Graphic Design: GIMP and Inkscape

If you find yourself needing to make resources for your kids, it helps when it works like the tools the professionals have available.

Enter G.I.M.P. and Inkscape: the free and open source answers to Photoshop and Illustrator. I use both often. Both of my kids are artistically inclined, so not only do I make material for them, I show them how I did it.

G.I.M.P. is the Gnu Image Manipulation Program, and it has been around for much longer than most people know. It's been included in versions of Linux to function in the role Paint plays for Windows. It's way more powerful than Paint, though. It's grown up and taken on features that were desired by users who had experienced Photoshop and Corel Draw and wanted to bring them to the Open Source Software community.

Inkscape is a vector art🎨 box. If you need to make a flyers, logos, graphics for cars, cutouts, custom coloring pages, what you need is to make vector art. Sharp edges and nothing out of place. Super useful. Learn it and teach your kids to use it. Even if you never make your own vector graphics, you'll get a better understanding of what the guy at the screen-printing shop is saying, and when your kids start their own business they'll only need to pay for a logo when they run out of mileage from their own imagination. (Mileage varies and graphic designers are talented, so the homegrown logo may not be snazzier than the scaled up professional "you're not going to pay me if this isn't good enough" logo. But I'm being honest: if you're using Inkscape, that difference is not highly likely to be a result of tools being unavailable.)

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