Graphic design made easy

In the first part of our social media step-by-step guide, we discussed tips and tricks for reinspiring your content. Now that you have gathered your content, we take a look at some tools for making graphic design easy. Our resident graphic designer Alana has collated a list of tried and tested tools to assist you in creating visual content that packs a punch.

With platform specifications changing at a fast pace; Instagram is not the only go-to platform for graphic content, with images and videos becoming increasingly popular on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. For businesses that lack internal graphic design skillsets creating this content may seem like the most daunting challenge in the social media process. Luckily, there are a range of design platforms to help out beginners.

Canva
Canva has developed a reputation for being a one-stop-shop for both beginner and seasoned graphic designers. The platform features a large variety of customisable templates from social media to posters and presentations. Available on both desktop and mobile devices, the interface is user-friendly. You can choose to either drag and drop into these templates or expand with a wide range of elements including photos, graphics and charts. Offering both a free and paid subscription model, this tool is budget-friendly.

Coolors.co
If you’re stuck on deciding what colours compliment each other and your brand, Coolors is a fast, free colour scheme generator. A visual tool, the website can generate a palette at random or the user can upload an image to extract colours from. Extra features include a capability to view shade ranges of each colour, save to collections and export hex codes for multiplatform use.

The Noun Project
The noun project hosts a collection of simple icons and illustrations for any topic imaginable. Created with the belief that visual language unites all, the simplistic iconography style is useful for beginner designers as they have more potential to communicate ideas without design clutter. A range of paid options is available depending on the needs of your business. This starts with a free subscription that provides access to the 3 million available icons, with attribution, and increases to $39.99 per year for unlimited use and features such as colour and background editing.

With this collection of graphic design tools under your belt, the task of creating visual content should feel more achievable for your business. We encourage you to leverage these resources, however, if you’re still facing challenges or would like to take your branding to the next level with customisable design, get in touch!