Out of all the messages a business can deliver, design can often be the first one that people perceive – making it incredibly important for a business’ design to leave a lasting first impression. Good design is helpful in making sure your business is instantly recognisable – in fact, well known accommodation hosting business Airbnb was recently valued at $13 billion based on its originality in design and technology.
Luckily, there are some super helpful (and extremely easy to use) online design tools to help your business shine! That’s right – gone are the days of getting frustrated with layers in Photoshop, or crying over the fact that objects just won’t line up no matter how hard you try.
Here my top recommendations:
Canva
Canva is currently my favourite tool to use for straightforward design. It is probably the most simplistic way to create a graphic that I have ever come across.
Canva provides a bunch of ready made templates, meaning all you need to do is pick which ones you think best suits the platform or channel you’re using to communicate. Templates include Facebook posts, posters and presentations and they are highly customisable, so you can add your own colours, images and style – you can even completely transform the entire thing if you want to!
Canva is free to use, but there are options to pay a little more if you’re looking for an extra level of creativity. For example, if your business is looking to add its own fonts, logos, or colour scheme you’re able to level your account up to access these features without any hassle.
VSCO
I use this app for every single photo that I take. VSCO always manages to get images to look just right and it’s a great tool to use as the first step in uploading photos to social media sites such as Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.
I find it to be much more useful than the editing tools within Instagram as the filters that are available do much more for enhancing images and it provides a huge amount of editing options. To make things even easier, you’re also able to purchase filter packs within the app.
Google Fonts
We’ve all heard of Helvetica, Arial, Calibri and Times New Roman. But what about Cormorant Garamond, Raleway, Bree Serif and Kreon? Change up the fonts you use by downloading brand new ones from Google Fonts.
Google Fonts is no secret, which is arguably why it’s one of the best online tools to assist in refreshing your design. The range of typefaces available mean you can change up your business’ font to stand out from the crowd.
Even better is that all Google Fonts are open source and downloadable, meaning you can use them wherever you want – including in documents and on websites!
Paletton or Coolors
Who doesn’t love a good colour scheme? The psychological effects of colour are astounding. In fact, study shows that consumers base their purchase decision off initial interactions with a product, and colour accounts for 62-90% of that decision making process.
If you’re thinking of changing up your colour scheme, or even just looking for a colour scheme to base your next marketing campaign off, using Paletton or Coolors would be a great place start.
Both sites are on par for creating colour schemes. The main difference is that Paletton seems to offer a little more choice, and Coolors is a little more fun.
The best thing about all of these online design tools is that you can use them together! Create a colour pallete on Palleton or Coolors, choose your font in Google Fonts, edit a photo in VSCO, and upload them all to Canva to create a unique web graphic for your social media.
Bonus Design Tool
Infographics are a great way to quickly present dense information. You’d be surprised to learn how many businesses use the web-design programme Piktochart to lay out their data. Piktochart makes it easy to insert data and information in a way that makes for optimal readability for audiences.
Image: Shutterstock