DesignCap - Online Graphic Design Software
Is DesignCap for you? It has limitations but is a solid offering.
What Is DesignCap?
DesignCap is a web-based graphic design software. Its primary goal is to simplify the design process for teams, individuals or businesses. These may be people who either don't have a dedicated team to produce creative, need to create content quickly or, dare I say it, are just not very good at it.
Think of this as loops in audio production. In skilled hands, you can make some fantastic sounding music, but even in the hands of a novice, you can use the basic building blocks to make something that sounds acceptable quickly and easily. Maybe not the best analogy but it works for me!
The DesignCap pitch on their homepage
You can use DesignCap to create a presentation, an Instagram post, a Facebook cover, a YouTube or video thumbnail, a poster, an invitation and more. It has thousands of templates to use as starting points which is a massive plus because it gives anyone and everyone a place to start.
Chart options in DesignCap
The built-in chart options are simple but elegant
Similar services are Canva or Piktochart. Admittedly Piktochart is more focused on info-graphics, but DesignCap has that covered relatively well too so it could be a good alternative. Strangely, the similarities to Canva are uncanny. I can see that there are only so many ways to design an interface for this type of work in a user-friendly way, but the two are very similar indeed.
What's In The Video?
In this video, I demonstrate how the software works, talk more about what it can do and also list several weak points.
My Thoughts
To summarise, DesignCap does everything it claims to do exceptionally well. The user experience is, except for the main route into your designs, flawless. It's reliable, powerful and fast in all the browsers I tried it on (Firefox, Chrome and Edge Chromium). Not only that, but it's also half the price of the competition. If you're new to graphic design and want to avoid the learning curve of Adobe Photoshop, this is where DesignCap can shine.
Opening page when designing a a YouTube Cover
There are quite a few things it doesn't do though that competition does. Now, these may not be important to you, but some things are absolute deal-breakers to me. DesignCap is half the price of Canva (looking at annual subscriptions here), but I can't use it because it won't let me, e.g. upload fonts, to name one thing. If you're from a Photoshop background, you'll find DesignCap frustratingly limiting and will probably soon give up.
Take a look at the video to see how it works or sign up for a free account (quite limited but worth a try). If you can live with the limitations, it's a terrific deal offering an excellent cloud service for your design work.