Which graphic design tool should I use, including AI ones?
Canva, for most founders: the free plan covers social posts, decks and flyers with limited AI, and Pro is US$144 a year at Canva's listed price, with ten times the AI allowance and a brand kit. Adobe Express is the closest rival and is priced in rupees: free with 5GB and over 345,000 templates, Premium at ₹398.84 a month including GST, and Airtel customers can claim 12 months of Premium free until 27 January 2027. Figma (free Starter plan, Professional seat $16 a month) suits product screens and decks you want full control over, and Affinity, now owned by Canva, is a professional desktop app for vector, photo and print work that is free for individuals. For AI pictures, ChatGPT Images and Google's Nano Banana in the Gemini app have free tiers, and Ideogram is good at words inside an image. Rule: Canva or Adobe Express for marketing graphics, Figma for product screens, Affinity for print.
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Canva's own plans page. Canva Free covers templates and basic editing with limited AI; Pro is US$144 a year for one person with 10x the AI allowance of Free; Business is US$250 a year per person. Canva shows Indian visitors their local price at checkout.
Adobe Express prices in rupees: Free at ₹0 with 5GB of storage and access to 345,000+ templates, and Premium at ₹398.84 a month including GST with 250 generative credits and 100GB. The page also states Airtel customers can claim 12 months of Premium free until 27 January 2027.
Figma's plans: the free Starter plan with unlimited drafts and 150 AI credits a day (up to 500 a month), then Professional at $16 a month for a full seat, $12 for a Dev seat and $3 for a Collab seat.
Affinity, the professional design, photo-editing and page-layout app now owned by Canva, is free for individuals. It is the free alternative to Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign for print and vector work.
The messiest part of staying on-brand across a website, app, LinkedIn, and event booths is that the person making a WhatsApp graphic at 11pm is rarely a designer. A Brand Kit puts your logos, colours, and fonts in one shared place inside the editor, and locked brand templates let non-designers ship things that are already on-brand without a designer in the loop. It is a starting point, not a full brand system, but it is the single lever that removes the most day-to-day drift.
One central kit holds your official logos, colours, and fonts so everyone pulls from the same source instead of hunting for the right file.
Locked brand templates let anyone swap the copy or image while the logo, palette, and layout stay fixed, which keeps non-designers on-brand by default.
The core Brand Kit needs a paid Canva plan, so budget for that before you roll it out to a growing team.
