No designer can push creative boundaries without having the right set of graphic design tools. In fact, the graphic tools work as your right hand. Graphic designers often enter the industry expecting only their education and experience to shed a light on what a career on graphic design is like. However, the industry is constantly evolving offering more creative and lucrative opportunities. A designer’s career path may look conventional, but they might end up offering something undreamed of.
The creative liberties are endless and unlike conventional careers, your education should teach you to break the roles and notions which promise comfort. Soon you could be juggling between architecture, psychology and typefaces.
In order to stay relevant and agile to whatever the situation, you’ll find yourself working with a range of graphic design tools. So to help you, we’ve put together the list of 20 best tools for graphic designers.
List of Best Graphic Design Tools Recommended by Top Digital Artists
1. Adobe Photoshop
It is one of the best tools for graphic designers and was launched in 1988. This software by Adobe has become a staple in a designer’s life. Imagine the program which can take your artistic style out into the world with full confidence. This program complements your artistic style and is an extremely powerful program which can be used to create prints and patterns for the digital world. In the case of graphic design tools, it offers countless tools and settings opening new opportunities for designers to express themselves. Photoshop allows you to build new skills, create digital artwork, learn step by step instruction, bring your ideas to life and speed up the design process.
2. ProofHub
It can be touted as the perfect tool for graphic designers. As designing teams are often overloaded with creative work which includes discussions about designs, design framework and making changes required to be handled by others, the biggest problems come when it comes to proofing. You’ll often be required to check and address changes at multiple levels, with Proofhub you will be able to manage such tasks hassle-free.
Proofhub is an online tool to help design teams manage all the tasks. The client can explain the changes required to be made and it eliminates the need for sending emails back and forth, thereby reducing the time of the process. With Proofhub, you can make changes, add comments and highlight design flaws instantly.
3. Adobe Illustrator
Create logos, sketches and icons with Adobe Illustrator. It offers 2D and 3D manipulation of graphics to increase the workflow. It includes both workability for professional and digital artists to create different digital products. Adobe keeps coming out with different features such as fonts and tools for easier editing and styling of texts to enhance the modern user experience making it friendly to be used by graphic and web designers.
4. Bannersnack
The next tool on the list is Bannersnack. At times when you need a straightforward and fast graphic design tool, there is Bannersnack. It offers an easy to use drag and drop editor which doesn’t require coding or drawing skills. Bannersnack has transitioned into a cloud-based graphic design platform using which you can create GIFs, HTML5 and AMP HTML ads as well as visuals.
In case you’re looking to create animated or static visuals for a campaign, Bannersnack is the way to go. It is loaded with features such as professional templates, hand-crafted illustrations, design presents which are available at no resale price offering the capability to manage different-sized visuals simultaneously.
5. Filestage
It is an online review and approval tool providing graphic designers with complete control over the content review process. Filestage makes it simple for graphic designers to collaborate with various stakeholders and includes various file types such as PDFs, websites, images and more. The tool focuses on the ease of use which means that your shareholders can leave their feedback easily. With an integrated to-do list and feedback, you won’t miss any single comment. It also shows the project’s status at a glance in case you want to see which design has been approved and which is still in review.
6. PicsArt
PicArt Photo Editor is the perfect tool for graphic designers. With endless editing tools, you can create professional content even if you don’t have design experience. PicsArt offers an impressive video editor which can be used to add effects and music to a video. The app also offers a desktop video editor which boasts of one of the largest communities in the world.
The best part of this tool is that unlike professional editors, it offers an easy to use and intuitive tool. There is an array of tools available for businesses to make editing more efficient. From AI-powered editing to creating designs from scratch, the design tool offers the necessary tool to help you succeed in content creation and marketing efforts. It goes above and beyond the effects with designs and magic effects which completely transform an image. New effects and tools are added frequently, so there’s always room for more creativity. With new effects and tools, your content is likely to stand out.
7. DesignBold
As a design tool, DesignBold is one of the best tools for a web and graphic designer. It is user friendly and helps you create stunning designs with the drag and drop functionality. It supports a massive library of over 12,000 customizable layouts. DesignBold is a great choice in order to build website elements such as logo, header any other visuals for your website. It is quick, cost-effective and suitable for any type of designers whether amateur and professional.
8. Logaster
It is known to be the perfect logo designer tool. In case you are looking to create a logo for a small project, but do not want to spend a lot of time creating it, you can route for Logaster. The tool will help you create designs in a matter of minutes. Besides this, you can create business cards as well as social media images with a logo. The logos can be downloaded and edited or be used simply for inspiration.
