The Makebadge is a simple popular online solution which allows making many different types of printing products quickly in your favorite web browser, even without any design skills. At the very start, Makebadge was the Flash-based application with the basic text and vector objects manipulations only, without an ability to save user’s artwork to his account, only to save as a .png file.
Now Makebadge has shifted its functionality and offers the brand new HTML5 based vector editor which supports:
- advanced vector objects capability like fills, outlines and opacity;
- additional Cliparts as vector .svg and bitmap images;
- uploading bitmaps and applying bitmap color effects and cropping as well;
- QR-codes generator;
- layers to change the positions of the objects, lock and unlock any object and make it invisible;
- pluggable templates;
- export to vector and bitmap graphics formats;
- use free photos from popular photo banks like Unsplash, Pixabay and others directly in Editor;
- linking artworks to users account to create a personal library for every user.
Finally, the current Makebadge editor offers tons of features and possibilities to create a high-class design item and print it at home.
Makebadge Editor Interface and Features
01. Initial state
When you start your work with Makebadge from scratch, you see the following screen:
As you can see, there are 4 areas:
- left toolbar panel where are placed the basic features to add and tune elements;
- top toolbar to make some instant actions with a selected object or get information;
- general editor area, your workplace;
- the additional area under the workplace to select a side or to change the scale.
02. Text
The first tab of the Left Toolbar panel is “Text”.
There are options:
- text weight, transformation and alignment;
- font-face selector and font-size selector;
- text editor field and “add new text” button;
- text color, outline type and outline color selectors;
03. Images
The second tab at left is “Images” which is related to uploading images, adding effects and using the free photo stock images.
Here you can:
- Upload your own image to the workspace from a local PC;
- search upload a free image from a free photo bank like Pixabay, Unsplash or Pexels directly from editor panel;
- crop an image on the workspace and mask it with another layer;
- choose an effect for your image from presets like in Instagram or (and) make fine brightness/contrast/saturation fine tuning.
04. Shapes
There are a lot of shapes available inside the third tab of the left Toolbar panel which you can select, add to your workplace and make an awesome composition.
05. Cliparts
We have added many colorful vector icons and illustrations, grouped in categories, which you can use in your design absolutely for free.
At this moment there are following categories of cliparts:
- Bar (25 images)
- Business (25 Images)
- E-commerce (50 Images)
- Food (25 Images)
- Holidays (80 Images)
- Management (100 Images)
- Office (50 Images)
- Robots (21 Images)
- Social Icons (107 Images)
- Social Media (49 Images)
- Travel (25 Images)
We are planning to constantly supplement the collection of clipart with new illustrations and icons
06. QR-Codes
With the Makebadge Editor, you can simply insert a QR code link in your artwork as a scalable object and use it as a part of your badge/card composition. There is a full set of settings and options to generate quality QR-code which will be readable by all kind of mobile devices.
07. Background colors
Choose a background color from the presets list or tune it by yourself more accurately and apply to the current side of the list.
08. Layers
What is the difference between bad and good editor? Right, the layers!
Arrange any kind of objects, lock, hide and group – that what you can do with the layers in Makebadge Editor.
09. Saving your artwork to the user account or downloading as a file
You can see the “Save” button everywhere in this interface. It means that you always have an ability to save the results of your work to the personal “My Designs” library inside your account if you are registered on Makebadge and signed in.
In the downloadable archive, you will get the set of vector and raster files for printing on your home printer or in a local print shop.
10. Top Toolbar options
The top Toolbar of the Makebadge Editor contains most usable features for the instant actions. Here are all of them:
- Keyboard Shortcuts. The useful keyboard buttons combinations for the fast work.
- UP ARROW: Move up
DOWN ARROW: Move down
LEFT ARROW: Move left
RIGHT ARROW: Move right
S: Select all
CTRL+DELETE: Erase all
1: Grid
CTRL+V: Center vertically
CTRL+H: Center horizontally
SHIFT+V: Flip vertically
SHIFT+H: Flip horizontally
Q: Bring to front
A: Send to back
L: Lock/Unlock
CTRL+C: Duplicate
CTRL+S: Duplicate from side to side
M: Align vertically with more space
N: Align vertically with less space
O: Align to left
P: Align to right
R: Rotate
V: Return to the original state
X: Align vertically
Z: Align horizontally
G: Group/Ungroup
DELETE: Delete
SHIFT+LEFT ARROW: Undo
SHIFT+RIGHT ARROW: Redo
SHIFT+UP ARROW: Smaller line of text
SHIFT+DOWN ARROW: Larger line of text
- UP ARROW: Move up
- Select All. Selects all (not locked) objects on the workspace.
- Erase All.
- Grid on/off.
- Center horizontally.
- Center vertically.
- Flip horizontally.
- Flip vertically.
- Rotate.
- Bring to Front.
- Send to Back.
- Lock/unlock.
- Group/ungroup.
- Duplicate.
- Delete selected object.
- Undo.
- Redo.
- Preview.