Guest Author: Ernie Smith, Associations Now
Plenty of tools out there could help give your visuals a boost—but they won’t completely replace the need for an actual designer. Also: Are web analytics bunk? Here’s what a former Reddit CEO had to say.
Communicating with your members is an increasingly visual endeavor—and getting visual requires having a mixture of skills, tools, and time.
But what if you’re lacking in the skills or time departments? What if you just run a small chapter and resources are tight? Fortunately, there are plenty of tools out there that could help fill the gap.
Over at Billhighway, writer Sarah Garrity highlights a series of graphical tools that came up at the firm’s recent Association Component Exchange.
Among the highlights are PowToon, an offering that allows people to easily create animated presentations; the web-based graphic design tool Canva, which had multiple fans among attendees; and Envato, a creative marketplace that sells professional, ready-made graphical components.
But while these tools had their partisans, Garrity was quick to emphasize that they were not replacements for traditional designers.
“Sometimes a tool can make a huge difference, as our CEX presenters demonstrated,” Garrity wrote. “But sometimes people expect technology to solve problems it can’t really solve.”