9. Fotor
Online edit, design posters and invitation with Fotor. What makes Fotor one of the best tools is that it offers basic photo editing as a design tool. Photo editing is possible with one-tap in order to enhance the image and make business promotion posters and cards. Simply input the image or use a stock image to get started. A number of features for designers include design templates, design stickers, cloud saving and texts & fonts.
10. Sketch 3
Sketch media is one of the best graphic design tools. It offers different sets of nested symbols in order to help you create the best of work. You can add different symbols to create a reusable and flexible design. There are a number of features of Sketch 3 which include artboards, colour picker, pixel perfection, text and shared styles.
11. Marvel
It is the perfect prototyping tool for designers. Prototyping is an important part of the web design workflow and with this tool, you can create anything from scratch. Marvel has a simplified interface and is fast & easy to learn. The tools work well for beginners as well as advanced designers.
12. Pixelmator
It is the perfect Image editor for designers. The Pixelmator Pro is a tool for designers which is packed with innovations and features an elegant single-window interface. It is the perfect tool to build upon multiple projects and is intuitive tools in order to move, resize and arrange layers. The tool is crafted with a unique collection of handcrafted brushes in order to help you bring out the painter. With the brushes having dual texture, you can give a dynamic blend to your art.
13. Sublime text
This text editor designer tool is likely to make you fall in love with. It offers a minimalist coding editor and lets you focus completely on the coding part. In case you are working on websites, it will give you the power to provide powerful shortcuts and is equipped with tools to leap between documents, filter files and make edits quickly.
14. Github
Working with code can be hard and writing without Git is unthinkable. Designers can use the Github tool as well. It offers a sketch plugin allowing the designers to directly use Git. It will change the way you code and make your design enjoyable. It is a platform which hosts code on a remote Git server with a web interface and allows you to collaborate with other project members.
15. Webflow
Webflow is known as the responsive web designer tool. It is one of the best tools for web and graphic design professionals. It allows you to create sites within a short period. You can design and develop workflow within the minimal effort. You don’t need to know how to code with this tool, you can just export and edit the HTML and CSS tags as per your needs.
16. Iconfinder
Visual language is the new trend and Iconfinder is one of the best places for designers in order to gain inspiration. Iconfinder hosts one of the world’s largest collections of icons. You can get Access to over 2 million icons available in SVG and PNG formats. It is probably one of the easiest ways to get icons which fit the commercial purpose.
17. Coolors
You easily generate colours with this tool. As colour selection can take time and tweaking, this tool is helpful for designers. It is a superfast colour scheme which creates, saves and shares colour palette in seconds. Choose your favourite color and get your required palette generated. Save it to your account or export it in any format such as SVG, PNG and PDF. It is available on iOS, Chrome extension and as an Adobe Add-on.
18. Palleton
It is the perfect color scheme designer tool. Palleton brings to life any design and a designer knows about the importance of good colours. It can be used to get a colour combination which works well. The tools offer amazing combinations of colours, choose your colours on a wheel and select from the tried and tested colour combinations such as Tetrad, Freestyle, Adjacent colours and Monochromatic.
19. Diigo
Diigo is a great tool for graphic as well as web designers. It helps them easily highlight any part of the web page as well as add sticky notes to it. What differentiates it from others is that it can be used as a bookmarking tool to help you share pages.
With outliner available Diigo you can easily structure your research and offer customization.
20. Pixlr
It is a popular photo editing tool which is easy to operate. Pixlr is one of the most amazing tools which can be used by web and graphic design people. It also offers some quick editing options from resizing files to cropping and reshaping you can do everything using this tool. As a web designer, you can do all that with ease using Pixlr.
Features on Pixlr include:
- Smarter tools powered with AI
- Faster editing time with toggle on-off
- Unique aesthetic photo effects
- Easier content creation with graphic elements, stocked library of stickers, borders and icons
- Seamless editing on the go
- Powerful navigation
- Advanced editing features
- Unlimited stock content with over a 10 million creatives
- Simple and easier to learn
- Edit photos right in the browser
Conclusion
With a bunch of tools at your disposal, you’ll be able to perfectly express yourself on the digital canvas. There are a couple of tools mentioned in the list, which you can learn from Youtube and get started to complete your creative goals. Some of the popular tools which can help you benefit include Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.
As a range of tools are available for use and get updated frequently, it is important to stay updated. Let us know your favourite tool which is relevant for designing and editing graphics.