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Design & colour

When you set up your small business, you possibly didn’t realise how many visuals are involved. If your design skills are a bit lacking, there are loads of tools out there to help you out.

Social media images, posters, and flyers – no problem! With these colour pickers, free templates, and simple video makers, your website and artwork will be instantly, recognisably yours.

There are thousands of 5-colour palettes to choose from here. Neutral, earth tones, bright, youthful – whatever you want. Once you’ve chosen, these 5 colours can be the basis of all your business’ online and print designs.

Who’s it for?

Pretty much anyone, but particularly small business owners who are going to be doing a lot of design and content creation.

Good bits

  • The search tool is simple. Start with ‘red’ and you’ll get hundreds of options, from bright and cool to warm and subtle.
  • You can build a palette around a colour you already like. Just upload an image of it to get started.

Not so good bits

  • It’s inevitable that you’ll choose the same colour palette as someone else. It shouldn’t be a problem as long as your designs are unique.
  • There’s so much choice, it’s quite hard to narrow it down…

Free-o-meter
5/5

 

Prices: It’s free!

Stylify Me

Spotted a font or particular shade of blue you quite fancy? Find out what they are with Stylify Me. All you need is the URL, and this clever free tool will pull all the hex codes, typography, and image dimensions.

Who’s it for?

Freelancers and small business owners looking for design inspiration.

Good bits

  • It’s very accurate.
  • Fast results. You’ll have all the info in a few seconds.
  • It automatically ignores ads and images, so your colour picker will only give you the actual design information.

Not so good bits

  • The image dimensions tool is a bit glitchy.

Free-o-meter
5/5

 

 Prices: It’s free!

If you’ve spotted a nicely designed quote or image on another small business’ Instagram, there’s a good chance they made it on Canva. This free design tool is a massive help for small businesses that don’t have budget for a designer just yet.

Who’s it for?

Freelancers and small business owners that really don’t have the time or money to learn Adobe.

Good bits

  • There are stylish pre-designed templates to get you started.
  • Tonnes of font, colour, shape, images, icons, and templates to choose from. You’ll never run out.
  • Tell Canva what you want to make and it’ll size it for you.

Not so good bits

  • If you want to do more than just edit the templates, you’ll need some natural design sense.
  • It’s still quite time-consuming if you get really stuck in.

Free-o-meter
4/5

 

Prices: Canva for Work costs $12.95 a month.

The large majority of features are free. If you want to resize images, export with a transparent background, or animate, it’s definitely worth thinking about the upgrade.

Create simple (and impressive!) slideshow videos to show off your business on social media. Animoto helps you storyboard, upload images and video clips, add fonts, colours, and music. Download versions for each social media channel, and watch your interactions!

Who’s it for?

Anyone who needs lots of visual marketing assets.

Good bits

  • The editing tools are easy to use, and videos are easy to customise.
  • Your shares, clicks, and sales could get a major boost.
  • You’ll have access to over 1 million Getty images.

Not so good bits

  • If you already know a bit about video editing you might find it limited.
  • The cheapest package only makes standard quality videos. You have to pay a bit more for HD.

Free-o-meter
2/5

 

Prices: £7.99 – £33.99 a month (billed all at once for the whole year).

There are three packages to choose from. The more you pay, the more music clips, fonts, colours, and storyboards you have access to.