Chorus Connection Blog

DIY Design Tools for Your Chorus's Marketing Strategy

Written by Tori Cook | Mar 20, 2018

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
  • 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
  • Pikwizardfree 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

 

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.