The Best DIY Graphic Design Programs for Social Media

Images just might be more important than the words you choose for your social media posts. The brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text. That’s right. 60,000 times faster…no that’s not a typo. When they said a picture is worth a thousand words it’s because a well-chosen picture can give you more information in less time than any other form of communication. When you look at a picture you instantly see the mood, weather and situation, whether or not your assumptions are correct. If someone had to describe all of that to you, it would take a minute or more, wouldn’t it?

Because images are the darling of social media (just under video), the last year has seen a plethora of DIY graphic design programs pop up. In the days of being able to do everything yourself, graphic design was one of the last holdouts. We already had accounting online, proofreading, invoicing, banking, conversation and advertising…why not DIY graphic design?

Now, don’t get me wrong. Not everyone should do their own graphic design. I don’t. I work with a fabulous graphic designer who does the high majority of the design for this website and my brand. If it looks awesome, she did it. If it looks acceptable, I did it 🙂 If it doesn’t even look acceptable, Ummm…I’ve been hacked? Not only can you NOT do every single thing for your own business, you won’t love everything that needs to be done. If you hate graphic design as I do, outsource that frustration and concentrate on the things you love instead.

However, if you’ve decided to delve into the world of DIY graphic design, here are a few programs that will help you. They each have their own unique focus, features and benefits. To write this comparison, I’m using the same photo and quote on all programs and I’ll talk about the pros and cons of each program.

Relay

$15/month +

I first met Craig, the creator of Relay, on Blab back when Blab was my daily hangout. We met in person at Social Media Marketing World 2016. Craig has built a great option for those who cannot pick colour combinations or center a line to save their life.

Pros

• Elements don’t move. You can’t uncenter something!
• Resizing for other networks is a click of a button and you can see all of the options on one page.
• Comes with colour theme choices ready to go.
• You can change the colour of individual elements.
• You can change the fonts.
• There is a training/tutorial section.
• Many templates to choose from.
• Can make text & elements any colour to match your brand.
• Lots of videos to show you how to use it.

Cons

• Elements don’t move. You can’t move things around to accommodate an unbalanced photo.
• Resizing is easy, but if your photo doesn’t work in the other sized layouts as is, there is little you can do to maneuver it. Because of this, you need to pick images that don’t have faces, for example, as you can’t always make the face appear in the resized images.

Pablo

Free

Pablo is integrated with Buffer, one of the industry’s favourite social media scheduling tools. As an add-on to Buffer, it’s a pretty neat little program. As far as graphic design goes, it’s very limited in features. If you just want to make motivational quotes as quickly as possible and add them to your Buffer queue, this would be a good option.

Pros

• FREE and no logo watermark!
• Super simple interface. Everything you need is on one screen.
• Only three sizes to choose from, tall & skinny (Pinterest), square (Instagram) and rectangle (Facebook & Twitter).
• Built-in free images (over 600,000).
• Elements can be moved around.
• Suggests colours for your text.
• Picks colours from the photo.
• Built-in motivational quotes to use.

Cons

• Only three image sizes… you’re not creating cover photos, posters or other things here.
• Only three font sizes on your image: small, medium and large (which isn’t always large enough).
• Cannot choose your brand colours.
• Cannot upload your brand fonts.
• No elements to add, such as stripes, boxes or icons.
• Has few templates to start with.

PicMonkey

$72 Canadian/year or $8 Canadian /month

I was planning to go in and test PicMonkey because I hear a lot of people like it, but you have to put in your credit card to get the free trial, and I don’t like that marketing tactic, so I didn’t do it.

PageModo

Free and from $6.25/month or $75/year

I first knew PageModo as an easy way to create Facebook Cover Pages. It sure has come a long way in a few short years. You can now design graphics for Facebook and Twitter posts.

Pros

• Easy to use templates.
• Ability to use custom colours.
• All template design elements are maneuverable.
• Lots of free images to incorporate.
• Schedule graphic posts to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.
• Link shortening with bit.ly.
• Also designs ads, contests and custom Facebook tabs.
• There are some videos to show you how to use it.

Cons

• Free version includes logo on every design.
• Can’t honestly say I noticed any other negatives in my short trial.

Stencil

Free and from $9/month paid yearly

Of all the programs, this one was the easiest one to learn to use. If you have trouble using new programs, this might be the best place to start.

Pros

• Drag and drop images into the design panel.
• Very easy-to-use interface.
• Easily resize one design to fit other networks.
• Custom colours available.
• Lots of templates to choose from.
• Library of quotes to use.

Cons

• I’m not really seeing any cons to this one.

Canva

Free and from $17 CAD/month or $150 CAD/year

After a year of using other paid programs, I came back to Canva premium because it’s just better. It’s easier to use, more intuitive, more photos and they keep adding more features.

Pros

• Lots of templates, photos and icons to use.
• Many free icons and images to incorporate.
• You can save your custom branded colours so you don’t have to know the codes all the time.
• Easily resize images for multiple networks.
• Save your finished designs in multiple folders to keep them organized.
• Save your uploaded photos and graphics in multiple folders to keep them organized.
• Upload your custom brand fonts.
• Create a “brand” so that templates are automatically designed in a brand colour and with brand fonts.
• Edit sounds and videos (think: create audiograms for podcasts and videos for everything)
• Has a great training system of videos and tutorials.
• Lots of people are making videos and templates to help you be more creative.

Cons

• Searching through templates can be tiresome.
• A lot of the pictures and elements you find and like will be paid additions.

No matter which DIY graphic design suite you decide to use, take the time to watch any tutorials they have. It will make the learning process much easier and shorter than my method of grab n go! I expect all of these programs will continue to expand their services and add new features over the years, so it’s a matter of figuring out which one speaks to your current abilities to design; whether or not you can center a photo or line of text is a big factor.

And please remember it’s not always best to do it yourself! Sometimes your money is better spent on hiring a graphic designer! My graphic designer builds me many templates that I can use over and over again. If you aren’t good at design, or simply need to outsource some of the work, hiring a good graphic designer is definitely the way to go.

Do you use a different, simple graphic design program? Send me the link and I’ll keep a running, up-to-date list here:

FotoJet

FotoJet is a robust online photo editor, graphic designer & collage maker that helps you to edit photos easily and enables you to create amazing collages, photo cards, social media graphics and posters, providing numerous powerful editing tools, 300+ professional designs, 600+ creative collage templates and 80+ classic photo grid templates. It works perfectly in any browser, without the hassles of downloading and installing!”

Biteable’s Free Image Resizer

This isn’t really a graphic design program, it’s just a simple way of resizing a photo you have. But it resizes a photo to every size you can think of INSTANTLY. So if you’re using a photo for cover pages, posts and thumbnail images, BOOM, it’s done in seconds.