9 Design Tools That Every Solopreneur Should Know About
As a solopreneur, you are essentially a one-man army. You manage sales, marketing, product development, accounts, and then some. Of course, graphic design is another thing that you have to manage yourself which covers your website, blog, social media accounts, digital ads, etc. However, you can reduce this burden to a huge extent by using the right tool for every task. The following are 9 of the best ones that you can use:
1. Design Wizard
Design Wizard is an image editing software that provides you all the tools you need to produce high-quality content on the fly. It comes packed with a massive library of over 1.2 million images and thousands of templates that you can use for your projects. You also get access to countless vector files, icons, etc. that are more than enough for any kind of design work.
What makes Design Wizard one of the best in the category is the variety of customization options it offers. You can personalize the templates to the smallest of details which are otherwise restricted.
2. Crello
A product of stock photography company Depositphotos, Crello is a simple graphic design tool that allows you to create or customize readymade layout images with new backgrounds, fonts, stickers, etc. These layouts or templates are categorized by size so that you can find the images that fit your requirements easily viz. blogs, flyers, posters, etc. The interface is simple and intuitive, and as a bonus feature, if you have your own fonts for personal or commercial use, you can upload them and use in your projects!
3. Vectr
Vectr is a vector graphics platform that offers you all the basic tools you need to generate vector graphics easily including shape tools, pen tool, pathfinders, gradients, fills and strokes, etc. Contrary to advanced vector design applications like Adobe Illustrator that can be quite challenging for a beginner or even an intermediate designer, Vectr keeps the workflow pretty simple and straightforward. That said, it still offers enough features to help you get the job done. These include image personalization features like fill type and color, opacity, clipart designs, import of SVGs, etc.
4. Figma
Figma is an online UX and UI design tool which you can use within your browser itself. Although it’s designed for team-based collaborative design projects, you can use it even if you are a solopreneur. It offers all kinds of design, code-generation, and prototyping tools that can make complicated design work a piece of cake. It can also come in handy if you need to appoint remote freelancers as it makes working with support teams really easy and simple.
5. Tailor Logo
Tailor Logo Maker is the ultimate answer to all your branding requirements. It’s an advanced AI-powered software that allows you to create high-quality and unique logos in a matter of minutes. You don’t even have to do the designing work for the most part as the “artificial intelligence” does it for you by using the information shared by you.
Compared to professional designers and even freelancers, Tailor Logo Maker is ridiculously cheap and accessible from any device (mobile and desktop) which are two big reasons why you must at least try it once.
6. Soapbox
Want to create professional sales videos in minutes? If your answer is “yes”, and it should be so as video marketing is the future of content marketing, then Wistia’s Soapbox is for you. It’s a Google Chrome extension that allows you to record, edit and share marketing videos on the go.
With Soapbox, recording and editing videos is plain easy and fun. You can record your computer screen while you demonstrate a service or product and use the webcam at the same time. You can add custom thumbnails and even change the videos after you have created them without worry as the platform updates them across every device automatically.
7. Tinkercad
If you want to create 3D models but are afraid that you don’t have the skills that traditional 3D modeling programs require, then you can check out Tinkercad. It is a free 3D modeling software that’s simple and easy to use. Although it’s designed for those who don’t have a lot of design experience, it does offer many useful features that help to create complex 3D models easily. For instance, it has more than 4 million predesigned assets and even offers lessons on the design process that can help you get started. If you want, you can import 2D or 3D vector shapes into the program to extrude into actual 3D models too.
8. Photovisi
Collage designs are cool but rather tedious to create…unless you are using a program like Photovisi!
Photovisi is a simple photo collage maker that allows you to create the perfect photo collages for your needs without breaking your back. You can just pick a base design from the variety of options available, add photos to it however you like and customize it by dragging the photos around until you are satisfied, and save! That’s it! You can also design social media banners for Facebook, Twitter, etc.
9. Awesome Screenshot
When you are creating a sales video, a presentation about your online platform, etc. then you need dozens or sometimes even hundreds of screenshots. Since doing this manually is inefficient and time-consuming, you can instead use a tool like Awesome Screenshot.
Awesome Screenshot is a simple Google Chrome browser plugin that lets you take screenshots of web pages, images, etc. in a few taps. It gives you three options: capture visible part of a page, capture selected area, and capture entire page which give you all the flexibility you need. It’s a nifty tool, to say the least, and getting started with it barely takes two minutes.
So, there you have it- some of the best design tools that a solopreneur will ever need. Have fun, and good luck!
Maria Papaefstathiou
VISUAL DESIGNER since 1996 and blogger since 2010. Living in Athens, Greece. She has been focusing her research on poster design and particularly on social poster design and portrait design. Her main poster project is a series of posters celebrating great personalities of traditional and popular culture in Greece and Jamaica. These include actors, singers, musicians, poets etc. This is an ongoing project. “I believe that design is a powerful tool that we designers can use to spark enthusiasm, change mindsets and bring positive actions to our world and our culture”. FOUNDER AND EDITOR OF GRAPHICART-NEWS.COM BLOG. She carefully curates high-quality designs, illustrations, and art, from all over the world that will teach and provoke other designers. Many consider her blog to be an exceptional educational tool. CO-FOUNDER OF THE INTERNATIONAL REGGAE POSTER CONTEST which was launched on December 2011, partnering, the creative activist Michael Thompson aka Freestylee. (www.reggaepostercontest.com)
