I'm completely new to this. So please bare with me. I'm trying to learn this software and am needing ideas. Anyway, I'm trying to create a web banner and print piece for a show called Tricks of the Trade. The show is about investment fraud. So far, I just have the title Trick$ of the Trade in a money green color. So yeah, it's boring.

But I'm stuck because I'm not sure what else I can do with inkscape (or illustrator for that matter). Any suggestions? Any links to how to do these suggestions? Thanks.

Welcome bmwaldrop!
I'm not clear exactly what you're doing, or if this is actually the best forum to help you. By "print piece" do you mean an article? And by "show" do you mean tv show? If so, why would you need a web banner? Unless you mean that the banner is going to serve as an advertisement for the tv show? Or by "show" do you mean like a video similar to youtubes? Does the banner need to be animated?

Based on what I understand, which is basically "web banner", and "investment fraud", my first questions would be -- do you want the banner to be like cartoony, or sophisticated, do you want it to contain your title? Will it target typical investors, or any subgroup or age group? Is it to be an advertisement at all, or serve some other purpose?

Do you have any creative skills? You don't need to be an artist at all, to use Inkscape, but I would say that you probably need at least a creative tendency.

Inkscape has its own excellent manual, and there are many tutorials where you can find help with specific things. Please see the links in my signature.

Any more info that you can provide will be helpful in getting better responses. Also, if you would edit your title, to more clearly reflect what kind of help you want, it will elicit better replies. Because we already know that you need help, or else why would you be here?? (Just click Edit, and change the title, then click Submit. Or as a moderator, I could change it for you, but I'm not clear yet what you want to do.)

Basically with Inkscape, you can draw just about anything you want. Inkscape as a vector graphics program is capable of photorealistic art, just like raster programs. Or any other kind of art really, except for music I guess, or sculpture, lol.

Anyway, before I try to offer suggestions, could you give use any further info about your project?

and if you just really need a quick showy web banner, without having to be too creative yourself, there's a tonne of ready-made effects in programs like gimp, which are geared more towards this sort of raster/pixel based graphics. there's a fair few extensions in inkscape now that allow you also to do this sort of thing, but probably more thought and creativity needs to go in to get a "professional" looking typical web banner. And especially if you want the banner animated, this is much easier in raster based programs (like gimp etc) instead of vector based ones. Animation is indeed very possible in vector graphics, but not at the press of a button with presets...just yet.