As a professional graphic designer, I’ve used Skillshare for this myself to level up my design skills, and I love the platform. Recently, I had one of my friends ask me what some useful freelance websites were for graphic designers to perform work on the side (I had mentioned Skillshare earlier as a great resource for learning), and I figured that would make a great blog post if I shared my opinion on some of the best ones out there.
So below you can find my list of some of the best freelance graphic design websites and platforms out there to perform work on the side (or full time). There are others like Fiverr , 99designs , and upwork , but those have been spoken about more throughout many other blog
Kimp
Best option for unlimited graphic design
Kimp isn’t a freelance website per se. But they are a great alternative for businesses looking to hire a freelance graphic designer. Kimp is a graphic design company that provides unlimited revisions and requests for a low monthly rate. While you usually can only take on one project at a time, Kimp gives you the flexibility to get exactly what you want each time, no matter how long it takes.
Kimp lets you work on up to 3 tasks at one time, which can create double the output of other unlimited design platform options. If you need even larger output, you can purchase additional subscriptions to up the ante.
With Kimp, you work with a team of 3 designers in at least one of three graphic design styles (print, illustration, or digital). You also get full rights to your designs once complete.
Fiverr
Best freelance website for small graphic design edits and task
Fiverr is a great option for anyone looking for freelance work on a budget. The name came from their initial offer, which was all services priced at just $5. While they don’t have that same pricing model any longer, it’s still possible to find low prices while retaining quality work. Fiverr lets freelancers create their service offerings, tiered packages, and rates for clients to browse and choose from.
If you want something turned around quickly without breaking the bank, Fiverr is an option worth checking out.
Toptal
Best freelance website for the top graphic design talent
For those looking for the best graphic designers that the web has to offer, Toptal is likely the place to find them. The site proclaims to house the “top 3%” of talent, hence their name.
They’re known for their rigorous screening process when selecting graphic designers for their hiring staff, with various skill reviews and test screenings dwindling their candidates to the top 3% of all qualified designers. This means if you choose to go with Toptal, you’ll be getting the best of the best.
Toptal works with each client personally and connects them with the right candidate or team of candidates based on specific needs. These could include the time frame for a project and the cost of the overall project.
Toptal also has a robust job board that lets you search and contact candidates based on their expertise. Whether you want a flexible freelance graphic designer, a web design specalist, or an experienced UI/UX, Toptal has you covered with the best candidates available.
- Read our Toptal Review
Timely
As a graphic designer, it is really hard to put a fixed amount for a gig. That’s why you will find a lot of graphic designers opting for an hourly job.
In that case, you will need a time-tracking and scheduling app, Timely. The app lets you schedule, track multiple projects and ensures that you are on track while working.
Behance
One of the best places for the graphic designers to be in, the Behance platform is a community of designers. Behance is a place where a graphic designer can not only showcase their work but take inspiration from others work.
According to us, it acts as a catalyst that brings more ideas to the table. Also, you can showcase your work to others.
Last, but not the least, it provides a good networking option where you can meet like-minded designers and potential clients!
Boomerang
Boomerang is a Gmail plugin that you can use to make your email handling process effective. Freelancer’s, in general, have to send a lot of emails every day.
With Boomerang, you can schedule emails, set reminders, and much more. It also helps you get a slight idea of the strength of your email by providing you a live score when you type in the email.
Overall, a great app that provides you a better email handling skills.
Upwork
Upwork (formerly known as Elance oDesk) is one of the world’s most popular freelancing platforms. With over 300,000 graphic and web designers available, you’ll have no trouble finding freelancers for your graphic design jobs.
The Process Of Hiring A Graphic Designer :
Upwork gives you two options to hire a graphic designer:
- You can post a job listing and have freelancers respond to it.
- You can go through their profiles manually and reach out to freelancers by yourself.
Key Upwork Features
- Search filters to help you narrow down your graphic designer search quickly
- A built-in work diary that helps you track the hours freelancers spend on your projects
- Built-in online workspace to collaborate with your graphic designer and share feedback.
- Upwork also has powerful mobile apps for Android and iOS to help you manage freelancers on the move.
Upwork Pricing
Upwork comes with three plans:
- Basic (Free) : 3 freelancers per job post + safe payment options + transaction reporting
- Plus ($49.99/month): 15 freelancers per posting + dedicated account management + advanced collaboration features
- Business ($499/month): unlimited invites to freelancers + premium customer support + advanced job post and talent sourcing tools
In addition to the membership fees, Upwork charges a flat 3% processing fee on all payments made to the designers.
Freelancer.com
Founded in 2009, Freelancer.com is a powerful freelancing website that’ll help you find your ideal candidates who are fit for your graphic design jobs. You can even hire them for a part-time or a full-time role.
