Tips, Expertise, Articles and Advice from the Pro's for Your Website or Blog to Succeed
Every designer could use some high-quality textures for their projects. You can use them as backgrounds, overlays, or just to make your graphics a little more interesting. And they look great in posters, banners, or even as part of a website.
But free, high quality textures can be hard to come by. That’s why we’ve put together this huge collection of texture downloads, free for use by any designer. Some require an email subscription to download, but that’s all.
Altogether there are nearly 300 textures and brushes here, sorted into three categories: nature and materials, abstract, and brushes.
These photorealistic textures draw from nature, as well as man-made materials like brick and plastic. You’ll find woods, stones, paper, and dirt that make great natural backgrounds or overlays.
Rather than drawing from nature, these textures are more abstract and random. They make great background textures for websites and posters, or pretty overlays for objects. You’ll find noise, splatters, foil, and watercolors mixed in here.
Last but not least we have textured brushes. These make it super easy to add shading, splatters, or grain to any image; just use the brush to draw it on, and add a little realism to your graphics.
Whether you’re using a brush to carefully draw realistic grain on an image, adding a pretty foil overlay to an object, or downloading a futuristic texture to use as a background, there’s something for every designer here.
Most of these are totally free for use, but make sure to check the licenses before you include any of these in a commercial project. Once you have the go-ahead, go crazy using these gorgeous high-res textures in your web and graphic designs.
Are you looking for the best web design software to make beautiful websites? Most experienced web designers have their own preferred software for different design tasks.
However, if you’re just starting out, then it can take some time to find that perfect combination.
In this article, we will show you the best web design software for different use-cases, so you can make the right decision for your need.
Due to common misconceptions about web design, many beginners feel that it would take them years to make decent and professional website designs.
While it’s true that you get better overtime, the right web design software can help you easily create beautiful designs with minimal skills.
That’s because some web design software automate the entire process which allows even absolute beginners to create beautiful websites.
Let’s take a look at some of the best web design software that will help you design like an expert web designer.
There isn’t a single web design tool that would do all the tasks related to web development and design. As a designer, you will need to choose a combination of different software to make your own toolkit.
We have divided our selection into different categories, so you can evaluate the best available options for each task.
Let’s start with the basics first.,
Many beginners ask us if they need to learn coding to make a real website.
While knowing how to code gives you an extra advantage in creating websites, many website builders like WordPress has made it easy for anyone to create custom websites without learning how to code.
This is the reason why WordPress now powers over 34% of all websites on the internet.
Beaver Builder is a user friendly page builder for WordPress. It allows you to simply drag and drop design elements to create your own custom design without writing any code.
To get started with Beaver Builder, you’ll need a WordPress website.
We recommend using Bluehost. They are an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider and one of the biggest hosting companies in the world.
The best part is that they are offering WPBeginner users discount on hosting and a free domain name. Basically, you’ll be able to get started for $2.75 per month.
→ Click Here to Start with Bluehost ←
For details, see our guide on how to make a website with step by step instructions.
Once you are up and running, you need to install and activate the Beaver Builder plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
After that, you can edit WordPress posts or pages using the Beaver Builder.
Simply point and click on any item to edit it or load from dozens of ready-made templates to use as a starting point. For instructions, see our guide on how to create custom layouts using Beaver Builder
Beaver Builder also comes with a Theme Customizer which allows you to create custom WordPress themes using the same drag and drop interface. Unlike editing pages, you can create a complete theme with your own design.
For more information, see our tutorial on how to create custom WordPress themes without writing any code.
Divi is another excellent option if you want to design a WordPress website. It is one of the best WordPress page builders and comes with dozens of ready-to-use templates to choose from.
After you have setup your WordPress site, simply install and activate Divi on your website and start editing. It works with almost any WordPress theme, and you can also use the Divi theme which comes with enhanced features for the builder.
It is a drag and drop tool which means you can simply point and click on any item and change its appearance. You can add images, videos, sliders, contact forms, widgets, and more.
Most importantly your design changes are fully responsive and would automatically adjust for mobile devices.
If you are looking for a fully-hosted website builder, then Constant Contact Website Builder is a good WordPress alternative for beginners. This smart website builder comes with beautiful website designs that you can edit using a simple user interface.
Simply start by answering a few questions, and the website builder will pick up design, images, and demo content for your site. You can then just point and click to replace it with your own images, text, videos, and more.
