Tell your story better with pictures.
Use free apps to design persuasive images, GIFs and videos. See how other campaigns apply these apps to inspire people to act. This blog is rich with images and light on words to illustrate the point.
Here are the top 16 free apps for social activists and change:
DeSantistan : Creating the graphic
Graphic design
LunaPic is a versatile free app to make graphics. You can crop (use only part of) an image, make the background transparent and dozens of other features. In the DeSantistan dashboard, the image of Mullah DeSantis has been cropped and the words 'Welcome To Desantistan' have been added on with Canva. Canva is a wonderful app, but many features such as the transparent background and advanced photo editing are only available in the paid version of the app while LunaPic provides them for free.
Create videos, GIFs and infographics
- Infogram - Create an infographic
- iMovie - Create an edit video clips
- Lumen5 - Create videos with catalog of royalty free video clips and soundtracks
- EZGIF - Create and edit GIFs
President Biden's Biggest Achievements : Creating the infographic
Create infographics such as President Biden's Biggest Achievements that combine text, images, GIFs and videos into an animated message with the free Infogram app. Infogram also provides a large collection of photos, videos and templates. You can revise your infographic at anytime, since it is stored online.
The party of the rich, by the rich, of the rich: Creating the video
Lumen5 makes it easy to create videos by providing a large library of professional video clips and soundtracks. This video about Republicans blocking relief during the COVID pandemic was created with Lumen5. It uses clips of a waiter serving champagne, money raining down, a homeless person and an angry voter. Images of Mitch McConnell and other Republican senators are inserted and captions overlaid. Finally, a free music soundtrack from the Lumen5 app is added. The video created is downloaded and then distributed through YouTube. Watch the final video here.
GOP packed Supreme Court cripples the EPA: Creating the GIF
iMovie is a free app to create videos, but can also be used to create GIFs. This example uses cartoons from the Political Cartoons catalog which were uploaded into iMovie and overlaid with captions. A GIF was captured from the iMovie preview panel in the top right. The GIF was then compressed with the free EZGIF app. Learn how progressive groups can get a free Political Cartoons account here.
iMovie can also be used to create videos, but does not offer a large collection of free to use images, videos and soundtracks like Lumen5. Learn more about creating rapid response videos here.
Pro-Russia FOX News : Creating the video
Photos, cartoons and video catalogs
- Unsplash - Large royalty free catalog freely usable images
- Pixabay - 2.6 million stunning free images & royalty free stock
- Pexels - Thousands of free stock photos, royalty free images and videos
- WikiMedia - 87 million freely usable media files
- Nappy - Free beautiful photos of Black and Brown people
- Political Cartoons - Thousands of free editorial cartoons for qualified groups
Use visuals
Pictures and animation attract attention. Use visuals to spread your further and make a bigger impact. Free apps make it easy and affordable to illustrate your point.
Storytelling goes better visuals. Find free-to-use images to use with your message from Unsplash, Pixabay, Pexels, WikiMedia and Nappy. Nappy is especially useful in finding images of Black and Brown people which are often under-represented in most photo catalogs.
Graphic utilities
- Brandfolder - Extract text from an image
- FreeConvert - Convert graphics files from one format to another
- PDFtoTEXT - Extract text from PDF files
- WeTransfer - Ship large graphics files over the web
- BigStage Teleprompter - Animate text with graphics
Utility programs come in handy when you have to optimize the size of your images so that they upload faster, send large files to partners, extract text from image files or animate words.
TakeAway: Tell stories better with pictures.
Deepak
DemLabs
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