7 Affordable Tools Every Beginner Designer Should Start With
We are feeling very excited to start another blog about design because because many beginners feel that they will never be able to learn design if they do not invest money in it.
Have you ever been fascinated by gleaming portfolios of professional designers and wondered, “How did they design it so well?”.
Every design begins with a very small step, and the simplest one is the selection of the best design tools. Let us tell you the good news that it does not require years of experience or costly softwares to do so. Today, we will explore how you can be a great designer with minimal experience and almost free design tools and softwares.
There are unlimited free design softwares and platforms that are helpful and accessible to everyone who wants to step into the design field. They can help to do as simple projects as logo designs and also professional and personal company projects. You just need to select the required tools to learn easily and rapidly, and build a skill with confidence.
At Emoris, we will guide you step by step to achieve your design goal through free design tools and softwares. In this article, we will be exploring 7 affordable tools every beginner should start with. Creativity is not always behind the paywall and we believe that cost should not be the reason for you to not start.
Why Affordable Tools Matter?
It is a common perception that designing requires a lot of money because professional design softwares are very costly. This discourages the creativity of beginners, and they eventually drop the plan to become a good designer.
Do you know this is not true nowadays because great design is not always labelled with software. It is about your passion, consistency, learning, and creativity. You can become a good designer even without investing your money into it!
Costly subscriptions and heavy purchases add the element of stress in your design career, and it can affect your productivity. Therefore, free softwares help you experiment, and you don’t even fear losing money. It is just like a playground where you play, sometimes you lose, sometimes you win, because you try new and different things that make you excited.
Do you know, good designers do not need the money to start their career; rather, they start with play, curiosity, and an affordable(or free) starting visual design tools. Such tools incorporate inclusivity into the world of design, whether you are a student or a professional designer.
When you get your first affordable tool, you can upgrade it from time to time as per design requirements. We can also help you in this at Emoris by exploring the following 7 affordable design tools.
Graphic and UI/UX Design Tools
1. Canva
Canva is one of the best software for beginners, rather it is a best friend for those who are new in this field. Have you ever used Canva for designing? It is just like a breath of cool breeze in hot weather because it is very simple, free as well as affordable if you choose to buy Canva pro later.
Let’s explore some salient features of Canva:
- It has thousands of templates for beginners to use for different purposes, such as logo design, background design, and video editing
- This free design software has drag-and-drop feature for designing for beginners
- Easy customization with the help of different tools
- Massive media library
- Magic media for image and video generation
- Brand kit to create brand identity
Canva is a great tool to create a wide range of graphics from logos to websites and resume making without requiring any technical skill. It is a very simple design software for beginners and very versatile for professionals.
It has different plans, including a free design software plan that gives access to plenty of features that are required to start a design career.
2. Figma
Figma is also known as the king of collaboration, and it is one of the best free UI/UX design tools. As you know, design is not a single person’s journey, whether you work with friends on a single project or work with a company, Figma is the best collaboration design tool.
It is browser-based software that works on collaboration to design wireframes, interfaces, and prototypes. You can invite your friends and colleagues to edit and comment on your design in real time. Its free plan is generous enough to help students, business teams, and freelancers.
If you are interested in the UI/UX design field, Figma is the best platform for you because it gently introduces all the basic features of UI/UX. It is also best for those who have never designed anything in life because it has a playful interface and environment that helps to do free experiments.
Figma, can help to create masterpieces similar to any professional design studio.
3. Framer
Framer is free design software and a prototype tool to create a responsive website with an attractive interface. It gives outbound digital design experience without coding. Framer helps to create a website that feels real when you browse it or click on its button.
Framer can design a fully functional and professional website with drag and drop features, animation, typography, and built-in hosting. It has overcome the gap between developing and designing by creating ready-to-launch websites.
Framer has live previews, built-in hosting, community, and resources, and pre-designed templates. Therefore, it is beginner-friendly and accessible to all who want to jump into this field without a technical barrier.
