13 Best Free Graphic Design Software

Do you want to invest in building a strong brand image? To do that, it's important to develop your brand's visual identity, creating a logo, defining a color palette, and other visual elements that should be present in your website and social media pages, for example. Counting on the best free graphic design software can help you in that task. 

The quality of the design pieces that are made to promote your brand influence how people perceive it. To increase authority and trust, the design must be professional and consistent with your company's vision, values, and mission. 

Nowadays, it's possible to encounter free graphic design software that provides multiple tools such as pre-built templates in different formats, which make the task of creating a banner or a flyer, for example, much simpler.

1. Shutterstock Creative 

Shutterstock has become known worldwide for its vast image bank, but it also offers one of the best graphic design software. You have the opportunity to create professional design pieces for free using the tools provided by the platform.

You can remove the image background, resize pictures, include text, change colors, and more. Choose the image format according to where you want to publish it. Shutterstock enables you to create different types of designs for Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and Twitter, for example. 

You also have the option to make folders, logos, presentations, posters, and invitations.  Another advantage is that you can save everything inside the platform, and allow your team to have access and edit your designs too. Enjoy the planning tools to create a schedule and enhance productivity. 

Free trial:

• Enjoy all the tools for free for 1 month
• Remove image background
• Resize images
• Apply special effects
• Personalized insights
• Pre-built templates

2. Canva

With multiple tools and an easy-to-use interface, Canva is one of the best free graphic design software that enables you to create presentations, social media posts, make your own logo, edit videos, and much more.

You will find thousands of pre-built templates in different formats, like invitations, calendars, business cards, flyers, and stickers.

You just need to choose what you desire to make, select the template theme, if it's for a holiday or launching a product, for instance. Then, you will be able to customize the design at Canva Editor, using the drag and drop tool. You can change the font, add images, graphic elements, and videos. 

Canva also enables you to edit videos for free with the trim and split tool, making it easier to create videos for TikTok and Instagram, with just a few clicks. You can resize it according to the platform you are going to post on.

Another useful tool is the PDF editor that gives the possibility to import PDF files and break them down into editable elements and alter them as you prefer. 

Free plan: 

• Over 250.00 free templates
• More than 100 design types
• Hundreds of free images and graphic elements
• Invite members of your team
• Collaborate and comment in real-time
• 5 GB cloud storage

3. Envato Placeit

Do you want to invest in creating products with your brand's logo for your employees or to give them as gifts to loyal customers?

Envato Placeit offers a mockup tool that enables you to apply your logo on different products, such as t-shirts, mugs, and then download the template. You can add text, images, and also change colors. 

Developing items with your brand's identity is a strategy to boost brand awareness, but that isn't the only feature that Envato provides, you can make your logo using the platform, and edit videos in different formats as well. 

You are also going to find thousands of free templates to work with. Select the one you wish to use, then personalize it by adding images, videos, texts, changing the colors and font.  Your social media post will look much more professional by using these design tools. 

Free plan: 

• Free templates
• Image cropper
• Video to gif converter
• Online video cropper

4. Desygner

If you are looking for free graphic design software that doesn't require specific design skills to be able to create different types of content, like flyers, newsletters, or banners, Desygner will help you with that.

It provides an intuitive dashboard and pre-built templates that make the task of designing pieces for your brand much faster and easier. 

All you need to do is choose a template, customize it with the drag and drop editor, then choose the file format you want to download, or you can even share it directly on your social media pages.

Desygner counts on a vast template library divided into different categories such as certificates, cards, invitations, social media covers, presentations, and logos. 

If you want to use the same image in different social media networks, enjoy the automatic image resize, which will save you time and work. Desygner also has a PDF editor where you can import files and edit the PDFs as you need, change texts, images, and colors with just a few clicks. 

Free plan: 

• Thousands of free templates
• Millions of free images and icons
• More than 300 design types
• Import and edit up to 10 PDF pages
• Automatic image resize
• Create your brand elements
• Organize your designs in folders

5. Fotor

Fotor provides a free photo editor that will help you to enhance the images you are going to post on social media or your website, for example. You can crop images, resize them, add texts, make collages, and easily create graphic designs. 

The photo editor has several features including background remover, blemish remover, and wrinkle remover. Upload the photo you want to edit, click on the menu to make the desired adjustments, add effects, and resize the picture, then download it or click to share directly at one of your social media pages. 

To help you make the best use of Fotor's features, you will find several tutorials and guides on the website. You can learn how to add a watermark to your photos or make them look like polaroids. Also, enjoy the multiple pre-built template formats to make different designs like invitations, labels, and logos. 

Free plan: 

• Basic edit adjustments
• Basic photo effects
• Basic portrait touch up
• Limited collage layouts
• Limited design resources
• Sync photos and works online to access anywhere
• Support JPG and PNG file formats for download
• High dynamic range (HDR) tech
• 100+ Photo frames
• 300+ Stylish fonts
• Massive storage in Fotor cloud
• Ad-free
• File management
• Auto-resized designs
• HD stock photos for personal and commercial use
• Stock photos and templates updated weekly
• Priority email support

6. Sketch

Sketch is a powerful macOS app that allows you to create design projects together with your team, and collaborate in real-time.

It also counts on a set of intuitive vector editing tools, pixel-level precision, customizable grids, resizing tools, math operators, OpenType fonts, and many other features, giving you the flexibility to create freely. 

The app offers you the option to save smart components, color variables, layers, and text styles to be reused in different designs, sparing you time from creating them all over again. You will have a design system where it's possible to manage and edit all your design components and use searchable menus to find what you need.

Working on a team in the same design piece becomes much easier with the tools Sketch offers. It enables you to create libraries of your symbols, text and layer styles, and color variables, share them with your collaborators and push updates, so everyone can be in sync. 

