IIA Digital Toolshed
IIA Toolshed – Social Media Design Tools
IIA Toolshed #4
Social Media Design Tools
Tooler’s Choice?
We looked at four social media Design Tools, no one is the winner because they are all very different and serve different needs.
What is IIA Toolshed? IIA Toolshed is a group of digital marketers & digital experts who know how difficult it is to keep up with the ever changing array of tools at our fingertips, to supposedly make doing business easier! To make things simpler, we’ve come together to test, evaluate and share the reviews of a broad selection of tools & technologies, to ultimately make the decision easier for you, when choosing what tools might best suit your business needs. At the IIA Toolshed, we come together every 6 weeks to evaluate a set of tools for a particular business objective, and we’ll publish our findings right here.
Who are we? The Toolers who took part this month are:
- Maryrose Lyons, Brightspark Consulting
- Eoin Kennedy, eoinkennedy.ie
- Felicity McCarthy, Sparkdigital.ie
- Ailbhe Lee, iia.ie
- Lynne Rourke, Buyandsell.ie
- Sasha Kinch, inm.ie
- David Cuddy, Realex
- Beatrice Whelan, Sage
Product Name | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
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Website | https://www.canva.com/ | http://piktochart.com/ | https://venngage.com/ | http://www.picmonkey.com/ | http://makeagif.com/ | https://www.draw.io |
What Is It | It is an online image creation and editing tool. Has been hailed as "The easiest to use design program in the world” – The Webby | Web based infographic software. Works best at creating visuals using your data sets. Not recommended for creating a simple visual. | It is an online infographic maker | A very powerful image creation and editing tool for markers who are not Graphic Designers. Great for editing images, creating logos and even infographics. | Its an online GIF making site, where you can very quickly make a give from images, videos or even youtube videos | draw.io (formerly Diagramly) is free online diagram software that can be used as a flowchart maker, network diagram software but also a handy editing and design tool. |
What's It Like To Use? | Very quick and easy. It is used by non-designers as well as professionals.It can be used for both web and print media design and graphics. | Very quick to get started, easy drag and drop feature allows you to build presentation or infographic quickly. Good selection of templates. | It is a simple platform to use for creating infographics. It has a number sample templates to get inspiration from. However, the majority of templates are only available for paid subscribers. Easy drag and drop interface allows rapid infographic building with elements such as charts, maps, pictograms, icons, text, images and more. | It can be a little intimidating and even fiddly to use initially. There are so many features and options that you can use. However once you get the hang of PicMonkey you can edit and design images in minutes. | It's very easy to use, very straightforward UI, but its sole use is for making GIF's. | The user interface initially appears intimidating as there is a lot of functionality and each session begins with a blank canvas. There is no registration and you literally start to design from scratch but the process is fairly intuitive. You can import images, add text with lots of export options and formats. |
Is There Anything I Should Know? | Social-media and technology expert Guy Kawasaki joined the company as chief evangelist in April 2014. When you pay for an image, you only have rights for 24 hours. Good news - you only pay for what you use. Bad news - users might get an unpleasant surprise if they need to re-purchase an image. This is not made super clear in the interface. | It takes quite a while (marginal few extra seconds) to save, even when you haven't edited anything : ( | In order to unlock all the features you'll need to subscribe for a premium version ($15/month). With the Premium version you are able to export the infographics into PDF and PNG formats. The product was created by Eugene Woo who is also the founder of vizualize.me which is an infographic maker for resumes. | PicMonkey has a free version, but images fonts and functionality are limited. I would strongly recommend upgrading to the paid version (known as Royale Membership). It is inexpensive - $33 a year, billed annually or $4.99 a month. The paid version gives an unbelievable number of image overlays and design templates. One downside of PicMonkey is it does not allow you to re-edit images or even save a "work in progress" for a later date. One big downfall with PicMonkey is that it is desktop only. A Mobile App would be really useful. | There is no need to sign in/register to make a GIF, but having a profile gives you more flexibility (there is a limit to the lenght of the gif you can make without signing in). Also before signing in, Youtube gifs seem to not work properly. Registration is free, and very quick and easy. Once you are registered you can remove the watermark. They have an chrome extension which seems to work pretty well and is easy to use. Its also possible to share to your social profiles (in many different ways) from within the app. Note there is a limit to the video upload size ( MB). There is virtually no editing of videos - it is just a GIF maker. | This tools is really designed for rapid building of flow charts but could also be used for enhancing, editing and producing good graphics for social media output. There are limited stock graphics available in the search bar - mainly icon style but currently it is a free tool with future licensing planned. |
