I believe that this is a topic worth talking about; can a designer be great and successful while using free tools? My simple answer is yes, you most definitely can be. Notice my usage of the word “can”. Using the right free tools can be just as effective as using more expensive software such as Adobe Photoshop or Macromedia Dreamweaver.
The first thing you need is a great sense of design. Even if you have these more expensive tools, but you lack a sense for good design, your designs will often be failures. The only thing I can say on developing a good sense of design is to practise, and look at other designers’ work. A great place to try is CSSMania. The only problem with css galleries is that, after viewing a nice site, you may inadvertently mimic their style of design. This is never a good thing to do. Besides making the original designer angry and possibly setting yourself up for a lawsuit, you still have no definite style of your own. So instead of looking at css galleries or similar sites, I would attempt to look at other forms of media or design. These can include TV commercials, magazine layouts, or even book covers. Just use your imagination, and try and develop your own sense of style.
Once you have your own personal style, you have the potential to be a great, and possibly influential, designer. Now you need the tools to make your designs work. By this point in your career, I bet you have heard of Adobe Photoshop. This software is used by professionals whose careers’ include graphics. What many people don’t know is that there is a program called GIMP. This program is almost the equivalent to Adobe Photoshop; the only difference is a few hundred dollars. Yes, GIMP is 100% free. To learn how to operate GIMP a little better I would recommend going to GIMPTalk, and following some of the tutorials.
Now that you have GIMP, you may be wondering what you can do with it. Well, it is great for all types of design. Some of these include: print, web design layouts, image manipulations, and even animation. In many ways it can be used as a substitute to Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Imageready.
The next substitute program that is worth mentioning is one that can somewhat replace Adobe Illustrator. If you didn’t already know, Adobe Illustrator is used mainly to create vector graphics. This is particularly useful in creating logos and icons. This can also be done in Adobe Photoshop and GIMP, but not to the extent that it can in Illustrator. Of course, there is a free alternative to Adobe Illustrator. It is called Inkscape.
Actually, I prefer to used Inkscape to any other vector program. It has a nice interface, and many useful features. The only problem with Inkscape is that it can be a bit hard to learn. I will put up some tutorials on Veckd, but another great place to start is DeviantArt.
3-D graphics is another field of multimedia that is growing in popularity. I’m not sure if you ever use 3-D graphics, but I will briefly mention it anyways. The main 3-D programs would be Maya and Cinema 4D. At least to the best of my knowledge. Each of these costs well over what most people have to spend. But do not fear, there is a great program called Blender that will save the day.
It is a very powerful 3-D modeling tool, but, like Inkscape, it is very difficult to learn. At least in my opinion. Where I found help was in a great site called BioRUST.
The last free tool that every developer should know about is one that is a “substitute” for Macromedia Dreamweaver. This time I use the word “substitute” very loosely. I will say that Macromedia Dreamweaver has many more features that Nvu, but for the price, I feel that Nvu is a great program, and gets the job done.
Both Dreamweaver and Nvu are WYSIWYG editors. Even though I do not personally use WYSIWYG editors, I felt I should mention it.
So can free be great? Free programs may lack some fancy features that expensive programs have, but in general I feel the same job can be done with these free programs that can be done with their more expensive counterparts.