In today's social-driven world, I'm sure you often find yourself needing to create simple design projects to share with your audience. To do this successfully, which I would define as creating something that looks contemporary, sophisticated, and attractive, you need the right tools.
In this post, I will be sharing some of my favorite, FREE, DIY resources to create simple design projects for both digital and print projects.
Free DIY Design and Creative Tools
Designers Toolbox has many great tools for sizing your print and digital projects. What size is a web banner or a postcard? Find out here.
The Essential Social Media Design Cheat Sheet has current sizing for images relating to every social media site you can imagine.
PicMonkey- Edit photos with basic features for photo correction, apply filters, overlay text, enjoy holiday and popular themes to add some pizzazz. Many features are free, some are available with their upgraded service, Royale, which is very reasonable at 4.99/mth or $33/yr.
The Graphics Fairy has created an excellent instructional on how to create overlay images or digital collage using free Picmonkey tools. An over lay image is one like the image above that has a combination of images, texts, logos,etc. in one image.
Placeit allows you to create those cool images with your logo, message, video or image placed into a laptop screen, smart phone, etc. Limited free services, more options with a paid account.
Canva gives you everything you need to easily turn ideas into stunning designs. Create designs for Web or print: blog graphics, presentations, Facebook covers, flyers, posters, invitations and so much more.
Free Hi-Res Images
Splashbase features office, technology, and creative images. Click on download, right click to save image to your desktop.
Gratisography provides quirky and artistic images for your creative projects.
Unsplash offers beautiful, artistic images for your creative projects.
The Graphics Fairy has thousands of vintage images in a variety of genres from botanical prints and illustrations to antique drawings from an instructional manual for a 3-Wheel bicycle, to vintage photographs...search and yee shall almost always find! It's easy to spend hours looking through this treasure-trove of vintage images from around the globe. This site is especially useful for finding fun holiday images.
Free Fonts
dafont.com is my favorite website for finding new fonts for creative projects. Check the usage requirements. Almost all fonts are free for personal use, some are free for personal or commercial use, and some require purchase for commercial use. The usage fees are very reasonable.
Resources for Infographics
5 online tools to create Infographics from Free Technology for Teachers
I hope you find these tools as useful as we do! Of course, if you need something professionally designed, we have
professional graphic designers at your service.