Why Ad Agencies Use Illustrator Instead of Corel Draw

Roberto Blake New York Graphic Designer Web Designer Illustrator Photographer

29 September 2009 5 Comments

I saw an interesting question posted on LinkedIn today and felt compelled to share it and my own view with the rest of you. The question put forward was: “Why do advertising agencies use Adobe Illustrator instead of Corel Draw?”

Illustartor VS CorelDraw

In my opinion Corel Draw represents a consumer grade product for vector illustration much in the way Paintshop PRO represents a consumer grade image manipulation program when compared to Adobe Photoshop.

The difference between Professional Grade and Consumer Grade applications is more than just price. The of course there is the simple matter of the output formats. The output formats are one o the strongest reasons I’m sure agencies have for using Illustrator; it has all of the standard output formats you would need, many of them capable of being important to various applications, not to mention that Illustrator can generate pie charts and bar graphs from excel document data. Then there is Illustrator’s versatility, not only does it wit work better than Corel as a standalone application, but also in conjunction with other applications.

As most seasoned designers know, its very rare that most projects/products will be produced in a single application. At minimum Photoshop and Illustrator will be used in combination for print material if not Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. This is particularly true in the advertising and magazine industry. Further more illustrator can be utilized working in conjunction with Adobe Flash After Effects and Premier lending its abilities to film and motion graphics.

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5 Comments »

Dan Armeneau said:

Have you ever used CorelDraw? I’ve used both for many years and I much prefer CorelDraw as I can work more efficiently and accomplish more with less effort. Time is money so if I can do something quicker with CorelDraw why on earth would I use Illustrator?

The biggest reason Ad Agencies use Adobe products is that most are Mac centric. CorelDraw never really was a Mac application so it never really caught on with Mac centric shops. CorelDraw has always been a PC application and perhaps that is the reason it’s used far more in the sign, garment and promotional items industry. (It was far easier to get a PC to drive a plotter or a laser engraver or embroidery machine than it it ever was to try and run the same peripherals from a Mac.)

I have converted more than a couple of Illustrator users once they became aware of how much more efficiently they could operate in CorelDraw.

This whole consumer/pro argument is a red herring and anyone using it shows their elitist side to the world.

Just my 2 cents worth!

Dan

# 30 September 2009 at 3:57 pm

Roberto Blake (author) said:

Actually I have used both I and still stand by my statement, though I can respect your opinion, its not elitism if its is not only proven but the excepted standard among the professional community. The Mac argument is a mixed bag of nuts for the simple fact that their are more than enough creatives that use both Mac and PC and that even among PC users Adobe Illustrator is still more widely used than Corel Draw.

# 1 October 2009 at 9:12 am

cypherbox said:

In my own opinion, I think the reason why Ad agencies use Illustrator instead of Corel Draw. It’s simply because they are fully compatible with Photohop.

# 2 October 2009 at 6:02 am

javier said:

I’ve used both too, the matter is not what the software does, both have enough tools to create good stuff

I think this is more than the software by itself.

corel is to illustrator like PC is to mac…

you know what I mean….

# 4 October 2009 at 4:47 am

Kuttyjoe said:

A very good explanation is simply that Adobe has done better with how they conducted their business. It needs no further explaining than that. Not saying that this is necessarily the case, but I actually believe that is the case. I would also say that I’m getting the idea that Corel has a powerful following in different parts of the world where companies and people are more budget conscious. It makes sense.

# 27 January 2010 at 4:49 pm