Useful Tools and Resources For Graphic Designer
![Avatar for Miika](https://cdn.rcimg.net/Miika/avatar-8a8b1cbe6b07734715a9171f51e09d41.jpg?width=150)
I see a lot of people confused about earning online. I do not see any difference between earning offline or earning online. Just like you need qualifications, skills, and experience to apply for real-world jobs, you also need qualifications, skills, and experience to work online. If you want to work as a graphic designer in an ad agency, you need graphic designing skills, likewise, if you want to work as a graphic designer on Fiverr, Upwork, 99Design, you need graphic designing skills. There is no need to spend money to work online. Do you need money to apply for a real-life job? No, the same is the case with online jobs. Unless you want to start a blog, or start an online business, you do not need money to make money online. Everything can be done for free and earned money just like in the real world. If you can't earn, learn new skills.
The Beauty of working online is you can build multiple income sources by using multiple earning platforms. Let's say you are a graphic designer, you offer graphic designing services on Fiverr, since you are a designer, you can also create NFT art, thus, you start selling NFT through OpenSea, and as a graphic designer, you create digital products and sell through Etsy, or create print-on-demand products and sell through Amazon or redbubble.
Stencil: A Graphic Designing Tool for Marketers
Marketers need a lot of marketing materials; these materials need to be created in graphic designing tools. It is not possible to hire a graphic designer everything marketers need marketing materials. Therefore, as a marketer, you need to use easy to use graphic designing tool.
Stencil is a graphic designing tool developed by domain registrar and hosting company Namecheap.
Stencil offer over 5 million royalty free photos
Over 1350 premium templates
Over 3 million premium icons
Stencil can be used by bloggers for creating graphics for their content, marketers to create marketing materials, and businesses to creating graphics for business branding.
Stencil comes with three different membership plans. The free version allows you save upto 10 images, upload 50 images, and create 10 collections. The pro version is $9 per month and the unlimited version cost $25 per month. With pro version you get access to 3 million photos and 3 million icon and graphics, and 1350 templates.
Craiyon: an AI to Create Photorealistic Images and ART
If you want graphic designs but you are not a designer or if you cannot pay for your graphic designs, you can use a program called Craiyon (craiyon.com)
Craiyon is an AI tool to create photorealistic images and art. Formerly it was called DALL-E Mini.
Craiyon uses Artificial Intelligence to generate realistic images and art from the description provided in human language. For example, if you give the instruction to the program to draw a picture of dinosaur wearing T-shirt, the program will generate the image. You cana gibe instruction like “photorealistic” “illustration” “high definition” etc. to generate the kind of image and graphics you want.
The program is completely free. However, you cannot download the images you generated on Craiyon, you can only use the inbuilt screenshot option to take the screenshot of the graphics and images you generated.
It takes under 3 minutes to generate art, images, illustrations and graphics. While giving instruction, more specific you are better is the design.
What is the Best Graphic Designing Tool
Most of the design tools are paid, one way or other you will end up paying for these services because once you start using them you will find that the free version will not be very useful to you, and in order to fulfill your design need you will hve to buy the premium version. Paying $9-$10 per month will not be difficult if you are already selling your graphic designing services or making money by using your graphics, but for newbies that will be very expensive. Therefore, I suggest you try GIMP. It is an open-source graphic designing tool. It ist just like photoshop (with similar tools, the same commands, and the same result), but you can do it for free. The best thing is you download and install it on your computer and do not need to work online. You can even save your work on progress. Canva, Adobe Spark, Stencil, Pixlr, Visme are no doubt good but GIMP is better.
If you need a graphic designing tool but cannot spend money to buy the tool, you can use software like GIMP, it is often called free photoshop (it is free and offers photoshop quality). You can do most of your design work on Canva but you will have to pay for premium service.
Graphic Designing Trends for Digital Marketer
In order to firmly rooted in your career and in order to stay ahead with other marketers, you as a digital marketer should be best in your field. You can be the best only when you are abreast with the market trends and create designs that the market loves. As a digital marketer, you need to create best of the best marketing materials. Here are some of the latest trends.
Geometric Abstract: Geometric Abstract is a design where you use geometric lines and figures to create the design.
Minimalist: Minimalist is a simple drawing/illustration.
3D: 3D design is a design where graphic designers create three dimensional objects
Line art: Line art is a simple illustration where the artists use simple lines to draw object. The drawing does not use shadows or shades.
As a marketer, you use these designs in the logo, website header, social media covers, posters, infographics, etc. Using the latest design trends in your marketing materials helps in conversion.
Making Money as a Graphic Designer
If you are very good at graphic designing, you can start working as a graphic artist. If you have skills, you can easily monetize your skills to make money. However, you need to become aware that money does not come easily.
Even though there are a lot if freelancing markets where you can make money as a graphics designer, it is really difficult to land jibs on freelancing platforms. If you are good with graphic designing you can also sell your designs through digital markets such as creative fabrica or creative market. Another method is to use your design on various household products and sell these designs as a print on products through the markets like redouble, amazon or zazzle. You can also try creating and selling digital art.
You can also make money by doing graphic designing for local companies, however, the main question is how do you get clients. "Marketing your services" can be the easiest answer, however, in most cases, these local businesses don't even realize they are using bad designs for their company's branding. Therefore, even if they see your ads, they will probably never approach you. The easiest way to get local clients is by sending your proposal with a better design. You can offer what kind of services you can do for them, with examples, and how your services can help them with their businesses.
![Avatar for Miika](https://cdn.rcimg.net/Miika/avatar-8a8b1cbe6b07734715a9171f51e09d41.jpg?width=150)
Great article! Tnks