The Process of Hiring a Graphic Designer
You can hire freelancers by:
- Using their search filters to identify freelancers that fit your job requirements and reaching out to them directly.
- Posting job listings and screening the freelancers that apply.
- Conducting contests where freelancers can pitch their ideas to you and you can select the one with the best concept.
Key Freelancer.com Features
- The platform creates a detailed design portfolio for each freelancer – allowing you to carefully screen candidates.
- Freelancer.com conducts certification exams to verify each freelancer’s skillset.
- Streamlined dispute resolution system with active customer support.
Freelancer.com Pricing
Freelancer.com has four membership plans:
- Intro Plan ($0.87/month): 15 bids per month + unlimited project bookmarks
- Basic Plan ($4.59/month): 50 bids per month + preferred freelancer + 3 highlighted contest entries
- Plus Plan ($10.18/month): 100 bids per month + daily withdrawal requests +5 highlighted contest
- Professional Plan ($27.91/month): 300 bids per month + 15 highlighted contest entries + premium freelancer insights
Fiverr
Fiverr is a popular platform used by small businesses to hire graphic and web designers. With a user-friendly interface and a plethora of visual design categories, you have everything you need here. From a business card design to WordPress website design, Fiverr has freelancers for every design job.
The Process Of Hiring A Graphic Designer:
Here’s how you hire a graphic designer in Fiverr:
- You can post job listing that freelancers respond to.
- You can go through a freelancer’s profile and reach out to them if their skill set meets your requirements.
Key Fiverr Features
- Fiverr highlights each freelancer’s seller level to help you quickly identify the best-rated freelancers.
- Fiverr is extremely affordable as it has no membership fees and offers services at just $5 (which is where its name comes from)!
- It has multiple search filters to help you zero-in on the best designers for your freelance work.
Fiverr Pricing
All purchases on Fiverr.com are subjected to a $2 service fee for work up to $40, and a 5% fee for services above $40.
ManyPixels
ManyPixels is similar to Kimp and provides unlimited graphic design. On the ManyPixels basic monthly plan, you get a dedicated designer and unlimited project requests, as long as you take things one project at a time.
There’s a drawback to only working with one designer, as your turnaround will only be as fast as they can work. However, you’ll never have to pay extra for requests or revisions. ManyPixels is a little more expensive than Kimp and they don’t complete as many projects each month. However, if you are looking for web and mobile app design, ManyPixels is the way to go.
99designs
99designs is a platform that lets clients either choose from multiple applicants or chose one individual designer to work with from the start.
To get started, you’ll choose from over 90 different kinds of design work. Then, you’ll post a brief for the project you need to complete. Designers will come up with their best ideas for the finished project.
You’ll view the designers’ options and have the ability to view their full profile, including information about their repeat customers and how many other design contests they’ve won.
One great thing that people notice about 99designs is it guarantees you’ll be happy with your design! So while you may pay a slightly higher ticket price, there’s sure to be a smile at the end of the road because of the company’s satisfaction guarantee. The designers won’t stop until they capture your vision.
Onlinejobs.ph
Onlinejobs.ph is the best place to find talented designers from the Philippines. Founded back in 2008 by John Jonas, Onlinejobs.ph has since become the largest online marketplace to find Filipino VAs or specialized talent.
This platform is unique because it only highlights the skills of remote workers in the Philippines, which comes with several benefits. Most Filipino workers speak English, which makes it easy to communicate about projects. They’re also some of the most hard-working talents you’ll find and often have much lower rates than some US freelancers.
While Onlinejobs.ph is known as a virtual assistant site, it also has members that are skilled in areas like SEO, graphic design, and CRO.
If you’re interested in working with talented Filipino designers, be sure to give Onlinejobs.ph a look.
Freelancer.com
Founded back in 2009, Freelancer.com is one of the oldest freelancing websites that brings a huge population of talented graphic designers to one location online.
To hire on Freelancer.com, you can use search filters to ensure the candidates will be qualified for the exact job you need. You can reach out to designers directly or post a job listing to allow for open applications. As an added bonus, there’s also the option to host contests where freelancers pitch their ideas so you can choose the best one.
Freelancer.com allows designers to create detailed portfolios, which gives you more content to screen as you make your selection. They also conduct exams to verify the freelancers’ skill sets and relay that back to you. If you ever have a dispute, there’s a streamlined system designed to resolve issues quickly.
DesignCrowd
One 99design alternative is DesignCrowd. For good design at a good value, look no further than DesignCrowd. If you’ve found yourself somewhere between the budget graphic design crowd and the higher-ticket platforms like 99designs, DesignCrowd could be a happy medium.
While you won’t get to see as much detail on designer profiles as you would on something like Fiverr or 99designs, you’ll still get a good idea of each person’s style and abilities.
