The folks at Visme contacted me to suggest that I try out their tools, since I had tried out Canva, and I was happy to oblige. Visme is a cool graphics tool, though it reminded me as much of Pictochart as of Canva.
Visme lets you build infographics, banner ads, and presentations from templates. You can also make graphics from scratch. There is a free version which allows you to create three projects (per month, I’m guessing) and you can make unlimited projects for $16.00 a month at this writing.
Rosie had told me yesterday about some interesting demographic data about social media platforms, so I went over to Pew Research, an excellent source of data on many subjects, and got some facts to use in an infographic. I picked a template at Visme and had this ready in about half an hour.
I think it would take more than three projects to develop expertise with any set of online tools, and certainly more than three to be able to give a really thorough introduction to the process. However, Visme is easy enough that I can give you a quick introduction — and maybe save you from losing one of your three free projects to random experimentation.
When you start at Visme, you can log in with Facebook or create an account. There’s a introductory video and a handful of tutorials (they’re new — I bet they’ll have lots more tutorials in the future). Creating a project begins with choosing the type of project you want to make.
The process is drag and drop. It’s more complex than Canva and easier than Piktochart, but it offers lots more control than either. The screenshots below, from when I was building the infographic above, give a glimpse of the many options you have as you work.
The presentations don’t seem much fancier than other presentation software, but certainly give PowerPoint and Keynote a run for their money. If you don’t already own one of them, Visme could save you from having to buy one.
Visme’s free version is clearly quite different from their paid version; every time you turn around you get a premium message.
I’m not opposed to paying for useful tools, and the pricing is affordable, but I think you’d want a premium Visme if you plan to use it more than once or twice (and you’ll have to pay if you want to use it more than three times).
You can see that the premium version offers quite a lot of things. If you love to create infographics and don’t have the software or the skills to do it by hand, this could also be a place to share your creations. It’s also fun. I will definitely be adding this to my list of classroom tools.
For business? If you’ve got the time, it’s certainly cheaper to make infographics and presentations with Visme than to hire someone to do it for you. The banner ads are probably better than most of the ones you see around, and it’s very easy to drop in a photo and a bit of text. I’m looking forward to the wireframes tool, and they’re also offering animation and sound options, some ready now and some coming soon. It’s very possible that this will be a great alternative to other presentation-building tools.
Quick Pinterest-ready graphics, which is what I mostly want from online graphics tools, are very fast and easy in Visme.
See the screen below? Very reminiscent of Canva, and just as simple to use.
Here’s my result. Four minutes flat. It’s not as exciting as what Jay can make, but I can do it myself in about the same amount of time it would take me to ask him to make it, and for a blog post illustration, it’s probably just fine.
Will automatic tools like these do to graphic artists what industrial automation has done to factory workers? Possibly.
Have you tried Visme? If so, I’d love to hear about your experience with it.
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