This was something i thought about the other day.

You can now get brushes, shapes etc for pretty much anything now - it makes life that little bit easier.

However, what is your view on them? Do you prefer (if we look at a vector perspective) to draw it "freehand " (say, using the pen tool) or if you can, use a brush to do it? Is using a brush cheating or is it just a natural progression to the design process?

Depends, I make my own brushes that I use in design Therefor it aint cheating. However, if you are one of those people that download their brushes from places like dA then yes you are a cheater. Not that it isn't going to be a natural direction thatdesigning is taking for people that cannot design their own brushes it is at least making pieces of work that would be shocking to look at less shocking with some skill at downloading brushes tbh

My 2 cents.

I try to make my shapes using pen tool if i actually need to other than that i don't use brushes just styles and other things