2 Great Places Online To Make Great Banners For Blogs

Other Posts of Interest 7/12/2014

Update to this post: Online Photo Tools To Create Highly Shareable Pinterest Pictures

For years I have created my own graphics, banners for myself and others and buttons that I use in posts. On newsletters, flyers and for social media websites. I have never purchased programs for this and started out by using a MicroSoft Office publishing program on my computer, but over the years there have been many websites that have made it possible to create with ease.  Some of the programs I have used in the past for just a basic banner is BannerFans.com but as with all things there are always new and improved so then came PicMonkey, much better and with more options, colors and graphics that you can use right on site, some are a little juvenile and the reason I say that is, you can upload your own pictures with ease. And any size banner is possible. PicMonkey is free to use and offers an upgrade on a month to month basis. But you would always have access.

Pros: The program makes it easy to create and edit  and make plenty of banners and graphics to use on your blogs and websites. There are plenty of video tutorials.

They also now offer pre made templates for the different social media banners, however, and you can visit their blog for more ideas and inspiration.

Cons: And because PicMonkey does not have a way to save your work you can actually re-access your banner, here’s how; once you are satisfied with your creation, you can share this to your social media with the details, i.e., a giveaway. If your giveaway has not started you can share it to your email and it will generate a link that you can save to revisit for sharing later.  You can also share your banner with text to We Heart It- See more here on We Heart It!

There is also a new kid on the block, called Canva, little more professional, and an update to this original post, Canva now offers templates for Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Social Media and just as user friendly as PicMonkey, they make it easy to design banners for Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Social Media, right down to blog graphics. They also offer the ability to create a collage in different templates. It helps so that you dont have to start with a blank sheet. With a few clicks you can add your own details. As you can see in these images.

Canva is free to use with paid upgrade with premium “options” but there are plenty of choices to create fantastic images. And many images are available for a purchase of $1 but keep in mind it is a one time use. If you go back to reuse the banner and want to keep and use the image you purchased, you would have to repurchase.

Pros: The use of the free templates make it fast and easy to create the right size banner for i.e., Facebook or Google Plus pages. They have different banner set to change the text and colors to save and use. They also store the latest banners you create.
Cons: This program does take a bit longer to figure out for a beginner. Does not offer cropping capabilities. Update: Instead of cropping you can customize the size banner you would need on the front page of Canva before you start.

Additional Tools:
BannerFans.com great for a basic banner
BannerSnack simple banners
Fotor Banner Create from existing templates
CoolTex Make some fancy text to use in posts

Places That You Can Find Images For Free To Use:
Pixabay
Photo Pin
Public Domain Archive
4 Designer-Graphics

Let me know if this was helpful in a comment. And if your looking for another kind of tool for blogging, need information about blogging, leave in comment, I would love to help by writing a new blog tool tutorial 🙂