You too can have a sexy graphic!

Andrew M
Sep 8, 2024
3 min read

We get lots of compliments on our boat name graphic. People ask "Who is your designer?". That would be me, the one with no artistic talent! So I thought I'd share with you how simple it was to make one, and the best part is, it uses free tools!

First, I must give acknowledgement to Will C. who came up with the boat name MackenSea (A derivation of our name Mackensea) and to Cheryl who sugested the stylized "S". She wanted "Something like the "S" in the Seattle Kraken hockey team". This must have been hard for a die hard Vancouver Canucks fan to suggest.

The result

The Tools I used

I'm on a Mac, but these tools are also available for windows:

Graphics editor:

To get your graphic printed, you will need to create a file with a transparent background. This can be done with Adobe Illustrator (requires a licence) or with Inkscape, a open source tool.

You can download it for free here

Bing Image Creator Website:

Bing has a free to use AI image generator. You simply describe the image you want and let it do its thing. You can access it here

Google Fonts:

If you do not find a font you like in your Graphics Editor, Google makes 1000's of fonts available for free. These can be downloaded and installed on your computer. You can find them here.

The process:

Cheryl wanted the logo to match the Nautitech style, so the first thing I did was go to the Nautitech website and get the Nautitech logo R:60 G:43 B:18. In bing if I use "Vibrant gold" in my description it comes pretty close. I used this colour in Inkscape for the lettering.

Step1: Create the graphic

Go to Bing image Creator (you may need to sign-up but it is free).

Describe the image you want, in my case the prompt I used was something like: "Create a stylized loch ness monster in the shape of a letter S. Use Aqua blue and vibrant gold. Make the S slim"

This is what I got:

Note that it creates a different set of 4 images every time you press "Create". Don't like any of these, just hit create again until you find one you like.

Be patient, you may have to play around with your prompt or keep or keep recreating with the same prompt to get the image that works for you.

When you get one you like, click on it:

Click on "Customize" and follow the steps to crop, remove the background and save:

Note if you have the payed version of ChatGPT the process is better as you can ask it to modify the result and hone in on what you like.

Step 2: If required Edit the image

Install Inkscape and fire it up. Open the file that was downloaded from Microsoft Designer. There are lots of Youtube videos on how to use Inkscape, so I will not go into it here.

You can then add text or other graphics. In my case I added text. Note to get the font I wanted, I used google fonts. On the Mac, you simply download the font and click on it to install the font, I assume windows is similar. But remember you will have to restart Inkscape after you downloaded the new font in order for it to pick it up.