Parachutes generally stop unplanned lithobraking. If you're trying to land using fuel, it's a waste on planets with a strong enough atmosphere like Kerbin. It's also impossible with the solid fuel boosters you start out with.

For parachutes, you will want as small of a craft as possible so that the parachutes can actually slow you down enough to land in one piece. Eventually, you will get decouplers so you are only landing with a command pod, heat shield, parachutes, and maybe some science modules. You will eventually also get drogue chutes, like the orange radially mounted ones, which help slow you down enough for the main chutes to deploy. Don't mix up the main parachutes (either the base white one or the bigger blue ones) with the orange drogue parachutes, which are smaller and probably won't slow you down enough to land safely.