Getting to Know a Drawing Program

1What is digital design?

Digital design means making pictures and designs on a computer, a laptop or a tablet. Designers use it to make patterns for cloth, posters, book covers, signs and logos. A computer can copy a shape perfectly, change its colour in one click and undo mistakes, so it is a very good tool for patterns.

2Free drawing programs

You do not need to buy anything. Your school computer or laptop may already have a free drawing program such as LibreOffice Draw, Inkscape or Paint. They look a little different, but they all have the same main parts. Ask your teacher which one your school uses.

3The parts of the window

• Menu bar: the words along the top (File, Edit, View…). Click one to open a list of commands. File is where you save and open your work.
• Toolbar: small pictures of tools. The select tool (the arrow) picks up shapes. The line, rectangle, ellipse and polygon tools draw shapes. The text tool types words.
• Canvas: the big white area. It is your page.
• Colour palette: the row of colour squares. Click a shape, then click a colour to fill it.

4Six skills to practise

1. Draw a shape. Click the rectangle tool, then press and drag on the canvas. To get a perfect square or circle, hold down Shift while you drag (in Inkscape, hold Ctrl).
2. Select and move. Click the select tool, then click the shape. Small squares called handles appear around it. Drag the middle of the shape to move it.
3. Resize. Drag a corner handle to make the shape bigger or smaller.
4. Colour. With the shape selected, click a colour for its fill (the inside). Most programs also let you choose a colour for its line (the outline).
5. Undo. Made a mistake? Press Ctrl and Z together to undo it.
6. Save. Press Ctrl and S, type a name such as my-shapes-uwase, and click Save. Save every few minutes, so a power cut cannot take your work.

5Caring for the computers

• Hands clean and dry; no food or drinks near the computer.
• Carry a laptop closed, with two hands. Never pull it by the cable.
• Sit up straight, with the screen at arm's length. Every twenty minutes, look at something far away for a few seconds to rest your eyes.
• Take turns fairly, and shut the computer down properly at the end.

6No computer today?

You can practise the same ideas on paper. Your "canvas" is a sheet of squared paper. Your "tools" are a ruler, a pencil and card shapes (a square, a circle and a triangle) that you cut out and draw round. Your "palette" is your crayons or natural paints. The only thing paper cannot do is Ctrl and Z, so draw lightly first!

7Look closely

These pupils at Ecole Saint Jacob in Rwanda are learning with small green laptops.

• How is the teacher helping?
• What do you notice about how the pupils sit and hold their laptops?

Try it yourself

Try each one first, then tap Show answer to check.