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25 Graphic Design Tools and Resources that will Take your Brand from Blah to Beautiful

I’m always on the hunt for different resources and tools to help me step up my visual design game.

Thanks to the internet, there are are a lot of affordable graphic design tools available for DIYers like muah that can bring life to anyone’s branding.  

The majority of the tools that I am sharing in this post are resources that I use for my own graphic design projects as well as client projects that I work on.

Let’s take a look at the list of 25 graphic design tools that transform your brand.  Oh and please note:  I have grouped these tools into categories to make them easier to scan through.

Stock Image Websites

 

#1:  Kaboompics (Free)

Kaboompics is the main site that I use to get stock photos from to use in my blog post graphics and etc.  The images are super gorgeous and FREE for anyone to use. They have recently updated this site to make it easier to scan and find what you are looking for their too.

 

#2.  Pixabay (Free)

Pixabay is probably one of the most popular sites that a lot of folks are using to get free stock images from.  This site is the first one that I found out about when I started creating branded graphics for my blog posts.  To date, Pixabay boasts more than 980,000 free images, vectors and graphics that you can download and use for your graphic design projects.

 

#3.  Pexels (Free)

I first heard about Pexels from Tiffany at BeautifulDawnDesigns.net and wowwww what I can I say.  The images on this site are drop dead gorgeous.  The site is easy to navigate and once you get there you will see images of the most recent photos for the past 14 days.

 

#4:  Stocksnap.io (Free)

Stocksnap.io has a large collection of high resolution and beautttiful stock photos.  The great thing about this site is that there are new photos added weekly to keep things fresh…so that you can always look forward to accessing updated images.

 

#5.  Unsplash (Free)

Unsplash is another excellent resource for getting free stock photos.  What I love about this site (and the other ones) listed in this section is that the majority of the images feature REAL people and they don’t necessarily look like plain jane stock photos ya know.  

As with the other sites mentioned in this section, the sites interface is easy to use so that you can find specific types of graphics to use for branding purposes.

Font Sites

 

#1.  Creative Market Font Packs (Premium)

Ohhh gahhhh, how I love Creative Market! I spend too much friggin money on this site getting font packs from them.  But yes… when I am working on client projects and etc, I usually head over to Creative Market to find premium font packs to purchase.  And if you’re not familiar with font packs, they are pretty much a pack of fonts that you can pay one price for and get access to multiple fonts.

 

#2:  Dafont.com (Free)

Dafont has a large selection of free, premium and personal fonts for graphic design projects.  The site is a little clunky in my opinion from a search perspective… nevertheless, you can still find an assortment of fonts to use for branding.

 

#3. Fontsquirrel.com (Free)

Fontsquirrel is prolly one of my favorite free sites for getting fonts.  The site does all of the hard work for you by “hand selecting” fonts and adding them to their site so that you can use them. For my blog’s redesign, I’m using the Focus Blog theme from Thrive Themes and used Fontsquirrel’s webfont generator to add certain fonts to my blog.  This feature is super handy!

 

#4:  1001Fonts.com (Free)

1001fonts.com has around 8,900 free fonts that you can use for branding and visual design projects.  I have to say that I love the way that this site is organized.  There is a nice little menu on the site that lets you click to see the different types of fonts in they have available.  

 

#5:  Fontspace (Free)

Fontspace is a nice site that has around 1,000 or so fonts to use for branding and visual design purposes.  Most of the fonts are free for personal use and work well for giving your brand an attractive appearance.

Choosing Color Palettes

 

#1:  Colorpalettes.net (Free)

Colorpalettes.net is my personal favorite resource for choosing color palettes for different projects that I work on.  Thanks to my client Delandria for putting me on to this tool.  I love using it because you can see how colors pair together and what they look like when they are used in photos.  #Itsuperdope

 

#2:  Color-hex.com (Free)

Woowoeeee! I am sooo in love with this tool. Color-hex.com has come through for a sista when I first started searching for tools that would help me choose color palettes. It takes all of the guesswork out of pairing colors together so I would recommend giving it a look for your branding projects.

