Need advice for basic graphics

Stacy Dubuc

I am looking for basic help with designing in Convio. As a novice I am not familiar with how to design for the web. The basic problem is how to get graphics with text to look nice on the web. We are a very small staff with limited resources so most of what I do is with trial and error however I am finding myself spending a bit too much time doing this. I am trying to create cute buttons that say donate now, etc. and overall really customize the look of what we are doing.

What is the best program to do this in, and what files type should they be saved as? Right now I am building them in Publisher (scary, I know) and saving them as a .gif which makes the text look jagged and overall less than the quality I want. Any help is greatly appreciated - we want our pages to be beautiful!

Here is a link to an example of the issue I am having

https://secure2.convio.net/spcam/site/Donation2?df_id=1540&1540.donation=form1