A better, *free* alternative to Canva?! Lemme show you my new fave design program. (It's NOT Photoshop!)
If you've been following me on my Good as Gold Instagram you might have seen me talk about it already, but I've been using a NEW program over the last couple months for creating Instagram graphics and designs for my clients, and I wanna share it with you!
It's totes free, it's and Adobe program (aka, its legit), and its way more chill than Photoshop. 🙋♀️I KNOW. The trifecta of newb designer dreams.
It's called Adobe XD.
First, a lil context about it + how I got into it...
I started using XD a couple months ago when I saw other designers talk about it, so I thought I’d download it and give it a whirl. And since then I’ve been using it a bit more in my own business — for my own shit, and for client projects, and its been so awesome that I’m now gonna test out creating my templates on it (instead of Canva).
The new template bundle will be launching next week, and it’ll come with all the tutorials you need to show you how to use it!
Ironically, this program was not meant to be used for templates and things in the way a lot of designers (like me!) are using it these days. It’s actually made for website + interface design, but because of how fucking clean and easy it is to use, and the fact that its FREE, people have been using it instead of Canva. Also, for the lols, Adobe actually created a rival program to Canva called Spark, but its absolute shit and not worth bothering with AT ALL. Haha.
So I wanna share what I love about it, because it was a HOT AF 🔥 topic in my DM's last week on Insta when I was talking about it!
Here’s the d-low, and I also made a lil video to go alongside it to show you the main differences between XD and Canva.
👉I've also included x3 templates for you from my new bundle, if you want to download them to have play around.
Let’s go.
Here’s why I reckon Adobe XD is better than Canva…
Watch this video for a visual run down, or read over my points below.
— You can keep ALL of your templates all in one document.
Unlike Canva where you have to keep all of your different sized templates in separate documents, you can have all of your shit IN ONE PLACE with Adobe XD! Each ‘template’ or ‘design’ is called an artboard, they can be whatever size you need them to be. This is maybe one of my favourite things about for a few reasons. For one, it just makes your life easier only having to keep track of one doc. Second, it means your brand consistency can be 20/10 because you literally get a birds eye view of (almost) all of the visual pieces of your brand.
I mean, look at this shit... (a sneak peek at the new templates!) I'm telling you now this will make your life 10x easier. 😍
— It's WAY more chill + less intimidating than Photoshop, too.
Photoshop is quite often used as an alternative to Canva, but I’ve heard quite a few times that as a total newb, Photoshop is quite intimidating because there are SO MANY options and buttons and ways to do things. With Adobe XD, its very simple, and there aren’t a ton of things you can do (the same way you’d use Photoshop where the options are almost endless), but XD has juuuust the right amount of shit going on. Enough to make it better than Canva, but not so much it makes your head spin when you crack it open.
— It’s an Adobe program…
So, its legit. In my opinion, if you want to get better at design, you should start learning Adobe, even if its just the basics. When I was thinking about whether to start using Adobe XD more for my templates, I was also thinking about my goals and my mission for Good as Gold — which involves helping people realise that good design doesn’t have to be a luxury, or a hard thing only a few people can do. And a part of this to me, is starting to use the right programs that can help you do that. So when I made that link in my mind, I knew this was something I at least wanted to try, to see how people respond to it.
Canva isn’t bad, it’s just not a good option if you want to start doing design shit properly… ya know? Canva is an amazing place to start, and obv they have a free option which makes it way more accessible, but guess what? Adobe XD is totes FREE TOO! Which is kind of insane, and I really fucking hope Adobe keeps it that way.
So… If you wanna step up your design game, even just a little, starting with a program like XD is a perffff first step.
This also means that if you might be interested in learning other Adobe programs in the future, you’ll hopefully find it easier — because once you start learning the basics of one or two programs, its easier to learn others like Photoshop or InDesign.
— I reckon its actually easier once than Canva once you get used to it.
I’m probably biased, because I’ve been using Adobe for 13+ years by now, so my brain is very used to it and where to find certain settings and shit, BUT I’ve heard from numerous people who aren’t designers that they prefer XD over Canva because of how much easier it is to use. I’m gonna take a stab in the dark and assume that this is because Adobe is a massive company that’s been designing creative programs for a VERY long time, so they know how things should work.
And ya know what? I can create shit so much faster in XD than almost any other Adobe program, when it comes to things like Instagram graphics and other simple graphics like that — and I think a lot of it has to do with being able to view lots of dartboards in one file, so copying and pasting different elements is SUPER EASY.
— There’s no rights or copyright things to worry about.
Ugh, this stuff is so boring to talk about, but its worth adding here. There are some shady-ish things in Canva’s terms and conditions, and its the kinda stuff that you’ll probably never have to worry about, but its still there, and its still shit you agree to when you use it. But with Adobe, what you create is 100% YOURS.
— You can export individual elements from your designs, to import into other things like your website, or Canva (if you’re creating multi page documents, like an eBook or something), or literally any other platform.
XD is actually created as a website/interface design program, which means it needed a way to be able to easily export all of the individual images separately, so website designers/developers can import them into whatever platform they’re creating a website on. SO this feature comes in handy AF when you’re doing the same!
— Changing colours (and some other things, like recurring elements you include on a lot of your designs) is STUPID EASY, and fun.
This shit is so simple but its fucking amazing when you’re designing something totally new and you want to play around with changing colours. Basically you can set ‘colours’ inside the document, kinda like a style guide, and you can edit them as you need to, and it’ll update that same colour across aaaall of your artboards that use that same colour. Check it out in the video and you’ll see what I mean!
And, the only things that you could consider downsides to XD are…
— It’s not made for multi page documents.
So things like eBooks, presentations, etc, will still need to be created in a program like Canva or Pages or another alternative. Although, if you have a HUGE document, Canva is not ideal for this because your life will easily become a nightmare when you need to make one tiny change in the footer of a 50 page document. But for small stuff - Canva is probably your best easy + free option here.
— The free option for XD is different to the one for paid Adobe Creative Cloud users, BUT only when it comes to cloud storage, font access, and document history. Aka, nothing that *really* matters.
It's not limiting you in half as many ways as fucking Canva does, between their paid and free plans do, lol. There are no limits on any of the feautres or anything major when you use the free version. You can check out the break down of the pricing/options over here if you wanna peep.
— Yes, its another thing to sign up for and download.
But so what… If you download it and you hate it or don’t use it, delete your account and forget about it. But you’ll never know until you try it. Also, its insane that this program is free, so if all you have to do is enter your name + email + download an app, you’re already winning I reckon.
So, you wanna download it and give it a try?
Not sponsored by Adobe! But I should be, lols.