Who would you recommend it for? | Creating images for use on social networks, in presentations or for print. | Any small business currently outsourcing design work. | For businesses wishing to create quality infographics without the cost of in-house designers | Any business that wants to create great looking images for their marketing materials and social media posts without the cost of a graphic designer. | Creating GIFs quickly from photos, videos, webcam or youtube. Especially useful for companies with lots of related images and willing to experiment in visual story telling. | Creating images and assets with flow chart elements or basic editing of images |
Cost | Free unless you purchase images. It would be preferable if you could arrange to view images by Free/Paid. Payment mechanism is cr card only (no PayPal). You have rights for 24 hours to edit imagery. £1 or €1 only. | "Free" but with watermark. Starts at $15/month. Templates, icons, 100MB download (no watermark?) Moves to $29/month (everything) | Two plans: Free and Premium ($15/month) | There is a Free option, but it is limited. I would strongly recommend upgrading to the paid version (known as Royale Membership). It is inexpensive - $33 a year, billed annually or $4.99 a month. The paid version gives an unbelievabile number of image overlays and design templates. | Free | Free but with future licensing planned. |
Specific Criteria (Out of 4) | ||||||
Size formats for various social platforms | 4 -Yes, it has pre-set up templates for Twitter header, FB cover, and all the main social channel image post sizes. | 3 - Yes you can change the canvas size. | 3 - the canvas size is customisable | 4 - There are plenty of size templates and you can customise your image or design to any size. | 1 - no not really, its an embedded link when sharing on Facebook/Twitter, but this is probably the right way for it to be shared | Size is pretty much determined by the edited size of the canvas. |
Purchase images | 4 - Yes, it has a range of free and priced images that you can search for from within the tool. You only pay when you publish the image - before publish you can use but they are watermarked.You can also upload your own images from your computer or Facebookor drag them from your desktop. | 0 - You cannot purchse images although there is an extensive libriary | 3 - free and for purchase images available. You can also upload own images | 2 - Once you have the paid version there are amazing templates, images and designs you can use. However you will most likely need to bring your own images to the PicMonkey table. | 0 - not relevant to this platform | 0. Some free icon style images available in search bar. |
Add transparencies | 4 - yes you can edit the transparency of layers. | 0 - no | 0 - no | 4 - Yes it is really easy to isolate images and add transparency of layers. | 0 - no editing capability | 0 - you can move images to background but no transparency |
Add layers | Yes, and you can easily move them back and forth - easier to use layers in this than it is in photoshop. | 2 - You can basic layers | 1 - you can add layers | 4 - Yes - very easy to layer images, text and photos. | 0 - no editing capability | 3 - Yes. Simple basic layering |
Editing capability | 4 | 4 | 3 - Fine | 3 - Once you create an image on PicMonkey you cannot re-edit it. However there is great editing features available when editing a picture. | 0 - no editing capability | 3 - Fine |
Add text & edit fonts | 4 - yes and good range of fonts | 4 - some really good fonts | 3 - fine, but could be more variety | 4 - loads of fonts and you can even import and use additional fonts on your pc. | 0 - no editing capability | 3 - Simply start typing. Can change text fonts etc |
Save templates | 3 - Yes although they are not called templates, you can save designs and copy designs to use them as templates for future designs. | 3 | 4 - Yes | 0 - Once you have created an image on PicMonkey you need to save it to your pc. They do not store your images, (This may be a good thing) | 0 - no editing capability | 3 - Yes |
Good range of export formats | 3 - presentation formats don't export to ppt compatible | 3 - limited to pdf formats and image formats. Will not export to ppt | 2 - pdf and png 4 - Dermot - export to Google Docs etc | 3 - Good format options. | 2 - GIF and MP4. Its more impressive that you can create a give in a few ways | 4 - wide range of drop down menu options of fromats and saving options from Google Drive, Dropbox to Browser. |
What did you love? | 4 -ease of use and the pre defined templates for social and ads. | 3 - SurveyMonkey Integration was great and really easy and quick to use and get started. | 3 - easy and quick to build infographics | 4 - Once I got used to it. It made me feel like a Photshop wizard without even going near the complexities of Photoshop. | It does what it says on the tin, no unnecessary frills | Although built for flowcharts it offers lots of functionality for creative use. Easy to play around with. |
What did you hate? | 3 - Very little. Can't believe there is no mobile option. Not even mobile optimised site. | 3 - Felt a bit like WordArt at times, limited shapes. Slight time delay can be annoying. | 1 - no keyboard shortcuts copy/paste like ctrl+c or ctrl+v, instead of clicking on delete button you need to use venngage interface button to delete items. | 3 - Only complaint is the inability to save and re-edit images. And the lack of a mobile app. | Inability to do ANY editing (even to flip the images around, which would be handy for videos taken on a phone). To get around this, upload the video to Youtube first. | Initial blank canvas and early learning curve. |
Are you going to continue using it? | 3 - Yes | 3 - Yes, good for reporting | 3 - Yes | 3 - Yes | 4 - Yes |
What’s next from the IIA Toolshed? Customer Service Tools