 

 #3. Adobe Color CC (Free)

Adobe Color CC is a nifty little tool that shows you different color combinations that you can use for branding. The site brings up a ton of color palettes that you can scan through to find the perfect color combo for your brand.

 

#4. Coolors (Free)

Coolors.co is a nifty little color picking tool that let’s you find a color palette and then it lets you export your color palette via an image, pdf or via a link.  

 

#5.  Canva’s Color Palette Generator (Free)

You already know that I am a hugeee Canva fan. I really believe one day that I’m going to be a brand ambassador for them. (Hollaaa at me Canva :-).  But yes… they just have some super dope graphic design goodies like their Color Palette Generator.  With this tool you can upload an image,then the color palette generator will give you color codes from the images.

Design Tools

 

#1.  Canva (Free or Premium)

You already know that Canva is numero uno for me in the world of branding and visual design.  In fact, I’ve covered a post that has more than 101 ways to use Canva for graphic design to get people’s creative juices going.  

But yea…Canva for Work is my favorite tool for creating branded materials ranging from letterhead to branded blog graphics – mainly because they have a ton of pre-made templates available to use for design projects.
 

#2.  PicMonkey (Free or Premium)

Picmonkey is an excellent graphic design tool for designing branded images and graphics for your brand.  Like Canva, PicMonkey has templates available that you can use to design images.

 

#3.   Pixlr.com

Pixlr is a free online editing tool that I’ve used in the past for different branding projects. Sooo as an example, when I launched my blog for the first time, I used Pixlr to design my brand’s logo and some of the other marketing materials as well.  Pixlr is a great photoshop alternative and is one that I highly recommend using.

 

#4. Photopea.com

Photopeaaa isssss #BAEEEE for me my friend. I’m not kidding.  It’s the main resource that I cover in my Mockup Mastery workshop that shows you how to mockup digital products and sell them online andddd pretty much any PSD files that I have to edit too.  

I know that Photoshop is the big dog out there in the design world, but goodness it makes my eyes cross. So I use this tool to edit PSD files and such.
 

#5. Adobe Photoshop

Yea, so even though I don’t use Photoshop, it still reigns supreme in the design world.  There is a lottt that you can do with the tool but the learning curve is very steep!

Font Pairing Tools and Resources

 

#1.  Typegenius.com

Struggling with font pairing? Then this is THE resource that you need to use.  Typegenius pretty much an excellent tool that takes the hassle out of putting fonts together and is a tool that I use pretty often for projects.

 

#2. Fontpair.co

Fontpair.co helps people pair Google Fonts together! Yayyyy for that right? Font pair pretty much has a menu that you can access to find different font combinations for your branding.  It’s a straightforward process and tool to use.

 

#3. Canva’s Ultimate Guide to Font Pairing

I had to throw this resource in here because even though it is a blog post, it’s still d@mn good one to refer to.  In this post Canva breaks down font pairing to the T…making it a heck of a post to refer back to as you embark on your font pairing journey.

 

#4. Type.io

Type.io is a site that puts together screenshots of font pairs from around the web.  I must say, this is a great resource for getting some design inspiration together – font wise for branding purposes.

What I love about this website is that they have a search section that lets you search for specific font pairings to see how other sites are using them in action.
 

#5. FontJoy

My my my…what can I say about this font pairing resource.  It was really love at first sight to be honest with ya.  As the tagline says, FontJoy simplifies font pairing with its easy to use interface.  

The tool gives you a screenshot of 3 different fonts that you can use for your branding.  All you have to do is hit the “generate” button to and it will show you different font combinations.

And there you have it! 25 awesome graphic design tools and resources to help take your brand from from invisible to influential.

Over to you good peeps! Are you currently using any of these resources right now? If so and in what capacity? I would love to know. Drop me a line below to share….