What I use to make my charts

A question that more and more people are asking me is “What do you use to create your charts?” So I think it’s time that I explain what I use to make my Hardanger (and other forms of embroidery) charts, and while I’m there may as well explain the other programs I use in my day to day design work.

I am a graphic designer by training, specialising in book design. That means I use a suite of graphic design and illustration programs when I am working on my books. I am working on a Mac computer, because that is generally regarded as the industry standard for graphic designers.

For my charts and illustrations, I use Adobe Illustrator. This is a vector based illustration program. It is not a Hardanger (or other type of embroidery such as merezhka, Sardinian knotted embroidery, Guimarães embroidery etc) charting program. This means that you start with a blank page and have to create everything to go on it. It has a large learning curve, but if you have the time and inclination to learn it, it can certainly be used for making Hardanger charts.

As I have been working with it for many years, I have built up a library of motifs that I can drag and drop into my charts, although I regularly have to create new ones to illustrate things I haven’t drawn before. These many years of working with the program have helped me to refine and quicken my methods so that now I can do a very involved chart in a day or so.

I think that one of the standard Hardanger charting programs would feel really limiting and annoying to me. It probably wouldn’t draw things the way I want them drawn. And people do say that they love the clarity of my charts, so I think that my finicky-ness with wanting them “just so” is probably worth it. I have never used any other program for creating charts, so cannot specifically comment on any of them.

This shows a close-up of one of my Sardinian knotted embroidery charts that I’m working on, in the Illustrator environment.

I also use Illustrator for creating the diagrams in my books. Again, years of working with the program means I have a library of ground fabrics, needles, fingers and different types of thread that I can use to create my illustrations.

For my photos, I take the photos in raw format and then open them up and work on them in Adobe Photoshop. This is a pixel based program (dots, as opposed to lines/vectors as are used in Illustrator). I’m still always learning things about Photoshop. Youtube and online tutorials are great for continued learning.

For laying out my books, I use QuarkXpress. This used to be the industry-standard graphic design layout program. The market has now shifted to Adobe Indesign. I’ve never used it though, and don’t know when I’d find the time to change over. I guess one day I might have to, but for now, Quark works really well for me. If I was starting out now, I’d probably use Indesign.

None of these programs are cheap. However, if you’re wanting to give them a try, you can probably get a free trial. At the time of writing this, each program offered a free trial. This would be a worthwhile thing before launching into using an expensive program that you’re unsure about.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.