

 Keep it simple, so that the viewers can get your message immediately 

 Keep it consistent in terms of typography and color application i.e. a good design should have at most three fonts or colors used in a design. 

 Add contrast to your designs to catch the attention of your audience. 

NB: Communication is best achieved when you know who your audience are. If you are designing for kids or adults, they both have various colors or fonts that attracts them.  

There are basic principles a design must entail and every graphic design comprises of various elements. These will be discussed in the next headline. 

PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN 

1. Balance: This is the proper arrangement of different elements in a design. It is also the stability of the design. There are two types of balance – the symmetrical balance and the Asymmetrical balance. The symmetrical balance is when every element is equally and evenly distributed while the asymmetrical balance is when the elements are emphasized on some parts of the design. Spot the differences below: 

2. Unity & Harmony: This involves combining colors and fonts in such a way that there is cohesion and coherence. Making a blend of two complimenting colors to form a good graphical design. 

3. Contrast: This is used to bring down the monotony of a particular color and size. A design having more than one color looks more attractive than one with a solid color. 

4. Proportion: This is  the way you combine various elements together in terms of sizes 

5. Dominance & Emphasis: This is the addition of the point of concentration and attraction. Every design has a particular information that is the most important and this needs to be emphasized on. 

6. Rhythms: This is the movement of forms in design in repetition. Every design has a particular pattern it follows, either horizontally, vertically or diagonally. But not combination of various patterns. 

7. Perspective: This is the way your design is to be viewed by the audience. 

ELEMENTS OF DESIGN 

 Line 

 Shape: The outline of something’s form. 

 Form: The shape of a thing. 

 Texture: The feel and appearance of a surface. 

 Color: the property of objects that depends on the light that they reflect and is perceived as red, blue, green, or other shades. 

 Size: the dimensions, extent, amount, or degree of something, in terms of how large or small it is 

COREL INTERFACES 

Under this segment, we will be making use of the material from Solar Laser systems limited on “How to use Corel Draw” which will be provided in pdf format. It covers the Interfaces, Configuration of the Workspace, The toolbox, Drawing Basics, Dockers, various commands and shortcuts, Outlines and Fills, Curve Editing, Using Guidelines, Projects, Using texts creatively, Import and export into CorelDraw, Tracing Basics. 

The workspace is the platform on which your design is done.  

As a graphic designer, you work with inches as dimensional units. 

CMYK – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. 

RBG – Red, Green and Blue. 

For printing, we use CMYK but for electronic e.g. DPs, we make use of RGB. 

Design is time – bound so you must be accustomed with the shortcuts. 

Assignments: Work on the various tools, write out the toolbox tools and their shortcuts. 

TYPOGRAPHY It is the act of creating textual images from typefaces or lettering of the alphabet. 

Families of Typefaces 

According to Ben (1976), there are four basic typefaces: 

1. Roman abcdABCD 2. Gothic abcdABCD 3. Script abcdABCD 4. Old English

  

Terms in Typography 

 Tracking: act of reducing the space in between the letters of a word using shape tool. 

 Kerning: act of reducing and increasing the space between each letter. 

 Leading: increasing and reducing of spaces between texts vertically. 

 Box rule: working around the extending and condensing of fonts, character to form a rectangular form or box shape. 

 Ascender & Descender: This involves increasing or decreasing the size of a letter in a text. 

 Super script and Sub script e.g. 𝐺𝐵 𝐴 Ten Fonts that bring a good design anytime: future, Helvetica, Trojan PRO, Minion PRO, Gill sans, Copper plate gothic, Garamond, Myriad, Compacta. 

Get your cool fonts at www.myfonts.com or www.fonts.com 

Assignment: Use fonts to illustrate the following: Normal, Bold, Digital, Tall, Slim, Jazzy, Playful, Technical, Contemporary. 

Using box rule, super-script, ascender descender, pick a caption from above. 

COLOR THEORY 

It is a sensation created in your eyes through the breakdown of white light from the light rays or spectrum. 

Colors on substances such as leaves, rock and other natural things are called pigment colors. 

CLASSES OF COLOR 

 Primary: These colors cannot be obtained by mixing other colors, but they can be mixed together to produce other colors. – RED, BLUE and YELLOW.  Secondary/ binary: They are achieved when two primary colors are mixed together in equal proportion. RED + YELLOW = ORANGE, YELLOW + BLUE = GREEN, RED + BLUE = PURPLE.   Intermediate  Tertiary: this is the combination of two secondary colors.  Complementary  Harmonious colors 

Colors can be interpreted conventional, emotional and spiritual; 

    

Black [Pride Mourning, Sadness Evil, Death, Demonic] 

White [Purity, Clarity, Peace Virgin, Clean Holy, Pure] 

Red [Danger Love, Celebration Life, Blood] 

Blue [Aquatic, Sky, corporate, masculine, Cool Heaven] 

Yellow [Brightness, Sun, Outburst Joy, Vibrancy New Beginning] 

Green [Vegetation Freshness Fruitfulness] 

Purple [Royalty Wealth Money]