Design Made Easy with Inkscape

An easy-to-follow, end-to-end guide with hands-on tutorials, tips, and tricks to make charts, diagrams, illustrations, and UX/UI mockups

Key Features

• A useful guide for those new to vector illustration to have them up-to-speed in no time
• Explore hotkey charts and tips, with a best-practices approach developed over ten years of using Inkscape
• Learn the fundamentals of vector illustration and become efficient by leveraging Inkscape's powerful toolset

Book Description

Inkscape is a very powerful and versatile vector illustration tool. You can use it to make charts, diagrams, illustrations, and UI mockups with infinite resolution. Design Made Easy with Inkscape is a comprehensive guide for those who are new to vector illustration, that will have you up-to-speed in no time. This easy-to-follow guide will teach you everything you need to know to make charts, diagrams, illustrations, and UX/UI mockups you can use and re-use forever, for free!

This book takes you through the basics of vector illustration, offering tips and tricks for getting professional graphics done fast, by leveraging Inkscape's powerful toolset, and industry experience which will benefit new users and professionals alike. This book teaches by examples, and uses a great variety of use cases from icons and logos, to illustration, web design and product design. This book contains hotkey charts and tips, a best-practices approach developed over ten years of using Inkscape as a design tool in production and includes links to free graphics resources you can use in all your projects.

By the end of this book, you will have a full understanding of how to use Inkscape and its myriad of excellent features to make amazing eye-catching graphics for your projects.

What you will learn

• Understand the benefits of vector illustration and the reasons behind choosing Inkscape over other non-free alternatives
• Navigate the Inkscape setup and workspace to make effective use of the software
• Explore the many tools Inkscape has to quickly create amazing and infinitely scalable graphics
• Learn to create by example using real-world scenarios and practice lessons
• Get acquainted with a variety of tips and tricks to make Inkscape an extension of your creativity

Who This Book Is For

This book is for aspiring designers, developers, and anyone who wants to leverage the power of Inkscape for vector illustration. The book requires no prior knowledge of graphics applications or vector/vs raster graphics are required either. This will be a beginner's guide and will only assume basic knowledge of how to use a mouse and keyboard.

Table of Contents

1. The Inkscape Interface
2. Moving and Styling Shapes
3. Drawing Shapes with the Shape Tools
4. Automatic Shape Alignment in Inkscape
5. Node Editing - Modify Your Shapes with Nodes and Curves
6. Fast Shape Editing with Booleans and Other Path Operations
7. Using the Text in Inkscape
8. Advanced Shading and Coloring
9. Clips and Masks
10. Automation with Clones and Linked Files
11. Organization Using Layers
12. Live Path Effects (LPEs)
13. Filters and Extensions
14. Vectorizing with Trace Bitmap
15. Conclusion