Free apps to create material for your online promotion
Updated: Mar 3
In web communication, where information flows fast, graphic information or infographics are the best way to explain a topic, make a concept or product interesting in a clear, straightforward, eye-catching way that holds the attention of your audience. They loosen up environments with much technical jargon, increase retention on a page, and complex information quickly and effectively. Moreover, when they end up in compatible news channels, their circulation visibly increases due to their immediate impact on the public.
And now we present to you several (free) online tools with which you can create infographics on your own.
CANVA
Canva offers for free 250,000+ templates and 5GB cloud storage; while for 11.99 euros per month, or 109 euros per year 5 different accounts can use CanvaPro which offers 100GB storage, millions of assets, and more.
Usually with free Canva there are so many templates that you can safely avoid this opportunity. In addition, the programme allows you to share your work; other users you send it to can therefore make changes.
It also offers many interesting templates for Instagram posts and stories. Finally, when editing, Canva makes it easy to add logos and other elements from your personal resources. There are various download formats.
In short, Canva is the kind of programme that can satisfy your tastes and lacks nothing!
PIKTOCHART
It is a cloud-based presentation management tool that assists companies in creating infographics, template management and collaboration. Piktochart requires free registration to use, yet it offers many features worthy of paid design programmes.
You can edit icons, lines, photos, backgrounds and more. In addition, Piktochart also provides various templates to give free rein to your creativity. Many infographics can be created in block, but the interesting thing is that you can either export them as one long graphic or individually.
The Pro version unlocks 600 more templates, different download formats and automatically removes the watermark. The monthly subscription costs 20 euros, whereas with the annual subscription the cost would be only 12 euros.
ADOBE CREATIVE CLOUD
Adobe, the biggest name in graphic design, has developed an app designed for creating graphics for social media and the web: Adobe Creative Cloud Express, and it’is free. If we compare it to Canva, it has less choice, but still offers several thousand templates that can be easily edited.
The Quick Actions section offers some actions (Resize Image, Crop Video or Remove Background) enhanced by Adobe's Photoshop and Premiere applications operating in the cloud, apparently. It is a very intuitive way to access what can be quite advanced tools in other applications.
As an editor it is fast and easy to use for 90 per cent of your work, but with the most powerful functions available for when you want them.
With the paid version, it is possible to create libraries (in the Libraries tab of the sidebar) available in all Adobe applications and insert photos from Lightroom or brand elements from Illustrator. Images and graphics from Adobe Stock are also available throughout the application. It costs about 10 euros per month and also offers 100GB of cloud storage space.
EASEL.LY
This application really allows for a great variety of choice, there are plenty of templates, but you can also create your own. Shapes, connections, colours and graphics are up to you. It is also very easy to integrate your designs with diagrams.
There is only one major downside: the product will be downloaded in poor quality JPEGs. Which may be fine on some socials and some content.
Only with the premium version can you opt for higher quality formats. Fortunately, it is one of the cheaper versions, just over 50 euros per year. This pro version includes more icons, stock photos, templates, and design options.
DESYGNER
This application provides hundreds of templates, but also provides additional features like a free-drawing pen tool and the ability to import from PDF, PSD, and SVG files give you a lot more creative freedom.
In the Assets of the free version you can upload and apply your own logo, any type of image and text from your assets, in any design. But you can also create your own colour palettes - with infinite choices for each shade - upload images, create custom text snippets, and more.
Desygner allows you to customise your work scheme so that for each design you can apply as many colour settings, graphics etc. as you like. A great time saver! The paid version is about 10 euros per month and allows more options.
We hope we have given you as many options as possible, now it is up to you to create and enjoy!
Diletta
Sources:
zapier.com/blog/graphic-design-tools-for-social-media-images/