i'm looking to get a small time company going for fun with some wheels, toques, hats, and shirts, but i have no graphic design experience whatsoever. when i look programs up online, it seems to be that illustrator is the go to program when it comes to graphic design. is this a program that i can just basically fuck around with and gain a basic understanding of it? or is it too next level?

if anyone has any input into this matter i would really appreciate it. personal experiences with it and so on, i'm computer literate but i have just honestly never had the opportunity or any reason to use illustrator.

thanks a lot for the advice. i will do some more investigating on youtube.

do you have any experience using photoshop or any adobe software? that'll come in handy because it all translates pretty well and makes much more sense if you have.

either way you can learn it all from online tutorials. and you can download the software for free for 30 days and find a patch to make it last forever (if you are into that sort of thing).

As with most things in life, time spent will reap benefits. I found this tutorial to be helpful when I first started.

Adobe Illustrator Tutorial! ::The Pen Tool::	Small | Large

I say just download Illustrator and get messing about is your best bet for learning (and obviously seek a tutorial when you get stuck).
Illustrator CS5 also has a live trace function so you can scan in an image and Illustrator can vectorise it for you automatically.
I've not used it personally but I've heard it works pretty well.

Good luck with this Pile it all sounds very exciting!

Going into it with no knowledge of any Adobe product is going to help you learn decently fast. I mean that because a lot of people go into Illustrator with Photoshop experience, and expect it to operate like Photoshop. The pen tool might be quirky to learn at first, but once you get your chops built up, you'll be fine.

My advice though - find a friend or somebody offering some help to get your brand started with artwork. You're going to want to focus on developing the brand and your products as a priority. You don't want to start a brand with beginner artwork, and spread yourself too thin on operations of your start-up company. If you have ideas, feel free to hit me up on PM and I'll give you some input. Slap has a few resident designers/artists lurking on here that are actually pretty damn good. I'm sure some of us will let you tap into us for ideas

...and sex no I meant ideas.

Finding out about command + r was a very good thing for me.

Also..Dat pen tool.

Adobe Creative Suite 5 and up has a live trace option in illustrator that is good if you're totally lazy.

I am still running CS2. Is live trace that good? I would love to have that option to just lay the basic points down so I can clean it up after.

What's your wheel company gonna be called pile?off topic but I'm guessing you know michelle at antisocial already.if you don't though, go in and meet her and talk to her a couple times/hang out.she'll probably carry them if you ask her and aren't a stranger.

I kno fabo is done on illustrator, which is a good example of the higher end/technical stuff that illustrator is capable of. My only advice is to not just fool around and figure shit out for yourself.there's so many shortcuts that you'll never know about unless someone shows you first.that way you don't just build your own/get stuck in bad habits.

i haven't really come up with a name yet, most likely will use a fictional characters last name from either a vonnegut or bukowski book, sounds lame but it's all i can really come up with at the moment. it's more or less going to be for myself and my friends, i don't expect success out of it but i'll probably make a little blog to go along with it if it all goes through without any problems and actually materializes from which people can contact me to get a hold of the product.

my main goal is to get some tees, hats, toques, wheels and stickers going in six months time. i would like to create a poor man's huf or brixton basically, without directly ripping them off and throw wheels into the mix as well just for fun. i'm going to order in all of the clothing and accessories and actually screen and sew all of it by myself in my workshop next to my house. i've just recently moved to my family's property which we've had since the 30's in a remote part of the sunshine coast where not much has changed since then, i've got a lot of time to kill and a lot of ideas to fuck around with and i'm stoked to get this going.

my biggest predicament at this point in time, is choosing which manufacturer to order the wheels from. i've talked to two places, skated wheels from both and get really great customer service from the both of them. i'm not sure if you've skated momentum wheels, but i like those ones a lot, and would really like to get them done by that manufacturer. at the same time though, i've skated a shit load of zero and pig wheels too, which i really liked, and that manufacturer costs less. i guess it is all essentially the same formula and that but i've really got to get that decision made as soon as possible.

i'll be drawing a lot of inspiration for the graphics from the music i like, literature and artwork from 1900-1960s. i'll post everything up in here once it gets going as well to pass through the gauntlet of criticism as well.