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Every designer has their preference on the medium that they use to create their designs. Although their work may appear to be crafted on expensive software after years of honing their craft, these tools may not be as out of reach as you think. Here are some (not so) secret and easy-to-learn systems which designers use that may surprise you.
Canva
Canva is a design platform where you can create anything from Instagram stories to corporate presentations. It’s free to access the basic features, although many find it worth it to pay for the premium package. They offer thousands of free templates where you can pull ideas for your next creative project and make the designs your own. You also have the ability to start from scratch and play around with their different features ranging from hundreds of fonts to various graphics and free images and videos. Flawless social media posts or logos can come from this website without anyone knowing it wasn’t complicated software, it’s that great.
Animoto
Animoto is a free video maker platform that allows you to create content from scratch or templates. These videos can vary from social media posts to website videos and Youtube content. Most Apple computers come with iMovie and Microsoft computers come with Video Editor, they don’t offer the same templates or storage platform Animoto does. Videos that you are working on can be stored in your account without you having to worry about losing content should your computer crash. They also offer premium packages for access to more features and remove the Animoto watermark from videos.
Adobe Creative Cloud Express
Similar to Canva, Adobe Creative Cloud Express is another great resource for getting inspiration from templates and creating multiple forms of content. There are some editing features that the two platforms don’t share such as collaborating on posts in real time (you can on Canva, not Adobe). Adobe also features a social media graphics creator and has a wider range of video editing features than Canva depending on the designer's needs. You can also access Creative Cloud Express for free with the option to upgrade, it’s another tool you may not realize a designer is using.
Wix
When learning about the Wix platform and all of its features, it’s easy to write it off as only a website design medium. But after further digging and experience, it doesn’t take long to learn how much more Wix has to offer. You can design a logo, social media posts, construct videos, and keep a calendar of when posts are going up on the platform. This is great for social media managers and designers looking to integrate their work onto their websites and social platforms from one central place. The non-website design capabilities may not be as extensive as some of the other platforms since the main focus of Wix is website design, but it still offers many great features that designers who are highly trained in Wix love to use.
It’s easy to think about graphic designers and think that the tools they use cost a lot of money or come from a secret hub of platforms that regular people may not be able to touch. Although this can be true to an extent, there are also a lot more tools available at reasonable prices that users may not think of or know about. Even if you don’t see yourself designing anything in the near future, you now have the knowledge of different tools that could help you should you or someone you know need access to design platforms.
We hope you enjoyed our blog post this week and found some of this advice helpful! We can be found on Instagram, Facebook, and we are now on LinkedIn! If you would like to connect with us please reach out via the chat or contact sheet on our website.
Written by: Jordan Basham