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Design is a critical part of a successful blog. It may not seem that important to you or something that you can wait on. But let me tell you, if you want a popular blog with raving fans, it’s got to look good. You have mere seconds to impress your readers, so your blog must look nice. Free design resources give you the ability to
I knew next to nothing about design when I created my first website. Now I cringe at the thought, and it wasn’t until much later that I found some incredible free resources to help make my blog look much better. There are many free design resources out there and I’ve done the research, so you don’t have to! Let’s look at some of these resources and how they can help you improve the design of your blog and website.
1. Canva-Free Design Program
Canva is, by far one of my favorite free design resources. It’s a free (yes, totally FREE) design program that lets you make unique Pinterest pins, Facebook graphics, posters, flyers, brochures, logos, business cards, presentations, and much more.
There are free pictures to use in the graphics, as well as many templates to help you get started. You can even upload your own photos to use in designs. Canva has great fonts and scripts as well as colors to choose for your brand kit. It’s great if you’re just starting out or experienced and need help nailing down your brand.
I was slow with actually branding my blog, and it’s one of those things that I wish I’d done sooner. When you look at other business owners’ websites and graphics, you can pick them out in a crowd. By building a brand, you make sure that people can recognize your design as unique to you. You need to stand out instead of blending in with everyone else.
Like other resources, there is a free and paid version of Canva. The free is fine for most people. I use Canva Pro because there are more elements and photos available as well as support, more colors for your brand kit, resizing, and unlimited folders.
2. Kara Fidd’s Free Blog Graphics That Convert Training Series
I had to follow up Canva with Kara because she taught me A LOT about using Canva, developing your brand, how to create beautiful pins on Canva, and much more.
She has a FREE three-part series, Blog Graphics That Convert that teaches you how to convert lead magnets or paid offers using visual promotion as well as five critical mistakes that many blogs make with design.
Kara’s website, Simplifying DIY Design, also has some great resources including a design vault that you can sign up for and gain access to for free. She also has some great paid resources if you’re at the point you want to invest in yourself such as The Complete Blogger Template Toolkit that comes with tons of templates and video tutorials. It was a must-have for me and occasionally, you can catch it on sale if money is kind of tight like it is for many of us.
Related: 9 Outstanding Free Courses to Help Grow Your Blog and Make More Money
3. Simple Icons- Free Icons
Simple Icons provides Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) for popular brands in case you need to use them in your website design or on other graphics. You can download them from the GitHub website or get the plugin for WordPress.
Simple Icons are also available on Drupal. Icons include Foursquare, Adobe XD, Instagram, Beats by Dre, Mastercard, Pinterest, Opera, Macy’s, Netflix, and many more.
4. Lumen5-Video Maker
Lumen5 is another one of my favorite free design resources. Lumen5 is a video creation platform developed for businesses and brands. You can create engaging video content for social posts, ads, and stories.
With Lumen5, I can create videos for my blog or social media posts in a few minutes. The platform is easy to use. Trust me, if I can use it, anyone can. Lumen5 also gives you the resources to make videos from their media library giving you access to millions of stock photos, soundtracks, and video footage. Everything you need to make an incredible video.
Lumen5 has a free version as well as four types of paid subscriptions. I’ve found the free version to be just fine for me. It’s kind of addicting once you start making the videos because it’s so easy.
5. GIMP-GNU Image Manipulation Program
GIMP is a popular free and open-source image editor available for OS X, Windows, GNU/Linux, and more. The software is free and allows you to change the source code and distribute the changes you make.
GIMP gives you sophisticated tools to edit photos, whether you’re an illustrator, graphic designer, or photographer. GIMP works with many third-party plugins as well as many options for customization.
The platform does everything from creating composites to retouching to restoring images. You can create anything that your imagination dreams up. Artists have the flexibility and power to make unique creations by transforming images.
Many creatives use GIMP to produce graphic design elements, icons, and art for mockups and user interface components. GIMP is not necessarily the easiest program to use but incredibly useful if you can use it.
6. Font Bundles
Remember, we talked about how important branding is? Well, you need at least one premium script or font to set yourself apart from others. You don’t want to mix up too many fonts and scripts, but two fonts and a script are a great combination.
Font Bundles is one of my favorite places for the right fonts to kick your design up a notch. It’s easy to search for fun fonts and scripts, and if you sign up for their weekly newsletter, you get a free font of the week in your email box every week. There are so many fonts available that, likely, you’ll never find the same trio as yours that you choose for your brand.
Enhance your graphics with fun fonts that represent your blog, business, and personality. Fonts can also be used with colors to create the way you want readers to look and feel about your business and blog.
7. BrandColors
BrandColors is a free design resource that helps you choose the colors for your brand. It can be difficult to pick just three to five colors to stick with for your brand. I STILL haven’t narrowed mine down to less than about nine colors. Plus, I was worried about picking complimentary colors and BrandColors helps with that.
DesignBombs created BrandColors as a reference for the most common brand color codes. It’s a very popular resource with over two million page views and includes 1600 colors for 600 brands. BrandColors continues to add more colors to its database.
Look at different brands so you can see what colors go together to make sure the colors for your brand are harmonious. The colors also include their hex codes, which is very important for adding the exact colors to programs like Canva.
Sometimes visualizing the color combinations helps you decide on the right ones to represent you and your business. Kara Fidd even has some design resources on her blog that tell you what different colors represent like the color blue is cool and represents trust. Red is a warm color that represents passion and excitement.
Free Design Resources to Illustrate Who You Are and What You Represent
Use these resources together and separately as needed. They provide just about everything you need to create your brand and make your blog and website look incredible. All you need to do is add some imagination, and that’s the only thing that limits you.