Some product marketers have the luxury of a design team to take care of all their visuals, others wear many, many hats, and one of them at some point or another will be that of a graphic designer. Whether you're putting visuals together for an internal presentation, designing buyer personas or paid social media campaigns, at some point you’ll need a design tool. And with the vast amount of options available on the market, finding one that doesn’t require a degree in graphic design can be tough. But, don’t worry! We’ve got you, here’s a list of 15 of the best design tools for PMMs.
Balsamiq
With a mission of ‘ridding the world of bad user interfaces’, Balsamiq provides wireframes so anyone can design great websites, mobile apps, web apps, desktop software, and more. It comes on three different platforms - Cloud, desktop and Google Drive - and their site’s also packed with lots of (free!) courses, resources and inspiration too.
Website: Balsamiq.com
Cost:
Adobe
From content management solutions, cross-channel advertising platforms and real-time analytics to image editing, video production and user experience prototyping, Adobe’s range is robust and equips you with just about everything you need to build, deliver and monitor product campaigns.
Website: adobe.com
Cost: *Below are the business packages. You can also purchase apps as an individual but if you do, you’ll miss out on things like collaborative video editing, volume discounts, and shared Stock plans.
“Adobe Premiere is a feature-rich video editing and production software for power users who want to do more with video. If you need to go beyond talking head videos, Premiere is essential. It allows you to combine multiple video formats and aspect ratios, as well as being able to combine graphics, animations, etc. into product videos. I’d recommend learning how to do J- and L-cuts in your edits to tighten up your videos.” - Tom Heys, Go-To-Market Consultant
Canva
Whether you’re creating graphs, editing photos or starting a social post from scratch, Canva caters for it all. With tonnes of templates, drag-and-drop tools and pre-set dimensions it makes creating awesome-looking artwork easy - whatever design-level you’re at.
Website: canva.com
Cost:
“I use Canva to create marketing content for our products because it’s simple and easy to use by a beginner like me that doesn’t have a degree in design. Canva has a lot of templates that I can use over and over, I simply change the font, add the product logo and add the picture.” - Alvin Mediadi, Product Marketing Coordinator at Hukumonline.com
Moqups
Moqups provides a single hub for teams to create and collaborate on wireframes, mockups, diagrams and prototypes. From visualising your concept to shaping your idea (with things like sitemaps, flowcharts and storyboards) to creating a functioning prototype, you name it, it can do it, and everyone can chip in with feedback along the way.
Website: Moqups.com
InVision
Connecting the entire design workflow in one place, within InVision, you can build prototypes, add, see and reject feedback, brainstorm on a digital whiteboard, create inspiration boards and smooth over design-development transitions, all from your most-loved collaboration tools.
Website: invisionapp.com
“Once our web team delivers a new UI, I’ll put a screenshot of it into Invision so that I can attach comments to specific parts of the screenshot. It makes delivering feedback much quicker.” - Al Sargent, Head of Product Marketing at InfluxData
Zeplin
Zeplin focuses on improving the collaboration between designers and engineers, providing them with the most accurate resources out there. With Zeplin there’s no need to manually write out sizes or margins, you simply type the copy and export icons.
Website: Zeplin.io
Cost:
Slidebean
Using a genetic algorithm, Slidebean arranges your content (text, images and charts) without the need for human intervention, saving you time and money when it comes to creating your next pitch deck - without compromising on quality.
Website: Slidebean.com
Cost:
Google Slides
Google Slides makes building impactful presentations a piece of cake. It comes with lots of themes, 100s of fonts and you can easily embed videos, animations and more. Better yet, multiple people can edit at once in real-time, you can make changes on any device, and everyone can comment and chat on the slides in-app.
Cost: Free
Website: google.com/slides/about
Lucidchart
Lucidchart turns ideas, visions, org charts, projects and more into visual diagrams so you can decipher information easier and make decisions quicker. Used by 99% of Fortune 500 companies and with affordable price tags, it’s a force to be reckoned with.
Website: lucidchart.com
Cost:
Sketch
Sketch turns ideas into designs and prototypes and puts collaboration at the heart of the process. Within the app, you can do everything from creating animated timelines and turning wireframes into UI elements to transforming screenshots into mockups. Vector editing, pixel-perfect precision, 100s of plugins and non-destructive editing are just a handful of the tools that come as standard.
Website: Sketch.com
Cost:
“One of the things I really enjoy about Sketch is the ecosystem of plugins and resources that exist. For mockups and prototyping there’s Sketch App Sources and Sketch Repo which have a huge number of free templates, mockup and wireframe kits which can help you speed up your design process considerably. My favourite plugin has to be Marvel, which allows you to import Sketch prototypes into Marvel making it extremely easy to collaborate with and work on prototypes with UX designers, Product Managers, and Engineers.” -Tejas Kinger, Product Marketing Manager at Hiver HQ
Figma
Figma specialises in design collaboration and provides spaces for teams to design, prototype and feedback on work. Simply share a link and see live updates, comments and changes as you go. In the words of Twitter’s Senior Design Manager, “there’s no going back.”
Website: Figma.com
Cost:
Shutterstock
Shutterstock’s home to millions of royalty-free photos, vectors, illustrations, icons, footage and music to bring your next email, product page, piece of sales collateral or social ad to life.
Website: Shutterstock.com
Cost: *Packages are also available in prepaid bundles (of 5 or 25 images) and for teams and organisations.
Unsplash
Another source for high-quality stock images but this time for free. Unsplash can be used for commercial purposes without crediting the photographer, and from nature, architecture and animals to travel, food and fashion, it’s got something for everyone.
Website: unsplash.com
Cost: Free
Marvel App
Marvel equips you with everything you need to create designs and wireframes in minutes, make interactive visuals (without code), test how users interact with your work, and collaborate in a single space.
Website: marvelapp.com
Cost:
Ceros
Among other things, Ceros strives to increase conversions, dwell-times and click-throughs by helping businesses take their marketing from samey to experiential, and it does that by:
1. Providing powerful and interactive digital experiences that drive action, deeper analytics and more quality leads.
2. Building stronger connections with immersive and unique experiences at every touchpoint. ceros.com not available online.
Website: ceros.com
Cost: Not available online
