Hi runlolarunpunk and welcome to GDF.

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Illustrator is the right software for designing a logo, but I'm not sure what your question is. Can you be more specific exactly what you are trying to do and why it isn't working?

There's really no way that anyone can answer your question since you haven't told us what's stumped you. Maybe you're just blowing off steam because you're frustrated, and that's okay.

First Illustrator and Photoshop are totally different, and if you're trying to learn Illustrator by drawing parallels to Photoshop, yeah, it would be frustrating. Illustrator can't do what Photoshop does and vice versa.

Illustrator is the very first computer application that I learned, so to me it comes very naturally. Honest, it's a great tool, but it's important to learn it from scratch and appreciate it for what it is and what it does. When learning Illustrator, mentally sit Photoshop aside — they aren't equivalent to each other.

If you've just dived right into a project of your own choosing and are getting frustrated, I'll suggest setting it aside and approaching it differently. Trying going through a step-by-step beginning-level tutorial that starts out with the extremely important basics, then works up from there. There are some pretty good online tutorials and some pretty good books. Maybe if you take this approach some of the concepts will start to fall into place faster than by just diving in.

The worst experience of a designer is to use an application software that you don't even know how to use. Aside from you are conceptualizing you'll become problematic of how to apply in actual illustration what you have in mind.

<b> is right. You must go for basic tutorial.

Look on Youtube for some basic pen tool tutorials.

Yeppp.....The pen tool is your friend in Illy. Until you learn it...it's your worst enemy!! Just give it some time and patience. You'll be fine.

I used to hate Illy. I, too, was Photoshop nut. THere was nothing, I thought, that I needed Illy for. Then, I started in one class and the teacher suggested that we needed to do it in Illy. Man!!! The cursing that went on in my house. My wife was not amused. LOL I must have spent 4 hours on a 10 minute project. But, I learned alot during that project. And I have learned a lot more every day since strating in that class.

Once you get used to Illy...you will begin to wonder what you ever did without it, and you will wonder why you wasted so much time trying to fight the process.

Try importing your heart into Illustrator and use Live Trace to vectorize it, if you're not good at drawing. It takes some getting used to to get the settings you want, but using the preview button will help. Make your type in Illustrator. Then you can outline that.