Is there a preferred software for creating screen print designs? Preferably something free and beginner-friendly.
I’ve been using Inkscape for my vinyl cuts but it lacks in the variety of fonts and can be a bit daunting for creating simple designs.
GIMP is free, but possibly even more daunting than Inkscape.
As far as fonts go, any that come with a program aren’t likely to be very numerous, unless your using a premium service like adobe creative cloud. You can download fonts from various websites, many of them free. Try www.dafont.com I’ve curated many from there.
I outright own my design software, but am interested in what the best free options out there now happen to be. Best of luck!
I’m a fan bn of inkscape and you can find fonts everywhere. That said I don’t usually look for them so I could be wrong.
In fact ignore this post
Google fonts and open foundry may be places to start IDK.
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Yeah, Inkscape and Gimp are the 2 that I would recommend depending on what you are doing. Inkscape uses the system fonts, so if you need more you can install what you need: Installing fonts - Inkscape Wiki
That being said I’m not very familiar with other similar programs as those two have covered my needs so far.
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Inkscape sounds like its most likely the software you are looking for. And as Christian said you just need to install the fonts.
Another one you might try is Figma. It was created primarily for UX design, but has vector-drawing tools and a ton of plugins, some of which might be helpful for screen print designs such as tracing bitmaps. Figma might not have quite the same functionality as Inkscape but it has a much friendlier interface and a lot of really great online tutorials and resources (although they will likely be UX design focused, but could be easily adapted for screen print designs). It’s free for personal use, can be run in the browser and has all Google fonts available without any need to download anything. You can export pages as PDFs to easily print for screen printing negatives.
Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions about Figma.
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