The web is constantly being reshaped and it is evolving in all of its horizons. Among the most popular aspects of the internet are web images. Online images are one of the most important aesthetic elements of browsing in this day and age.
A good image on a website can determine if a user wants to keep on browsing your site or not. Albeit the rapid evolution of the internet, images are not that quick to adapt to these changes. And are still one of the relics of the internet that can take up the most space within a website.
An image can take up to 80% of a webpage’s data. The more data a website has the more time it will take to load up as well, which means it will attract fewer visitors. This can be pretty harmful to your business too if you have online or web business. It has become more and more important for web pages to be responsive. Since its content needs to scale naturally with a given device’s resolution that is capable of browsing a particular website. This can be done with Scalable Vector Graphics or SVGs.
SVGs are an image format that will not lose quality with scaling since it does is automatic. They give you way more freedom over the image sizes that you are using and the way they can interact with a design. SVGs are XML-based and they contain two-dimensional vectors. This can be shapes, paths, or anything that you can make in Illustrator.
This format is way more suitable for a web page than for example a JPEG file. SVG is more powerful than any given image format that you can find or use on the internet. Since you can easily manipulate them with coding in either CSS editors or in JavaScript. With all of this important information, let’s look into the realms of the best free SVG design software that are available online right now.
1) Raw
It might seem like SVG is the only solution to make your site eye-catching but did you know that you can use animations as a media format for your webpage as well? This is possible with a lot of free platform-tools just like the one we talk about here, Raw.
Raw is a totally open-source web application that helps you in creating vector-based animations and even charts. This can achieve with the help of the D3.js graphics library which provides you with an easy-to-use editing interface.
This app gives you sixteen different types of premade templates to display your data. If you want to make a movie chart or to visualize the length of a song or any other custom data sets that you might want to visualize in an SVG format.
2) Inkscape
This popular graphics editing engine is very much used by either freelancers or indie designers. Inkscape is open-source and more than 10,000 people use it worldwide.
With this application, you are able to build and optimize vector graphics in all kinds of forms, like charts, illustrations, logos, and so on. It can totally support SVG but sadly enough since 2015, you cannot make SVG animations with it.
3) SVGjs
This library will provide you with all the needed SVG animations that a developer or a designer might need. With SVG.js you can stack together SVG images to make quirky animations that you can use in video projects, websites, or anything that might be creative and it helps you get inspired.
4) Method Draw
This site can be very useful if you want to create your own SVG files. Method Draw is a web-based app for free vector graphics editing. It looks like a minimalistic version of Photoshop but you can use it in the browser instead.
It has the feature to upload your own content and edit it as per your interest. It’s pretty straight forward. You add texts, shapes, drawings to your work to make it look good. And in the end, you are given the choice to change their colors or to transform them into any given size, rotating it, or setting up its width or height.
5) Adobe Edge
If you want to use a really flexible and easy-to-use design tool you should probably look out for Adobe products since they are the global leaders in developing them. Adobe is one of those companies as well that will always keep track of what’s the latest thing in web design.
Since they are aware that it takes more than a pretty picture to keep customers coming back to a website, they made this really awesome software that has the name Adobe Edge Animate.
If you feel like you want to explore the greatness of SVG animations. You should really get yourself a subscription to Adobe Edge and if you have no clue where to start with this program. YouTube can give you a helping hand since the site is flooded with useful Edge tutorials on how to make SVG graphics.
6) Chartist.js
If you are looking for a way to make your presentation or video more appealing visually than Chartist will definitely help you. Chartist gives the ability to designers and developers to create interactive and dynamic charts for any device.
They serve you simple and very useful libraries on charts that you can simply attach to your website. Making a nice and good looking, responsive website with very interesting charts.
7) SVGMagic
SVG is an old kind of vector graphic format, but it has been only added to the web recently. This means that many of the older browsers are incapable of supporting new HTML5 technologies.
When SVGMagic started their site they have kept that in their perspective, giving the ability to webmasters to convert stalled SVG files back to PNG so that these older browsers can show these images. This app uses jQuery as a base platform.
8) Glyphter
If you need SVG optimized icons or fonts you should really check out Glyphter. They give you 16 different sources to look out for. On their site, you can browse between icons and all sorts of fonts that are editable inside their website, which can be very useful. Of course, you can download them afterward to use them according to your needs.
9) Quasi SVG
With this awesome application, you can make quasi-crystalline patterns that will definitely give a great look to your websites, apps, or backgrounds. All you have to do is to enter the details such as ‘Symmetry’, ‘Scale’, ‘Magnify’, and such. Quasi SVG will give you beautiful patterns once you get yourself around it and of course, you can download it in an SVG format.
10) Snap SVG
This site will help you to create, edit, or build your own SVG animation files that will most definitely blow away your clients, visitors, or other designers. Snap.svg can help in creating more interactive online video games, or online content that relies on awe-inspiring visuals.
With this app, you can make excellent interactive vector graphics that are adaptive to resolution thus you do not have to worry about screen sizes in any form. This website even serves you a JavaScript library that makes working with SVG assets way easier.
11) Iconizr
If you are looking for a good website where you can convert SVG animations or drawings then iconizr is a web page for you. All you have to do is put all your SVG files together and let the app convert it into a usable CSS icon kit.
12) Bonsai JS
Bonsai JS is a JavaScript graphic library with an intuitive API and SVG renderer. With Bonsai you can create amazing SVG animations with ease.
On the official website, you will be able to try out some of the cool animations you can create with this framework. This is an open-source tool, that can be used by all.
13) Plain Pattern
This website can be useful to all web designers. Plain Pattern is a very simple app with which you can create plain color patterns that can be exported into an SVG format.
At this stage, the site is still under construction. But hopefully, more features will be added to it in the future. It is recommended to look out for this site. As once it gets updated it will be even handier than it is now!
There you have it!
Hope this collection of tools will help you create, edit, customize, animate, or convert SVG projects. If you know other similar tools that will make your web designer or graphic designer job easier. Please share down below in the comment section.
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