Three cool design tools for non-designers

Graphic design has become one of those skill sets which every marketer and communications professional should have in their arsenal. But what if you can't draw or design for toffee, or you can but don't have access to the high-end design software like Adobe? Usually the obvious answer is to hire someone who can, but due to budget constraints, that it not always possible. Especially if you are a freelancer, small business or a start-up.

Fortunately there are a range of design tools for non-designers which make it so much easier to produce excellent marketing materials to promote your brand or service for free or through an affordable payment plan. Below I've listed three design tools that I've found to be both simple use and affordable.

Canva

Canva is hugely popular among content creators, non-professional designers and marketers/comms professionals, myself included. And it’s easy to see why.

It’s a free design program that comes with hundreds of different document templates to choose from. All of which are very easy to modify and customise according to your preferences and needs. It’s also really simple to upload your own images or stock images and integrate them with your chosen template and the additional elements Canva offers.

As with most online based software, Canva operates on a freemium model, but you get so much under the free version that you may think it hard to justify upgrading to the paid version. But that’s not to say that you shouldn’t.

Canva Pro offers the following features:

• A brand kit to enable you to create your brand’s visual identity with logos, colours and fonts

• One-click design resize

• 60,000+ free templates

• 60+ million premium stock images, photos, videos and graphics

• Upload your own fonts and logos

• Custom templates

All of which is worthwhile paying for especially if you are a frequent user and want more choice of templates, as well as to easily customise your work according to your brand requirements.

BeFunky BeFunky is a free photo editor and graphic design tool, similar to Photoshop but without the hard work. It’s very similar to Canva in that you can create:

• Banners and templates for web ads and social media

• Brochures, with support of professionally-designed templates

• Infographics and posters

For me the stand out feature are the tools for photo editing. If you’re a fan of Instagram filters there’s plenty here to choose from, as well as a crop/resize tool and a collage maker. You can also batch edit your photos, remove backgrounds and retouch photos. In the past I'd always steer clear of photo editing, leaving that to the professionals, but there is something comforting using this tool as it does feel to be a lot easier to navigate and create/customise some awesome photo images. Definitely worth a try.

BeFunky also operates under the fremium model, and there’s a lot you can take advantage of for free before going ahead to use the BeFunky Plus version which is on a very affordable monthly plan.

Crello

Another design tool for your consideration is Crello. It helps you to create images for print, social media and websites. It works in exactly the same way as Canva with its templates for social media posts, brochures, posters, presentations etc. Once you’ve chosen a template you can then customise using the free backgrounds, icons, styles, images provided or pay a small fee for the premium ones. Personally I don’t think the free images are all that, but you can upload your own easily enough. I also find the editor a lot more tricky to use but it may be that the pro version offers more flexibility as well as choice. Even so it’s still a worthwhile consideration.

With all the online design tools available what are your favourites?