Resources & Courses for Aspiring Showit Designers & Brand Designers

Unbridled Form is all about intentional experiences that feel as much like running wild as they do coming home. These courses, templates, and brand resources offer endless possibilities to serve your clients, and are the perfect tool to kick off your new chapter of growth. I trust these with my clients and my own business so I hope you find something that feels impactful for where you’re heading next. 

Recommended Showit Courses

Showit Course for New Designers: Showit-All by Rebel and Rise

I’ve personally taken this course and it’s fantastic. Katie walks you through everything from navigating the back-end of Showit, understanding how sections work, blogging with WordPress, implementing SEO, and integrating tools like Flodesk, Thrivecart, quizzes and more. You also get an exclusive template to use for guided test projects and client work.

Katie also covers setting your business up for success with modules that give guidance on pricing, setting up a template shop, and earning extra money through affiliate marketing. AND there are over a dozen guest trainings from other web designers and business specialists.

Of all of the Showit courses I’m currently aware of, this is my number one recommendation for anyone who’s starting on their Showit web design journey and wants to start off with a solid foundation.

Katie offers a free training where she goes through the types of services you can offer as a Showit web designer and a behind-the-scenes look at the back-end.

Showit Course for New or Experienced Designers: Revolving Revenue by Northfolk

I haven’t taken this course (yet!) but Sam and Rachel are the queens of giving away insane value in all of their individual templates, commercial use Showit templates, and educational resources. Revolving Revenue goes beyond design and basic shop set up to cover: market research and offer development, optimizing leads, launch planning, and system setup and automation.

They also have so many guest speakers on topics like semi-custom brands, Pinterest marketing, SEO, and specialty offerings like design intensives. AND you get tons of bonuses like funnel planning workbooks and the OG commercial use canvas kit for building templates — like using building blocks instead of starting from scratch.

Honestly, just go to their site and see for yourself. This course is so insanely extensive and I dream of taking it someday.

Understanding SEO or Hiring Someone to Help with SEO: Duo Collective

Duo Collective is a boutique organic marketing agency specializing in branding and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), for small business owners and creative entrepreneurs. These gals are the real deal when it comes to SEO strategies to help your target audience find you online and start getting more clients and customers. The Duo Blog covers everything from how to find SEO keywords to understanding which SEO metrics you should track. They also offer a course, done-for-you SEO services, and one-off marketing consultations.

Neither of these course or contractor recommendations contains affiliate links that provide you with a discount or me with a kick-back, but some of the following design asset links do. Rest assured, I only share the very best tools of the trade that I trust with my own business. I highly recommend you get set up as an affiliate for the shops you love and trust, once you’ve had a chance to try each out for a bit and see if you really do love it.

Recommended Shops for Design Assets

Showit Template Shops

Not all Showit template shops are created equal. I’ve had clients come to me with templates they’ve already bought and the sites have sometimes been a pain to work with. Links not set up already, blog functionality not there, navigation and footer canvases not set to automatically display on every page… Just stuff you shouldn’t be dealing with if you bought a ready-to-customize template. So here are the shops I trust with my own brand and my clients:

• Northfolk: Sam and Rachel are the queens of moody Showit websites and hands-down my most trusted template shop for full sites for creatives like photographers, designers, writers, and creative service providers of all kinds. They also have individual pages that can be added to any existing Showit site for when you launch that podcast, passive product, or blog. Use code “UNBRIDLED” for 15% off!
• Tonic Site Shop: Tonic has incredibly impactful templates that are all the best of light, bright, and timeless. & they just keep the consistency coming with incredibly easy-to-use social media and pitch deck templates that you can edit in Canva and have a killer post or PDF ready in minutes. Use code “UNBRIDLED” for 15% off!
• Super Hero Designs: Melissa’s Showit website and Canva templates blend aesthetics, function, and affordability, with the average full site template costing about $350. So whether you’re looking for something modern and bold or natural and understated, her templates are a great option that are easy on your budget. Use code “UNBRIDLED” for 20% off!

As you’re getting started, you can also look around for free Showit templates. The Showit design store has a bunch of free ones for a variety of industries (and they can totally be customized for any type of business) and some independent template shops offer free home page templates in exchange for your email address.

• Free templates from the Showit store
• Sunset by Super Hero Designs
• Charlotte by McKinley Media
• Cultivate by Oregon Lane
• North Shore by With Grace and Gold
• Canvases by Style Maker Studio

There is zero shame in using a template for your own web design portfolio site. Doing so allows you more time to explore and develop your style, by customizing what’s already there for you versus staring at a blank page and wondering how the heck you get an element to scroll like it did on someone else’s site. Using templates allows you to get a feel for what functionality is possible and then to expand on it in your own custom designs. They’re a great tool as long as you give original design credit to the template shop and don’t abuse them for client work.

Because unless you’re buying a commercial use license to a product like Northfolk’s Universal Add-On Bundle, Sales Bundle, or Designer Access Pass, your clients will need to specifically purchase a template that will then be licensed to them. You cannot buy these templates and then use them on whatever projects.

Stock Photography

Sourcing non-basic stock photography is hard work, especially if you want photos that aren’t circulating on everyone else’s sites. Below are my favorite stock photo sites for curating visuals that feel like a styled brand photoshoot. You can view entire albums or collections of all photos from one shoot, for maximum consistency.

• The Humble Lion
• Editorial Stock Images
• Kaboom Pics
• Pexels
• Unsplash
• Moyo Mockups

Fonts

Not all type foundries are created equal either. Stay away from anything that looks scammy and maybe just stick to the main reputable foundries for now. Some foundries may have neat-looking typefaces, but sometimes they’re not optimized for web display and they can increase page load times (decreasing SEO and user experience).

• Jen Wagner
• Creative Market
• Blanc Salvage

Social and Email Templates

• Artistic Social Media Templates by Saffron Ave
• Bold Social Media Templates by Super Hero Design
• Modern Social Media Templates by Tonic Site Shop
• Flodesk Graphics by Tonic Site Shop
• Flodesk Graphics by Saffron Ave

Business Tools

• Dubsado: I tried Honeybook and Freshbooks but Dubsado is my favorite so far for customizing forms and proposals and staying on top of onboarding items like contracts and deposits. Dubasdo simplifies and streamlines the admin tasks that tend to get less attention when you absolutely love the core of what you do. Get 20% off.
• Flodesk: If you can design a Canva graphic, you can create a beautiful email with Flodesk’s drag-and-drop style setup and simple open and click rate reports. And if you can build a Showit site, then you can definitely create some awesome emails. Plus, you need to have an opt-in for when you launch your newsletter and it’s best to start sooner rather than later. This guide was written for developing a copywriting freebie, but there’s a lot of overlap in the strategy behind a web designer’s freebie offering as well. Take a look and then get 50% off your Flodesk subscription.
• The Contract Shop®: Look to these pre-written templates if you want to prioritize protecting your business and your sanity but don’t want to fork out your life savings for an attorney. They have options for contracts, terms and conditions, and pretty much every type of legal template to avoid headaches and keep your site and business legal.

Should you want more personalized support and strategy, get in touch to schedule a strategy consultation or design workshop call. You’ll fill out a questionnaire about where you’re at in your design business or client project and then we’ll make the most of our one-hour call by diving right into exploring your process, opportunities, or what you’d like a second set of specialty eyes on.