Visual content is a lot more captivating than a block of plain text. When it comes to visual and social media marketing, graphic design is a popular option. The tools that we have in 2019 to create these things are game-changers. The following tools will help you to embellish your social media content and blog posts for more leads, conversions, and sales.
The Tools
Canva
Price: Free or $12.95 per month
Platform: Web, iOS, Android
Out of all the graphic design tools, I think Canva may be the most popular option, as well as my personal favorite. The interface is user-friendly and modern. Their range of templates is almost endless. Canva also includes:
- Millions of stock photographs, vectors, and illustrations (many are free)
- The option to upload your own images
- The option to edit photos with filters and other editing tools
- Icons, shapes and other elements
- Option to upload your own
- Hundreds of fonts.
Adobe Spark
Price: Free or $9.99 per month
Platform: Web, iOS, Android
Like Canva, with Adobe Spark you can create graphics in an instant. What Canva doesn’t offer, however, is the ability to design a video or a webpage. Spark allows you to upload videos and design the layout and theme and add music. The functionalities are a little limited, but it gets the job done quickly and effortlessly. You can also create a professional-looking website without a designer, knowledge of code, or hosting.
Adobe Spark also offers a variety of iOS apps, including Spark Post, Spark Page, and Spark Video. Each one allows you to create graphics, webpages, and videos within its app.
Stencil
Price: Free or $9 per month
Platform: Web (and browser extensions)
Stencil reminds me very much of Canva. According to Stencils website, they offer:
- 2,200,000+ stock photos
- 770+ templates
- 100,000+ quotes
- 2,500+ Google web fonts
- 2,000,000+ icons and graphics
- The ability to upload and store logos and fonts
- Browser extensions
While I like the interface and easy usability Stencil has, I feel that the features are severely limited unless you upgrade to a paid account. Templates are inaccessible unless you upgrade, rendering the website a tad useless to the casual consumer. It also seems to be the same deal for a large portion of the photos. What’s interesting about Stencil is that they offer browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, which is nifty.
Crello
Price: Free or $7.99 per month
Platform: Web
Crello is a lot like Stencil, with millions of photos, thousands of templates and several other design options. Their interfaces are different but similar. Unlike Stencil, Crello doesn’t have a browser extension option, but it does offer the option to create a video or animated post. Crello also has better template designs than Stencil, Canva, or Adobe Spark.
Adobe Photoshop
Price: $20.99 with Creative Cloud
Platform: Software for Mac and Windows, iOS, Android
Adobe is the industry leader in imaging and graphic design software. This isn’t news to anyone. Millions of designers, photographers, videographers, and artists around the world use their products. Because of this, Photoshop is the most well-equipped tool you could use to create marketing graphics. While it is the best tool, it also requires you to have a decent amount of proficiency in using them. Because of this, you’ll have endless options for creativity.
Photoshop offers the capabilities to:
- Adjust, crop, remove objects, and retouch images
- Build and organize with layers and utilize layer styles
- Rotate, skew, enlarge, shrink, scale or change the perspective of anything
- Use endless fonts, both built-in and your own fonts
- Create artboards
- Draw and paint with pencils, pens, markers, and brushes that look real
Here at HIPB2B, we use our knowledge of graphic design to create our images for the blog. We believe our original writing deserves original imagery. This can range from the cover image to internal graphics. This allows us the opportunity to create something totally unique, eye-catching, and share-worthy while adorning our work. We use a range of graphic design tools here and are always looking to try something new.
Here are just a few of the cover images we’ve created for past blog posts:
Let us know what you think:
- Have you tried any of the graphic design tools we listed?
- What is more important to you in a tool like these – usability or capability?
- Are there any other comparable tools we’ve left out?
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