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Challenge

• Solopreneurs and small business owners can’t afford professional designers when starting out.
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Opportunity

• Use no-design tools to bootstrap your brand.

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Get Started

• Understand that in the long run no-design tools cannot replace a professional graphic designer. You need both skill and experience to create credible brands.
• Learn enough of design basics to be dangerous and beat 95% of the competition.
• Build a basic set of visuals for your company:
  • Generate a name for your business: Namelix.
  • Create a logo with a few clicks: Logobly, Looka, Logology.
  • Build a webpage on ready-made templates: Dorik, Carrd, Versoly.
  • Add style with colors and font combinations: Colorsandfonts, Coolors, Khroma.co.

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Tools

• ​UnDraw, Scale, Open Doodles – Free-to-use illustrations.
• ​Flaticon, Icons8, freeicons – Free-to-use icons.
• ​UnSplash, StockSnap, Pixabay – Freely usable stock photos.
• ​Humaaans, blackillustrations, Blush, Open Peeps – Create illustrations of people with pre-made blocks.
• ​WeVideo, Typito, Wave.video – Video editors.
• ​AppMockUp, Screenshot Creator – Create screenshots for app stores.
• ​Crello, Canva – All-around tools: edit photos, design objects, animate or create video/audio.
• ​Visme – Presentations, infographics, charts.
• ​Zlides – Pre-designed slide decks.
• ​Mediamodifier – Product mockups.
• ​Remove Bg – Remove picture backgrounds automatically.
• ​Vector Creator – Vector graphics with library blocks.
• ​BannerBear – Automated media generation.
• ​Froala Design Blocks – Responsive design blocks built on Bootstrap.

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Pros

• Save money when you don’t have inbound cash flow yet. Most listed tools are free to use or freemium.
• Save time and spin up quick designs for fast-paced content marketing: ads, blogs, newsletters, social media.
• Save effort: Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign are great tools but can have a steep learning curve.

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Cons

• There is actual design involved. Even if you use pre-made libraries and blocks, you can’t escape from basic laws of design.
• Putting it together still requires work. Time investment is greater than 0. But the quality is probably a lot better than when a non-designer starts from scratch.
• Designs converge to similarity when everyone’s using the same basic blocks. Same happened with Bootstrap and web development.

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Cases

• ​Signals – I created my basic visuals using Dorik, Bootstrap, Mediamodifier, Flaticon and draw.io.
• ​Hubstaff – 97% costs cut with DIY infographics by using Visme.
• ​American Airlines – Design workflow squeezed from 10 hours to 1 by using Canva.
• ​n8n – Used BannerBear to auto-create visuals for conference speaker submissions.

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Forecast

• No-design tools are part of the bigger emerging creator economy trend. It’s easier than ever to get started. But more difficult than ever to stand out from the masses.

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Resources

• ​NoDesign.dev – A collection of no-design tools for those with little to no artistic talent.
• ​How To Use DIY Graphics Like A Pro – This guide shows that over tweaking a design template is actually harmful.
• ​Is Design Mostly Dead? DIY Platforms vs. Hiring a Pro – Why you should probably use a professional for the important pieces.

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Takeaways

• No-design tools can be a fast and a cost-efficient way to bootstrap a brand. In the long run, you should start using professionals at least to create the core items.
• Learn enough of design basics yourself to get the big things right.
• Expect some similarities with the visuals of other businesses if you use a lot of templates and pre-built blocks.