When it comes to starting a business or making a website, graphic design is one of those important elements that we tend to overlook. Thankfully, a well-designed website doesn’t necessarily have to look outstanding or be created by a professional digital artist. In fact, many people these days use templates to start their websites, only making minor changes before settling on the final result.

Sadly, a lot of people believe that they need to have a professional freelance designer or artist to create a good website. Possessing just a bit of graphic design knowledge is usually enough to get started, and this can be great for startups and small stores that don’t have a lot of starting capital.

So let’s take a look at how you can save money on graphic design by learning a few simple things.

Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/silver-imac-and-apple-keyboard-v9vII5gV8Lw (CC0)

Get your hands on some digital art hardware

You don’t need an expensive Wacom tablet to make simple art. All you really need is a simple standalone drawing tablet or even a regular pen tablet. Having a pen makes it a lot easier to brainstorm things and draft ideas, and it makes navigating digital art and design programs a bit more intuitive. However, you can always use a mouse instead if you don’t plan to draw things freehand.

Learn some simple graphic design tools

People immediately point to industry-standard programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator when they need graphic design tools. However, these are expensive for the average startup and you can just as easily use free tools like Krita, GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), Inkscape, or Figma. There are plenty of online tutorials on how to navigate these programs. After learning the basics, you have complete creative freedom and you don’t need to spend a single penny on them. If you need help learning code like JAVA, you can always get an online tutor.

Learn about color palettes

Have you ever tried to draw something but realized that all of the colors clash and it looks strange? That’s probably because you aren’t thinking about color theory. This is a great creative habit to get into because the way we see and relate colors can drastically change an image. Certain colors clash which makes them stand out from each other, and some colors complement each other well which creates a cohesive design. Learn more about color palettes and theory so that your designs look much nicer on the eyes.

Utilize all of the free resources on the internet

You might be surprised at all of the incredible free resources that are available on the internet. From a seemingly endless number of design tutorials on YouTube to informative blog posts and articles, you can truly learn how to do graphic design by yourself in just a matter of hours by looking at all of this content. If you ever decide you want to do something a little more professional, then you can always look at online learning courses instead. However, we firmly believe that all of the free content available on the internet is more than enough to get you started.