Whether you’re just starting your ecommerce journey or you’re an experienced seller you need a way to design your products. That’s where design softwares comes into play. Design software allows you to create that unique design you’ve had in the back of your mind and place it onto a product your customers will love.
The only problem is how do you choose from the ever growing list of design applications? When they all have so many different features, purposes and prices it can be hard to know which is the right one to choose. That’s why we created this guide on our top five favorite design softwares so that you can find the software that best suits your needs.
When choosing the best design applications we based our choices off of a few important features including ease-of-use, capability, price, and mobility.
Ease-of-use is rated on how quickly you can learn the software and how quickly you can start creating with it. Capability refers to how much control and versatility the software offers. Price is an important aspect because if you’re just starting out you might be more interested in keeping your costs low but if you’re already experiencing high volume it might be time to upgrade to one of the more expensive options. Some applications you can use anywhere anytime even from your phone and some are limited to a desktop or laptop resulting in various levels of mobility. With this in mind let’s look at our first option on our list.
Canva is a favorite among students, beginners and professionals alike. People love it because of its simplicity and ease-of-use, and its many templates that help you to design everything from presentations and infographics, to that million dollar product design. It’s also web-based which means you can access your designs from any device anywhere!
Pros
Intutive and easy-to-use
Many design templates
Budget Friendly
Easy Collaboration
Many stock elements, graphics, photos, etc.
Web-based so you can access your designs anywhere
Cons
Free plan is very limited
Unable to copy designs onto other designs
Limited creativity and use
Less control than other softwares
Limited intellectual property rights
Photoshop 19.99/month (includes Lightroom)
Adobe Photoshop has been around for a long time now and for good reason. It’s a powerful application with many use case. You can also get Adobe Lightroom as an added bonus which is great if you’re interested in learning photography.
Pros
Surplus of features, tools, and capabilites
Multitude of file formatting options
Easty to scale and size designs
Adobe is an industry standard; there products work well together
Great support and online forums/tutorials
Lightroom is a great bonus for those interested in photography
Cons
Steep learning curve
Subscription based plan can be costly
Large application size
More difficult to collaborate with
Not great for vector graphics
Illustrator $20.99/month
Next up also from Adobe is Illustrator. Widely popular among graphic designers, Illustrator allows you to create amazing graphics with ease. Illustrator specializes in vector graphics which allow you to scale and resize a design without losing quality.
Pros
Multitude of features and tools
Vector based design software makes scaling easy
File recovery
Image tracing tools
iPad application
Can work on multiple designs at once
Works well with other Adobe products
Cons
Subscription based plan can be costly
Large application size
Steep learning curve
Teams feature is expensive
Easier with drawing tablet which adds to cost
Coreldraw $22.42/month or $549 one-time purchase
Coreldraw is an application that’s popular among manufacturers creating engraved or print designs. It’s very robust and customizable and unlike the adobe softwares it has a on-time purchase option available.
Pros
Professional-level software with unique features
Customizable layout makes finding tools easier
Many training videos available
Flexible and versatile
Dynamic Asset Management
One-time purchase option saves money in the long run
Able to share design elements easily with others
Cons
Print Preview isn’t accurate
Compatability issues when using multiple apps
Steep learning curve
Ease-of-use issues
Limited intellectual property rights
Procreate $12.99 one-time purchase
Procreate is popular among Apple users because of its low price and because it was made to be used with iPad. And because it’s made for iPad that means it’s extremely mobile allowing you to create designs while traveling or from room to room.
Pros
Designed for iPad
Highly-responsive brush technology
Intuitive Interface
Customizable tools and canvas sizes
Inexpensive, one-time purchase
Very mobile, easy to travel with
iPhone version available as well
Cons
Steep learning curve
Only available on Apple products
Limited use-case; not great for web design
Less control than other softwares
No masks, vectors or adjustment layers
When deciding which design software to use it’s important to think about what to do you need right now. Are you looking to create products as fast as possible? Then Canva is your best option. Do you love Apple products and enjoy using pens to draw with? Then Procreate is the pick for you. Or maybe you want power and versatility and don’t mind taking the time to learn a new software then Photoshop, Illustrator or CorelDraw would be great for you. Whatever you decide keep in mind you can always switch to a different application later and also that any of these will be able to create winning designs.
To make things even easier we recommend using designs from a site such as Creative Fabrica. You will still need an application like Canva or Photoshop to resize the designs but Creative Fabrica has thousands of elements, images, fonts, symbols and done-for-you designs that are ready to be placed on any product you’re wanting to sell.