Creating marketing collateral, both print and digital, is a crucial component of your chorus's marketing strategy. However, without a web/print designer, it can feel overwhelming to try to create these materials on your own. Luckily, nowadays, there are plenty of "Do It Yourself (DIY)" tools available to help non-designers... design things!
Don't be afraid of experimenting with these DIY design tools; anyone with zero design experience and some level of technical ability can easily learn how to use them.
DIY Graphic Design Tools
- Canva - a complete design tool for designing everything from social media images to ebooks
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Fotor - a powerful online photo editing and graphic design tool for great visual creation in minutes
- PicMonkey - a simple tool for editing images and creating collages
- Logomakr - a tool for generating your own logo
- Canva Logo Maker - another tool for generating your own logo
- Pixlr - a free online photo editor similar to PhotoShop
- Piktochart - tool for creating infographics
DIY Social Media Design Tools
- Stencil - create social media graphics with ease
- Snappa - create social media graphics, digital ads, or web graphics
- Over, Inc - mobile app for adding text overlays to images and designing social posts
- Pablo by Buffer - Buffer’s social media image creator
DIY Free Stock Photos, Vectors, and Icons
- Pixabay - free stock photos; no credit required
- Unsplash - free stock photos; no credit required
- Pikwizard - free stock photos; no credit required; plus a photo editing tool
- StockSnap.io - free stock photos; no credit required
- Freepik - free designs; some require credit
- Iconstore - free icons
- Giphy - free; embeddable and downloadable GIFs
DIY Branding Tools
- Color Psychology - research on emotional impact of different colors
- Color Psychology Infographic - statistics on the psychological impact of colors
- Typography Psychology - research on fonts for a psychological response
- Typography Infographic - simple approach to choosing fonts
- Image Color Picker - a tool for identifying the specific color from an online image
- Font Pair - choose fonts that go together
- What Font - identify fonts you like on the web with this Chrome extension
- Coolors - color palette generator
Hiring a Designer
If for some reason, you're wanting to avoid DIY design, you may consider hiring a designer.
The cheapest option for hiring is to consider using a service Fiverr for your one-off projects. On Fiverr, there are designers available for small projects which can start at only $5 to create! Otherwise, you may want to create a job description and post it to marketing jobs forums or on a nonprofit job posting website like Idealist.
Both print and web design requires someone with a particular skillset. For web design and development, look for someone who understands HTML, CSS, jQuery, and Javascript, who has experience working in responsive frameworks, and preferably has a background in graphic design and/or web development. For print design, find someone who has access to and understands Adobe Creative Suite, has experience creating style guides and delivering on brand, and preferably has a background in graphic design. Some designers are capable of doing both web and print design and development.
Tori Cook is the former Director of Sales & Marketing at Chorus Connection, an active board member of the Greater Boston Choral Consortium, and a soprano with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. In a past life, she was the Music Director of the Harborlight Show Chorus and President of Chorus pro-Musica. When not making music, she daydreams about adopting a golden retriever puppy and scuba diving to exotic locations around the world.