The world of graphic design is changing. Once upon a time, if a small business wanted a leaflet, a business card or a brochure printing, you had to go to a graphic design agency and pay through the nose for them to design your promotional material as well as print it. Even in the rare event that you wanted to design your own advertisements, you had to be a Photoshop or Adobe expert to achieve it, and few of us have the time to dedicate to that! 

 

Well fortunately, that’s no longer the case. Today, thanks to the ready availability of easy-to-use graphic design programmes, even the most technophobe of people can create stunning graphics that will grab your audience’s attention and get across your business’ message succinctly. And thanks to modern marketing’s insatiable need for fresh, regularly updated and original content, it’s never been more important that companies are able to create their own material quickly and cheaply.

 

But with so many platforms out there, it’s difficult for the un-initiated to know which are the best and which are the easiest to use. That’s why, to give you a helping hand and guide you through the multitude of options available to you, we at North West Digital have been doing a little trial and error to bring you our ultimate guide to the top 3 free graphic design resources for small businesses. Now don’t say we never give you anything!

 

1. Be Funky

 

Most laptops or smartphones now come with their own basic photo editing software built-in but it’s often just that – basic – and frequently incapable of interacting with other platforms to allow you to do anything more complex than adding a bit of a filter. That’s where Be Funky comes in; this fab little website is brilliant for a multitude of things, whether you just want to touch up a photograph or create an entire graphic from scratch.

 

With their easy-to-use photo editor, you can easily crop, touch up or add effects to your photos to create the perfect images that are ready to be shared across your social media or on your website. You could even use their own stock photos if you don’t have your own, although they’re not the best quality and mostly look a little too cheesy.

 

 

If you wanted to do more, then their simple tools allow you to create photo collages that are perfect for sharing news of a recent event, such as a trade show, or you latest arrival of new stock. With one correctly sized social media graphic, you can share 4, 8 or even 12 individual images and thus tell your customers your latest news in one, easy-to-digest graphic. Moreover, you can also create simplistic social media graphics with a photo and some text overlaid, completely free and exactly how you want it. Easy peasy.

 

2. Canva

 

Canva is brilliant; it’s one of those tools we use frequently here in the NW Digital office – practically every day in fact. For starters, it’s completely free as long as you use your own images and only $1 (about 80p) if you want to use one of their stock images.

 

Secondly, whereas Be Funky is an amazing tool for photo editing and a mediocre one for creating graphics, Canva is an awesome tool for creating graphics of all kinds. It has readymade templates for all the main social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, even Etsy!) so you don’t need to worry about what size your graphic should be; just select the appropriate template and off you go. Moreover, the program itself is so simple that even a complete computer novice could use it, and Canva’s tutorials cleverly walk you through the whole process as you go along too, making it an absolute doddle to create professional looking graphics.

 

 

The really great thing about Canva though is the fact that it’s not just for designing online graphics; the tool is also fabulous for creating offline marketing materials too. With ready set up templates for A5 leaflets, A4 posters, or even bigger (or custom) sizes, it’s never been easier to create your own marketing and promotional materials without the need to employ a costly graphic designer. What’s more, Canva lets you download your designs with print quality resolution and even bleed space, all for free.

 

3. Unsplash

 

One of the most consistent costs you’ll run up against when you’re trying to create your own marketing materials is that of stock photography; whether for your social media posts, your email newsletters or your print advertising, every business needs a good supply of fresh and relevant high quality images. Unfortunately, finding a plentiful supply of these at an affordable price can sometimes be tricky.

 

We can all accept that it’s a fair enough expense to pay for someone’s intellectual property – after all, we wouldn’t expect to give away our own work for free – but, even though each stock photo may only be a few pence a time, when you need lots of different images frequently the cost can quickly add up. One solution is to commission your own photographs but, for most small businesses, that’s just not a practical or an economical option, hence the reason that Unsplash is so brilliant.

 

 

Unsplash is a great little website that allows you to search for and find free to use, high resolution stock photos that are already in the public domain, hence won’t cost you a penny and can be used almost anywhere for anything. In addition to being able to search for the photos by subject or theme, Unsplash also organises their photos in collections, so it’s easy to find free photos of things you want or get inspiration for a marketing campaign if you’re stuck for ideas. Moreover, if you sign up to their weekly email newsletter, you’ll get ten free curated photos sent straight to your inbox each week, so that you can start to build up your own database of usable stock photos too, ready on hand for whenever you need them.

 

 

In a similar vein is the marvellous Death To The Stock Photo project, which is aiming to do exactly what it says on the tin. If you sign up to their monthly newsletter on the website, DTS (as they’re known) will email you approx. twelve beautifully shot and completely free photographs each month, for you to use however you wish. Each month the photos are based on a different theme, so they may not be directly relevant to you every time, although they are intentionally left quite generic to be as multipurpose as possible. Hence, with a bit of creative thinking, you can usually find a way of utilising these artistic images and, if not, you can add them to your personal store of stock photos, ready to be used whenever you need to create a quick graphic.

 

Get Creating

 

So there you have it; with these free, easy-to-use tools, even the most unartistic amongst you can start to create imaginative and unique marketing materials for your business, thus saving yourself a small fortune in graphic design fees. Of course, to begin with, you’re not going to churn out masterpieces, as there is actually more to good graphic design that just arranging some words over a photograph, but with time and a bit of trial and error you’ll begin to create graphics that are more than adequate for the smaller, in house marketing campaigns.

 

Copy Shop Printing 

 

And don’t forget, once you’ve created your designs, then the best place to get them printed out is at the North West Digital Copy Shop. Based at our head office in Meadow Mill Industrial Estate at Stockport, the NWD Copy Shop is your one-stop-shop for all your printing needs, whatever they may be. Whether you need a raft of brochures printing out for your latest trade show or want several thousand A5 leaflets printing for a leaflet drop, just bring along your readymade designs and we’ll print them out for you, just how you want, whilst you wait.

 

If you’d like to know more, you find out about the NWD Copy Shop on the website or in this previous blog post, or why not just get in touch with us to find out how we can help?

 

You can email us at info@, phone us on 0161 477 8950 or complete the contact form on the website and we’ll get back to you ASAP.