Useful Web Design Tools Used by Platform Creator
1). FONTS
Choosing or identifying the ideal font can make a big difference in designing your website or marketing piece. Designing a brochure for a preschool would vastly contrast an elegant font applicable for a clothing boutique.
If you ever wondered what that font is that you’ve see online but can’t identify it, Fontface ninja is what you need.
Adobe Typekit (paid)
Here you can find tons of amazing fonts designed by the top experts at Adobe.
2). STOCK PHOTOS
This is a resource that we use at Platform Creator when we’re looking for quality photos. These photos are a little pricier, but the quality is phenomenal and something you won’t find in adobe stock. This is a great resource for ministries.
Adobe Stock (top choice)
Adobe Stock has millions of photos with packages starting for only a dollar each. Adobe places high quality pictures here, that could use a little editing in Photoshop, if you want that artistic quality of a true photographer.
You can find reasonably priced stock photos here.
When you just can’t find the image you want, go to iStock for the highest quality Getty Images.
3). COLORS
Paletton (free)
If you’re looking for a color scheme for anything, Paletton is the way to go. Paletton uses their own “Colorpedia”, an encyclopedia of colors. Paletton’s colorpedia is a constantly growing source of information about color theory, color schemes, and color usage.
4). GRAPHIC DESIGN
Adobe Illustrator
This is the perfect program if you need to create some vector art. For those who don’t know, vectors are based on a set of mathematical equations that make sure your image doesn’t lose resolution no matter what the size of it is. If you’re a beginner and don’t know where to get started try this interactive course on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tastytuts+adobe+illustrator
We use a variety of different Adobe products and recommend that you view some of the pricing packages that Adobe has available. They also provide very good tutorials for free.
Adobe Photoshop
Photoshop is a very powerful application that is used mainly for editing photos, but also has an incredibly wide range of uses. From 3D art to getting that lighting just right, Photoshop has a wide range of uses. On the downside though, for beginners, this wide range of features can be very tricky to learn. Just stick to the basics and work your way up from there.
I recommend watching this introductory Photoshop course if you want to get a solid foundation for this application.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tastytuts+adobe+photoshop
Adobe InDesign
In Design’s primary purpose is for publishing. You can create and preview documents for both print and online. For typography it offers much more precision than Photoshop or Illustrator would. The projects usually worked on with InDesign include newspapers, posters, flyer, announcements. At Platform Creator, we use InDesign primarily for business cards, event planning, posters, and exhibit banners.
Adobe Bridge
Bridge is an application that organizes photos and graphics. In our own practice, we have used bridge primarily for finding out ways to optimize our graphics to ensure that the site can run as efficiently as possible.
GIMP (Free)
This is a great program for beginners and the program we started on. If you have a photo that you want to edit or lighten up a bit, GIMP is a perfect program. Drop us a line is you need any help with any of these programs.
5). WEB DESIGN
WordPress a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability with tens of thousands of plugins and theme options. Drop us a line if you need some help or suggestions on the steps to take to get started.
If you want an elegant and easy drag and drop platform, WIX is a good option.
There are a variety of different publishing platforms available, but WordPress is a good place to start. Joomla. ASP.NET. Squarespace. Drupal.
The first thing you need to do to get started is choosing a hosting platform. Bluehost offers a wide variety of low-priced options to higher dedicated server packages. We’ve used Bluehost for years for their reliability and customer service. They also offer domain and email server options and a variety of different marketing tools.
After you install WordPress or another publishing platform, you’ll want to use a theme to create your website. A theme is coding (CSS, HTML, PHP) that gives you a good starter template from which to create your website. Themeforest has many different options. Elegant Themes has many unique mobile responsive templates. If you prefer to customize your own theme, try Dreamweaver below.
Adobe Dreamweaver
Dreamweaver is used for creating websites. The advantages of using Dreamweaver range from helping you write code and design beautiful CSS that’s customized exactly the way you want.
Adobe Premiere Pro
This application is used for editing videos. You can browse for clips and bookmark them.
6).PRINT
Alphagraphics provides one of the broadest arrays of products and services among the printing industry. Aside from commercial work (books, annual reports, brochures, business cards, letterhead, etc.) they can create event marketing (indoor / outdoor) exhibit banners and displays.
NextDayFlyers offers flyers (of course), business cards, postcards, brochures, stickers, and booklets. On their website, they offer plenty of templates if you want to create something quickly or design your own right on their website. If you already have your own template you can upload that as well. NextDayFlyers offers a great selection of high-quality products at affordable prices.
