Five Design Solutions Every Entrepreneur Can Leverage for Free
Whether you are an entrepreneur or creative looking to enter the business world you need to make sure your branding is on point. Most entrepreneurs are working with budget constraints when they first start out and often can’t afford to hire an agency or graphic designer. If you’re in that position don’t worry, your marketing materials don’t have to suffer in terms of design quality. In recent years there has been a rise of wonderful do-it-yourself design tools that level the playing field. In this post we’ll look at five free design tools every entrepreneur should utilize.
When it comes to promoting your business or cause there’s no way around social media. If properly leveraged this can be one of your most effective marketing channels. In order to stand out you need to publish eye-catching designs and attention-grabbing content. Pablo lets you design beautiful social media posts for free. To start your project choose what you want to design, whether it’s a Facebook cover, Instagram post or YouTube channel art. All of their templates can be fully customized with their easy to use editor. When you’re done you can download or publish across your preferred social media channels right away.
To contrast your social media campaign it’s helpful to have a set of beautifully designed business cards handy. Not all networking is done online. Whether you are attending a tradeshow or meeting clientele at coffee shops it’s a nice touch to drop off a business card. Business Cards is a free design application that allows you to create printable cards quickly. Choose your favourite templates, add your contact details and incorporate your logo and brand colors. Once you are done you can download in high-resolution format and print at home or send it off to your print shop down the street.
Quality design is all about the details. One way to quickly elevate your design is through the use of carefully chosen fonts. If you are settling for the generic fonts available to you in your word processing or presentation software you’ll look like all the other content pieces presented by competitors. Da Font offers a large database of fonts that you can browse by style, category, etc. Once you find a font download it in TTF format and install it on your local machine for instant use.
Another way to enhance your design is through the use of icons. Not only will they add a visually pleasing touch but help you highlight certain sections of your content that are important. The trick is not to use cheap looking clipart. Try a free site like Free Pik to find icons that suit your brand and messaging. They offer over 80,000 icons that you can download in EPS, SVG and PNG format.
If you are in need of posters, flyers, ads, presentations and more Crello might be worth a visit. This free web based graphic design editor is powered by a database of professionally designed templates. To get started simply select which graphic design item you need to design and then select a template. As you customize you design make sure to incorporate your logo and brand colors. Save to edit at a later time or download instantly and start using across web and print.