a program for manipulating text/font graphics for label artwork?

[FiveseveN]

...or two minutes in Illustrator:

The font is more condensed than in the example, obviously, but the workflow is there.

[RandomGlitch]

+1 for Inkscape.

I use it for everything.. labels on pedals, band posters, presentation diagrams at work...

It's a great program.

[JohnForeman]

not trying to hijack the thread, but along the same lines.  How does everyone go about getting the correct dimensions for the labels?  i.e.  I want to create a border type label for the top of my pedal, how to i create the boarder the correct size so it fits the size of my enclosure?  short of wasting a bunch of paper with print/adjust/print...  I have gimp and inkscape installed.  not familiar with either one.  I looked around in gimp looking for a way to draw lines based on length and not just free hand.  I wasn't even able to figure out how to set the line thickness.  I will need to spend some time with the tutorials.  I have seen tutorials on how to put the labels on the enclosure, but none on actually creating the labels...

[mordechai]

Not wishing to bang on about it, but......this is close, I think.  Took about 30 seconds using WordArt.  The oval is just there to show how the text relates to the shape; with a little more jiggery pokery the text can follow the oval more closely.

Yes, that's really close to what I'm going for.  But I didn't find anythng like that option in the Word Art on my Microsoft Word program...are there options buries in there that I'm not seeing?

[Steve Mavronis]

not trying to hijack the thread, but along the same lines.  How does everyone go about getting the correct dimensions for the labels?  i.e.  I want to create a border type label for the top of my pedal, how to i create the boarder the correct size so it fits the size of my enclosure?  short of wasting a bunch of paper with print/adjust/print...  I have gimp and inkscape installed.  not familiar with either one.  I looked around in gimp looking for a way to draw lines based on length and not just free hand.  I wasn't even able to figure out how to set the line thickness.  I will need to spend some time with the tutorials.  I have seen tutorials on how to put the labels on the enclosure, but none on actually creating the labels...

I use GIMP and set the default Image/Advanced Options to 300 DPI and Default Grid/Spacing to 30x30 Pixels. That way you can accurately measure things to scale. Just take your real world measurements in inches and multiply times 300 to get the pixels size. I also use snap to grid as needed.