There are more and more design tools. Once upon a time, knowing how to make masks in Photoshop was enough to be the coolest image in the office. But technology has developed, now any entrepreneur can create a landing page for his business and a dozen advertising posts for Instagram simply in a browser editor. At the same time, professional programs for designers open up more and more opportunities, and in order to master all the available functions of the next program, you have to spend a lot of time. In this article, we’ll take a look at Google Web Designer and tell you why it’s worth investigating for designers working in advertising.
What Is Google Web Designer
Google Web Designer (GWD) is a free tool from Google designed to create HTML5 banners, animations, interactive advertising materials and other graphic elements.
With GWD, you can create projects using a visual interface or using code. So knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript will be helpful when working with GWD, but not required, especially when starting out.
What Google Web Designer Looks Like
The interface of the visual editor Google Web Designer is similar in its structure to the interface of other popular graphic editors. There’s a workspace, toolbar, history, content library, individual tool settings, and more.
Separately, you should highlight the timeline, which comes in handy when creating animations and videos. This is somewhat different from creating animations in separate layers in similar programs. If you have difficulties creating animations in similar services, try this tool, it may seem clearer.
And the previously mentioned code editor looks like this:
What You Can Do With Google Web Designer
Google Web Designer allows you to create almost any dynamic and interactive visual content, anything, even greetings for Viber chats. But it is usually used to create banners, videos and advertising creatives.
You can perform a variety of tasks in Google Web Designer. Here are some of them:
- Creation of banners for digital advertising. Google Web Designer allows you to easily create web banners of various sizes and formats. You can use design, animation and interactivity tools to create engaging promotional materials.
- Animation. You can create moving elements and animations in Google Web Designer. This allows you to create attractive and effective advertising banners that attract the attention of users.
- Website design development. In Google Web Designer, you can create designs for pages and immediately make this design responsive with the “Alternate Pages” feature.
- Video. Among other things, GWD allows users to edit videos and audio tracks.
- HTML5 and CSS visual editing. Google Web Designer gives you the ability to make changes to HTML5 and CSS code directly in the editor interface.
Google Web Designer is a powerful tool for creating web banners and promotional materials that allows you to express your creativity and create attractive and effective advertising campaigns.
Dynamic Creatives With Google Web Designer And Creative Studio
GWB is useful for creating promotional materials because it easily integrates with other Google tools. In addition to accessing Google fonts and custom files on Google Drive, users can integrate Google Web Designer directly with advertising tools. In particular, in Google Web Designer you can create master banners and variations for dynamic creatives in Creative Studio. We described this possibility in more detail in the article “What Is Google Studio And How Dynamic Creatives Work“.
There, our specialist suggested pulling elements from GWD for a dynamic creative that would change depending on the weather around the viewer.
Google Web Designer Tutorials
Google has an official training program that introduces users to the functionality.
The course for beginners lasts 38 minutes and is devoted to the basics of working with the service. And lectures on how to make “Engaging, Interactive Creatives” for users with an average level of knowledge last 1.5 hours.
Alternatives to Google Web Designer
Google Web Designer is a multi-functional tool, so it’s hard to find a 100% alternative that matches all format options,
Of course, there are many other tools for creating web banners and promotional materials besides Google Web Designer. Some of them:
- Adobe Animate is a program for creating animations, including animated advertising banners.
- Canva is an online tool for creating various graphic materials: from postcards to advertising banners. Suitable for those who occasionally create visual materials and do not need advanced functions.
- VistaCreate (ex Crello) is another online tool for creating graphics, including web banners.
- Sketch is a popular design and prototyping tool that can also be used to create web banners and promotional materials.
- Vectr is a free vector graphics editor that allows you to create web banners and other promotional materials using a simple interface.
Each of these tools has its advantages and disadvantages, so the choice depends on the specific needs of the user and the requirements for advertising materials.
