Five Fantastic Free (and Easy-to-Use) Visual Resources for Writers would be a better title for this post. I must confess that for me, the easy-to-use part is even more important than the free factor. In an earlier post I wrote about my discomfort with the online trend away from words and toward anything visual. But while writers and content marketers want to be read, original photography can be unaffordable, stock photography can get boring and few of us have regular access to a graphic designer with the time available to help develop original visuals to match our blog and content generation schedule.

Five-Fantastic-Free-Visual-Resources-For-WritersCriteria to Qualify as a Fantastic Resource

  • As I noted, easy-to-use (and learn) trumps just about everything for me. Easy-to-use means fast and minimal effort for a non-professional designer. I’ve learned more than enough software, thank you. I want to focus on the strategy and the message. Our clients and I want near-immediate results.
  • Adobe Creative Suite does not need to be opened.
  • Flexible. The same tool can create visuals that support a variety of writing styles, topics and content.
  • Offers an alternative to public domain, Creative Commons or stock photography
  • Free or minimal cost

Five Favorite Visual Resources

Let’s explore creating images by moving gradually from more word-dependent to pure images. Here are my current favorite five visual resources for writers and marketers with a limited budget and a looming deadline.

  1. Tagxedo

    Tagxedo, word cloud with styles, is an advanced version of my old word cloud favorite Wordle. Tagxedo turns words — famous speeches, news articles, slogans and themes, even your love letters — into a visually stunning word cloud, words individually sized appropriately to highlight the frequencies of occurrence within the body of text. Be forewarned though, there are distraction-inducing options for playing with an infinite number of color themes and shapes.

  2. Quote with Quizio

    Quizio is simplicity defined. Paste in a quote and add the source and then flip quickly through a number of alternative layouts with different fonts and colored backgrounds. There’s nothing esoteric here, just an easy way to create an image that can be used as a pull-out quote or headline.

  3. Easelly

    Easelly is a basic infographic tool that can create simple images from pre-built themes or from scratch. An Infographic is an appealing image when you have a set of data points or statistics to share. There are a number of Infographic tools available, but I’ve found this to be the best balance of simplicity and functionality.

  4. Coggle

    Coggle  is a free mindmapping and diagram tool that I find faster and easier to use than one of the dedicated mindmap or 3D tools, and it can help you create a sketch-like image that’s more appealing than the ubiquitous PowerPoint or WordArt diagrams. I’m still a fan of Inspiration software for a major mindmap, but for a quick illustration of a concept, Coggle does the trick.

  5. Pic Monkey

    Pic Monkey, is a montage or collage builder. What if you have several great images to choose from and can’t decide? Pic Monkey and other free collage-making tools let you take multiple small images to create a larger one with greater potential impact.

Don’t get me wrong. When you’re creating cornerstone content or whenever you have the opportunity to work with a designer, jump at it. But for all those times you’re on your own and looking for something different to support your words, these are my fantastic five visual resources. Are there others you’d add?