Graphic design has become a necessity in today’s digital environment. From abstract visuals for social media, and brand logo design, to designing a beautiful website interface — the tools you use can mean everything in results of mediocre or professional quality work.
Graphic design tools ranging from simple to professional ones are available online and even more, the monster of options ate up all. Whether you do vector illustration or photo manipulation, UI design, or 3D graphics, there’s something for every designer, no matter your skill level. If you are not—then ask and we would be happy to shed some light on the topic.
So here are the 15 best and latest graphic design tools that every designer must know in 2024. So much in such kind of tools not only give the strength to create but also boost productivity and efficiency.
1. Adobe Photoshop – The Industry Standard for Image Editing
When the average person thinks of graphic design, they would probably think of Adobe Photoshop. And that is for good reason! Photo editing and manipulation tool, Adobe Photoshop is the industry standard when it comes to designing photo quality and high-definition designs.
Whether you are designing a digital painting, an illustration, or editing photos for a promotion ad, photoshop is the first choice for anything pixel-based.
Why Designers Love It:
- Versatility: ranging from photo editing to graphic design missions, Photoshop is highly skilled at addressing almost any kind of visual needs in the wide spectrum of image manipulation tasks.
- Pro Tools: The layers, filters, and brushes provide you with full control over your design.
- Native integration: Photoshop works seamlessly with all Adobe Creative Cloud apps such as Illustrator and InDesign like a well-oiled machine, thus creating a very convincing design decision.
- Endless possibilities: design posters, flyers, UI mockups, and digital paintings with exciting detail.
If you are really into design there is no escaping photoshop.
2. Adobe Illustrator – Best for Vector Design and Illustration
If you work with vector graphic files (logos, icons, or typographies), Adobe Illustrator is one of your mandatory tools. Unlike pixel-based images, vector graphics never lose the quality no matter how much you scale them up making Illustrator ideal for projects such as branding and print media.
Why Designers Love It
- Infinitely Scalable: Artwork can be created that scales to any size without becoming blurry.
- Accuracy: When it comes to shapes, anchor points, or paths, Illustrator has extremely accurate controls.
- Custom typography: craft a font with tools to manipulate your text.
- Performance: Integrates well with Photoshop as well as other Adobe solutions for more complicated design projects.
Illustrator is an indispensable tool for logo designers or individuals working with vector art.
3. Figma – The Best Tool for Collaborative Design
Figma has taken the design world by storm, with real-time collaboration as one of its features — creating a powerful tool for UI/UX designers. Browser so they can be the same design at the same time and in different locations, plus no file sharing.
Why Designers Love It
- Collaborate in real-time: Great for teams as multiple users can work on a design project at the same time.
- Prototyping: You can create prototypes as well as interactive wireframes.
- Cloud Storage: The designs I always safe and you do not need to worry about losing files.
- Design systems: scale design systems for systematic branding across projects.
Figma is primarily focusing on providing tools to create interactive experiences and it has a nice, powerful interface.
4. Canva – Simple and Easy-to-Use for Non-Designers
It makes it possible for those in need of quickly put-together and high-quality design sans the depth of graphic designing. Canva is a cloud-based platform that comes with a drag-and-drop tool to let users create eye-catching designs even if one is not experts in software like Photoshop or Illustrator.
Why Designers Love It
- Designs: Over 1,000 ready-to-use designs for social media, presentations, posters, etc
- Ease of Use: Drag, drop, and tweak as you need.
- Stock photos and assets: Equipped with an enormous library of stock images, icons, and graphics.
- Collaboration with the team: Design and share projects709
Canva is especially beginner-friendly and therefore a fantastic resource for marketers, small business owners, and essentially everyone looking to build quick, professional designs.
5. Affinity Designer – The Affordable Vector Graphics Tool
If you’re looking for the functionality of Illustrator but without the price, then Affinity Designer is a great option. With a price point that fits just about any budget, this vector design tool has a healthy set of features for the serious graphic designer. If you are going to create logos, icons, or detailed illustrations, Affinity Designer offers professional quality at the price of a cocktail.
