Content creation is harder than it looks! And in our digital and visual era, if you’re not putting out great content regularly, you’re losing your audience and conversions. Nonetheless, content creation can be a time-consuming process without the right tools – that’s why we’re here to help! Check out this comprehensive list of the 5 design tools to make quick social media content without any hassle.
1. Canva
Best for powerful template-based graphic creation
In the 5 years since it was launched, over 10 million people have used Canva to simplify graphics design. With hundreds of templates, image and illustration assets, and dozens of fonts and text stylings, Canva makes it easy to create unique, high-quality images that are great for sharing on social media or your blog.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve never designed an image in your life—Canva boasts a straightforward, drag-and-drop interface that allows even a novice to get started quickly. But beginners and pros alike will benefit from Canva’s rich asset library and professional templates, which let you design attractive graphics, presentations, and posters with little effort.
Start with one of Canva’s preset sizes (or set your own canvas dimensions), then start building your own layout or choose from Canva’s giant library. The free version of Canva provides a large library of images, icons, layouts, text styles, and shapes for you to use, and allows you to upload your own graphics, while their premium plan offers even more design resources.
Once you’ve chosen your template or layout, you can use this resource library and drag-and-drop elements, add or edit text, and adjust core settings like font, color, image filters, and opacity to make your graphic.
Canva offers less customization and flexibility than some tools (especially compared to major graphic design apps like Photoshop), but what it lacks in settings, it makes up for in an intuitive interface and beautiful templates. However, it is worth noting that, since Canva has 10 million+ users, you’ll want to put in a little extra effort customizing your designs to make sure they stand out from other brands that use Canva.
Canva Price: Free for 8,000+ templates, 1GB storage, and up to 10 team members; from $9.95/mo per user for Canva for Work, which offers unlimited storage, access to 300,000 assets and templates, custom fonts, transparent backgrounds, and more
2. Venngage
Venngage is a free content creation tool with hundreds of unique templates users can choose from to help them tell their story visually.
Simply choose a template, add your charts, text, and visuals to the project, and customize your new infographic with fonts and colors to make it your own. But Venngage’s capabilities don’t stop at infographics. Users can also create everything from reports, logos, and newsletters, to mind maps, white papers, and business plans.
This tool also has special pricing for students (50% off!) and nonprofits.
3. Lumen5
Lumen5 is one of the more interesting visual content creation tools on our list. That’s because it uses artificial intelligence to let you create a video from the text. Enter a URL and the software will create videos to match, including photos and music. This is definitely one to keep an eye on.
4. Crello
Crello is a graphic design tool that makes it easy for brands to create stunning graphics without a lot of prior design knowledge. Crello’s advantage over Canva is that it offers more than 10,000 free design templates, 65 million stock images, and more than 11,000 design elements. Like Canva, a variety of different image types are offered, including templates specifically for social media. Crello is free for users, though some design elements cost $0.99.
How to Build Graphics Quickly with Crello:
- Use Crello’s “Inspiration” tab to find a free design template or templates that work for your brand.
- Simply click on a design template you love, and customize it using the Crello editor.
- Save your finished product, and/or share it across your social media sites.
Whether you’re a complete beginner, business owner or marketing professional looking to upskill, this social media marketing course is perfect for you.
5. Gravit Designer
Best for more advanced social media graphic design
If you’re intimidated by advanced tools like Photoshop, GIMP, or Sketch, but need more functionality than you can get from a tool like Canva or Desygner, Gravit Designer may be the tool for you.
Gravit Designer includes many of the classic graphic design functions of tools like Photoshop, Sketch, and GIMP—such as layers, drawing tools, grouping, shapes, text, effects, and more—with a much more simplified, easy-to-learn interface.
As a self-described intermediate (on my best days) designer, Gravit Designer suited me perfectly. All the controls and effects I needed were easily available, so I could really make the design my own without spending a lot of time starting from scratch with Photoshop and its overabundance of tools. A tutorials tab in Gravit Designer’s main view also gives you ready access to all the knowledge you need to get started.
While Gravit Designer is ideal for building your own designs from scratch, it does come with a small library of templates pre-sized for uses like blog posts and social media images. Start with one of these preset canvases, or define your own. The app also offers a small library of shapes, illustrations, and icons. While not comprehensive as the asset libraries included with some other apps, it’s nonetheless a handy addition to a tool that already does so much.
Want to backup your design files or make them easily shareable with your team once you’re done? Gravit Designer is built to sync with the Gravit Cloud, which is also free. Simply create a Gravit account, enable the sync, and you’ll be set!
Gravit Designer Price: Free
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