In today’s digital age, graphic design has become an essential skill for students in various fields of study. Whether you’re a marketing student looking to create compelling ads or an art student exploring your creativity, having access to free graphic design tools can greatly benefit your work. In this article, we will discuss some of the best free graphic design tools available for students to enhance their designs and bring their ideas to life.
Table of Contents
5 Free Graphic Design Tools Every Student Needs
There are several free graphic design tools available for students. Let’s find out.
Figma
Figma is a free vector graphics editor and prototyping tool that is great for designing websites. It is a collaborative interface design tool that connects everyone in the design process so teams can deliver better products faster. Figma offers a range of powerful design features built for the future of the web, including layout grid, constraints, components, desktop design, and mobile design. Figma is a user-friendly tool that is designed to make designing websites easy for beginners and advanced users alike.
It offers a range of free website templates, UI kits, design systems, and 2D and 3D illustrations that are handpicked and of the highest quality. Figma website UI kits can help users craft the basic structure for website homepages and landing pages with ease. Figma is a versatile tool that can be used to design websites, mobile apps, and other digital products.
Canva
Canva is a global multi-national graphic design platform that is used to create social media graphics and presentations. Canva offers a range of readymade templates for users to use, and creating an account and using Canva is free. However, the majority of high-quality elements will need to be paid for in order to download one’s designs.
It offers a range of functionalities, effects, and tools that allow users to create professional-looking designs, including social media graphics, presentations, posters, flyers, and more. Canva has three pricing tiers: Canva Free, Canva Pro, and Canva for Teams. Canva is available as a desktop app for Windows and as a mobile app for iOS devices.
Paint.net
Paint.net is a free image and photo editing software for PCs that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. Paint.net is often cited as one of the best free Photoshop alternatives and is a full-featured software with all the bells and whistles, from layers to plugins to unlimited history.
It is a user-friendly tool that is designed to make image and photo editing easy for beginners and advanced users alike. Paint.net is ideal for high school graphic arts projects and is available for Linux, Windows, and MacOS.
Inkscape
Inkscape is a free and open-source vector graphics editor used to create vector images, primarily in the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format. Inkscape is professional quality vector graphics software that runs on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows desktop computers.
It can render primitive vector shapes, such as rectangles, ellipses, polygons, arcs, spirals, stars, and 3D boxes, and text. Inkscape’s primary format is SVG 1.1, meaning that it can create and edit with the abilities and within the constraints of this format. Inkscape can import and export other formats as well.
It offers an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. Inkscape is available for download from the official website and is regularly updated with maintenance and bugfix releases.
GIMP
GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free and open-source raster graphics editor used for image manipulation and editing, free-form drawing, transcoding between different image file formats, and more specialized tasks. It is not designed to be used for drawing, though some artists and creators have used it for that purpose.
GIMP is a cross-platform image editor available for GNU/Linux, macOS, Windows, and more operating systems. GIMP provides sophisticated tools for graphic designers, photographers, illustrators, and scientists to get their job done. GIMP has similar functionality to Adobe Photoshop but has a different user interface.
GIMP is often compared to and suggested as a possible replacement for Adobe Photoshop. It uses a tabbed document interface to handle multiple images easily, and the tabs display a live thumbnail of the image instead of a text description.
Recommended Resources:
- How to Create Free Professional Invoices for Your Business Using Online Tools
- Turning Your Art into a Successful Business
- The Best 6 Free Animation Software for Art Students
- 7 Top Free Photography Tools and Resources for Art Students
- The Best 4 Free Video Editing Software for Art Students
As a student, free graphic design tools are an essential resource to help you create professional designs and build your portfolio. Whether you’re working on a project for school or looking to improve your skills, these tools can help you achieve your goals. So why not explore some of these free graphic design tools and see where your creativity takes you.