{"id":8870,"date":"2017-05-22T11:27:20","date_gmt":"2017-05-22T01:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/?p=8870"},"modified":"2017-10-24T16:45:47","modified_gmt":"2017-10-24T05:45:47","slug":"what-i-use-to-make-my-charts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/2017\/05\/22\/what-i-use-to-make-my-charts\/","title":{"rendered":"What I use to make my charts"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

For my charts and illustrations, I use Adobe Illustrator<\/a>. This is a vector based illustration program. It is not a Hardanger (or other type of embroidery such as merezhka, Sardinian knotted embroidery, Guimar\u00e3es 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Using

This shows a close-up of one of my Sardinian knotted embroidery charts that I’m working on, in the Illustrator environment.<\/p><\/div>\n

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.<\/p>\n

For my photos, I take the photos in raw format and then open them up and work on them in Adobe Photoshop<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n

For laying out my books, I use QuarkXpress<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,6,41,54,13,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-designing","category-hardanger","category-portuguese-embroidery","category-sardinian-knotted-embroidery","category-ukrainian-drawn-thread-embroidery","category-white-threads","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8870"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8915,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8870\/revisions\/8915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}