“Industry-standard” design tools like Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, etc.) can be pricey and requires a lot of familiarising. It can also be a challenge to utilise when you don’t have a lot of guidance from someone well-versed with these tools.Budgets can be a huge blocker but it doesn’t have to be. In this article, I’ve compiled some tools we tried and tested at Guardian Angel. We think these would be a great option for you if you have a limited budget and we think it would elevate your campaign and marketing game.

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1. Canva

Price: Canva Free (Free) | Canva Pro (£10.99pm) | For Teams (£12.99pm)

Canva is a platform that allows you to create social media graphics, presentations, posters, documents, and other visual content you might need. At Guardian Angel, it’s been helpful for simple video editing and creating video-based assets that would be perfect for our social media uses.

Pros:

• Canva is a practical option if you don’t have a designer in your team.

• It’s also a web app. So there’s no need to download the platform.

• There are tons of templates to choose from. You can build elevated and dynamic content for your campaigns, presentations, ads, and social media.

• You can make your designs from scratch.

• It’s very user-friendly — Easy to navigate and play around with.

• Great for also pre-planning content for all your social media.

• Canva also has a blog filled with tutorials and inspirations if you ever want to do something more bespoke.

• It’s convenient to hand over the assets within the team using Canva.

• (Canva Pro perk) Apply your brand to your assets with little effort.

• They also have a video editing tool that is easy to use.

• The whiteboard functionality would be an alternative for Miro, Invision Freehand and Figjam. It’s perfect if you need to do any planning for campaigns.

Cons

• As a designer, it can get frustrating since there’s only so much you can do with the templates (especially if you only have the Free plan). But I do think it’s specifically great to go hand-in-hand with other tools like Figma or Adobe Illustrator.

• Canva Free doesn’t allow more bespoke fonts or graphics and has limited Cloud Storage.

• Because there are so many templates to choose from, it can get overwhelming where to start.

Link here

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2. Figma

Price: Starter (Free) | Figma Professional ($12 per editor/monthly) | Figma Organisation ($45 per editor/month)

Figma is generally used by Product Designers to work on creating Digital Experiences. But because of its ease and versatility, we also use Figma to plan for our ads, and campaigns and create assets for our social media. If you were with us during our first Free Wills Campaign, you would have seen that we planned all our concepts through Figma.

Pros

• Unlike Adobe Creative Cloud, Figma requires no experience to learn the tool. But saying this, I do think Figma is great if you have at least one designer. I found that by having at least one person familiar with Figma, it’s been quite easy to get non-designers in my team to use Figma.

• Figma can be accessed via browser as well as downloadable on all devices. (You can also download Figjam on your iPad)

• I think it’s the closest alternative to Adobe Create Cloud (Illustrator, InDesign, Sketch) if ACC is out of your budget.

• You don’t need to have paid subscription to view files.

• It’s perfect for teams who work remotely since it's been designed to have collaboration in mind. You can edit projects in real-time, see who has changed what and embed comments and feedback directly in the designs.

• Even though it’s not quite made for this purpose, you can create illustrations on Figma.

• There is a HUGE community of Figma users sharing their work for others to use and plenty of Youtube tutorials if you ever need extra help or ideas.

Cons

• It’s primarily used for Digital assets so the colours for Print will not print accurately.

• It’s not meant to replace tools like Photoshop and Illustrator.

• Figma is more suited for static content (video content is mainly used for prototypes and using Figjam).

Link Here

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3. Keynote, Google Slides & Powerpoint

Price: Keynote (Free for Mac) | Powerpoint (£5.99pm for Microsoft 365) | Google Slides (Free but may need to buy Cloud Storage)

These tools are known as presentation tools that we have as a default on our computers. But did you know, you can push these tools beyond their intended use?

To fellow designers, I know — you probably won’t believe that I’m adding this to the list. But as a startup that works with several charities varying in size, we have to give credit where it's due.

Pros

• It’s easily accessible and you don’t need to be a designer to use them

• I’m not well-versed in complex animation so tools like After Effects take a lot of effort. So as a Mac user, I’ve found real value in creating simple animations through Keynote (like the one above. We’ve had to use for an ad campaign)

• Powerpoint is widely used by non-creatives. So if you were to share work, it’s easily transferable to other devices.

• Google Slides are great because you can access this via the browser.

• Presentation tools can cover your most basic design needs (i.e Posters,
  Simple Ad Campaigns, maybe even for Social Media, etc.)

Cons

• It’s not a replacement for the design tools.

• And it’s an option if you have no designer or budget.

• You have to know your way around Powerpoint, Google Slides and Keynote if you want to push beyond the intended use.

• It’s not a feasible solution in the long term.

Link here

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4. Pexels & Unsplash

Price: Free

Having your content means you’re achieving bespoke and authentic content for your brand. Hiring a photographer to do a shoot is ideal but costs a lot of money. From our experience, sometimes it’s just not a high enough priority for us to expense in our budget. So having access to high-quality royalty-free images is a great alternative.

Pros

• It’s widely used by designers when it comes to sourcing imagery.

• Photos that are posted by creators are of high quality so you’ll never have to worry about pixelation.

• Most creators share photos that come in a set from the same photoshoot. So it means that you have a compilation of imagery that is consistent and adds a little variety.

Cons

• Keep in mind these images are stock photos — they’re not going to always feel authentic to what you’re trying to capture.

• You will see other companies use the same images. So you do have the danger of looking generic.

Pexels | Unsplash

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Final Thoughts

The main running theme for these tools is that they are available, affordable and accessible. But it’s also about what works best for you and your team.

Maybe you’d like to try one tool or multiple tools at a time. You might end up realising that some of them aren’t applicable. It’s all about trial and error.

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This article is written for the Leg Up for Legacy Community and our Legacy Partners at Guardian Angel.

Eiriel De Roxas