I’m sure that many of you may already be familiar with Kittl, a design platform, through YouTube ads.
Okay, I don’t know if they’re everywhere else.
But their ads seem to be all over YouTube right now.
When you think of Kittl, you may think of it as a platform that allows you to create designs for print-on-demand.
Well, you’re not wrong about that.
Kittl is indeed worth looking at if you’re thinking about showcasing your design talent through product designs.
But is it worth looking if you’re an author and you don’t have any plan to expand into merchandising?
Guess what?
You’ll be surprised to find out that Kittl is still worth looking at despite what you know about it from their YouTube ads.
A note about Kittl
Just to let you know that everything I’ve shared on this blog post is based on my own experience with their free plan.
As you can see here, the features in the free plan are obviously limited.
And it can mean that I don’t know much about Kittl’s true potential beyond my experience with their free plan.
Sure, I can upgrade to any of their paid plan for one month and cancel my subscription after that to experience their full features.
But nope, I find it a hassle to cancel the subscription after a month.
If anything, I would prefer to upgrade to the paid plan without having to cancel it, unless it’s due to unforeseen circumstances.
My thoughts about Kittl as a design platform
Here’s the funny thing about how I came across Kittl for the first time – YouTube wasn’t the first place I heard about Kittl.
It was actually through a random Google search that led me to discover the platform.
All this time, I thought I was using the right font on my book cover and the interior.
But it turns out that I got the whole font combination wrong!
As someone with only average book cover design skills, I figure I should use the template specifically designed for thriller book covers and make adjustments from there.
Lo and behold, that was where I came across Kittl for the first time.
Kittl may have been the place that provides tons of beautiful templates for print-on-demand.
But the templates include book cover templates, too.
That was the reason that got me sold on Kittl and decided to give it a try.
So, how was my experience with Kittl then?
Do they have book cover templates that are akin to the premade book cover or anything equivalent?
Sad to say, there are not that many, as far as thriller book cover templates are concerned.
And they’re the templates uploaded by the Kittl users, though.
The designs are great, of course, but they may not adhere to the industry standard, as seen in the premade book covers.
Amazingly enough, the interface isn’t that much different from Canva, albeit it has more tools for easier design creation for print-on-demand.
So, they’re right about Kittl being easy to use even if you’re new to design.
What you should know about Kittl
You can use Kittl to design a book cover like you would in Canva, not just designs for print-on-demand.
The only caveat?
There’s a limit on the dimension size you can download in the free plan.
Let’s say you want to use Kittl to design your book cover for Kindle.
You can set your canvas dimension to the one for a Kindle book cover, like you would in Canva, and begin the design process on Kittl.
But the dimension for your book cover design won’t be the one that you set initially when you download the file.
The dimension for your book cover will be the dimension for the Wattpad cover instead, which is 500×800 pixels.
Anything bigger than 500×800 pixels will require you to upgrade to their paid plan.
And if you think about wanting to use the free plan to build your t-shirt empire and will only upgrade to the paid plan once you make some money, you can’t do that either.
You will still need to upgrade to their paid plans for seamless integration with print-on-demand platforms such as Printful and Redbubble.
Another thing to note is that you will have to credit Kittl in your design if you’re on the free plan.
You don’t have to credit them if you’re on their paid plan, though.
Who should use Kittl?
There’s no doubt that Kittl is a wonderful tool to have if you want something similar to Canva, but specifically for print-on-demand.
Not only does it have a similar interface to Canva.
But it has a wide variety of tools you can use to make a unique design that is essential in the print-on-demand design, with the wavy text design effect being one of them.
Can you do the same on Canva?
Well, you can, of course.
But it doesn’t have a dedicated wavy text tool like the one on Kittl.
Having a dedicated wavy text tool may not mean much to you if your book cover design doesn’t require one.
But if you happen to need one, you can do that easily in Kittl.
I could be wrong about it, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to have a wavy text design on your book cover if you’re thinking about using one.
It will only make your book title and subtitle harder to read.
Those fancy text designs, such as circle, angle, distort, and arch, will only work best on t-shirts, not book covers.
Will I see myself upgrading to the Kittl paid plan in the future?
Believe it or not, I actually do plan to upgrade to their paid plan because of how easy it is to use even for non-designers.
But that is if I ever plan to venture into selling merchandise on my online store, though.
There’s no reason for me to upgrade to their paid plans if the only thing I do with it is to design a book cover.
I still prefer Word since I already have it and am familiar with it.
Just upload the fonts you need, and you can begin designing the book cover like you would in Canva and Kittl.
Can you create designs for t-shirts in Word?
Well, maybe you can with a little bit of tinkering.
But if you want something that makes the design process much easier with direct integration to Printful and Redbubble, then Kittl is the right tool to use.
Want to give Kittl a try? You can sign up here:
As always, I’ll let you know again if I’m upgrading to any of their paid plans for real.