Maricopa Women In Business Site Question

[brent]

First of all, I love the designs on these websites by Image Werks Design.  The http://www.mwib.org/ site has a Paypal link to make donations. The page that appears looks almost like a bank check to make payments. Is this a template that is included with a Paypal account or do you design the template yourself ?

Thanks,
Brent

[cdiedrich]

Thanks for the props.

I used the standard layout that Paypal provides and changed the header to just include the name of the organization.

Paypal just changed their look and I think this "check" look is part of that.

Carl...
Imagwerks Design

[brent]

Thanks for the info Carl. I think your http://www.kazooskafe.net site is nice too. Was it created in Dreamweaver or similar?

[cdiedrich]

I start in Illustrator, slice them up in Image Ready and then hand code them in Dreamweaver.  I don't use the actual Dreamweaver tools, but use it more as a previewing and editing platform.

[brent]

Thanks. Dreamweaver works well for me but I'm trying to settle on a graphics program that I can use to get that unique look. I'm not a graphics artist so the learning curve to create nice contours, etc. is a bit of a challenge for me. I'm considering Coreldarw X3.

[cdiedrich]

I taught myself design in CorelDraw, all the way back to version 4.  CorelDraw is easier to learn than Illustrator.  The only reason I switched is because CorelDraw is not supported on a Mac anymore and I moved platforms when I started my design business.  I still use CorelDraw on my PC when I need to do more complex node work, as the node editing tools in CorelDraw are superior to the Illustrator setup.  Overall, I like both programs, but would love it if Corel would introduce a Dual-Core supported Mac version.

I will say that the PDF and Color Management in the Adobe products is better than in Corel.  I also like that the tracing utilities are directly in Illustrator and not a separate program as they are in the CDX3 Package.