Design Inspiration and organization Tool
4. Milanote
Milanote is a free design software that manages projects, organizes, and plans them. It is basically a visual tool for organizations to arrange and collect the company data, such as notes, ideas, images, files, sketches and links.
It is an design organisation tool that is user-friendly with easy drag-and-drop boards. You can also call it a digital design moodboard because it is evernote for designers and creators. It helps you to reflect on what you think by storyboarding, brainstorming, project planning, moodboarding, and creative writing.
Milanote is beginner-friendly because if you don’t have experience, you can still use it as it has easy learning curve. It supports different media formats, synchronizations, an autosave feature, pre-templates, collaboration, and sharing features.
Design Assets and Resources Tool
5. Envato Elements
Envato Elements is an all in one resource tool that gives unlimited creative assets, such as images, fonts, templates, illustrations, audio clips, video clips, and many more. You have to pay a minimal subscription fee (or get limited access to free resources) to access those millions of assets on one platform that can be used for attention grabbing visuals design.
It is a game game-changing platform for creators and designers who need fresh and good quality design assets regularly. It is simple to use and gives professional look to designs and projects. Therefore, even if you have less experience in your design skills, you can still create design studio quality visuals with the help of Envato Elements.
Have you ever used any asset of Envato Elements? If you belong to the design field, you must try the Evanto Elements ready made library to create professional looking designs. Envato also has a safety net for beginners and provides inspiration and confidence to move forward in the design field.
tool For Learning Design
6. Skillshare:
Skillshare is a digital learning platform for anyone who is new to the world of design and wants to learn it. Skillshare offers unlimited courses in the field of creativity, productivity, business, and personal growth. Top-notch creators and professionals teach about free visual design softwares, psychology and techniques in the form of video lectures.
Skillshare has a soft and flexible learning curve that helps to learn about design, writing, marketing, typography, and illustration. It has a practical and project-based approach to learn the lesson and creating projects from the people who are already in top 10% in their respective fields.
Design Portfolio and Writing Support Tool
7. Grammarly
There is no purpose of a great design project if you’re not able to sell it, right? Which is why, a content writing tool acts as a supportive colleague to a designer whether it is for writing a website copy, creating a compelling presentation, designing the resume that cracks the job or just creative writing.
If you have done any of the above then you mustt have definitely heard about Grammarly. It is a tool that helps designers to correct grammatical mistakes, makes content flow smoothly and helps connect better with the audience through words. It makes an analysis of writing content and improves it in terms of punctuation, grammar, spelling, tone, clarity, word choice, and plagiarism.
It is a seamless and beginner-friendly platform for those who want to write error-free content for essays, social media captions, blogs, emails, and academic content. It works for different platforms such as Google Docs, Browsers, and Word.
How These Tools Empower Beginners
With the help of these 7 affordable tools, even if youre a beginner, you will be able to make your design process faster, easier to manage and tell compelling stories that people want to listen to, and also create visuals that makes people stop and look. And the best thing is, it goes against the myth that creativity is expensive; therefore, creators have a great choice to make mistakes without any loss.
For example, you can use Canva even if you have not designed a single graphic, and you can write error-free content with the help of Grammarly, even if you are not good at grammar, that too without investing anything!
Final Thoughts
It is not easy to start something new, but it is fun if it is affordable, and the same is the case with the design journey. If you are a beginner in the creativity field, then you are lucky because you have a huge variety of free design tools avalable on the internet.
At Emoris, we have tried to help you find different free and affordable tools for designing and other purposes to ensure that a new career does not require a huge bank balance. Design is not about fancy and expensive stuff; rather, it is more about your curiosity, passion for learning, creativity, ideas, and growth.
If you liked the above article and want to stick around for a little more, then you can check out the following articles:
1. Color Theory Simplified: Everything You Need to Know
2. What is Emotional Design? Why It Matters More Than You Think