Free 30-day trial:

• Unlimited documents and projects, version history, shared libraries, members, and Guests.
• Real-time collaboration, components, prototyping, advanced layout, customizable, works offline.
• View projects and documents, inspect designs, download assets, comment, and discuss.

7. Vectr

Vectr is one of the best free graphic design software to edit and design vectors like a professional, via web or its desktop cross-platform. With intuitive tools, you don't need to be an expert in this area to enjoy all of its features, 

With Vectr you can create logos, presentations, cards, website mockups, and many other 2D graphics without losing clarity and blur-free by using vector graphics, instead of raster graphics. If you have any doubt, Vectr also provides several tutorials to guide you through. 

To develop projects in a group, share a real-time view of your activity on Vectr with your team. They can observe as you edit designs, live on their desktops. 

Free plan: 

• Vector graphics editor
• Collaborate in real-time
• Create blur-free 2D graphics
• AI-powered

8. Inkscape

Inkscape is a free and open-source vector graphics editor, which has versions available for Windows, Mac OS X, and GNU/Linux.

It provides several features to enable you to create illustrations, clip art, logos, typographies, and many other designs. The standard file format it uses is the SVG, but you can import and export AI, EPS, PDF, PS, and PNG as well. 

One of the aspects that make Inkscape stand out as one of the best free graphic design software is its users' international growing community, who provide help and support to help improve the platform tools. You are going to find several learning materials to develop the designs. 

Free plan: 

• Drawing pencil tool
• Shape tools
• Text-tool
• Embedded bitmaps
• Color selector
• Pattern fills

9. Gravit Designer

Gravit Designer gives you the tools you need to create with flexibility and precision whether you are developing marketing materials, presentations, UI design, or art, for instance. Available for Mac OS, Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS, you can work online and offline. 

The platform was built to offer powerful features for design professionals, but also has an easy-to-use interface that enables beginners to quickly learn how to navigate and make incredible design pieces too.

You will count on thousands of premade design assets, such as shapes, icons, stickers, frames, and lines that can be used for free in your projects.

Use the built-in Google fonts library to access multiple free fonts. To help you with your designs, take a look at the example files created by Gravit's team, and get inspired. The platform is also adaptable for touch-enabled devices, and is compatible with pen devices too, like Apple Pencil. 

Free plan: 

• 500MB cloud storage
• PDF export
• Color space (RGB only)
• Extended font support (web fonts and system fonts only)
• Public link sharing

10. Blender

What about being able to create not only amazing 2D graphic designs but also 3D ones? Blender is one of the best free graphic design software that enables you to do that.

Free and open-source, it counts on cycles render engine, which gives you real-time viewport preview, CPU and GPU rendering, VR rendering support, PBR shaders, and HDR lighting support.

With Blender's modeling tools, you can create 3D projects using features like advanced sculpting tools and brushes, 3D painting with textured brushes and masking, and even Python scripting for custom tools and add-ons. 

Blender also allows you to create amazing animations for short films, and advertisements, for instance. The software provides features like envelope, skeleton and automatic skinning, curve editor and dope sheets, custom bone shapes for fast input, and sound synchronization. 

Free plan: 

• Rendering
• Modeling
• Sculpting
• Animation and rigging
• Grease pencil
• VFX
• Simulation
• Video editing
• Scripting

11. Vecteezy

Vecteezy offers you millions of free resources such as high-quality images, videos, and vector illustrations.

If you need to find photos to use on your website, social media pages, and designs, you will find a full library of photographs separated into multiple categories like animals and wildlife, people and lifestyle, and travel, and adventure. 

To develop different types of design projects, Vecteezy also has free vector arts in different formats, so you can make backgrounds and banners with several themes, for example.

Choose the ones you want to use and start creating. Vecteezy has a video library too with several videos that are free-licensing for personal and commercial use.

Free plan:

• Free images
• Free videos
• Free vectors

12. Infogram

Infogram is free graphic design software that enables you to create different types of graphics using its pre-built templates to power up your blog articles, reports, presentations, and much more.

You can choose the template you prefer and customize it by changing the color palette, selecting the fonts, and adding your company's logo, for example. 

Besides infographics, It's also possible to use the platform to create interactive charts and maps, animations, slides, posters, social media posts, virtual backgrounds, email headers, and Youtube Thumbnails.  

Work on projects together with your team by creating a shared library with them where they can follow up on each other's works, make and edit designs. Set permissions levels by role and organize the team into groups. 

Free plan: 

• 37+ interactive charts types
• Up to 10 projects
• Up to 5 pages per project
• 13 map types
• Publish your content online
• Import data
• Object animations

13. Design Wizard

Design Wizard gives you multiple tools to create different types of designs, such as cards, invitations, ads for social media, sales posters, and certificates.

Create your free account, select the format you want to use, define the canvas size and enjoy its extensive catalog of images and templates to completely customize your design. 

The Design Wizard editor has an easy-to-use dashboard where you can change colors, insert icons, texts, photos, and position the elements as you wish.

Use the resize tool to have the same image in different sizes, so you can post it on different social media, for example. It's also possible to add filters and adjust details like brightness and contrast. 

Free plan:

• Pay As You Go Image & Video Downloads
• Resize Image Designs
• Add Text, Images & Shapes to Designs
• Custom Colour Palette
• Reseller Rights
• Lifetime Licence

Enjoy the Best Free Graphic Design Software and Strengthen Your Brand's Image

Choose the best free graphic design software that offers the features you need to develop content for your brand. Explore the software of your choice to get to know the tools it offers, and learn how to use design as a way to create a strong brand image, enhance authority, and have a visual identity that is memorable for your target audience.