You’ll love the wide range of categories that will help you narrow in on the right designer as well as how easy it is to create a designer wishlist and start designing immediately.
Design Contest
Design Contest is a crowdsourcing design platform that lets clients launch a contest in one of 35 different design categories along with a creative brief for the assignment. Then, designers choose a contest they have an interest in and submit their innovative ideas. Most clients get to choose between 200 or so entries.
Conclusion
Graphic Design Software For Beginners Free Mac
Gravit Designer
Gravit Designer is a full-featured vector design app suitable for all manner of jobs, from screen and icon designs through to presentations, illustration and animation.
- Windows / Mac / Linux / Browser
- Precision – Unmatched precision in any unit from creation to exporting.
- Structure – Powerful pages with masters, real layers and symbols to structure your content.
- Vectors – Non-destructive booleans, knife tool, and path graphs.
- Layout – Grids, anchors and auto-layouts made for pixel perfect screen designs.
- Multiple fills/borders, effects and blending modes together with shared styles.
- Text – Handcrafted powerful text engine with text on path, web fonts, and styles.
- Export high quality PDFs, SVGs and Images using slices and multiple assets.
- Advanced – Presentations, sketch and EPS import, design templates, transformations, and more.
2. Inkscape
Inkscape is an open-source vector graphics editor similar to Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, Freehand, or Xara X. What sets Inkscape apart is its use of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), an open XML-based W3C standard, as the native format.
- Windows / Mac / Linux
- Drawing: pencil tool (freehand drawing with simple paths), pen tool (creating Bézier curves and straight lines), calligraphy tool (freehand drawing using filled paths representing calligraphic strokes)
- Shape tools: rectangles (may have rounded corners), ellipses (includes circles, arcs, segments), stars/polygons (can be rounded and/or randomized), spirals
- Text tool (multi-line text, full on-canvas editing)
- Embedded bitmaps
- Clones (“live” linked copies of objects), including a tool to create patterns and arrangements of clones
- Transformations (moving, scaling, rotating, skewing), both interactively and by specifying exact numeric values
- Z-order operations (raising and lowering)
- Grouping objects (“select in group” without ungrouping, or “enter the group” making it a temporary layer)
- Layers (lock and/or hide individual layers, rearrange them, etc; layers can form a hierarchical tree)
- Alignment and distribution commands
3. GIMP
GIMP is a cross-platform image editor available for GNU/Linux, OS X, Windows, and more operating systems. It is free software, you can change its source code and distribute your changes.Whether you are a graphic designer, photographer, illustrator, or scientist, GIMP provides you with sophisticated tools. You can further enhance your productivity with GIMP thanks to many customization options and 3rd party plugins.
- Windows / Mac / Linux
- High-Quality Photo Manipulation
- Photo Enhancement
- Digital Retouching
- Hardware Support
- Unlimited Beats & Pages
- Sell Digital & Physical Products
- Full WordPress Music Website
- 90 Free Graphics – Get $15 Off
4. Krita
Krita is a FREE and open source painting tool designed for concept artists, illustrators, matte and texture artists, and the VFX industry. Krita has been in development for over 10 years and has had an explosion in growth recently.
It offers many common and innovative features to help the amateur and professional alike. See below for some of the highlighted features.
- Windows / Mac / Linux
- Brush Stabilizers
- Layer Masks
- Layer Management
- Pop-up Palette
- Brush Engines
- HDR Support
- PSD Support
- Resource Manager
XARA
Xara Designer Pro X is a no-frills all-in-one design tool that delivers on speed and functionality. It’s built on a high-performance vector rendering engine, making it super responsive.
What’s more, the Xara Pro+ package gives you complete access to a full suite of programs. From illustration, and photo editing, to advanced page layout, web graphics, and web design.
Favourite features
Cloud Access – Uploading your designs to the cloud makes for easy collaboration and review. A nice add-on to an already loaded offer.
Multi-purpose UI – From illustration to photo editing, everything you need is in one place. This can be very useful for designers that offer an array of services.
Affordable Subscription – For a monthly subscription, Xara Designer Pro X is a really affordable option. Without the need for additional tools, you can still create beautiful graphic designs at a fraction of the cost of other software.
Pros
- Powerful yet easy-to-learn – It has all the necessary features to satisfy any experienced designer. But, it’s also simple enough to encourage beginners to keep going. Xara has a ton of tutorials, and they offer how-to hints through Xara Xone.
Cons
- Confusing packages – Xara Designer has a Pro+ and a ProX package. The former is subscription-based, and the latter is a once-off purchase facilitated through Magix. Make sure you check out the comparison before making your purchase. What’s more, they send constant reminders to renew subscriptions or buy the package. It’s just a bit annoying.
