If you Look Good, you Feel Good: Helpful Design Tools and Resources for Startups
Ask any kind of athlete, from Soccer players to Tennis stars, and they will tell you the same thing; “if you look good you feel good and perform better”. I believe the same to be true for startups. After all, two of the most important things in early stage ventures is having confidence in what you’re doing and getting noticed for it.
Having a great product that works well is important, the next step, good design, is as valuable and is essential, so make it a priority.
When you’re face to face with a client, you can talk up your product and it’s benefits all you like, but if the next day they look at your landing page/website/pitch deck and it looks like a dog’s breakfast, they will be less likely to use your product and definitely less likely to share it with other important decision makers.
I work with startups every day, as the Community Manager at H2 Ventures, and I know that design doesn’t come naturally to everyone (especially founders who are busy building). The good news is, it’s never too late! There are plenty of resources on the internet, with lots of tools to help! So here is my list of the best tools and resources for good design.
High Quality Photos
There’s nothing worse than a low-res, pixelated image. There are now some great free photo resources. Unsplash is filled with high quality, free to use images. For Stock Photos, Pexels has tonnes of free to use Stock photos.
https://unsplash.com/
https://www.pexels.com/
Fonts
It is worth spending time to find good fonts. For online fonts, try Google Fonts as these fonts are viewable on all computers. For free to download fonts for print based material, try DaFont or Adobe TypeKit.
https://fonts.google.com/
https://www.dafont.com/
http://typekit.com/
Colours
It is worth selecting a colour palate for your company, be consistent and only use the colours you have chosen. To find nice colour palates and also good web colours check out the following websites:
https://htmlcolorcodes.com/color-picker/
https://flatuicolors.com/
https://www.materialui.co/colors
https://coolors.co/
If you are after Gradients, check out: http://gradients.io/
Canva has also created a beautiful list of colour palettes: https://www.canva.com/learn/brand-color-palette/
Mockups
Have you ever wondered how people make their screenshots fit perfectly into phones, or how people get their logos on bottles, shopfronts and notebooks. Chances are, these aren’t real and have been created using a mock up tool. These tools can make your work look slick and professional. For mockups, take a look at the following:
http://market.designmodo.com/creator-scene-generator/
https://graphicburger.com/
Icons
Icons can be used for almost everything and are a great way of highlighting points, breaking up text and displaying emotion throughout all your work (website, pitch deck, flyers). Some places you will have to pay for an icon set, however there are some free ones out there. If you do find an icon set that you like and suits your brand and theme, it might be worth paying the amount to get the whole set. Some icon tools I use are:
https://iconmonstr.com
https://www.iconfinder.com
https://thenounproject.com/
http://www.streamlineicons.com/free-icons.html
Wireframes
If you’re designing wireframes or mockups, Sketch makes it really easy to build and design out your pages. I am yet to use Invision App but I have heard great things from fellow designers. AdobeXD, Keynote and Powerpoint are also great tools.
https://www.sketchapp.com/
https://www.invisionapp.com/
https://www.adobe.com/au/products/xd.html
https://www.apple.com/au/keynote/
https://office.live.com/start/PowerPoint.aspx
Email Signatures
Make a great impression with a nice email footer. There are a few websites out there that can build one for you, I have found HTMLSig to be really useful.
https://htmlsig.com
Websites and Landing Pages
If you don’t know how to code or have limited time, a great resource is SquareSpace. It is my favourite website builder as they have beautiful templates ready to go, all you have to do is add in your text and images. Another great tool for landing pages is Launch Rock. https://www.squarespace.com/
https://www.launchrock.com/
Get inspiration from websites that you like! Here are a few of my favourites at the moment.
https://www.atlassian.com
https://stripe.com/atlas/guides
https://www.bemasterly.com/
https://www.bonjoro.com/pricing
https://www.airbnb.com.au/
http://www.gotoskincare.com/
https://splashthat.com/
A few tips:
1. Use your border, don’t make your text / images go to the edge of the screen, use a nice wide border.
2. White space is your friend! Don’t try to cram heaps of information just to save space, use the white space.
3. Don’t have too much text. No one reads through all the text, so why have it? Try and simplify all your messages as best you can.
4. Have a sign up button on your website, if possible, at the top.
5. Use animation if you can to add interest to your page.
Pitch Decks
Take a look at Themeforest https://themeforest.net/ or Canva https://www.canva.com/, Y Combinator also have resources. http://www.ycombinator.com/
For content of Startup Pitch decks, learn from those who have gone before you:
http://www.pitchskills.com/best-startup-pitch-decks-2018/
https://medium.com/startup-grind/all-the-public-startup-pitch-decks-in-one-place-7d3ddff33bdc
https://piktochart.com/blog/startup-pitch-decks-what-you-can-learn/
Posters/ Flyers, Deliverables
Canva! What a great tool.
https://www.canva.com/
Inspiration
And hey! One always needs inspiration, my best places to look for new ideas when I’m stuck or looking to be inspired are as follows:
https://www.pinterest.com.au/
https://www.behance.net/
https://www.designspiration.net/
http://theinspirationgrid.com/category/design/
So, spend some time on your brand and design and it will pay off.
These are my opinions only. I studied a Bachelor of Design in Visual Communication at UTS and am a freelance graphic designer. https://www.meekodesigns.com/
