Graphic design is a skill that can pay off dividends, both personal and career-wise. With entry-level software and services for graphic design like Canva, it makes DIY graphic design closer to the masses. Graphic design is no longer just for graphic designers or anyone with access to expensive graphic design software. You can do it yourself as long as you have an internet connection and the right attitude to learn a new skill.
If you’re a marketing professional or business owner, and you can do a bit of graphic design, this gives you a lot of edge over those who don’t. This makes your projects done faster since you can do the small edits yourself. With exposure to doing graphic design, it makes it easier for you to relate and communicate with graphic designers on your team. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved, the reason why DIY graphic design is awesome!
Ready to start learning and doing the graphic design yourself? But don’t know where to start? We’ve compiled a list of graphic design tools and services that you can use. Continue reading below to find out more.
DIY Graphic Design Softwares
We can’t deny that Photoshop or Illustrator has most of the features a graphic designer needs. As a beginner, you may want to explore some Photoshop alternatives first since the subscription is a bit pricey. You may not need the countless features that Photoshop offers. The learning curve required is a bit steep too. Here are some easy-to-use platforms you can start with.
Canva
Canva is a graphic design platform, used to create social media graphics, presentations, posters, documents, and other visual content. The app already includes templates for users to use. The platform is free to use and offers paid subscriptions like Canva Pro and Canva for Enterprise for additional functionality. Users can also pay for physical products to be printed and shipped.
GoDaddy Studio (Formerly, Over)
GoDaddy Studio is a visual communications tool with a difference. They make it easy and fun to build a brand, promote your business, or just have fun with designs – all from your phone or desktop.
Crello
Crello was created to help anyone become a designer and create good-looking images for professional or personal needs quickly and without the need to hire a professional designer.
Easil
Easil is an application that allows you to create your custom graphics for social media or print. You’ll find numerous ready-made templates to inspire you, so you can form stunning, customized images that are unique and easy to share.
Learning how to do graphic design is one thing, but knowing how to create effective marketing material designs is another. Be sure to check out our blog posts for graphic design like our 7 print design tips for your marketing projects and improving your digital marketing design with visual hierarchy.
Free Stock Photos
The next you’ll need with your DIY graphic design journey are the images to use. You can’t just grab pictures on google or you’re gonna get your company in deep trouble. So where can you find free and high-resolution images?
Listed below are different sources for free stock images that we’ve curated for your convenience.
Librestock.com
Librestock scans the best free images from the top stock sites and indexes them, so you can find the perfect picture faster. There is also a very useful search feature on the web, making it easy to browse through the thousands of available images.
Unsplash.com
Unsplash is a creative platform that enables high-resolution photography to be freely available for any kind of use and has become one of the best sources of stock images. Under the Unsplash license, all images are released for free.
Pixabay.com
Pixabay is a lively artistic community that shares copyright-free photographs and videos. All materials are published under Creative Commons CC0, which makes it legal to use, even for commercial purposes, without asking for permission or giving credit to the artist.
Pexels.com
Pexels offers images licensed under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license with high quality and fully free stock photos. All images are beautifully labeled, searchable and easy to discover through their pages.
Free Fonts
Every designer knows that having a great typeset can take any project from meh to wow! With minor adjustments being made, you can build a totally different look and feel to your graphics. Fonts are the unsung heroes when it comes to graphic design so be sure to carefully consider this in your designs.
Dafont.com
Dafont has an archive of freely downloadable fonts. Browse by alphabetical listing, by style, by author, or by popularity.
Befonts.com
Befonts consists of Free Font for Designers! High-quality design resources for free. And helps introduce first-time customers to your products with free fonts downloads.
Fontsquirrel.com
Fontsquirrel scours the internet for high-quality, legitimately free fonts. Download thousands of completely legal, high-quality, free fonts.
Urbanfonts.com
Urbanfonts offers Download Free Fonts and Free Dingbats
1001fonts.com
1001fonts lets you download 54000 fonts in 26000 families. Download quality free fonts for Windows and Mac. The home of free fonts since 1998.
DIY Website Platforms
With the rise of digital marketing, making the move in launching a website has countless benefits. But the mere quantity of options for building a website can be overwhelming. That’s why we came up with a list of free website builders to help you make the best decision for your particular needs and get you your website in no time.
Wix
Wix helps you to create and sell through your website with hundreds of templates and great tools. Friendly and flexible for beginners, Wix is perfect for everything from personal online portfolios to websites for small businesses.
Weebly
Weebly allows you to build beautiful websites easily, even if you don’t have any programming experience – which is a perfect free website builder for beginners if you aim to create business websites, e-commerce websites, or even blogs.
WordPress
WordPress is also one of the well-known website builders because of its flexibility, features, and ease of use. In WordPress, you can create any kind of website. No code, no manuals, no limits.
Shopify
Shopify is now the leading commerce platform designed for businesses of all sizes. Whether you sell online, on social media, in-store, or for blogging, Shopify has you covered.
Learn and Grow
You have everything to gain with nothing to lose by learning DIY graphic design. Level up your career or business by gaining a new skill. Hope our lists above are a big help to you. For complicated design projects that are above your skills, just send us a message and we’d be happy to help.