Well, what a unique and powerful little tool this is. Imagine, you have no graphic design experience, you don't know how to use Photoshop, Quark or Illustrator and you have just created a royalty free logo for yourself in a couple of minutes having never seen this particular software package before! All this is possible using SWGSoft's latest graphic tool AAA Logo.

I'm going to list all the good things I discovered while working through AAA Logo before I start in on the things I found lacking in the software. Firstly, there is a library of 2000 graphic elements which can be utilised in your logo creation and there are 60 template logos you can use as a starting point for your logo design. And, secondly, and perhaps most importantly, the interface is very very user friendly. From the microsoft-like drop down menu at the top, to the icon library to the left, to the canvas area to the right and the colour bar at the bottom, it all looks like every other image editor out there. Well kind of, but you know what I mean, there is nothing foreign here, just take a look at the screen shot below.

 

Okay, so the product is user friendly and there is a great library. What can you do with it?? The answer is simple, you create logos and you create them quickly. Ask anyone who designs for a living and they will tell you that the hardest thing about the job is the "blank canvas" approach. You need an idea, a place to start. And, this is where I think AAA Logo has an advantage over the high-end image editors, because sitting just at the left of the canvas is a display case of graphic elements to play with. Ideas can be put to paper much faster and changed more readily, making this, as I said, a powerful tool. The two logos below were put together, without much thought I must admit, in just a few minutes. Powerful.

So whats the downside? The software exits without a prompt and the logo is not saved, well that is unless you have saved it prior to hitting the "X" button. This is a troublesome and major oversight in my opinion. Other more trivial things I noticed were; when working with a group of elements there was no way to move the group around together, it had to be done individually; there was no precision, no rulers, no guides, just eyeballing and guesswork; to remove objects you had to use a menu item, you couldn't just select the element and press the delete button; you could import bitmap images and incorporate them into the logo design, however, the bitmaps couldn't be resized or transformed. Nothing too major here and I guess the question has to be asked, is that sort of precision necessary for a small tool like this? Perhaps adding in some photoshopesque elements would price the tool out of the market, as, speaking of pricing, AAA Logo is very cheap at $49.95 US.

So there you have it, the good and the bad. Overall, though I give AAA Logo a definite thumbs up. Its a powerful and easy to use tool and it is aimed at both novice and experienced users who want to turn out royalty-free logos quickly and easily. Nice one SWGsoft.

I will definitely revisit this software when the next version appears, so watch this space for updates.