Why Designers Love It
- Not a subscription: Purchased once — no need to pay for monthly service as you would with Adobe products.
- Raster & Vector tools: Switch between raster and vector workspaces to design precisely as you wish.
- Advanced typography with complete control over text, fonts, and layouts.
- Performance: Fast & Responsive: Event with very large files.
Affinity Designer, by way of Serif, is an excellent vector-based Illustrator alternative for budget-conscious designers.
6. Sketch – Perfect for UI/UX Design
Sketch is one of the most common tools among UI/UX designers, but it is only available for Mac users. Sketch is another popular one that has gained lots of attention (for good reason – Sketch is the perfect app for making simple, clean interfaces for mobile apps and websites).
There are some nice idea design tools in the market but one of the favorites we use and trust is Sketch. As the fastest growing world, especially for the UI Design industry, soon makes Sketch is soon trendy to use (healthy competition with Adobe who consistently develops such software to be competing) by much of designers out there.
Why Designers Love It
- Artboards: Great for responsive design with simple artboard control.
- Plugins: There are several plugins available to extend its functionality.
- Prototyping: Users can prototype app and web mock-ups by using built-in prototyping options.
- Design systems: Quickly implement the design across your projects.
When you design something, especially in the web or app world Sketch is a bare backbone for user experience seamlessly.
7. Procreate – The Go-To for Digital Illustration
When it comes to illustrators, Procreate is the iPad app that has taken the digital art world by storm. An intuitive drawing and painting tool that let’s artist draw and paint on the move with the iPad’s touch screen and Apple Pencil. Despite its minimal design aesthetic, Procreate offers an array of professional-grade brushes and layers that boggle the mind of any digital artist.
Why Designers Love It:
- Real drawing experience: When it comes to drawing, you actually feel the paper and pencil because of Apple Pencil with iPad.
- Custom brushes: Over 800 built-in or create your own.
- High resolution canvases: enables you to create high-level quality images, ideal for print and web.
- Timelapse recording: Capture the process of your designs, so you can show off your creative journey.
Procreate for Digital Artists and Illustrators is considered an essential app because it offers professional tools while also being portable.
8. CorelDRAW – A Versatile Vector Design Tool
Long before AI tools, CorelDRAW was a household name in the design industry for more than two decades because of its intuitive interface coupled with excellent vector designing utilities. CorelDRAW is ideal for logo designs, vector illustration, or print layouts; it offers a simplified and comprehensive interface while maintaining the level of professionalism expected from graphic design software.
Why Designers Love It
- Best For: Logo design, typography, and vector illustration with advanced vector tools
- Easy to learn: Learns more quickly than some other vector creation programs.
- AI-enhanced tools: New AI-enabled features, such as image tracing, enhance workflows.
- It Is An All-in-one Solution: Vector Designs + Photo Editing + Layout In One Platform.
When it comes to a professional tool that is simple enough for everyday needs and powerful enough for in-depth design, there are few that can rival the power of CorelDRAW.
9. Inkscape – The Best Free Vector Tool
An amazing vector design tool that is absolutely free for any designers on budget. It definitely has a way to go in terms of polish compared to Adobe Illustrator but it is still a very capable option for creating vector illustrations, logos, and icons without the expense.
Why Designers Love It
- Free and Open-source: An Economical Answer to Expensive Software
- Fundamentals: Provides the necessary vector illustration and layout tools.
- Community-backed: Constant updates by a team of developers with a vested interest in the future of Builds.
- Cross-platform: Windows, MacOS & Linux
If you are a beginner in vector design or searching an open source free software for Illustrator, Inkscape can save your day.
10. Gravit Designer – A Browser-Based Design Tool
Gravit Designer is a FREE full-featured vector graphic design app that works on ALL platforms with an internet connection. If you create logos, presentations or vector illustrations and are looking for free tools (because we all need to save money), this really easy yet powerful interface will work for beginners as well as professionals.
Why Designers Love It
- Web-based: You can join from any device that has a browser.
- Save to the cloud: and access your project from anywhere on any device.
- Costs: Free with Pro available for additional features
- Vector and Raster: Supports vector and raster workspaces
Strong candidate for DesignersSlightly less adept than Sketch, Gravit Designer is a cloud-based design tool.