Gator is another website builder that allows you to design complete websites without any coding. Gator is made by HostGator, one of the best web hosting companies in the world.
It is a fully hosted platform, which means you don’t need to worry about updates, security, or backup. It not only includes the builder and website hosting, but you also get a free domain name for your website.
The builder software itself features an intuitive drag and drop interface with more than 200+ professional web design templates. Each template is fully customizable using a simple point and click tool.
You can edit any item on a page or drag and drop commonly used items like images, videos, photo gallery, text, columns, maps, and contact forms.
Gator also comes with a built-in stock photo library, so you can find and add beautiful photos on your website.
The eCommerce industry is expected to reach $4.9 trillion by the year 2021. There is an enormous demand for eCommerce web design in the market.
Following are our top picks for the best web design software for eCommerce that will allow you to break into this market without any coding skills.
WooCommerce is the best eCommerce platform in the world. It runs on top of WordPress, which means you’ll need a WordPress website to design an eCommerce website using WooCommerce.
You can sign up with Bluehost to get started. They are offering WPBeginner users discount on hosting + free domain name. Basically, you can start with $2.75 per month.
For detailed instructions, see our complete guide on how to start an online store.
BigCommerce is a popular eCommerce platform. It is available as a fully-hosted solution and the best part is that it can be easily integrated into a WordPress website.
Creating an online store with BigCommerce is quite simple. It comes with beautiful storefront designs and fully customizable themes for your online store. It automatically handles product images, crops them, and displays them in beautiful gallery layouts.
Wondering how it stacks up against WooCommerce? See our article on BigCommerce vs WooCommerce for side by side comparison of the two platforms.
If you are looking for a fully hosted eCommerce solution, then Shopify can be a good fit for you. It comes with professionally designed templates to create almost any kind of online store.
All eCommerce design tools are highly intuitive and allow you to just drag and drop items to create beautiful pages. You can easily upload custom logos, images, videos, and more.
Shopify takes care of hosting, software, and backups, so you can just focus on creating a beautiful online store.
For more details, see our detailed comparison of Shopify vs WooCommerce.
A big part of web design consists of graphics to create custom logos, background images, featured images, and more. For all these, you will need graphic design tools.
These tools require some basic know-how of how to use them. Luckily, there are tons of online resources to quickly get you up to speed.
Adobe Photoshop is the industry leader in photo editing and graphic design software. It is available for Mac and Windows operating systems.
It is one of the oldest and the easiest to use graphic design software on the market. Due to its massive popularity, there are plenty of online resources to learn Photoshop for free.
Adobe Photoshop is a bit more expensive than some other software. It is available on a subscription basis and each plan comes with different apps and addons.
Sketch is a powerful vector design tool which allows you to create scalable high-quality designs. Sketch makes it super easy to create icons, illustrations, prototypes and mockups for apps, websites, and print.
It comes with an intuitive design that’s easy to learn for beginners. It also comes with tons of learning resources to help you quickly familiarize yourself with the software.
Affinity Designer is an incredibly easy to use and powerful graphic design tool. Suitable for beginners and advanced users alike, Affinity Designer is packed with all the tools you would want in a graphic design tool without any of the complicated stuff.
It also allows you to easily switch between raster and vector modes. This makes it easy to design illustrations with a powerful combination of tools.
Affinity Designer is available for simple pricing of $49.99 one-time payment.
Basically Affinity is a perfect combination of both Adobe photoshop and illustrator.
Adobe Illustrator is Adobe’s vector graphic design tool. Popular among graphic design professionals, Illustrator lets you create logos, icons, drawings, typography, and illustrations for print, web, video, and mobile.
It is easy to use but comes with a slight learning curve to take full advantage of the software. However, Adobe offers plenty of resources to help you get started. You’d also be able to find free tutorials online.
Adobe Illustrator is available on monthly subscription plans, which makes it a bit more expensive than other software.
If you are looking for a free web design software, then Gimp is an excellent free option. This open source design software is a good alternative to Adobe Photoshop and allows you to easily edit images and create graphics for your websites.
Gimp is available for MacOS, Windows, and Linux. It may not look as polished as some other paid software, but it is a full-featured and powerful design software with much to offer.
Web design doest not just end with the launch of a website. Marketers regularly need to design graphics, social media images, icons, infographics, banners, and more.
There are plenty of tools that allow you to design professional-grade marketing material with very little effort and skills. Here is our pick of the best web design software for marketers.
