10 essential tools for graphic designers

In this post we’ll tell you about 10 tools for graphic designers that are essential for achieving a technically and visually successful result.

Readers and users alike dream of seeing visually appealing and interesting content with eye-catching and captivating visual elements, whether online or in print. However, the real job is for graphic designers to turn this dream into reality. For a professional graphic designer, there are certain essential programs and equipment that can be dispensed with.

In fact, the days of people just reading content are long gone. Nowadays, the website or magazine you hold in your hands has to look more attractive than the actual words published on it, in order to capture your attention for longer and get a good lead acquisition.

Tools for graphic designers

Graphic designers must use certain tools to create a design with intriguing visual elements and tailor images and text to users. The latest trends in the graphic market demand that every graphic designer invests in the latest design tools, devices and technology in an attempt to create designs that appeal to a significant number of potential customers.

On the other hand, I have to say that there are many creative designers who far surpass the more professional technical designers, why, because they are creative. Some professionals use the best software and tools for graphic designers but they have no creativity or imagination so their result is not attractive, although it is perfectly technical. This is worthless.

The combination of the best technique and the greatest creativity is perfection.

Today we’re going to explore the 10 tools for graphic designers that will give your graphics a professional look.

1 – Illustrator

This tool for graphic designers is one of the main and most important. It works in vectors, which means you will never see pixels. Because it has no pixels you can use the same element to embed in a business card or at the same time to print a 10 metre canvas. The image will never have pixels.

This is often used for logo design, fonts, illustrations and icons.

Illustrator is a fantastic graphic design tool for creating topographies, sketches, icons and other complex illustrations for video or mobile. You can use it to create immaculately set-up artwork by sketching out pixel-perfect shapes. Illustrator makes designing faster than ever before.

Illustrator has numerous plugins to turn a blank page into a clean-looking page. It has plugins designed for Ai versions, as well as a number of features designed for newer versions such as Creative Cloud. As an integral part of Creative Cloud, you can use Illustrator on both Mac and desktop.

2 – Photoshop

One of the most powerful tools for graphic designers. Its use is mainly for photography. It is an excellent image transformer. In professional magazines and albums you’ll never see an image that hasn’t been through Photoshop before.

This amazing tool offers basic functions such as channel blending, perspective correction and even the clone stamp tool. Photoshop is considered one of the best graphic design tools that works on both Mac and Windows.

With Photoshop, you have other useful add-ons such as one-touch adjustment, cropping, panoramic image option and much more.

Photoshop makes photo editing an interesting task. Whether you’re an experienced graphic designer or not, Photoshop has automatic photo editing options that breathe life into your images, making you a pro in your field of graphic design. Business Print experts use Photoshop to integrate multiple images and even filter out unwanted objects from the image.

3 -Pixlr

The Pixlr editor is a very useful tool for graphic designers using Photoshop. This amazing tool not only opens .PSD files but also saves all the artistic layers.

Pixlr is a great alternative to Photoshop for customers who have simple image editing prerequisites, including things like cropping and resizing. This fine tool provides all the functionality you need without having to worry about an additional graphic design software licence to maintain.

4 – GIMP

Also known as the GNU Image Manipulation Program, the graphic design tool GIMP is a perfect alternative to Adobe Photoshop. It incorporates photo manipulation functionality to create sharp graphics. GIMP has a fully customisable interface along with full-screen mode that allows you to view and edit the image simultaneously.

This graphic design software has extensive features that provide a unique experience. In addition, it can run on OS X, GNU/Linux, Windows and other operating systems. It is undoubtedly one of the most excellent graphic design software whose cross-compatibility platform provides strong support.

5 – ProofHub – Graphic designer’s tools for proofing

ProofHub is a great testing tool that allows design teams to manage their tasks seamlessly. Clients can use this proofing tool to explain or request small changes to be made, such as adding colour and moving text to the required part of the design.

Makes it easier for graphic designers to work

ProofHub eliminates the need for emails, approvals or comments, while reducing the time consuming process. This online proofing tool allows you to make instant changes to your file, add comments and even highlight any bugs you may have noticed in the design.

6 – DesignBold

DesignBold is another easy-to-use graphic design tool for creating stunning images with a set number of drags. It has plenty of design resources, including a huge library of 12,080++ customisable layouts that allow you to craft design elements on your own.

For example, DesignBold allows you to create various types of visual elements such as a logo or a header for your website content. It is a fast and cost-effective tool suitable for beginners and professional designers.

6 – Marvel

Any experienced graphic designer will tell you that prototyping is a fundamental part of design today. Marvel is the ultimate prototyping tool that allows you to create anything from scratch, as well as sync all your designs directly from your cloud storage.

Marvel Canvas is a great tool for sketching the prototype and adding gestures and conversions to your design. It has a simplified interface that works well for both advanced UX people and non-designers.

7 – Inkscape

Inkscape is a specialised tool for vector art enthusiasts as well as graphic designers using the SVG format. It is compatible with Mac, OS, Linux and Windows.

It is capable of directly editing the source code of a blog, whether you are a professional graphic designer or not. Inkscape is also easy to use for illustration, colouring or sketching. The availability of Ghostscript’s .eps extension makes it easily readable.

9 – Indesign

Specially for book layout and any kind of publishing project in general.

InDesign was consolidated as the software of choice in professional layout in the year 2003, with its inclusion in Adobe’s Creative Suite (CS), a status it has maintained over time, improving in each version its features and gaining more and more followers. As part of the CS, it is fully integrated with other professional graphics applications from Adobe, such as Illustrator and Photoshop.

With Adobe InDesign we can tackle any type of editorial project that requires a high quality graphic appearance, thanks to its multiple functionalities.

1. Packaging documents for printing
2. Making interactive pdf documents
3. Developing a complete corporate visual identity
4. Developing animations in flash format
5. Preparing the prototype for the user experience of a website
6. Creating e-books in ePUB format (Electronic Publication)
7. Making publications for tablets and smartphones

10 – CorelDraw

Corel’s graphic design software is ideal for aspiring designers looking for a graphics editor with the ability to generate infinite designs without restrictions. CorelDraw can hone your design skills because it has some great productive features, unlike many other vector editors available on the market.

CorelDraw gives you maximum control for fast, dynamic results. This vector object editing software features tools such as Attract, Repel, Smudge and Rotate. It also has the Alignment Guide for positioning objects to suit your needs.

Many more tools for graphic designers

So, you know, if you’re a graphic designer you should use some of these tools. Familiarise yourself with the ones that work best for you and improve your skills and designs with them.

Of course there are many more tools for graphic designers than the ones described here. If you know of any more that might be good leave us a comment so we can all take them into account in our projects 🙂