Pricing
- Pro+ – £16,95/mo for 1 user, billed annually
- Xara Designer Team+ – £9,98/mo per user, min. 3 users, billed annually
- ProX – £109.00 once-off (Regular price £219.00)
Does Xara Designer Pro+ have a Free Trial? Yes, there is a 14-day free trial
Does Xara Designer ProX have a Free Trial? Yes, there’s a 7 day trial without any registration required. If you’d like to increase it to 30 days, you’ll need to register and get your extension code.
Crello
The simplest online image editor to produce posts, covers, graphics, and posters using the best software on the web.
- Web Browser Based
- Filters
- Crop
- Blur
- Shapes
6. Photo Pos Pro
https://59946728b244b7cfb492fe050fbce7fa.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.htmlPhoto Pos Pro is a popular free graphic design software that is user-friendly. This free photo editor provides you complete solutions to enhance your photos.
- Windows / Mac
- Remove/erase/replace backgrounds
- Remove unwanted objects
- Fix poor photos
- Frames and Collages
- Advanced Photo Effects
- Stunning Text Effects
- RAW Files support
7. Pixlr
Free graphic design software Pixlr claims to be ‘the most popular online photo editor in the world’.
It boasts more than 600 effects, overlays and borders, and lets you do all the main things you’d expect from a photo editor, from cropping and resizing to removing red-eye and whitening teeth. This free app is available in both iOS and Android varieties.
- Mobile App
- Create photo collages with a variety of layouts, background, and spacing.
- Balance out color in one easy click with Auto Fix.
- Layer multiple photos and blend them together to get a unique look, using Double Exposure.
- Stylize images to look like a pencil drawing, an ink sketch, a poster, and more.
- Make your selfies beautiful with simple tools to remove blemishes and red-eyes or to whiten your teeth.
- Focus on one color with Color Splash or add impact with Focal Blur.
- Choose from a pool of effects to give your image the look and feel you want.
- Adjust the mood of the photo with overlays – amplify the tone, cool it down, or add surreal shades.
- Mask your photo with captions. Choose from a variety of fonts.
- Finish off your editing process with the right border – pick a style that suits you.
- Keep things fresh with our growing catalog of additional effects, overlays, and border packs.
- Keep track of your favorite effects and overlays with the Favorites button.
- Resize images quickly and easily after editing.
- Share photos directly with friends through Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or email.
Free Vector Graphics Software
Vectr is a free graphics software used to create vector graphics easily and intuitively. It’s a simple yet powerful web and desktop cross-platform tool to bring your designs into reality.
FastStone Image Viewer (Windows)
It would be almost impossible to find an image format that FastStone doesn’t support. It also provides management and comparison of files, as well as some rudimentary editing and slideshow-with-transition effects.
Picasa (Windows, Web)
There’s arguably no better way to organise your images (and videos) than the great interface of Picasa. The Web Albums also makes it easy to share images online, and this is a sterling effort all round.
SketchUp (Windows, Mac)
If you’re getting into 3D and still don’t want to spend big bucks on software, check out SketchUp to get started building models.
Inkscape (Windows, Mac, Linux)
Most vector-based drawing programs, like Adobe Illustrator, will cost you big bucks – but Inkscape is open source. It uses the SVG format for files to support features like markers, clones, and alpha blending.
Jing (Windows, Mac)
Jing can do a lot. Mainly, it takes still screen captures, but it also captures video screen casts. The Screencast.com account you get with it lets you store 2GB worth of files for sharing with others online.
CorelDraw
CorelDraw feels like a professional graphic design tool, but the learning resources make it great even for beginners. The different pricing options and tools make it the perfect option for beginners through to professionals.
Favourite features
Endless Content – CorelDraw has been around for a long time, giving you access to an extensive library of high-res photographs, digital images, fonts, professional templates, interactive frames, gradients, and vectors.
Exceptional Vectoring – Famous for its vector capabilities, once you start using Corel there’s no going back. Corel’s versatile shaping and drawing tools have been industry favourites for over 30 years.
CorelDRAW is FINALLY on Mac – CorelDraw used to be only for Windows. Luckily, you can now use this amazing tool on any device. Work on Windows, Mac, web, iPad, or mobile. You can also design on the go with the new CorelDRAW App.
Pricing
Subscription – £299.00 (Includes £49.83 VAT)
Once-off – £539.00 (Includes £89.83 VAT)
Does CorelDRAW have a Free Trial? Yes, there is a 15-day free trial
Conclusion
There are many ways to find freelance work. Freelancing gives you the freedom to set your own schedule and the ability to make the same amount of money if you worked longer hours. I’m sure you’ve heard of sites like Upwork and Elance, but there are also other websites that can help you earn extra cash or get your graphic design done ASAP,