Visme Review

 

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So, a little while back, the nice people over at Visme approached me to take a look at their cloud-based software. At first blush, it looks a bit like Canva. Needless to say, I quirked an eyebrow at what appeared to be a new piece of software looking to fill a niche that other products already filled. After all, there is already a Canva. For people with a lot more skill in graphic design than me, there is already an Adobe Creative Suite.

Then, I started to dig a little deeper into the software. Yes, it does some of the same things as those other pieces of cloud-based software, but it’s not a one-to-one match for either. It’s more sophisticated than Canva, which creates a slightly steeper learning curve but also opens up more possibilities. It’s less sophisticated than most Adobe products, which is not a bad thing. Adobe products are great, but they are also wildly overpowered and over-featured for the non-professional user. You average user who wants to throw together an infographic will straight up drown in Adobe’s feature set, assuming they can decipher the program well enough to get started in the first place.

Book Covers

As a freelance writer and primarily self-publishing author, though, I have some specific needs. Right at the top of my list is a tool for designing book covers. So, I started there. Since I’ve already built a cover for my upcoming space opera novel in Canva, I wanted to see how hard it would be to more or less replicate that cover using the Visme software. Here’s a side-by-side comparison.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Granted, they aren’t identical, mostly because the specific font I used for the first cover wasn’t available in Visme. I also wanted a version with a larger font for the title to improve visibility for Amazon’s thumbnails. Overall, though, I got similar results. I take that as a good sign. Just as importantly, there were a bunch of features I might have used in Visme that just weren’t called for in assembling this cover. On the downside, the features for adjusting text in Visme were a little more limited…or, at least, I couldn’t find them when I went looking (I’ll swing back to this later.) Overall, though, I’d say that you get equally good options and results from both.

Infographics

Of course, I’m not just an author. I also have a second life as a freelance writer and blogger. That life can produce unexpected demands. For example, sometimes, you need an infographic for a blog. Yes, you can make infographics on Canva, but the options there are difficult to sort through and adjust. I threw together this silly infographic in about 5 minutes on Visme based on one of their templates.

One of the things I really liked about Visme here is that it provided a menu to adjust the circular graphic around the 100% to whatever number you needed it to be. It’s one of those small — but unbelievably useful — features you don’t realize you desperately want until you get to use it.

Brochures

From time to time, I’ve found myself asked to do things that are only nominally related to writing. For example, throwing together a tri-fold brochure. Yes, there’s some writing involved, but you essentially need to build a working version of the brochure to figure out how much text you can reasonably use without cramping the visual space. Again, Visme offers both blank versions of a trifold brochure and template versions. Since this isn’t something I do on a regular basis, I mostly wanted to play around with the templates. So, I threw together the customer-facing side of a brochure for an agency that specializes in ghostwriting blog content for other businesses. Here’s the result:

It’s not the flashiest brochure ever, but that’s on my minimal graphic design skills, rather than any real failure on the part of the software. There were countless adjustments I could have made, but I wanted to test out the usability of one of their existing templates. I was pleased with the ease of use.

Other options

Of course, this is just a tiny sampling of what you can do with the software. Other things you can make using this software include:

VideosGIFsDocumentsSocial media graphicsCharts/GraphsPresentations

Of course, those are just high-level categories of the options. If you dig down, you start seeing the range of options. Under social media graphics, it breaks them down according to social media platform. If you look at the documents section, it ranges from resumes and surveys clear on up to fully-fledged magazine templates. Head over to presentations and they’ll help you put together everything from a SWOT analysis to a budget or a creative brief.

In short, it’s not just a tool for making pretty pictures. It’s a resource for writers, business owners, and even artists on a deadline.

Usability

Usability matters a lot when it comes to graphic design and even document design. There’s a reason why people settle on one program and will keep using it until the heat death of the universe, given the option. Either it has great usability or they spent a substantial amount of time self-educating or getting trained to use a specific piece of software.

The good news here is that Visme doesn’t try to break the mold with the user interface. The vast majority of the features are easy to access and intuitive to understand. If it has a failing, it’s the lack of text adjustment features. For example, I generally expect at least a limited range of text effect options, like a drop shadow, reflection, and glow. These effect options appear to be wholly absent from Visme’s interface. If they do exist, which they may, I couldn’t find them while I was putting together the images above.

Final Thoughts

So, what’s my overall impression of Visme? I really like it. It offers a somewhere more sophisticated interface than Canva, while not going the Adobe route and throwing in every bell and whistle you could want. That extra features make it a more powerful tool without sacrificing on overall usability.

It’s also a bit more versatile in its offerings. It’s a tool that can serve your average blogger or a mid-sized company that has more diverse and specific needs. If you’ve run up against the limitations on Canva and wished there was something between Canva and Adobe Creative Suite, this is the option for you.

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