Google Drawings — An Easy Answer to your Drawing Needs

As an Information Developer/Technical Writer, sometimes you may need to prepare drawings, such as general designs and illustrations, flowcharts, architectural diagrams, and more. Nowadays, a variety of graphic design and drawing tools are available online. However, most of them are licensed tools and only a few offer free usage within a trial period. How about using a free, online drawing tool that can fulfil almost all your drawing needs?

Introducing Google Drawings — a web application that can be used for creating various drawings, illustrations, flowcharts, and more. Let’s look at the highlights of Google Drawings and what makes it a powerful application for creating and editing drawings

• Free to use: If you have a Google account, you can use this application like you use Gmail or Google Drive. It’s an absolutely free product from Google.
• Access through multiple devices: It’s an online application and no installation is required. You can directly access the application using a web browser from any device with an internet connection.
• Work with colleagues and friends: Google Drawings allows you to work with your friends and colleagues in a collaborative environment. You can invite them to draw and edit; the changes being reflected immediately, making them visible to all collaborators in real time.

Create flowcharts

A flowchart is used as a representational diagram for presenting a workflow or a process. Drawing flowcharts can be hectic or time-consuming. Google Drawings makes it quick and easy to create different flowcharts by utilizing different shapes and arrows. If you don’t want to start from scratch, you can use the Google Drawings flowchart templates available within the application.

Custom designs and drawings

With Google Drawings you can effortlessly create custom designs using the various tools available in the application. Insert shapes, lines, textboxes, etc. into your drawing as you do in MS Office. Also, you can use royalty-free images from the Google Drawings library. Search for the image that you need and drag it from the library to create your masterpiece. Once you are done with the drawing, you can download it in the preferred image format.

Professional-looking posters and flyers

You can create high-quality flyers and posters export them as any image format or PDF file. Make your posters attractive using the creative background images that are available in the Google Drawings library. The tool also supports a variety of unique fonts for your use.

Annotate screenshots

Tech writers usually need to annotate screenshots to highlight UI elements and provide visual clarity. Use the Shape and Line tool to highlight the UI elements and apply the desired color and size. Also, from the Shapes section, you can try adding different Callouts with text to your screenshots.

Collaborative whiteboard

In the new era of hybrid and remote working models, you can use Google Drawings as a collaborative virtual digital board, where you can pin your post-it notes with texts. Share your thoughts, ideas, or any other piece of information by sticking it as a note on the board. You can then share the URL with your friends and colleagues; allowing them to view the board and pin their own post-it notes to the digital board.