Want to create your own images to promote your business?
- Barbara Kotua
Did you know that you don’t have to be a graphic designer to create great images for your social media, articles and email marketing campaigns?
Although we have wonderful and extremely talented graphic designers working for us, sometimes little things like designing quotes, social media images, images for newsletters and images for proposals or PowerPoint presentations can be whipped up easily using this online design tool. Quite frankly I’m no designer, so most of the time to get the right look and design for our business or a client it is far better and sensible to send these to the professional – not only will they do a fantastic job but they will create something for you in half the time. That’s what they are trained for!
However, back to the online editing tools for those simple jobs…there are a number of options for online editing available now that are just so simple to use.
Take for example www.canva.com, what a gem this is! Canva is known as “The easiest to use design program in the world” and we would agree. Canva is an online tool built by designers who had non-designers in mind. When you open your account, which is FREE, Canva offers a quick tutorial and five Starter Challenges to help you on your way. There are other design tutorials on the home page.
You can create a template, change the background, text or other elements as needed. And because Canva saves your work in layers, you can go back and make changes hours, days or months later. Cool don’t you think?
There’s loads of flexibility with Canva, they offer free and paid options for backgrounds, icons and pictures—or you can upload your own images. The paid options on Canva are only $1, however they’re only available for 24 hours and for one project only. There’s a huge selection to choose from and using them can be a great time-saver and can really make a difference.
To find an image, click in the search box and choose the type of image you’re looking for. Want to change the colour of something? For text, click on the text and then click the colour circles to change colours easily. Canva doesn’t have a colour chooser (a dropper to select colours already in your image), but they do have a colour wheel under the + sign. It does save your recent colour, which is great when you are using certain colours in a project.
Of course, like anything new (if you haven’t used it before), it does take a little bit of getting used to.
How to use Photo Filters to Enhance Your Images
There are other handy online tools… here are just a few we use:
PicMonkey - www.picmonkey.com
PicMonkey is a fun, user-friendly online tool, great for resizing, cropping images and more… plus it has a huge collection of fonts. This tool is free, but if you get a paid account you can get the ad-free version that includes premium fonts and layouts. Create collages and more.
www.ipiccy.com (similar to PicMonkey)
www.textgram.me (for android, iOS, PC and web users)
www.wordswag.co (for iOS users)
Here are some great articles to inspire and inform!
Want to know all about Canva and its capabilities? Check out their informative blog page.
4 Tips to Create the Perfect Cover Photo on Any Social Network
How to Combine Text and Visual Content for Better Social Engagement
15 Resources to Create Images for Social Media
About Barbara Kotua
Barbara Kotua has a 30 year history in Media, Marketing, Digital Marketing, Administration and Customer Service learning all the tricks of the trade along the way. Spending over 25 years in print media and marketing, Barbara has marketing, sales, sponsorship and events experience under her belt. She has an uncanny knack of knowing what will work for you and your business. Barbara is the person to call to manage your marketing project.