Canva is a graphic design tool for marketers and bloggers. It is a web-based tool and doesn’t require installation of any additional software.
It comes with many ready-made design templates for different types of graphics. You can pick a template and then use Canva’s drag and drop tool to edit those images for your own website.
Balsamiq is a powerful design tool to create mockups, wireframes, and websites. It comes with an easy to use interface that helps you learn UI design as a beginner. Advanced users would find it immensely helpful in quickly building mockups for products pages, marketing material, and more.
Moqups is another wireframe and mockup design tool. It allows easy sharing and team collaboration without downloading any files.
The intuitive user interface makes it easy to use for beginners and powerful enough for advanced users. It comes with a built-in library of thousands of icon sets, fonts, and style library.
Piktochart is an easy design tool to create presentations, infographics, flyers, and posters. It comes with dozens of templates to use as a starting point.
You can use it in your browser, so there is no need to install any software. Simply drag and drop to add icons, elements, photos, shapes, lines, and arrows. Rearrange items and add your own text to create professional designs for your marketing campaigns.
Need to quickly design static HTML sites? These web design software will help you easily design HTML sites without writing any HTML at all.
Adobe Dreamweaver is one of the most beginner friendly web design software. It allows you to easily create mobile-friendly static HTML websites, stand-alone landing pages, or quick HTML docs.
It is easy for beginners to simply drag and drop to create web pages. Advanced users would find it equally useful with smart coding, autocomplete, compilers, git support, and more.
Google Web Designer is another intuitive and easy to use tool to create HTML-5 based designs, motion graphics, and animations. It can also be used to design banner ads, video ads, and other marketing materials.
You can start from scratch or choose from dozens of templates available in different layouts. Google Web Designer is available as a free download for Mac, Windows, and Linux operating systems.
We hope this article helped you find the best web design software for your design toolkit. You may also want to see our list of the best CRM software and the best business phone services for small businesses.
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The post How to Choose the Best Web Design Software in 2019 (Compared) appeared first on WPBeginner.
A collection of very modern and unique CSS gradients.
Capture, collaborate and communicate on visual feedback wherever you work with BugHerd. Collect and pin feedback, it’s like using sticky notes on a website.
Evan Minto shows how to pull off an intrinsically responsive grid without media queries using the new min() function.
Flawwwless is a coding education platform with easy to follow interactive tutorials.
Learn about an additional tool to help you balance immediacy and freshness when serving your web app. By Jeff Posnick.
With ImportDoc you can create a web page that updates dynamically with the content of a Google document.
Scott Jehl shows a simple HTML approach for loading CSS files asynchronously.
Exciting news for Gatsby users: With a Gatsby theme, all of your default configuration (shared functionality, data sourcing, design) is abstracted out of your site, and into an installable package.
The web presentation of The Cool Club FWA, a deck of cards displaying the 54 coolest websites in history, as featured in “Web Design, The evolution of the Digital World 1990-today”.
Day 21 of the WebGL month by Andrei Lesnitsky will teach you how to create a Minecraft terrain.
The freshly updated library for detecting if elements are in the viewport plus smooth scrolling with parallax effects.
A guide that describes how Google Search processes JavaScript and best practices for improving JavaScript web apps for Google Search.
Dan Abramov explains the beauty of algebraic effects in an easy to understand way.
Understand the mechanics of responsive AR in this article by Keith Hamilton.
Scott O’Hara goes into the specifics of how an anchor may be exposed to assistive technologies, such as screen readers.
A collection of side projects including web, mobile and desktop apps.
A look back at 29 years of the design of the Adobe Photoshop application.
TabNine is a deep learning powered autocompleter for code that was trained with about 2 million files from GitHub.
An excellent loading animation demo by Aaron Iker.
Axel Rauschmayer looks at private fields, a new kind of private slot in instances and classes, part of the ES proposal.
A Three.js analog clock made by Jon Kantner.
With Stein you can use Google Sheets as your no-setup data store.
Scroll down and press the toaster button to go back up in style!
Collective #534 was written by Pedro Botelho and published on Codrops.
Adobe Photoshop is a versatile and extremely useful piece of software. With it, you can edit, paint and enhance photos, create your own artwork, and even create attractive, eye-catching marketing materials for your business. The Complete Photoshop Mastery Bundle will take you from photoshop zero to professional hero. Learning Photoshop can enhance your career opportunities. […]
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