A short while ago I reviewed McVid from pICa software, a very nice and comprehensive set of routines which gave the user machine code graphics of all types in all screen modes, something on which there is very little advice for the serious user, so I was expecting something very flash when Art Designer dropped through the letterbox the other dahy. Unfortunately I was disappointed. It's a very simple package with very few really useful facilities for making images other than pretty patterns.

First of all let's look at which it does. Options listed include airbrush, circle, elipse, draw, area fill, filled blocks and text. All very nice except they don't come easy and you can't do much with them. For a start, everything is in Mode 2. Fair enough, you say, more colours, but why not give the user a choice, he might want more detail from a hi-res mode. Then there's keyboard input.

The cursor keys are used to position a cursor and every function requires a control character, that is CTRL and a key, both at the same time. In airbrush mode you have to keep the keys held down at the same time as the cursor keys, three keys for one function is asking too much. Why not use a single key to toggle functions?

Circle and elipse routines are much the same in their over-use of keys. First CTRL P for the centre, then CTRL R for the radius in the case of a circle or two CRL Es for an elipse, after which, in both cases, you have to specify whether solids or lines are required. On top of this you get a qhacking great white dot in the centre, and what happens if you want an elipse drawn at an angle to the horizontal?

I could go on like this but there seems little point really, other than to say I wouldn't recommend it to anyone over seven and that I'm disappointed to see it come from a company who got off to such a good start.

Incidentally, there's a character editor sitting inside it somewhere. There have also been several hundred character editors just as good going for free in just about any magazine you care to pick off the news-stands, Big K included.