Get started with Inkscape

What you get out of this

You need a logo. You need labels for the product, an image for the trade show booth, maybe a print for a t-shirt. Someone in the company then opens a drawing program, makes something that looks good on screen, sends it to the printer and gets the answer that the file cannot be used. It is not the printer being difficult. It is the file type that is wrong.

Inkscape solves that. It is a drawing program for vector graphics, and the difference from an ordinary image program is worth two sentences: an ordinary image consists of dots, and if you enlarge it, it becomes blurry. A vector image consists of instructions about lines and surfaces, and it is redrawn at the right sharpness regardless of size. A logo that will sit both on a business card and on a banner must be a vector image.

The program is free, open source, and is available for both Windows and Linux Mint. What you make in it is yours, without a subscription and without a watermark.

Before you start

• An idea of what the logo should show. Inkscape is not hard, but it does not draw anything for you.
• A computer with a mouse. If you can borrow a drawing tablet, that is nice, but it is not needed.
• About an hour to learn the tools, and then as long as you can bear to spend on the shape itself.
• The knowledge that the first attempt will be ugly. That goes for everyone, and it does not matter.

Install on Windows

Go to inkscape.org and choose the download for Windows. You can choose between an .exe and an .msi, and both install the same program. Run the exe file if you are unsure.

During the installation you are asked which parts to include. Leave the defaults as they are. The extra fonts and sample files take up space but do not cause any problems.

The first start takes time, sometimes half a minute while the program loads its fonts. This is normal and only happens the first time.

If you lack administrator rights on the computer, Inkscape is also available in the Microsoft Store, which installs per user. If that is also blocked, do the work on a private computer. Inkscape cannot be run in the browser.

Install on Linux Mint

Inkscape is in Mint's own software repository, so it is one command:

sudo apt install inkscape

The word sudo means the command runs with administrator rights, so the system asks for your password. The characters do not show while you type. It is not broken, that is how it works.

One thing to know: the version in the repository is the one that existed when Mint was released, not the latest. On Mint 22 it is version 1.2.2, while the project itself is on the 1.4 series. For a logo it does not matter. If you still want the newest version, there are two ways.

Via Inkscape's own PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:inkscape.dev/stable
sudo apt update
sudo apt install inkscape

Or via Flatpak, which Mint has ready with Flathub added:

flatpak install flathub org.inkscape.Inkscape

The Flatpak version runs a bit more isolated from the rest of the system, which sometimes means it does not see fonts you installed yourself. If you do not mix the two, both work fine. Install one of them, not three.

The six things you actually use

Inkscape has many buttons. You need six of them to make a logo.

1. The selection tool, the arrow at the top of the left column or the S key. Click once to move and scale, click again on the same object to rotate.
2. Rectangle and ellipse, the R and E keys. Hold down Ctrl while you drag and you get an exact square or circle.
3. The Bezier tool, the B key. Click for corners, click and drag for smooth curves, finish with Enter. This is the difficult tool and the only one that requires practice.
4. The node tool, the N key. With it you move individual points in a shape that already exists. Most good shapes come about by drawing something rough and then adjusting the nodes.
5. The text tool, the T key.
6. The color box at the bottom. Left click gives fill, shift and left click gives stroke color. The cross at the far left of the row removes the color.

Learn two more keyboard shortcuts and you save an hour: Ctrl and D duplicates the selected item, Ctrl and Shift and A opens the align panel where you center things against each other instead of nudging them into place by eye.

Set up the document before you draw

Open File and then Document properties. Set the unit to millimeters and the size to what you are actually making: a business card is 85 by 55 millimeters, an A4 is 210 by 297.

If you are making a logo that will be used for everything, draw it in a square area and ignore the size. Vectors scale anyway. What matters is that you know where the center is.

Three things that make the printer say yes

Convert text to paths. Select the text, open Path and choose Object to Path. The letters are now shapes instead of text, and then it does not matter that the printer does not have your font. Save a copy with the text still as text first, otherwise it can never be changed again.

Save the right file type. Inkscape saves in Inkscape SVG, which contains extra information that only Inkscape understands. That is the right format for your own working file. If the file is going to someone else, choose Save As and then Plain SVG or PDF. PDF is almost always what the printer wants.

Check what is what. Open the Layers and Objects panel (Ctrl+Shift+L) to see the list of everything in the file. If invisible leftovers remain outside the canvas, they follow along in the file and can show up in the print.

If the image is going to be used on the web or in a presentation, export a PNG instead with File and Export. Choose the width in pixels, not in millimeters, and go big: 2000 pixels wide is reasonable for something that will be seen large on a screen.

From a sketch on paper to vector

If someone in the company has drawn the logo by hand, you can bring it in. Photograph or scan the sketch, drag the image into Inkscape, select it, open the Path menu and look for the option to vectorize the bitmap (Trace Bitmap in English, the Swedish menu text can vary between versions). Experiment with the settings and look at the preview.

The result is rarely good right away. Treat it as a starting point: remove the original image, use the node tool and clean up the shape. It is still faster than redrawing everything from scratch, and the shape becomes your own rather than a drawing that resembles someone else's.

How you know it worked

• Inkscape starts and you get an empty white canvas in the right size.
• A shape you drew can be scaled up ten times without the edges becoming blurry.
• The file is saved as .svg in the company's shared folder.
• There is one version where the text is converted to paths, and one where it remains as text.
• An exported PNG looks sharp in the presentation.

If something goes wrong

The program starts slowly or hangs at startup. It is the fonts being loaded. Wait out the first start. If it happens every time, try the Flatpak version instead.

You cannot see anything you have drawn. The shape probably has no fill and no stroke color. Select it and click the color box at the bottom.

An object cannot be selected. It is in a locked layer, or is locked itself. Open the Layers and Objects panel (Ctrl+Shift+L) and click away the padlock on the layer or on the object.

The text looks different for someone else. They do not have the font. Convert the text to paths before you send the file.

Ctrl and Z undo too much at once. Inkscape merges certain steps. Save more often, and make a copy of the file before you do anything big.

The file opens in the browser instead of in Inkscape when you double-click. The browser has taken over .svg. Right-click the file, choose to open with Inkscape and check the box for it to always apply.

What you do next

Draw the logo, save it as an SVG and put it in the company's shared folder before you do anything else. Everyone in the company must be able to get the same file, otherwise you will soon have three variants.

If the logo is going into a document, a quote or a presentation, it works directly in ONLYOFFICE. And if you need to sketch out what the product will look like before you draw it for real, do that in Excalidraw first.