11. Blender – A Must-Have for 3D Artists
Blender is an industry standard 3D design powerhouse that serves as a full featured professional suite for modelling, animating and rendering (as well as video editing). Due to its capabilities and robustness, it has become a favorite among the hobbyists and PCB designers as well; we all know this open source software.
Why Designers Love It
- Entire toolset: Blender does just about everything from 3D modeling to sculpting and animating.
- Free and open source: N/A, work alongside a large community that provides blogs and resources.
- Rendering: Great rendering solutions as well, from cycles to Eevee.
- Cross-platform: support (Windows, macOS, Linux) => Open to everyone.
If you’re looking to get into the world of 3D design, Blender is the tool for you covering professional-level features while absolutely free, so it’s not surprising we liken it to Gimp.
12. Adobe InDesign – The Gold Standard for Layout Design
Adobe InDesign is the go-to tool for print design and other complex layouts such as brochures, magazines or eBooks. A must have tool if you work in print Before adobe InDesign, the only available DTP software was Quark Xpress.
Why Designers Love It
- Professional layout tools: Great for multi-page documents, InDesign is ideal for managing text, images, and other design elements.
- Create interactive PDFs and eBooks by adding buttons, animations, and hyperlinks.
- Learn more! Adobe Illustrator Interoperability ** Quickly design charts with extensive file compatibility: Import graphics and text from other Adobe products.
- Use Master Pages: For consistent layouts across multiple pages you can use master pages.
InDesign covers all the professional needs for layout design especially when working with print or digital publishing.
13. Adobe XD – The Tool for UI/UX Design
While I found Adobe XD superior for wireframing dot PERIOD (especially that it is an application designed specifically for UI/UX designers which makes creating and prototyping interfaces easier. XD is a must-have tool for any design team interested in creating user-friendly versions of features quickly and that enable seamless collaboration/feedback.
Why Designers Love It
- Prototyping/Wireframing: A fast and easy way to create prototype that illustrates user flow and interactions.
- Design systems: Use common styles and components across projects.
- Live collaboration: View your work for the moment and immediately solicit feedback or edit by collaborating with them.
- Creative Cloud Integration: Able to seamlessly work with all of your other Adobe products for quickly importing assets and designs.
Adobe XD is an important tool in the toolbox of any UX designer working to create user engaging experiences.
14. Vectr – A Free Vector Graphics Editor
Vectr is a free in-browser vector graphics editor designed to be simple and easy enough for anyone. While it may not have all the bells and whistles of some other tools, it is great for beginners or even a quick design.
Why Designers Love It
- Ease of Use: User-friendly interface ensures that beginners looking to start with graphic designing will find it easy to learn and use.
- Real-time collaboration — Work with others on projects simultaneously.
- Cross-platform: Web app, desktop app or browse extension, to get you going everywhere.
- Key Features: Extensive vector tools for shapes, text and simple graphics.
This is another simple vector graphic tool to use for beginners.
15. The Free Photoshop Replacement: GIMP
GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is the most popular free and open source image retouching program that can be held in comparison to Adobe Photoshop. Though it lacks Photoshop’s more advanced features, GIMP is a powerful, full-featured photo editing and graphic design suite.
Why Designers Love It:
- License: To be free and open-source — subscription fees need not apply.
- Custom editing features – including layers, filters, and effects for super-creative visuals
- Tailored-to-you workspace: Users are able to customize the interface so that they can work better.
- Huge community: Thousands of tutorials, plugins, and help from the GIMP community
GIMP is a great option for anyone seeking powerful but free photo editing software.
Conclusion
When it comes to graphic design, your working areas and tools can either make or break the final piece. With whatever thing you may be doing, no matter how detailed your illustrations are or whether you are a user interface designer or preparing print layouts, those tools will aid in solving your pain point in design improvement as well as work streamlining.
Keep in mind, when you try these 15 best graphic design tools of 2024 that the most appropriate tool for you will be based on your reasons, training level and design aims. Take advantage of what is on offer, try it out and be creative with these amazing tools. Happy designing!